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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6202444" data-attributes="member: 42582">I started with Moldvay too. But when it talked about "GM as boss", I took that to be in terms of (what I would now call) setting the scene and resolving disputes over fictional positioning.After all, the passage doesn't say "The GM is final arbiter of outcomes." It says "The DM decides how these rules will e used i the game." I never interpreted using the rules as extending to non-use and the substitution of GM fiat over outcomes: after all, the example in Moldvay of what to do when a player wants to jump over a cliff into an underground stream isn't that the GM should fiat the outcome; it's that the GM should set the odds and then let the player roll. And the instructions there are telling, in my view: they don't say that the GM should think about what would make for a good story, or even a good game. They say that "One quick way for a DM to decide whether a solution [suggested by a player] will work is by imagining the situation, and then chosing pecentage chances for the different possibilities."This is consistent with what I said to [MENTION=6701124]Cadence[/MENTION] way upthread, that I see this stuff as being about background and fictional positioning, not outcomes. My understanding of the GM's role in these terms was reinforced by reading people like Don Turnbull, Lewis Pulsipher and Roger Musson in White Dwarf; by reading Gygax's DMG (which, as I explained upthread, I interepted in the same light); and by reading Dragon and identifying bits of advice that seemed to fit with my own experiences of what made for a fun game.TL;DR: you may have read those passages as conferring upon the GM authority as to outcomes, but I didn't. (And, for what it's worth, still don't.)</blockquote>

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