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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8146479" data-attributes="member: 42582">I didn't force a desired outcome to occur. I allowed a desired outcome to occur. Those two verbs - force and allow - are not synonyms. They're actually quite close to antonyms.The PC doesn't need to know whether Lady Askol believes him or not. For all the character knows, as per [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER]'s post upthread, Lady Askol doesn't believe him but is going along with him. This is a case of the character wanting something - ie for Lady Askol to accept his lie about not having used psionics - but how do we know he doesn't  have it? That's what this whole discussion is about. My job, as GM, is to decide whether I want to put that question to the test. I chose not to. The next part of this post will explain why. Here's the passage from pp 248-49 of the Adventure Burner (it's also reproduced in the Codex):The Say Yes rule is difficult to adjudicate, yet it's one of the most vital elements of the system. It grants the GM authority to cut right to the important stuff and skip extraneous or tiresome action. In a recent campaign, our characters were crossing a narrow span over a chasm. The GM, Pete, described the bridge in vivid detail. One of the players, rich, described his character hopping up to the railing and capering along. Should Pete have called for a [check] for Rich's character to keep his balance? No. Never. Why? Certainly "in real life" there's a chance of falling, but in the story, it just didn't matter. Rich was roleplaying. He was embellishing, interacting with Pete's description. Rich made the scene better. And what would the [check] have accomplished? He would have succeeded and stayed on the bridge. Success would have kept him at the same point. Or he would have fallen and we would have had to save him. It would have turned out like a false not in a bad action movie. There would have been quick cuts and close ups but nothing really would have happened. Thus, Pete could Say Yes to this action. Rich wanted his character to look cool crossing the bridge. Great! Move on. Later, those same characters needed to cross a narrow ledge to gain entry to a lost tomb. Pete described wind whipping along the cliff walls. We wold have to make [checks] to cross and get in. This was a totally legit [check]. The tomb was the goal of a long quest. Would we get in unscathed? Or would this cost us? In this case, it wasn't about us in particular, but about our gear and an NPC friend. If we failed, we'd lost those precious resources! In another recent game, our previous session ended with Thor's summoner making a pact with a revenant to lead the group across endless plains. At the beginning of the next session, I had to resist every GM impulse. I wanted to call for Orienteering . . . , Survival . . .,  Foraging [checks]. I wanted to dig right into that journey and make it real with dice rolls. But it would have been too much and unnecessary - and breaking the intent of the deal Thor made in the previous session. Thus I simply described the arduous journey and cut right to the good stuff - the group of travellers on the banks of the river that borders the Land of the Dead. Though I did not explicitly Say Yes, the idea is the same.The idea is that the acrobatic character (I think I know it's an elf from another reference to the same character elsewhere in the book) is just that: a capable acrobat. So in embellishing the scene by narrating his PC's acrobatics, Rich is not introducing anything out of context, or at odds with the established fiction.And then there's nothing at stake because no one - neither players nor GM - is interested in the question what if the PCs don't make it across the bridge? And if no one's interested in that question, it would be bad GMing to invoke the mechanics in such a way as to pose it!The Classic Traveller example isn't strictly parallel, but it's in the neighbourhood. It's already established that (i) von Jerrel has swept Lady Askol off her feet, and (ii) that Lady Askol is not terribly bright (INT 5 on a 1 to 15 scale with 7 as typical), so it doesn't strain the fiction for her to accept the lie. And there is nothing at stake here because, at this point in play neither the player nor the GM is interested in the question what if Lady Askol decides that von Jerrel must be deported back to Ashar. That may be an interesting question in the future; likewise it may be interesting, in the future, to explore exactly why, and to what extent, perhaps even to what end, Lady Askol has accepted the lie. But at the moment no one cares to put any of this on the table. So we don't.There is clearly curation of the fiction here: Luke Crane refers to it as an exercise of GM authority. But there is no force, as the GM is simply going along with the player.As I posted already upthread, I am not GMing a "world simulation" game. Nor am I GMing a "self-writing fiction" simulation.When I (or Luke Crane, or Vincent Baker, or similarly-inclined RPGers and RPG designers) talk about something being at stake they're talking about something that arises out of the interplay between what the character wants in the fiction and what the participants care about in respect of the fiction.In the quote coming up next in this post, you use the notion in exactly that intended sense:I don't think this is very accurate. It absolutely ignores the crucial role of the player - which is odd in a thread about player agency.The player has made a choice for his PC - to tell a like to Lady Askol. That gives me two options: (i) put it to the test now; (ii) let the fiction unfold as the player wants, with everyone being able to see that he has thus raised the stakes for later. I chose (ii). If the player really wanted (i), he would have made that point. But he didn't. He went along with my going along with him.Right. What Campbell said. If the player really wanted to put the matter of his PC's lie to the test, right now, he would say so. Either literally; or if he feels shy about calling out a GM error, by declaring a follow-up action that unequivocally demonstrates that desire.As it happens this player isn't shy about calling out GM errors. He also does so from time-to-time by reference to Let it Ride - ie reminding me if I try unilaterally to put something back into question that has already been established in the fiction by way of a player's success in action resolution.I realise that there seems to be a widespread ethos in the RPGing community that the GM is always right and its improper for players to draw attention to GM errors. But it seems to me that that ethos only makes sense if we assume predominantly GM-driven, high fiat/force, play. Play that begins from the starting point of player agency being desirable, and that deploys techniques and mechanics guided by principles that will help bring such agency about, doesn't need any such ethos.</blockquote>

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