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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8146371" data-attributes="member: 42582">The discussion a page or three back about "saying 'yes'" and GM force reminds me of a discussion [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] and I have had in the past.There can be differences of technique in the extent to which the GM consciously manages the way the fiction unfolds to sometimes force conflict, and sometimes allow the stakes to build - as I did with von Jerrel's lie to Lady Askol - compared to letting the fiction as structured by rules for "moves" unfold with less curation and hence more "impartial" or purely "emergent" moments of crisis.Burning Wheel is an instance of the first. I would guess also DitV, though I've never played it. PbtA is the second, and the role of GM prep in preparing Fronts is part of that.I'm refereeing Traveller in some sort of intermediate state (I hope not too incoherent a state!) between the two approaches.(And [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] if I've misunderstood/misdescribed I'm very happy to be corrected.)EDITED to add, as I catch up on the thread:The only thing I disagree with here - which I've mentioned already upthread and have gestured at in this post - is that Classic Traveller is a bit less explicit about the referee role than a game like BW or AW. So I'm doing some extrapolation (see my quotes upthread about the stated roll of the referee; and there's more stuff about "just in time" generation of content in a referee-less game which I am adapting to a refereed game) and also some retrofitting of techniques that didn't really have names or concrete instruction books in 1977.But otherwise your post is 100% right.FURTHER EDIT in response to reading more back-and-forth:For me, there is something more fundamental here than fidelity to established procedures. As I've said, in Classic Traveller the procedures themselves are not spelled out with the clarity of BW or AW.What is fundamental is that the player knows that he narrated his PC lying and that I narrated Lady Askol accepting it. We both know that no check was made. We both know that the matter hasn't been put to the test. We both know, therefore, that it is up for grabs in the ways [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] and I have sketched out. (And other ways too, perhaps. No one knows yet where play might go.)It's different from, eg, the use of a Storyteller Certificate in Prince Valiant which can establish (within certain limits) a NPC mental state that the GM is bound by just like a regular success.It's different from, eg, the initial checks for seduction which were declared, with the (implicit) stakes of kidnapping an Imperial Navy Commander, and resolved in favour of the player.Pretending to resolve it in such a fashion and then lying about it would (i) be deceptive, and (ii) would either (a) close of those avenues of play that AbdulAlhazred and I have sketched out or (b) would require more GM deception or flat-out fiat to open them up again. Neither (i), nor (ii)(a), nor (ii)(b) is appealing to me.</blockquote>

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