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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Smackpixi" data-source="post: 9609305" data-attributes="member: 7028579">The OP has two very different examples of DM fiat.  One is story, one is rules.  If you go to the market looking for your long lost sister, and she doesn’t live in that city, DM Fiat, you don’t need to roll, she’s not there.  Same with the Feather, if it’s not there, it’s not there.  Not everything has a chance of success, unless you have quantum mechanics game rules.  But if you’ve tracked the sister or feather to this market, maybe GM Fiat makes up the odds on a roll, for bumping into her or finding the feather or maybe for story or fun reasons yes she’s there or no she’s not.  GM Fiat shouldn’t be a dick about withholding what they’ve worked for nor should it just give away stuff w/o work.  Maybe it takes a couple Tuesday market visits to find the sister, you don’t know the odds, sure, but it’s doable.Edit, Fiat or not, if there’s a roll, I always reveal the target for success, not always before they decide to roll, but always after there’s no backing out, that’s the drama of the game.  You can Fiat less bad failures, or less good (oh but then) successes, but you can’t Fiat meaningless roles or the game is broken.The second issue is a long long rulesy thing.  On rules, my take on GM Fiat is that you help the players do what they want to do, and round off the corners of the actual rules when necessary.  For sure, sometimes my ruling is, “Dude, you clearly don’t know what “and” means, maybe you’d like to take that action back”.  Sometimes though, close enough, works.  Sometimes, “I don’t think that’s how that spell works, what’s your reasoning as to why it does”.  And never is it a recourse to the internet to see how anything has been litigated before.  Come up with a plausible reason, great, ok.  And later I’ll look it up and maybe explain why, no, can’t do that again cause “exploitable in xyz way”…or maybe I don’t and see if they figure out the exploit and let them do it once.Edit, but I see you want edge cases, and some rulesyness.  Then it becomes about was the intention good, but technically flawed, like did they want to block the hallway with an alarm on a VTT but set it two fat too far to the left, dick move to squeeze a shapeshifter through, but has the first watch not slept in two days?  Ok to GM fiat some odds of falling asleep.GM Fiat is there to move the game along.  It’s, sure, about trust, but trust in that whatever the GM is ruling is about making the game more fun, or more interesting, and keeping it moving, and yeah, won’t always agree, but trust that their brain a heart is in the right place.  If you’re a GM and that’s not your motivation, stop being one.</blockquote>

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