You're spouting the largest fallacy to come out of the Forge... that the in-story structure doesn't matter.
I never asserted that, and I've never seen that asserted at The Forge either.
the fiction is only satisfying to most if it has the appearance of internal logic and causality.
And? That's such a modest constraint that it tells us almost nothing about how to design or GM a game.
In real life, I have spent a total of les than 3 weeks in London, a city of millions of people. In the course of those 3 weeks, on one afternoon I was walking in the neighbourhood of the British Museum with an Australian friend of mine who lives in London and, completely by chance, we bumped into the sister-in-law of that friend whom I hadn't seen for years and whom my friend hadn't seen for many months at least. She just happened to be walking through that area on her lunch break.
In the same period, my partner saw, on or around Oxford Street, her mother's best friend (who lives a few kilometres from us here in Melbourne). That woman just happened to be holidaying in London at the same time we were visiting there.
I have never bumped into either of these people by chance in Melbourne, despite Melbourne having a smaller population and smaller CBD, and despite the sister-in-law having lived here for most of the time I've known her, and despite the best friend having lived her for longer than I have been alive.
Unexpected things happen in real life all the time. (So, of cousre, do expected things.)
Are there boxes in the alley? Does the wizard have a beard? Neither a yes or a no answer violates any sort of internal logic or causality. But a decision needs to be made. You can't settle on a decision procedure simply by reiterating the importance of logic and causality.
When that fails, one no longer has any sense of story.
The only RPG I know of that advocates total failures of ingame causal logic is Toon - for obvious reasons. But unless you are deliberatley setting out to produce absurdities, maintaining ingame causal logic is very easy (subject to issues of being overwhelmed by detail - but that is not at issue in any of the play techniques being discussed on this thread).
if the Half-dragon were to simply invite the raiding PC's into his parlor for tea and scones in chapter III, the players would be rather unlikely to accept, and would probably quit the game, for lack of story-logic.
Yet James Bond takes tea and scones with every villain he faces. There are other instance in neighbouring genres, too, where villains and heroes pal around to various degrees before fighting (eg Magneto and the X-Men). If the players quit the game all that tells me is that the GM is not very good at conveying story and motivation. It doesn't tell me anything about the lack of ingame story logic.
for many people, the reaction they choose isn't based upon the real world events, but upon how they perceive the story.
Sure, it might be mechanically better to face down the Half-Dragon... but the pattern of ass-kicking he's given in chapter I & II makes any players VERY reticent to face him in Chapter III... even tho' mechanically, they are far more than a match for him now.
Personally, I've very rarely encountered this phenomenon in real life. I've read articles advocating playing a PC who remains terriried of kobolds even at higher levels, but I've never played with or GMed a player who took this approach. My players infer the capabilities of their PCs in the story from the mechanical capabilities of their PCs.
So if their PCs have grown more powerful, they will recognise that, whereas once the half-dragon was tougher than them, the tables have now turned.
What
would violate ingame causality is if the PCs have grown more powerful in various ways (eg able to cast fireballs, able to cut through platoons of orcs, etc) yet they don't recognise this increased capability relative to the half-dragon.
That's in story elements combining to shape a player's decisions. Yes, it's all based upon things that happen at the table, but that's utterly irrelevant, because the player is deciding based upon the story as he remembers it, not based upon hit point totals nor AC's.
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The ongoing narrative shapes the play as much as the rules and the events at-table do.
The story as a player remembers it is an event that occurred at the table, in the real world. It is those words spoken by way of narration, and the player's memory of them, that is exercising causal power; not the fiction.
You cannot divorce them and still be roleplaying.
What cannot be divorced from what? Of course the fiction is relevant to a roleplaying game; that is one of the main things that distinguishes a roleplaying game from a boardgame. But that doesn't change the fact that the fiction doesn't exert causal power. The fiction is
authored - it is a creature of the player experience, not a creator of the player experience.
If the GM decides that there are no boxes in the alley, or that the NPC wizard is clean-shaven, that is not just the GM "narrating the truth of the gameworld". That is the GM
deciding the content of the gameworld. That decision may be a sensible one, or it may not be. But in judging whether or not it was a good or bad decision, appeals to the causal logic of the gameworld have no role to play.
Similarly if a player has his/her PC walk into a bar hoping to meet a particular NPC. The GM deciding that the NCP is there, or isn't, is
making a choice. Neither possiblity is precluded by ingame causal logic. So in discussing what choice the GM should make, appeals to ingame causal logic have no role to play.
Upthread, [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] gave as a reason for random rolling, rather than mere GM stipulation, that it removes bias on the part of the GM. That may be a good or bad reason, depending on your broader conception of what makes the game fun and engaging. But it isn't an appeal to ingame causal logic. It's an appeal to an aspect of the real-world play experience. That's why, even though for my own purposes it's not a technique that I adopt, it's a technique that makes complete sense to me.
