GM fiat - an illustration

[Maxperson]

Well... "winged monkeys drop rocks on the party" bypasses the spell, assuming that the monkeys are 21' or more up.

Again... who determines exactly what creatures are in the encounter? Their disposition? The distance of the encounter?

All of those used to be determined by reaction rolls. I think there's a reason for that.



Sure, rulings will be needed. But I would expect that to be more a case of from time to time, not pretty much every time this or that spell is used.

What makes the Alarm spell useless in pretty much any setting that has any sort of realism at all, is the spell itself. Insects, rats, mice, etc. are size tiny, so the alarm would be going off every time a fly flew into the cube or a spider crawled by. DMs actually have to ditch what makes sense in order for it not to be completely useless as a spell.

WotC should have made it a size small or larger creature.

 

[Maxperson]

You're talking about things that are predetermined in GM prep rather than things that are decided in the moment.

If you pre-decide in prep that the sports car is behind door one then fair enough, player agency is preserved.

If you wait for me to choose a door and then decide no, that door has a goat behind it after all, I have no agency.

If you wait for me to choose a door and then decide yes, that's the sports car, well done, I also have no agency.

That's illusionism and it's a type of railroad, and the only one that might be advocating that in this thread would be @bloodtide. Nobody else is suggesting that as a resolution type.

If you wait for me to choose a door and then randomise the goats and sports car I still have agency.

No you don't. Your choice didn't matter one bit. Only the die roll did. You only have agency if the fact is established prior to the door selection.

 

[Maxperson]

What? No you don't. It's quite possible you have no agency in any of those situations, if there was no way to know anything about what was behind the door in the first place. The last example you gave just ensures that's the case.

There's no meaningful difference between a choice with a random effect on the outcome, and no choice.

I disagree. Even if you don't know what is behind the doors, your choice still matters. YOU are the one picking the door and what is behind doesn't change. Your choice isn't being negated by a quantum ogre(or goat), so you have agency. Now it's not going to be as much agency as if you knew what was behind each door before making the choice, but you still have agency none the less.

You only lose your agency in those examples if your choice doesn't matter at all due to illusionism or random determination after you pick the door.

 

[Maxperson]

This one I am unclear on. I am fine with randomness. But I don't see how if a player chooses a door and you determine what is behind it randomly that protects your agency. You aren't really making a meaningful choice, it is just down to the dice, no matter which door you choose, it is a random result. Perhaps I misunderstand the example though

The die roll is just a form of the illusionism railroad. The result of the die roll would have been applied to any door selected, so the result is the same as if the DM just plunked that result down himself using illusionism. The only way for the choice to matter in those examples, is with pre-determination of what is behind each door.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Pre-establishment, if it's not adversarial in nature, won't impact agency. What happens after establishment, though, can absolutely affect agency. If the DM drives the players towards or away from pre-established thing, he's reducing or elimination agency.

Let’s just set aside adversarial GMing. I’m not really talking about that… let’s assume good faith on the part of the GM.

The things established by the GM ahead of play can absolutely thwart player agency. Stuff that the player doesn’t know can be used to block an action or a goal. Why couldn’t it?

Just curious, but why can't the Order of Nyx be introduced there? Does introduction have to happen outside of a potential conflict?

Generally speaking (because different games will handle this in different ways) when you level a consequence on players as a result of a low roll, you draw upon what’s already extant in the setting. Mostly, it’s about immediate things… you’re in melee with someone and roll poorly, the move is to inflict harm on the PC not have Godzilla show up.

So with a more general check or move that doesn’t have immediate and obvious consequences, yeah, you might introduce a new threat. But when and how you can do so matters a lot. What you don’t do is have pre-existing ideas about the game that are unknown to the players and use them to block actions.

What was overridden in the OP? The alarm spell is used to minimize the chance of being surprised/ambushed, not eliminate it. Players don't get to cast the alarm spell with the expectation that it will always warn them in time, because that's not what the spell does.

So in the OP, the players chose to have a small chance that the alarm spell wouldn't work, and that choice was honored. As it would also have been honored had it worked.

The point is that the GM can just fiat their way past the spell. What determines if that’s fair or not?

What makes the Alarm spell useless in pretty much any setting that has any sort of realism at all, is the spell itself. Insects, rats, mice, etc. are size tiny, so the alarm would be going off every time a fly flew into the cube or a spider crawled by. DMs actually have to ditch what makes sense in order for it not to be completely useless as a spell.

WotC should have made it a size small or larger creature.

The caster can designate creatures that don’t trigger the spell.

 

[Pedantic]

I disagree. Even if you don't know what is behind the doors, your choice still matters. YOU are the one picking the door and what is behind doesn't change. Your choice isn't being negated by a quantum ogre(or goat), so you have agency. Now it's not going to be as much agency as if you knew what was behind each door before making the choice, but you still have agency none the less.

