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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Professor Phobos" data-source="post: 4033973" data-attributes="member: 18883">Well, maybe we're just talking past each other? "Make up a rule" is indistinguishable from fiat. I don't define fiat as running roughshod over anything. Rule 0 is just, "Feel free to employ fiat decisions."Which bit did? The player deciding on how his PC ended up, or the knight?Where are you getting this? I didn't say anything about player actions not mattering. In my own campaign, they matter more than anything- barring certain edge cases where I negotiate for some kind of compromise, I let player whim trump my own. Admittedly this is because I am very lazy and if they want to drive the plot, I'm not going to stop them.Ah, the PC is always a high-level knight, because he's a PC. So long as it's a PC, it is assumed to be the dominant factor in the narrative (or "a" dominant factor, alongside the other PCs). If the player retires the character and hands him to the DM, then it changes, but in that case there's a reasonable expectation of the GM to treat it with reverence or allow the PC to fiat what happens next.As for NPCs, what they are "the rest of the time" is a basically what they are unless they're somehow linked to the PCs- wholly disposable plot devices and setting elements. Basically, I don't believe anyone other than the PCs are "important." I try to make NPCs interesting , but they should serve some purpose for the player's enjoyment. Other than that, I tend to go through them like a thresher machine.Well, at the moment I'm just confused as to what exactly we're discussing. What is the "this" to which you h ave an issue?Sorry for the hostility, actually, it was uncalled for. Well, this is an important point- I only skip/ignore things the players are uninterested in. Recently they requested a session devoted to "Home and family life" rather than the life-and-death struggles, so we did a session on that. If they really enjoyed climbing a mountain, we'd do that, though I might try to negotiate a bit since I find mountain climbing terribly tedious and so maybe it'd only take a half-session for my sake.It's just bad DMing not to enable the players however you can.Yep, exactly, but I don't view this exclusively. For example, I usually let players define their family, friends, social position etc, up to and including starting up side-plots and whole storylines based on that. I tend to view that stuff as part of the wider penumbra of their character background and completely up to them.The thing is, again, you're operating on the idea that the two are mutually exclusive. I like to use the combat rules when I want some tension and some tactical gameplay, or if the scene is important and dramatic. But I don't see the value in running a whole combat just for the sake of following the rules- if it isn't interesting, and the players don't care, I'd just skip it. Outclassed opponents? Slaughter 'em however you want. There are degrees of decree. I don't just decree that Santa shows up and saves the day, but I might decree that a villain, tired of blood and war, surrenders instead of fighting when confronted by the PCs. A player might decree that his character's brother shows up at his doorstep with a knife in his back, but not that he's suddenly an Elven Warlord with an army at his back. There's an expectation that game world decrees will be reasonable and fit within the established context of the setting.Basically, RPGs are not like other games. There is a wide variety of game activity not covered by the rules, or for which the rules are only guidelines, or for which the rules are useful tools sometimes but not always.Well, let's look at some concrete examples, as I think we're definitely talking past each other here. "Can I grab the Hobgoblin and use him as a shield?" is a game-mechanics question; the player is asking if the game makes it possible. I would say, "Yes, make a grapple check to grab him and, oh, a dex check to get him in the way in time." Something like that. He's trying something not explicitly covered in the rules."Can I talk the Princess into making peace?" I would normally say, "You can try.""Can I shove the folding boat into the creature's mouth, shout the command word, and have the boat enlarge inside it's skull?" I would definitely say, "Hells yes! Make a (appropriate roll) and if you succeed it dies!""Can I get a message from my father informing me my mother has died?" I would nod, and tell the player that he doesn't even need permission for that kind of thing.Let me give you an example from my game a while back. I thought it might be fun if one of the PCs got turned into a vampire and the other PCs had to kill him (this was for a horror game). It's not the kind of thing I'd just do to a PC, so I picked a player I'd think amenable and asked if he wanted to do that story. He said sure, played it to the hilt, and it was a great session. You'll have to understand my frustration when you deliberately phrase things like "precious story" and "little tale." That's not what I'm advocating at all- again I don't have a story in mind when I start an adventure, I just want to see a good one to have appeared by the end. And it's not my story. I don't have any characters of narrative importance; all I have is the scenery. My goal is to give the players a good story of their characters- which involves working with them. More importantly, it involves giving them the narrative context to be awesome. I don't "want them to do" anything. Occasionally I have a player ask, "Hey, if I do this, will it screw up your deal?" and I say, "I have no deal! Do whatever you want!" About the only time I really do any railroading is the start of the adventure, as I"m fond of sudden paradigm shifts ("You all wake up in each other's bodies!") but even then, all I'm interested in is getting the ball rolling and seeing something cool come out of it at the end. The game is serving to add tension and the risk of defeat. A good RPG story has no pre-determined ending; if they lose, then they lose. If they win, then they win. I'm entirely comfortable with having the apocalypse if they don't save the world. But what I'm not comfortable with is unsatisfying defeats and unsatisfying victories, so I try to arrange things that they only lose after an epic battle or only win after some great sacrifice or act of daring-do. No, not at all. One certainly does not follow from the other. Remember, there are no rules for a lot of things. I can, as a DM, decree that a town the PCs have never visited in a kingdom they've never heard of suffers a landslide. There are no landslide rules. It's pure fiat. Now if they were in the town, and wanted to save the people, they'd have all kinds of rolling to do. It'd be an adventure. Not up to my whim since it is "on screen", it is part of the story of the PCs and they have input (both via game mechanics and via player whim) on the outcome. The rules are tools for the players and GM. They serve at the pleasure of the group. The DM is above the law. Hell, in a sense, the players are above the law- this is why house rules get made. In most cases it's just agreed to follow the rules for the player actions, because that's part of the point of the game.Yes! Of course they should think so. People in the real world still ride horses despite there being danger inherent to it. Batman doesn't know he's never going to get killed. He has no idea he's got plot immunity. He acts accordingly. People with unbreakable necks breaks the believability of the world. People who, by narrative logic, will just never break their necks is fine, because that's how almost any story works.GM's have been deciding on what is and is not available in their world since the hobby began. I'm in a campaign that bans arcane magic. This is world-building. This is normal. Are you really suggesting that it is inappropriate for a GM to regulate the availability of magical items or obscure Trained by a Master abilities? Are you really saying that the GM can't decide compound bows or steel forging haven't been invented yet in his swords-and-sandals game? There are very, very few RPGs, particularly semi-generic ones (or at least, "Homebrewing is Encouraged") that operate on that level of restriction. Maybe Burning Wheel, I've never tried it. Wealth-by-level and all that malarkey are just guidelines.I mean, GURPS is the only game I know that has the "rules=physics" design goal, and it's explicitly built around customized campaigns. This wasn't my campaign, but I know of a D&D game set in Mythic Medieval Russia. All kinds of things were changed. By all accounts, it was a great, flavorful campaign. This is normal. This is expected. This is good. World-building is one of the perks of GMing.</blockquote>

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