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Your definition of impartial and bias may be defensible in a Platonic sense. But it says that authorship itself can't be considered unbiased. Any novel will be; any film will be; any game setting will be. Because it captures all possible types of bias, including things like "I had a bad...

I can understand the frustration here. Maybe it is obvious, but I think it's worth saying that a lot of the little phrases used in the discussion are jargon. I guess they say something specific if you've encountered them, but what they say literally is open to a much wider array of...

Old post had a typo. I meant the "partiality" (or lack of "impartiality"). Looks like I got it wrong in another old post too. Sorry. Some kind of cold today, must be messing with me. Yeah, and a half dozen others besides. I just wanted to capture a few.

Let's say it was an established part of the lore that the horn could cure this disease. But they didn't know until they were in the north for unrelated reasons, and heard from a sage. Then they decided to try it out.

The partiality comes in because I modified part of the world so the player could complete their quest. Previously, the ice was impassable; then, the player wanted to bypass it; therefore, I changed the world so it could be bypassed. If my notes had said "no one sails due to dangerous ice, but...

I had an example about hiring a ship earlier. Consider a variant of that. The players are in a northern city and the ice has closed passage for the winter. In my GM notes I have written "Ice blocks all travel". However, one of the characters must return a yeti horn to the south, because it can...

I don't read the post as saying the GM came up with it after the fact. It sounds like the GM previously came up with some information about the world--e.g., "night shift, Hooper and Brody. Paid well and subject to zone of truth. Won't take bribes". Then the PCs tried to interact by bribery.

How did these drow know where the hunting party was? Yeah, if at some point the drow stopped chasing the party and then guarded the exits that would make sense. Does the pursuit actually stop though?

This was not how I understood the example. I thought it was established lore before the players interacted with it. Perhaps I'm wrong? True, but iirc there is no way for the party to know this. As the party the game incentivizes you to move as quickly as you can but develops better if you take...

So I want to come back to the way I framed it before...are statements like "the GM adjudicates the world" and "the GM adjudicates the rules" railroading? The key point to me here seems to be that the GM is not adjudicating successes; the players are. Consider an example: your players are in a...

No. And this kind of chase mechanic can actually work great in a sandbox. The problem with OotA is that it wants to make the players like the underdark and form relationships there so they want to return to save it in the second half. But optimal play in the first half will have them moving as...

You're right; I remembered there was a forced railroad bit, but it's that they're caught up with regardless of how fast they go and how many precautions they take. But then, there is time pressure. If they don't move quickly, they will be caught by an encounter that will be overly difficult...

As written yes. But it's expressed to the players that the drow are chasing them and they're given numerous signs of this. They have to guess that it's just a dramatic element and no matter they do they will not get caught until just before they leave.

I mean the decision making about where the PCs go and what they attempt is exclusively in the hands of the players. The GM defines and adjudicates the world. The players act within that world. Right--this is why I figured you'd see the statements "the GM adjudicates the rules" and "the GM...

Because this causes player actions to feel like they have more weight. This makes those actions feel more meaningful. If the DM is actively changing their decisions in order to further, to suppress, or otherwise to change the players goals, then the world no longer feels as objective. This...

All this sounds to me like you see "the GM adjudicates the rules" and "the GM adjudicates the world" as railroading. Right? The factors here amount to what I'll call "the state of the world". E.g., if a priest follows a religion that forbids drinking, that is the state of the world. The GM...

I think these statements could be clarified. In sandbox play, decision-making is not in the hands of the GM. The players determine the goals, they determine the approach, they determine where to go, they determine what plotlines to explore. The GM adjudicates without regard to player goals. But...

This is the same thing EzekialRaiden was getting at yesterday--the need for a heuristic. And I think the answer is the same. For large sandbox worlds, the heuristic at a certain point is "the referee's judgement" and the game requires players to trust that as a heuristic to succeed. I've played...

Yes, but it's not that the world was a certain way and you chose the wrong approach. The reason why the approach was poor didn't exist until after you failed the roll. To me that doesn't give the feeling "oh I should have made a different choice and then I would have succeeded". If I made a...

Exploring the world makes it feel more alive. It gives a sense of discovery and makes the world feel realistic before and after the dungeon. Ime OotA is a pretty poor sandbox precisely because of the way it is setup. It gives the players a goal which is opposed to exploration and gives them...