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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8133587" data-attributes="member: 6696971">This it the reply I was looking for as this is where I expected you were coming from (hence the framing of my posts prior).Two things:1)  This is D&D system-specific.  Not all D&D provides GMs that level of authority.  Moldvay Basic, RC, and D&D 4e do not and Gygax's 1e DMG calls for a much more neutral brand of refereeing (curating nonsensical outcomes or outcomes that are arbitrary and cheat the process of filtering skilled play from unskilled play...not curating outcomes that don't lead to (a) GM-preferred story or (b) GM-conception of what a will yield a "fun play experience").  Now if you're playing AD&D 2e (which started the curating outcomes and revising rules that don't lead to (a) GM-preferred story or (b) GM-conception of what a will yield a "fun play experience"), 3.x, or 5e (which adopted the AD&D 2e GM role and authority basically whole cloth), then you have that authority.I'm assuming you're running D&D 5e and you're assuming the lead poster is as well?2)  "Because that's why there is a human being there to make these calls, I trust them to be able to read the situation, and adjudicate things better than any rule system alone could. And if I don't trust the GM to do that, then no amount of constraints placed on them will help."You were concerned about dogmatism in TTRPGing upthread.  Did this not strike you as dogmatism while you were writing it?  You can't extend this principle to all of D&D let alone outside of that rubric to other games.  Highly functional rules + great GMing advice + system constraints on the GM (through the holistic integration of procedures + system architecture + the game's ethos/agenda) can create games where (a) the premise of play is beautifully and consistently addressed and (b) the GM's authority and cognitive workload are simultaneously reigned in.  So its fundamentally not true that constraints and great rules won't "help" <to achieve a consistently coherent and fulfilling play experience>.  Now, in a particular style of play this is true (the type that 2e and 5e promote; heavily GM-driven games where their conception of a fun/fulfilling time and a good story is made mandate through the authority the system grants them and the system architecture that consistently demands their mediation in, overwhelmingly GM-facing, action resolution). But that is only one style of play.</blockquote>

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