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No. The point was, very specifically, that the players must play this out, unless they explicitly say they don't want to. Because my standard, which I set out before this, was that I'm happy to do it if the players want to, but won't make a thing out of it unless they express interest.

So the reason is "because I want every single check to have a single specific defined success result and a single specific defined failure result"? How is that actually any kind of criticism against fail forward then? You're projecting a specific mechanical design and acting like that design is...

Okay. How is that different from what I originally said? Lanefan specifically said it is that the players WILL have to go through the haggle motions unless they explicitly say no. That was in response to my policy, which I was quite clear that if the players want to do it, sure, that's clearly...

Yep! A huge part of WoW improving its reception by gamers generally was by moving away from old-school-D&D design, and WoW itself was a stepping away from the intensely punitive old-school D&D design of EQ. My late father absolutely adored EQ--but he really, really disliked some of the ways...

And the former was rampantly overused. Weapon of first resort when it was designed as a weapon of last resort.

... If that's the best mechanic in 5.5e, wow, that's...not a great sign.

Exactly. The person who controls all of the contents of the world, and who can change those contents if/when/as they feel like it, and who contains ALL ability to ever observe any portion thereof, can always change those contents to be as they wish them to be. Nobody can pull off perfect...

But this then means there is no such thing as "traditional GM" stuff. There's just what SableWyvern does, what Lanefan does, what Micah does, etc. If you're going to say there is a style, then people who speak up in defense of that style should be expected to...y'know...defend that style and...

No, it isn't. It is literally the most important thing. The same goes for all your arguments about how important it is that characters roleplay with one another even when their lives aren't in danger. Because why you do things is, quite literally, the most important thing. If motive didn't...

Lanefan has now explicitly said otherwise.

Is it acceptable for the GM to forbid some outcomes and permit other outcomes, because the forbidden outcomes would be bad for the campaign in some way (e.g., "the campaign just ends in a really dull and disappointing way"), while the permitted outcomes would avoid whatever is bad about the bad...

Like the (at this point numerous) examples of people mischaracterizing "fail forward" as somehow meaning "always succeed". Even though I know I've contradicted that several times, and I'm pretty sure you and others have as well.

How? I am being 100% sincere here. If you go through all the complex motions of the player insisting they want six torches instead of five, whether or not they get those torches, how has that actually changed anything about them? As I already said, "high-stakes" things are high-stakes to the...

Okay. I don't see why "Okay guys, I messed up, you shouldn't have been put in a situation like this, let's rewind and do things differently" isn't an example where logic says nothing should happen. That's precisely what in-world logic says should happen: nothing. Nobody's coming to save you...

The things you describe are not low-stakes. These are high-stakes. They're not world-ending threats. But they are stakes that matter to the PCs. Those sorts of scenes are fantastically important to the process of play, and at least PbtA games all but tell you "yes, do that thing, that is great...

And you are playing in a non-euro-western campaign then, completely outside of the typical D&D fantasy universe? Because I'm 99.9% sure you use an extremely euro-western campaign setting. I believe we have specifically talked about that in the past, in fact. Only if they care about...

Not really. I'd prefer that if something profoundly confusing, where I have pointed out a clear divergence between things that, up to this point, have been argued by you and others pretty consistently, that...some kind of explanation is forthcoming? Rather than being told "there's no problem...

But absolute zero-context "random chance"--which is what I assume you mean by "far more often than random chance would dictate"--almost never applies? Adventurers are, by their nature, people in a dangerous, often foolhardy "profession", if it can even be called such. They are already, by their...

I just... Okay? Like if you're going to tell me that you refuse to participate in further discussion, I can't really demand anything of you otherwise. But it's just profoundly confusing to be told that there will never be situations where the GM controls events, and then be told that actually...

Certainly. But those are examples of having a cool highlight scene, rather than scrupulously following verisimilitude and scrupulously always avoiding "storytelling".