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I like it (pardon the pun). What it saves are hundreds of posts sayng nothing but "I agree" or "Hear, hear!".

The crazy thing here is that I'm arguing a position that I don't personally hold. If it's me, that ruby's location is nailed down before the PCs get near the place. Map-and-key all the way. What I'm trying to expose for the poor design it is are rules that allow a task-plus-intent declaration...

In case it's not already clear, when it comes to games I'm not big on the whole "social contract" thing. If the game rules don't prohibit me from doing something - particularly in an RPG, a game type where the rules are in theory prohibitive rather than permissive - then it's within my purview...

Ah. I'd been assuming there was a longer time window between door attempt and deaths, in part due to my reading the original example as the house only just having caught fire.

Isn't that exactly what I'm doing (which you're calling me to task for) when I build on the known fiction "The Desert Rose ruby is somewhere in this house" by attempting to fine-tune its location with my action declaration "I pick open the safe to find the Desert Rose we're here for"? I'm...

Not really, in that downstream connections can often only be observed in hindsight; and we're playing in the here-and-now. Sure, punching someone in the eye might cause a bystander to try tackling me, and when that attempted tackle goes wrong he sails past me into traffic and gets hit by a bus...

There's a considerably more direct and immediate connection of consequence in the first example than in the second, assuming the combat in the first is strictly between me and my foe with nobody else able to intervene in any way. And even there, the projected consequence isn't ironclad...

Except I'm not being a deliberate jerk, or any other kind of jerk for that matter. I'm simply declaring what seems like a reasonable action attempt with a reasonable-to-the-fiction intent attached. I'm not saying I open the safe to steal a holy avenger sword, nor to steal the nation's founding...

I've just been given heat upthread for not following the fiction closely enough, this - given the house has otherwise been narrated as still, dark, and quiet - seems like an example of the same. Ditto if there's something even more outlandish in there like a dragon or a vorpal bunny or Luke...

Ok? This is a fairly common "next hit wins" situation that I've seen loads of times. It comes down to a pure gamble: you hit, and win, or you miss, and die; unless your luck runs high and the foe also misses, meaning the gamble is repeated next round. I don't see how this relates to the...

If the only info we-as-players have to go on* is that the ruby is in the house somewhere, and the GM hasn't determined its location ahead of time because the system says she's not supposed to do that, then by what mechanism is its actual location determined? Success on a search roll or similar...

And all of this makes sense. However..... ....when I made this exact point (in different terms) in a long-ago thread I got shot down for it. Well, I have to then succeed on my roll. Failure, or even success-with-complication, means I haven't fiat-declared anything. But if memory serves...

If they would have died anyway had I done nothing, my failing to get into the building didn't change anything.

I'm having a hard time imagining how this situation could ever arise. The GM is responsible for the truth and veracity of the setting and if she's blown it to the point where even she's not enjoying it, something's really come adrift somewhere. If, hypothetically, it were to get that bad I'd...

I'm happy to begin and end with the fiction, but if as a player the game lets me try to establish some of that fiction (that's not yet been established) via action declaration incuding intent, and on a successful roll that fiction becomes established, then why wouldn't I always declare intents...

That's an in-fiction deadline, which makes lots of sense. Again, though, an in-fiction thing rather than a meta-counter. You've determined it's going to take the building 7 rounds to collapse which means, though the PCs don't realize it, they've got 6 rounds to get out of there safely. Looks...

Part of the disconnect here is that you seem to be using "clock" to refer to some form of metagame countdown timer unrelated to in-fiction time where I (and maybe others) see "clock" as shorthand for "in-fiction time deadline".

Yes they are connected, potentially, in the downstream. No they are not connected in the immediate. It's a question of granularity. In the immediate, my failure to boot the door open merely means I'm still stuck outside the locked door. We won't and can't know whether my failure to get the...

I miss the phone call if I can't open my door. I also miss it if I get home five minutes later and can open my door (unless the caller is stupidly persistent and lets it ring for five minutes, which means I probably don't want to answer it anyway). The ringing phone is not related to the task...

So far, I rather like the cut of this guy's jib. And the cut of his mainsail, too. He's bang-on right with this, and is saying the quiet part out loud: when we have to abstract things (and it's unavoidable that we will) we're in whole or in part turning roleplay into mechanics-play. And sure...