Sure, there's nothing that openly encourages them to ignore such, but there's nothing that encourages them to listen to such, either, I'd say. And I think the assumed approach leans more toward the former than the latter.
I'm a bit unsure about your
formers and
latters (because of the negations - "nothing" - and also the verbs embedded in the "encourage" verbs). Are you saying that the assumed approach tends towards
ignoring player cues rather than
paying attention to those cues?
That seems plausible, based on my exposure to D&D play. But that has nothing to do with players not wanting to tread onto the GM's field of authority; nor with "living sandbox" vs "story now". You can have full GM authority over backstory and situation and still have the GM pay attention to those cues. And that could be story now (I mean, this is basically how AW works - the cues are mostly going to manifest in the process of
asking questions and building on the answers) or it could be
@Campbell's story-now-in-the-streets-right-to-dream-in-the-sheets.
So
@FrogReaver,
@Crimson Longinus - are you saying that you prefer the GM to ignore player-evinced priorities in the exercise of their authority? And if you are, are you able to say anything about why you have that preference?
So I actually played in a session for that campaign just last night. And something came up that I think may be worth noting, and for different instances.
***************
First, one point of frustration I experienced as a player. Again, I was playing my ranger character. We were in battle with some hags who had kidnapped some children from the nearby towns. We'd tracked them down and located their coven's meeting place. During the ensuing battle, we managed to kill one of the two hags present. The other fled.
My ranger had cast Hunter's Mark on this hag and also has the Sharpshooter feat. These matter because as the Hag fled by swimming away through the swamp water, my turn came up and I declared that I wanted to shoot her.
The GM told me I could not attack the hag. I asked why. He advised because of the range (the hag had been on the opposite end of the battlefield as my ranger, and took the Dash action on her turn to move double speed). I reminded him that with the Sharpshooter feat, my ranger ignores disadvantage due to range, and my long bow range is 600', more than enough to still put the hag in range.
He then said it was due to not being able to see her in the water. I asked if I was allowed to attempt to track her using the Hunter's Mark spell, which would grant me advantage on either Perception or Survival skills used to track the target. He then said that because she was underwater, even if I could track her, I could not attack her.
I concluded at this point that he simply wanted her to get away. I didn't quite get why, and I haven't yet had a chance to discuss that specific point of play with him, but I plan on it. I found it to be pretty frustrating.
Your first example is uncannily like my bad-guy-in-the-valley-then-in-the-volcano scenario. It's a transparent exercise of GM force.
In Prince Valiant, a GM is entitled to use "special effects" in an episode. From the rulebook (pp43-44):
Special Effects are ways in which a Storyteller . . . can decisively affect the action of the game without any coin throws. Special Effects give the Storyteller control over the course of events, even in the face of very powerful Adventurers.
When possible, the Storyteller should use coin throws to impose his will on the Adventurers. For example, it is more realistic and entertaining to assign a high Difficulty Factor to a task, and let the Adventurers all try and fail, than to simply say “it’s impossible to do that.” But leaving your story vulnerable to a lucky coin throw can be risky.
For example, if a puny Adventurer was fighting your main villain and making excellent coin throws, fairness dictates that he win, even if it spoils your story. But a Special Effect gives the Storyteller an event that occurs without fail. This can help him control the story without being too dictatorial. . . .
Special Effects are normally linked to specific characters in the story (see the Episodes for examples). Usually no more than three characters with Special Effects, or one character with three Special Effects, should be used, so as to let the players retain some control.
The players should not know what Special Effects your characters have, but they should be logical ones for the characters. For example, a beautiful girl is more likely to have the Effects of INCITE LUST or INSPIRE INDIVIDUAL TO GREATNESS than she would be to have HIDE or KILL A FOE IN COMBAT. Your players may be able to guess what kind of Effects a character has, and this increases the fun of the game. . . .
The user states that he is putting into action a Special Effect and reads it into the plot. The desired event happens, and the story is changed, often dramatically. The Storyteller must create a reasonable explanation for the way in which the Effect takes place, in terms of the current situation.
One of the Special Effect is "Save in Combat" (p 45):
This Effect saves one character who is about to be attacked or defeated in a brawl, melee, battle or other violent situation. The saved character does not defeat the enemy, but rather confuses or avoids the foe long enough to escape. Anyone can use this Effect to avoid injury or capture, including women, priests, children, or other noncombatants.
When a warrior puts this Effect into action he suddenly trips his foe, shatters the foe’s weapon, shoves a table across the room to knock the foe down, or otherwise evades his enemy long enough to escape combat.
Even if there are many enemies, Save in Combat rescues the character from defeat in combat.
This sort of "technology" is not foreign to 5e D&D - Legendary Resistance is a form of it. But like Prince Valiant's special effects, Legendary Resistance is rationed. The rationing is the biggest part of what makes it principled.
Marvel Herioc RP has a different version of this: the GM can always spend 2d12 from the Doom Pool to end a scene. This has benefits for the players, too: whenever a d12 is spent from the Doom Pool they get 1 XP each (a d12 is the biggest die in the system); and the Doom Pool is now smaller.
I personally think it is poor GMing to frame a situation as a combat, to be resolved by application of the combat resolution mechanics, and then to just arbitrarily suspend those mechanics with no reference to any principle or acknowledged game technique. Upthread (I think it was in this thread) I mentioned that when I ran Maiden Voyage using Burning Wheel I merged the two encounters with the ghost ship into one. It was precisely to avoid this sort of issue that I did that! Or in other words, I took my own advice - if I want an edge-of-the-volcano-scene, then cut straight to that and don't insert a valley scene first where I'm not prepared to wear the outcome.
The second instance of play involved another player and his use of his familiar. His familiar counts as a fey creature and he can dismiss it as an action, where it goes to a demiplane until resummoned on a subsequent action, when it appears within 30 feet of the caster. So he sent it out to scout an area that was beyond 100 feet, which means the caster could no longer look through its eyes. He waited a few rounds and then dismissed the familiar, placing it in the demiplane, and then resummoned it the next round.
The GM narrated that a pair of redcaps came along with it! The familiar encountered the fey, and they grabbed it, then when it was dimissed, the GM decided their fey nature allowed them to kind of piggyback along with it, and so they appeared along with it.
One or two players seemed to be a bit bothered by this. I'm curious how others feel. It seems to be totally unsupported by the rules as written, but it seems a kind of suitable outcome based on the fictional elements. I would have liked that consequence to be the result of a roll of some sort, but one was not made.
To me, this seems like a GM trying to do something interesting, and the system letting them down a bit.
In 4e this would be easy to adjudicate, because the skill challenge framework creates a context for imposing consequences for failure, framing new complications within an overall context in which the players can achieve finality of resolution, etc.
5e seems a bit weaker in this context. How should the GM have handled this, short of fiat, in 5e? Let the player of the wizard roll a save? Make the redcaps roll an Arcana check? This is getting into the terrain where it's hard for me to stick to analysis rather than evaluation: I prefer systems that have the flexibility to handle this without raising any eyebrows or relying on largely arbitrary assertions of GM authority (eg Cortex+ Heroic, which has incredible flexibility in consequence narration; 4e D&D, which comes pretty close to that; Prince Valiant, which has not player-side magic of the D&D sort and so doesn't raise the "unsupported by rules as written" issue; etc).
