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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8998728" data-attributes="member: 42582">[USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER]I'm not a party to your discussion with iserith and others. But I was a party to the discussion about the Diplomacy example. Here is the reply in question (and <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/with-respect-to-the-door-and-expectations-the-real-reason-5e-cant-unite-the-base.326771/post-5977412" target="_blank">here's a hyperlink</a> - I'm not using the quote function as a poster from a 10 year old discussion doesn't need to be notified of this particular conversation):That's not ambiguous. It is exactly as I posted above. It has nothing to do with "legitimacy" given the fiction, and everything to do with a principle about how in fiction causation and fiction introduced as part of consequence narration should be correlated.Three things:* It is not retroactive to introduce it starts to rain - that is purely forward looking. It's just that instead of a random weather check, the GM has responded to the failed Diplomacy check.* If you read the post I quoted, you will see that there is no complaint that (eg) the GM didn't telegraph with cloudy skies.* Not every RPG follows the AW principle of hard moves follow on soft moves. In AW, narrating the birds in the tree, or the clouds in the sky, creates particular opportunities for subsequent hard moves, including if the player hands an opportunity on a silver platter. No such rule applies in 4e D&D, in part because there are no "silver platters" in 4e D&D: the GM does not get the opportunity to "follow through" in the AW fashion if a soft move is made and then ignored. What 4e D&D has instead is scene-based resolution in the form of a skill challenge, and narrating that it starts to rain is permissible.Whether it's well-judged is a further question, but relevant considerations there would include broader questions of them, is the speaker a cleric of Melora (probably doesn't get arbitrarily rained on), etc. Not whether or not the GM had narrated some clouds.EDIT: A further set of considerations:* In AD&D, and I suspect in 5e D&D, narrating birds on the cliff at the opening of the climb check is an invitation to the players to describe how their PCs chase away the birds or put on bird-proof gear or something similar that engages with the granularity of the situation - and all that stuff is low- or no-stakes. So in effect, every time a possible consequence is flagged it invites the players to deal with it. Narrate clouds and they bring their umbrellas. As a result the space for failure narration is winnowed down more and more. In another recent thread [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] called this sort of thing, when initiated by the players ("Are there birds?" "Are there clouds?" etc) a "conversation trap" used by players to manipulate obstacle ratings.* In AW, on the other hand, chasing away the birds is just another action, and either triggers a GM soft move or - if the circumstances are right - is Acting Under Fire and hence triggers a player side move. So it's not a way of "bypassing" challenge by hedging the GM in with more and more low-stakes fiction.* 4e D&D would permit a "weather watching" attempt as part of a skill challenge to give a successful oration outdoors - a check on Nature, say, to affirm that no rain is expected - and depending on framing it might be a primary or a secondary check. This is different from both the above as a technique, but it locates the attempt within the resolution process, so it just feeds through to the outcome without any disruption or bogging down or "conversation traps".</blockquote>

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