You only lose your agency in those examples if your choice doesn't matter at all due to illusionism or random determination after you pick the door.

Unless there's some further possible action you could take to gain more information, then I don't see a difference between a player making a choice and rolling a die. Agency requires better than random level impact. Consider the card game War, which has no agency (and is fact deterministic from the deal); War doesn't become a better game if the players split their decks in half and pick which one to flip from.

Giving the player decision that doesn't have any bearing over outcome can't provide agency, and if I'm honest with you, is mostly a good way to waste your player's time. It's particularly effective if they have been presented a series of choices with agency beforehand and can't clearly differentiate this non-choice from them.

 

[Maxperson]

Unless there's some further possible action you could take to gain more information, then I don't see a difference between a player making a choice and rolling a die. Agency requires better than random level impact. Consider the card game War, which has no agency (and is fact deterministic from the deal); War doesn't become a better game if the players split their decks in half and pick which one to flip from.

Giving the player decision that doesn't have any bearing over outcome can't provide agency, and if I'm honest with you, is mostly a good way to waste your player's time. It's particularly effective if they have been presented a series of choices with agency beforehand and can't clearly differentiate this non-choice from them.

The choice matters whether the player has the information or not. If one door has the way out and the other certain death, then even if the player is picking randomly, his choice still has meaning as it is what determines freedom or death. It's minimal for sure, but it's still the player's choice that is deciding the outcome.

The difference between the above and say war, is who is deciding. In war, the deck is making the "decision" in quotes because it's a deck of cards. The player isn't deciding. If the player had a choice of two different cards and had to pick one without knowing what the number was, that would be the same thing. It's the player's choice, not the cards.

Now ideally the DM isn't going to put in a decision of that magnitude without some sort of way to get more information, but it serves as an example.

 

[Pedantic]

The choice matters whether the player has the information or not. If one door has the way out and the other certain death, then even if the player is picking randomly, his choice still has meaning as it is what determines freedom or death. It's minimal for sure, but it's still the player's choice that is deciding the outcome.

The difference between the above and say war, is who is deciding. In war, the deck is making the "decision" in quotes because it's a deck of cards. The player isn't deciding. If the player had a choice of two different cards and had to pick one without knowing what the number was, that would be the same thing. It's the player's choice, not the cards.

Now ideally the DM isn't going to put in a decision of that magnitude without some sort of way to get more information, but it serves as an example.

I simply don't recognize that as agency. If a choice can be seamlessly replaced with a die roll, it's meaningless and should not have been offered to me. I'd even go a step further and say trivial optimization cases (particularly if all information is open upfront) also don't offer any real agency, but that sounds closer to what you're suggesting here.

 

[Maxperson]

Let’s just set aside adversarial GMing. I’m not really talking about that… let’s assume good faith on the part of the GM.

The things established by the GM ahead of play can absolutely thwart player agency. Stuff that the player doesn’t know can be used to block an action or a goal. Why couldn’t it?

I don't see an obstacle as blocking. Obstacles can be overcome. It may pause the players, but it's not going to block them.

Generally speaking (because different games will handle this in different ways) when you level a consequence on players as a result of a low roll, you draw upon what’s already extant in the setting. Mostly, it’s about immediate things… you’re in melee with someone and roll poorly, the move is to inflict harm on the PC not have Godzilla show up.

So with a more general check or move that doesn’t have immediate and obvious consequences, yeah, you might introduce a new threat. But when and how you can do so matters a lot. What you don’t do is have pre-existing ideas about the game that are unknown to the players and use them to block actions.

Thanks. I figured there would be a way to introduce them, and if not during the encounter it had to be done another way.

The point is that the GM can just fiat their way past the spell. What determines if that’s fair or not?

Trust. The players trust the DM not to be adversarial like that. If they can't trust the DM, they need to find a new one.

The caster can designate creatures that don’t trigger the spell.

I don't see how the caster can know every tiny animal and insect type that might wander in, and that's if the DM is generously interpreting that sentence to allow classifications of creatures and not say Bob the spider and Jiminy the cricket, which is the most likely interpretation. It seems like it was put in there to allow the rest of the party not to set off the alarm.

 

[Maxperson]

I simply don't recognize that as agency. If a choice can be seamlessly replaced with a die roll, it's meaningless and should not have been offered to me. I'd even go a step further and say trivial optimization cases (particularly if all information is open upfront) also don't offer any real agency, but that sounds closer to what you're suggesting here.

It can't be seamlessly replaced with a die roll. A die roll is random. Choice is not. And that's assuming that the players are doing nothing to learn more about the doors.

If I put in two doors, I expect them to listen at the door, perhaps look under to see if there is light, maybe cast a spell or use an item to see what is beyond them, etc. If they just walk up and flip open one of the doors, they chose to do so with no information. That's agency.