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One way the good climber will discover the crumbling rock is by testing it, and discovering that it crumbles. Does the GM then narrate it? I posit that, in most D&D games, the answer is no. When the check succeeds, the sort of thing that might cause failure - like crumbling rock - is not...

This argument was not widely accepted during the 4e era. It's slightly odd to see it being trotted out this late in the day.

Rangers being more observance reduces their chance of being surprised. It is their greater stealth which increases their chance of surprising. Monks don't have an increased chance to surprise others, except via their thief-like ability to move silently. But one of the weaknesses of AD&D's rules...

Huh? No one would describe rolling an attack in D&D as petitioning the creator. It's just applying the action resolution rules. Creating an Asset in MRHP/Cortex+ Heroic is just applying the rules too. Notice how, in D&D combat, you don't resolve the action declaration "I attack the NPC" by...

The worry here seems to be about "easy mode" or "breaking the game". That's not a problem in MHRP/Cortex+ Fantasy Heroic: an Asset has a rating, which is the result of the roll made to create it, and then is the measure of the contribution the Asset makes to building a dice pool. I posted this...

This is a tautology, or close to one: if the GM has promised X then the GM should provide X. I don't think much of the discussion is driven by people not appreciating the truth of this statement.

I have never found this. And I play with players who are pretty experienced, and some of whom are pretty hardcore wargamers. The whole framing around "convincing the GM" is what is odd to me. It suggests a lack of sincerity in engagement with the shared fiction. There also seems to be a lack of...

This claim seems false to me. In a "trad" game in which it is known that something dramatic is happening right now at the top of a wall/cliff/whatever, so that getting to the top ASAP is important, it would not break any "social contract" for a failure on a climb check to be narrated as the...

So you would never describe a failed climb check as being the result of a handhold crumbling? Because you would never narrate the fiction in response to a player's rolled check.

No. If you read the account of play, you'll see that they were teleported by a Crypt Thing. Maybe you're not familiar with the Crypt Thing: it's a classic D&D monster from the Fiend Folio, and it has the ability to teleport its victims to a random location within the dungeon. In the account of...

See, this is where I assert that you are just confused about how fiction works. The fiction is not being changed. It is being authored: everyone agrees that there are strange runes; no one knows what they are or do; now a roll has been made, and we all know what the runes are - they are a secret...

I refer you to @Maxperson's example of the "quantum crumbling rock" for climbing. It is impossible, when playing D&D in anything even close to its conventional method, for every bit of fiction to be specified in advance and treated as an input into the resolution process.

This provides an illustration of why I find the phrase "narrative game" unhelpful. I described a particular game using particular techniques - MHRP (Cortex+ Heroic). In the same post, I described a different game that uses different techniques - Torchbearer 2e. But TB2e still uses a version of...

I don't think this is right at all. What @Hussar is expressing is a classic "mechanical simulationist" viewpoint. From [urk=[URL="https://www.arkenstonepublishing.net/isabout/2020/05/14/observations-on-gns-simulationism/#13-mechanical-simulation]Tuovinen's"]Observations on GNS Simulationism –...

Although, as per my long post just upthread, this is still too simple. When the GM narrates firm holds, or crumbling holds, depending on whether or not the climb check succeeds or fails, that is shaping the fiction to respond to (i) the roll and (ii) the player's hope for what the roll would...

This makes no sense. Surprise depends on whether or not a modified roll beats a target number. Thus it is the relationship between the roll, the modifier and the target number that determine surprise. This is no different to any other resolution/determination process in a RPG. If you are saying...

It's simply false to say that the runes are simultaneously good and bad. They may be good. They may be bad. They may be neither - perhaps, as the players (and their PCs) conjectured of the ochre writing in my TB2e game, they are just a note left by an Orc telling any passing Bugbear to leave its...

No. My issue is that (i) it's utterly routine for the GM to make a decision to narrate/introduce some bit of fiction prompted by some at-the-table process (eg rolls that determine that an encounter occurs, that a PC is surprised, etc), but (ii) the example of (i) which is narrating a cook based...

In addition to what @EzekielRaiden posted, I didn't use the phrase "surprise roll" in relation to 5e D&D - I used the phrase "rules for surprise": There is a roll that determines surprise though, as I've noted: the roll for the DEX (Stealth) check.

I didn't talk about terrain. I talked about the facts of what the PCs are doing, such that they don't notice the Orcs. But terrain could be mentioned. Is there enough shadow to hide in? The GM can just decide this, like the ride on which the dire wolf stands.