Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9631954" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I'm a bit outside all of you guys here.  My position on fiat is that both the lack of accountability and the arbitrariness are equally consequential.  The decree component indicates unilateral authority.  That bakes in lack of accountability (to system and process as binding architecture and to players as participants in a coalition).  The arbitrariness component is because the decision the GM makes indexes neither table-facing structure/procedure nor overt, enumerated principles which constrain and inform that GM's decision-making.  Neither of those mean the GM's decision-making process is baseless nor degenerate/dysfunctional.  But it definitely means it lacks the features I'm pointing at above.And, again, I don't think this is "bad" in terms of an agenda for play nor "bad" in terms of an output.  But I hold 100 % true (from a long journey of first-hand experience, an abundance of second & third-hand experience via endless testimonials, and an absurd amount of consideration on the subject) that this approach is (a) not remotely as versatile as it purports to be and (b) that there are a huge number of failure-points embedded in the play model.  Finally, (c) if you have a lot of failure-points embedded in your <whatever>, you better be willing to interrogate (and ruthlessly so) your discipline, piece-by-piece, or you're absolutely going to be more apt to fall prey to those failure points...and while you might not know it, the other participants of your <whatever> sure as hell will.  I think that (c) is a big problem for this model of play because (as we see here and everywhere else) there is an absolute rejection of interrogation of play...and a refusal to post Actual Play or engage with hypotheticals.</blockquote>

Verification