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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6197131" data-attributes="member: 42582">That the GM has (certain aspects of) the fiction change in response to the players descriptions of what their PCs do is not contentious.What is contentious, it seems, is that there are different ways for a GM to make such changes, and also that there are some such changes which are able to be made by the players rather than the GM.What should constrain the changes that a GM makes? The results of a player's skill check? The GM's conception of the causal logic of the gameworld? The GM's conception of what would be "best for the story"? The GM's conception of what the player was trying to achieve via the skill check? Something else? Different answers to these questions produce radically different play experiences. Even moreso will we get different experiences if we change the boundaries between what the players have authority over, and what the GM has authority over.It puzzles me that you seem sometimes to be disagreeing with this, but at other times say things like "4e is very different from what went before" or "Of course if you play the game differently from how it was intended, you'll get different results."Taking you at your word that you acknowledge that different ways of playing the game produce different results, what do you think those different ways consist in? In my experience they consist overwhelmingly in different ways of handling action resolution. After all, that's the guts of playing an RPG - the players declare actions for their PCs, and those actions are then resolved.And to answer my own questions about constraint: when I GM 4e, I make my calls about what happens, when that is within the scope of my authority, by reference to the results of skill checks, and my conception of what a player was trying to achieve via a given skill check. Questions of causal logic don't come into resolution, because they will already hav been dealt with in framing the skill check - in working out what exactly it is that the PC is doing.So, in the Chamberlain case, we don't even get to the point of rolling Diplomacy until we work out what the player is doing. Suppose the player says "I approach the Chamberlain, to ask permission to enter the king's presence" and the GM replies "The Chamberlain has his fingers stuck in his ears and is repeated 'I can't hear you, I can't hear you'." If the player then says "OK, I tell him to let me in to see the king" the GM can answer "He doesn't reply - you don't think he heard you, he has his fingers stuck in his ears." No roll is needed, because the player has not framed an action that can succeed within the context of the fiction.So now the player says "OK, I say it again but really loudly." Or perhaps says "No, you misunderstood me - I was shouting it and gesticulating so that he would pay attention to me". At that point, in my approach the player has declared an action that can succeed within the context of the fiction. So s/he is entitled to a skill check, under the rules of the game. What the skill should be is a little unclear - no version of D&D has a "Bellowing" or "Conspicious" skill that I'm aware of (Burning Wheel does have a Conspicious skill, which I think would be suitable in this context). Intimidation might be appropriate, or Bluff, or perhaps Diplomacy at a penalty for shouting - this can be worked out via negotiation between player and GM.Depending on whether the player succeeds or fails, the GM then adjudicates a response. If the player succeeds, the GM's adjudication has to respect that success - in this case, the Chamberlain takes his fingers out of his ears and replies to the PC's request.What if, in the fiction, the Chamberlain is under some sort of curse or enchantment which prevents him for pulling his fingers out of his ears and listening to requests? Then, as [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] mentioned upthread, the GM has a responsibility to let the player learn, in some fashion, what is going on. At my table, I would probably go about it this way - as the player is explaining how his/her PC is planning to try and get the Chamberlain to take his fingers out of his ears, I would call for an Insight check. If it succeeded, I would explain that it seems there is no prospect of success - the Chamberlain seems cursed or insane; and at that point the player can start declaring actions the are feasible within the fiction, like Healing checks or Remove Curse spells. If the Insight check fails, then how I would adjudicate that would depend a lot on broader context, but the easiest default adjudciation would simply be to say "For some reason you can't fathom, the Chamberlain won't listen to your entreaties and continues to repeat over and over 'I can't hear you' with his fingers in his ears". At that point, again, the player can then declare further actions.What I've described in the above four paragraphs isn't intended as an authoritative account of how to GM. It's not even an authoritative account of "indie" style, though I think it's reasonably representative of how, on that style, you might handle the scene in question. The overarching point about the indie style approach is (1) that there is a reason for including the Chamberlain. It serves some thematic purpose, not just a procedural purpose - it's not a mere obstacle for its own sake. Perhaps it's a foreshadowing of the spread of madness among the nobility, in a campaign where at least some of the players, via their PCs, have shown some concern for the nobility and their sanity.And (2) that there is no preconception as to how the situation will resolve. The GM has no "plan" for how the Chamberlain encounter will play out. Maybe the PCs will befriend him, or cure him, or argue with him, or kill him, or simply walk away from him. The outcome of the Chamberlain encounter provides the story considerations relevant to framing the next encounter, whatever that might be.I think that this is why most mechanical systems that are trying to support indie-style play depart fairly radically from traditional task resolution when it comes to social encounters and knowledge checks.</blockquote>

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