GM fiat - an illustration

[Bedrockgames]

The OP didn't say that anything is a problem.

I think @Micah Sweet said that a GM who makes stuff up in the moment that circumvents the Alarm spell is a jerk. I took you to more-or-less agree with that upthread. So you two seem to care, and to think that it can be a problem.

I think in the case of the alarm spell, the example sounds ike a problem. I don't think the GM making things up is problem generally

 

[Micah Sweet]

As I posted upthread - one natural destination for this line of thinking is a systematisation of the tables, when you roll on them, how they are modified, etc. And - voila! - you've replaced your Alarm spell with Aetherial Premonitions.

That is a systemization of the process of play, not of the tables. The tables are for individual things, like the availability of nightblades for hire, which is likely affected by a number of modifiers.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I see no benefit to forcing the kinds of restrictions you want, to be honest.

This is where I think there's some difference in understanding. If you were, say, playing Dungeon World, you aren't going to find any 'restrictions' forced on you. You just find a simple universal system where the point of resolution doesn't hinge on these sorts of imagined chains of causality. The fiction DOES explain the causes and effects of things, in a story sense, but that describes the trajectory of play, instead of constraining it. IME there are LESS restrictions. The stories that have come out of our more narrativist campaigns have been more fluid, wide-ranging, and thematic than the earlier ones were.

Not that I think they were necessarily 'better' by all possible measures, but they did seem to contain 'more types of stuff'.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is where I think there's some difference in understanding. If you were, say, playing Dungeon World, you aren't going to find any 'restrictions' forced on you. You just find a simple universal system where the point of resolution doesn't hinge on these sorts of imagined chains of causality. The fiction DOES explain the causes and effects of things, in a story sense, but that describes the trajectory of play, instead of constraining it. IME there are LESS restrictions. The stories that have come out of our more narrativist campaigns have been more fluid, wide-ranging, and thematic than the earlier ones were.

Not that I think they were necessarily 'better' by all possible measures, but they did seem to contain 'more types of stuff'.

I don't want to play or run a narrativist campaign, so for me what you are describing are restrictions. I respect that you feel differently.

 

[bloodtide]

In what world are not caring what some fool printed in a book, not caring what other GMs think, and disagreeing with players considered to be anything other than thinking you know better than them?

I call the world Earth.

But if you want to elaborate... okay. Why don't you care what designers may put into their rules?

They are just people: fallible humans. What they write is nice, and I might like some of it. But I feel not even the slightest urge to follow everything they print in a book.

Why don't you care what other GMs think?

Well, in a general sense, I don't care what anyone thinks. It is a generally good way to live life.

Why do you disagree with players?

Well, I disagree with a lot of people. I'm not the type that follows "fads" or "trends" or "what is popular". And I sure don't look at a whole group of people who all think only one thing and have a desire to join them and become "one of them".

Rules for what? How much resources some opponent has? I mean, sure if you run City State of the Invincible Overlord, pretty much every building is keyed in the whole (large) city. You still can't tell who will work for whom, exactly what their goals and resources are, etc. Plus you will have to play in something with this kind of level of prep.

Well, that or you have a VERY slow moving kind of plodding game where much of the time the players are simply 'fiddling around' or doing something of little consequence. It would be effectively impossible to sustain a game at any great pace where you had to make up all the financial and social details of the life of tons of NPCs and figure out how the entire world works in detail.

I mean, we decide to break into a warehouse in Fong Town. Who does it belong to? What's in there? Can they afford magical protection? Do they have influence with the town government to get the PCs in trouble? I believe you can sometimes construct this amount of detail in a very restricted sense, but that means you better have the PCs on a short leash so they don't go outside that!

I ran this kind of campaign, it definitely wasn't sustainable at the pace we moved at! In fact it devolved down into essentially narrativist play after a few months. Not that I'd really heard about those techniques (it was the '90s) but focusing on the plot as being the thing that was the game part of play got pretty interesting. Not that it was easy to do with 2e, but kind of possible.

The above is very possible, as I do it. And so do a lot of other DMs.

One type of DM won't, or can't put much effort into the game beyond just playing it. Much like say a board game. This type of DM, the player DM, wants to be just like the typical player. And that is putting very little effort, often none, into the game. Even more so outside of the game play. The casual player and player-DM just wants to show up, play the game for a couple hours and have a fun time. This DM does not make up much.

The other type of DM puts a lot of effort into the game. Often many, many, many hours per week every week. Nothing like any other type of game. This type of DM is far beyond and apart of the typical player. While the typical player just makes a character and shows up to the game ready to play, this DM does tons and tons of work outside the game. This DM makes up tons and tons and tons of content.

And the big difference too is one DM does nothing and the other writes an adventure.

 

[pemerton]

The other type of DM puts a lot of effort into the game. Often many, many, many hours per week every week.

I've done this - when I was a student and had the time. I'm very confident @AbdulAlhazred has too, probably a decade or more before me!

For my part, I can say that the sessions I run today, using systems both newer (eg Torchbearer 2e, Burning Wheel, MHRP, D&D 4e) and older (eg Prince Valiant, Classic Traveller) are better than the ones that I was running back then (using AD&D and Rolemaster).

That's partly because I've become better at my craft; and partly because the systems are better suited to what I am trying to do. My relative lack of prep (none for some sessions) hasn't had any sort of adverse consequences!

 

[aramis erak]

Although, say, B/X can easily be played basically like a boardgame where players basically gamble at whether the next door they'll bash will be good or not and the GM is actively trying to kill them.

I've done that. Both sides of the screen, too.

 

[aramis erak]

Well, video games come to mind as games with no rules: video games have programs. Unless your saying 'rules' and 'programs' are the same things.

Very much alike, programming and rules writing. And adventure writing.

They're essentially procedural flowcharts. A good adventure is a branching flow-chart at its core, and one that ties into the flowcharts and data sets of the core rules.

the human brain is, essentially, a Turing-Complete computer. Anything a computer can do, a human can do... just nowhere near as fast if it involves math. We aren't quite to the reciprocal yet.

 

[aramis erak]

I already have. Sports and board game rules completely contain the entire game. You don't encounter situations where either the rule should not apply, or there is no rule that applies. In an RPG you encounter those situations all the time.

There's no rule in baseball for when a bird steals the ball. (I've seen that happen. Once. At a friendly game in Anchorage... bald eagle stole the ball.) What I've read says that the Umpire on scene makes a call. Ours called it a walk and forbidden to steal.

I just pity whomever the eagle dropped it on...

 

[aramis erak]

Fortunately, ttrpgs aren't about winning or losing. They're about having fun with a group of friends

There are some that are. They're not for everyone's tastes...
Brute Squad comes to mind; if you run the GM out of dice, you find the McGuffin and win the scenario.