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I guess I'm sticking with the obvious. We're playing a game, and things should work the way/s the rules say they do, the vast majority of the time. That seems like a standard that should apply, whether a given thing is magic or not.

Because they're both game elements? They should at least both be things the players can understand, in the sense of knowing what they can rely on.

Winning at chess by talking your opponent into resigning.

I think some GMs don't have their suspension of disbelief falter when magic is involved, because it (usually) explicitly breaks the rules of how things work in the real world; many of the 2014 background features (and other "mundane" character abilities) at least seem to operate in more...

I'm inclined to describe "blithe negation" as "looking to say no," but I'm also not looking to resuscitate a dead argument.

Plausibly. I think some GMs will tend to start from "no," while others will start from "yes," in response to functionally similar player asks. Whether the differences there are more about the GMs or about the players is ... difficult to tell. Clearly some GMs expect players to be more...

(The conversational thread that's from is emphatically over, but you can track it from there, I think.)

There's been at least one poster who embraced blithe negation of PC abilities, so at least one person is saying exactly that. But your point (in another post I'm not quoting here) is vaild: If an ability isn't going to work, it needs to be an exception, and (as we absolutely agree!) the GM...

What I said that was most relevant here, I think, was this: and also possibly this: Do you really think I'm entirely agreeing with you?

Fortunately, the player I had who was most inclined to do these things was also newest to the system and A) needed the mechanics checked and/or explained to him and B) was happier knowing (how) things were going to work before he tried things. The way I ran things with/for him seemed to get the...

I don't insist on this (who knows what the barbarian has heard somewhere?) but I respect the hell out of it.

That's about where I am. I'll say no if someone's actually violating like a clear rule, but I'll try to make something work toward the same end. I also have players who understand they don't need to surprise me with a tactic for it to wrong-foot their enemies, so they'll ask be about stuff...

It's not "Nope." It's "Here's the situation, does what you want seem plausible to you, as though it fits the narrative, here?" It works out so much better when the player says no, even if they're kinda guided to it. It also works out better if it's not the default.

I have to figure there are feedback loops, which might drift between or otherwise connect otherwise unrelated tables, where trustworthy builds on trust--and the opposite.

I'm open to the idea there is some reason this particular context overrides the rulebook, but I think it's the GM's responsibility to convey that context to the player/s such that there is adequate buy-in to move on. "Nope" won't do it, most of the time.

Gotta be a strawman. It's not ever a hiccup when a conversation goes violent.

As I said upthread a ways, I'm pretty sure the change is going to work better for a lot of tables, since everyone at the table will have the same expectation/s.

This. So much sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I think it's pretty close, yeah. Seems to me the conflict is between DMs who hold their settings closely--as in, are really reluctant to let go of anything in them--and players who want the abilities they choose to work the way they understand them to--and who will have at least some tendency to...

Because it's "funny."