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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6008505" data-attributes="member: 42582">Luke Crane.In D&D I think it is understood that if a player describes his/her PC as having a certain hair colour or eye colour (and those fit within the permissible range of hair colours for the people of the campaign world), or a certain sexuality, or a certain fondness for plain clothes or fancy clothes, or some other thing personal to the PC and mechanically insignificant, then the GM does not have authority to change that description.Similarly, if I say "My guy doesn't like snakes", the GM can't override my decision about what my PC does or doesn't like.And then getting into the nitty gritty of action resolution, if I roll an attack or save or damage die, the GM generally doesn't have authority to change the number that I rolled, and that I feed into the action resolution mechanics.But all these limits on GM authority are implicit. The books don't spell them out. (And at least one limit is disputed: namely, whether or not the GM has the prerogative to fudge his/her own die rolls performed in the course of action resolution.)Burning Wheel is a lot more forthright and upfront in stating clearly what authority the GM has, and what authority the player has, over the content of the fiction and the processes of action resolution. I haven't got my book in front of me, but the closest thing I can think of to what you describe would be a characterisation of a GM as "cheating" if the GM calls for retests when the circumstances haven't changed (as part of the Let it Ride rule).The analogue of this in D&D would be a GM who insists that an NPC is not dead even though a player has reduced the NPC to 0 hp. (And there is nothing else going on, like regeneration or resurrection.) But whereas D&D is vague on where the GM's limits lie, BW is fairly clear.BW's core build and resolution mechanics are pretty sim - objective DCs, stats and skills, Lifepaths for PC generation, etc - but it has a few key rules that push it in a narrativist direction, especially Let It Ride, and it's rules for adjudicating failed checks.</blockquote>

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