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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6196479" data-attributes="member: 42582">That's not really a very fair summary of what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is saying. He's not saying that his character must succeed. He's saying that he wants the GM to acknolwedge, in adjudicating the game, the scenes that he as a player wishes to engage with and the action resolution mechanics that are relevant to that. In this case, Hussar as a player has, in the fiction, manoeuvred his PC into a situation where he is conversing with the king's chamberlain. He, the player, has a goal in respect of that, namely, persuade the chamberlain to let him in to see the king. And he, the player, wants to determine whether or not that goal succeeds via the actin resolution mechanics (Diplomacy check in 3E; skill challenge, perhaps, in 4e).Suppose that Hussar had, instead, declared that his PC draws a knife and stabs the chamberlain. I expect Hussar would be equally unimpressed by a declaration from the GM that his attack misses, the guards overpower him and put him in jail. He would expect that action declaration to be resolved via an attack roll and all the mechanical accompaniments of that.Hussar is also talking about "the tools available to him" - namely, the action resolution mechanics. I gather by "tools available to me" you mean the tools available, in the fiction, to your PC - with the content of the fiction being determined via the GM. That is precisely the sort of GM force that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], myself, [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] and others are talking about.When you say "equally common in everyone else's D&D games" are you therefore denying that I (and others) are playing D&D? Or that we're misdescribing our own games?If you read upthread, you'll see that I discussed the interpretation of the passages that [MENTION=6701124]Cadence[/MENTION] referred to, and explained - among other things, with reference to what Gygax says in his PHB and with reference to what other leading personalities of the era were saying - why I interpret those passages differently.You may think there is no difference between what Gygax says and what Monte Cook says. I think there is a huge difference.I've already discussed this upthread. There are differences between the 4e PHB and 4e Essentials.The PHB (p 8) says "When it’s not clear what ought to happen next, the DM decides how to apply the rules and adjudicate the story." The Essentials Rules Compendium (p 9) says "The DM decides how to apply the game rules and guides the story. If the rules don't cover a situation, the DM determines what to do. At times, the DM might alter or even ignore the result of a die roll if doing so benefits the story."I regard the PHB account of the GM's role as consistent with a range of GMing approaches, incuding both "wargaming" and "indie" play as well as "storyteller" play. I regard the Essentials account as a major change - fitting with certain retro aspects of Essentials - and consistent only with "storyteller" play, given that it empowers the GM to use force to suspend or override the action resolution mechanics. (This can also be related to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s post upthread: the Essentials rulebooks don't explain what to do if the GM and the players have different ideas about what would benefit the story.)I think an important aspect of "indie" style is that the rules aren't seen as modelling a shared fantasy, at least in the first instance. Their primary function is telling us who has authority, on any given occasion, to conribute content to that shared fantasy. Sometimes the GM has that authority; sometimes the players do.For instance, in the example of the Chamberlain, the player explains what s/he is hoping to have his/her PC accomplish, and then the action resolution rules are engaged. If the player succeeds on his/her skill checks(s), or Charm spell, or whatever it is, then his/her desired content is contributed to the fiction - ie the Chamberlain agrees to let the PC in to see the king. If the player fails his/her skill check(s), then the GM gets to decide what happens in the fiction - some sort of failure of the players' intent, for instance that the Chamberlain tells the PC to come back another time, or to leave and never return, or calls the guards to clap the PC in irons, or whatever other complication and adverse conseuence the GM thinks is appropriate within the context of the action resolution mechanics and the scene framing guidelines.This is a further illustration of why I regard the differences in playstyle, and their implications for such issues as whether or not casters are more powerful than fighters in play, as far from trivial.</blockquote>

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