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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7753656" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, this is one of those points where the disinclination of some posters to actually analyse anything, or even to acknowledge that there can be different sorts of game rules serving different sorts of purposes, makes it very hard to talk coherently about various roles the GM might have.In this thread, the following things have all been lumped togther as "rule zero" - and probably others as well:* A GM describes a boulder as "large", and then a player says "I pick it up and throw it across the chasm", and someone has to adjudicate the fiction, eg in this case deciding how heavy the boulder is and hence whether or not the PC can pick it up. * A player declares an action - say, "I throw the boulder across the chasm" - for which the system has no express rule (AD&D has no express rule for throwing boulders, for instance), and so someone (typically the GM) has to come up with a resolutin method; * A player delcares an action - let's stick with "I throw the boulder across the chasm" - for which the system does have an express rule (eg 4e and 5e have rules for making STR checks for this sort of feat of athletics), and that rule includes various sorts of provision for circumstantial modifiers, and the GM applies such a modifier; * A player delcares an action - let's stick with "I throw the boulder across the chasm" - for which the system does have an express rule (eg 4e and 5e have rules for making STR checks for this sort of feat of athletics), and yet the GM decides to impose a different resolution method, or perhaps fiats failure or impossibility; * A resolution method has been agreed upon at the table, and the GM pretends to apply it but actually doesn' (eg by ignoring or fudging a die roll);The first sort of thing is found in most "traditional" RPGs - the GM has to adjudicate the fiction. It is also found to a significant degree in a game like Burning Wheel. In some "modern" systems, though, the determination of the ability of the PC to lift the boulder might be rolled into the resolution of a declared attempt to lift or throw it - eg if such a check fails, one possible narration might be that the boulder is so big even the strong PC can't lift it!The second sort of thing is common in classic D&D, because it has few generic resolution processes, and rather has a whole lot of situation-particular mechanics (most of which involve searching for, listening at, or forcing open doors - which tells us something about what those early games were mostly focused on!).The third is expressly advocated in AD&D (see eg the discussion of the adjuciation of saving throws in Gygax's DMG), although in my own experience it's rare for an AD&D GM to apply modifiers that aren't being read from a chart (so attack modifiers are common, because there are lists of those, but saving throw modifiers are rare, because these are stated as general principles rather than a detailed list). Most RPGs that I'm familiar with are pretty similar to AD&D in this respect, although not all: Cortex+ Heroic doesn't directly allow the fiction to modify resolution (it's mediated via Scene Descriptors), and in Dungeon World the fiction is expressed primarily by way of GM moves.The fourth is not advocated expressly in many systems I'm familiar with, and nor is the fifth. The fourth, to me, smacks of arbitrariness if done unilaterally (why is the GM not going the first or third way?), though if the purpose of the variant is eg to save time at the table, and the player is on board, then that is a different matter. Many contemporary RPGs address this possibility expressly by having both "simple" and "complex/extended" resolution options.The fifth - outright fudging - is to me a sign of limitations in the system. A well-designed system won't deliver results that need to be overridden. Look at the two examples Gygax gives: his need to fudge the roll for the secret door discovery to get to the "exciting" layer of the dungeon becomes unnecessary in a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" approach to resolution (and I have used this in Classic Traveller on occasion to mitigate some of the issues inherent in that system); his need to fudge wandering monster rolls could be mitigated by having a rule for triggering monster rolls that factors in considerations other than time in the dungeon (eg a cap on the number or HD or whatever of wanderers while on the way to an objective, with that cap growing by X every time the party does a stupid/careless thing that makes them deserve all the wanderers they get - mechanics like the Cortex+ Heroic Doom Pool show how this can be done).</blockquote>

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