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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8155741" data-attributes="member: 42582">Over multiple posts over multiple threads over multiple years I have said exactly what you say here - from the point of view of the mechanics or basic structure of game play there is no difference between:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I attack the Orc, hoping to defeat it in combat;</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I search the wall, hoping to find a secret door;</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I attune to the painting, because if it's magical I want to gift it to the university</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">As we enter the territory of Auxol, I keep my eyes open for my brother Rufus who still lives here.</li> </ul>All involve the player (i) saying what it is that his/her PC is doing, and (ii) saying what they hope will result from it. Because that result is an event in the fiction - the Orc is defeated; a secret door is found; the paining is discovered to be magical; we encounter Rufus - it follows (inevitably, I think) that if the player's hope is realised the fiction is changed ("authored") in a fashion that s/he wants.Sometimes, in some systems and some contexts, the GM has already decided that the event is not going to be part of the fiction. So regardless of what the player rolls on the attack dice, the GM narrates the Orc as undefeated; regardless of what the player rolls on the searching die, the GM tells the player that no secret door is found; regardless of what the player rolls on the attunement die, the GM narrates that the painting is not magical; regardless of what the player rolls on the Streetwise or Circles or Gather Information or whatever dice, the GM tells the player that the PCs do no come across Rufus.There are very few RPGs in which the combat rules are presented as permitting the GM to just decide that an Orc is not defeated in combat, and so GM decisions about this sort of thing normally get discussed under the label of "fudging". But the structure of resolution and decision-making is no different in the other cases than in the "combat fudging" case.Likewise, the idea that players will take "unearned victories" in the non-combat cases has no more merit than it does in relation to the combat case. They are all just action declarations that, if successful, introduce new events into the fiction which are the ones the player is hoping for.The idea that a game will "fall apart" if the PCs are able to discover secret doors that the GM didn't decide on in advance is no different from the idea that a game will "fall apart" if the PCs are able to defeat Orcs that the GM didn't decide on in advance. If one takes either idea seriously, the implication is that the only games that won't fall apart are railroads.And on the Czege-principle side-issue: in each case it the framing of the situation as including the Orc, the wall, the painting, or the arrival at Auxol is the result either of past action resolution or of GM stipulation. So the idea that the player is both author of the problem and author of the solution is shown to be false in virtue of that fact alone.</blockquote>

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