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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8133001" data-attributes="member: 82106">My underlying point, which maybe isn't fully explicated in this one post, is that subverting CHARACTER choices in-narrative isn't really determinitive. It doesn't establish the existence of force or not. What matters is what the players goals were, and if the results flowed logically from their action declarations and check results (or whatever, depending on the rules in question). This is at least a consistent construction of the idea of force which is not dependent on unprovable assertions about what narrative other choices would have produced.And I think it IS generalizable. There are certainly other types of scenarios, like: I the GM have decided that this NPC who is about to be defeated will appear again, thus I fudge his attack role so he knocks the fighter down and escapes. This is certainly a type of force. It doesn't involve (much) uncertainty about what would have happened had the GM made a different choice, and it doesn't involve any subversion of a player choice at all. So, what am I saying here? We don't know where the other branch would have gone where the GM didn't fudge the roll? I think its pretty clear (I say it is in this example) that the NPC would be defeated. Still, what if the escape meets the requirements of developing narrative in the direction the players wanted? Well, frankly, D&D at least, isn't very accomplished at dealing with this situation. A player could literally say "we let him go", but there isn't really a mechanism to translate that into fiction. Now in some other games maybe there is. If the GM in such a game were to deny that possibility, then a mechanic/process/principle of play was violated (this might be the case in BitD for instance, as I understand it, though we would have to develop the fiction more to elucidate that).So, I agree that there are different situation, and different games that work in different ways, but I don't see that my point is invalid or empty.</blockquote>

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