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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6196735" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I (as have plenty of others) have written a ridiculous amount of words to try to achieve some semblance of clarity on this subject...and we can't even get past the definition of GM-force (of which I've written out, explicitly, multiple times now), let alone try to analyze the nuance of its application broadly or specifically.  I'm reading follow-up posts and I truly have no idea how they are supposed to be a progression of prior information assimilated from the discussion.  I answered Cadence's specific, focused, well-considered query.  Now things are meandering wildly, careening into things past that should have been well-resolved, information/concepts conflated viciously into a collage that basically serves as a treatise which could only be titled "The Last 55 Pages Didn't Exist".  I don't even have any idea how to come to square the last several pages.  Goalposts are all over the place.Whether or not various D&D GMs have vaguely mused upon GM-force as a technique or specifically granted authority of its use (eg AD&D 2e) is irrelevant.  Whether pemerton employs it in his 4e game in any frequency beyond gross anomaly is irrelevant (and he doesn't by my reading of his myriad play examples)...he (or I...or anyone) could be the biggest hypocrite in the history of the  world and his (or mine...or anyones') hypocrisy, being merely a biographical fact about the individual, would have 0 bearing on the veracity of the issue under discussion (and I don't see any cause to try to indict him as such).  What is relevant is (i) the definition of GM-force (canvassed so many times in frank language at this point that its impossible to confuse), (ii) it is a real thing, (iii) GMs employ the technique to achieve a specific sought end, (iv) its invocation has implications on play (hopefully understood and therefore intentional), table dynamics generally, can be analyzed to qualify (and even perhaps quantify in certain situations) its effect, and (v) does it provide us insight into the nature of disparate perceptions of linear fighter vs quadratic wizard.</blockquote>

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