GMing: What If We Say "Yes" To Everything?

[Starfox]

I've had games where the players were restricting themselves far more than I was. This of course differs from player to player, depending on personality and personal experience. The important thing is for everyone to be reasonably on the same page. If one player is playing the Hulk and another is playing a small town cop this might be very weird even if the GM says yes to everything. Then again there is RIFTS doing exactly this.

 

[FrogReaver]

I've had games where the players were restricting themselves far more than I was. This of course differs from player to player, depending on personality and personal experience. The important thing is for everyone to be reasonably on the same page. If one player is playing the Hulk and another is playing a small town cop this might be very weird even if the GM says yes to everything. Then again there is RIFTS doing exactly this.

Which also highlights a problem with even saying yes to everything at char gen.

 

[damiller]

Of course. I just don't see why.

Normally in RPGs the referee has three options when asked if the player can do something. Yes, no, and maybe. Maybe is the only response where the game mechanics come in. With both yes and no you skip the mechanics. Can I carry X, yes. Can I jump over the moon, yes. Neither refers to the game mechanics for that yes. Can I X, maybe...roll for it. To conflate the "always say yes" as detailed in the OP with "yes, but only if you roll for it" is to not actually engage with the topic.

it could also be a "Yes and" roll for it. I reject your framing of the conversation as only including (or being limited to "yes, but")

additionally right after your post @FrogReaver notes that the conflation of yes = success was taken out of the equation. That is not the definition of "Yes" in this discussion.

So I would say I am not the one who is not actually engaging in the topic.

 

[soviet]

Alexa, please reinvent Vincent Baker's 'say yes or roll the dice', but make it confusing.

 

[KYRON45]

"Say yes to everything" means precisely "yes, you just succeed"; because the words "maybe" and "no" have just been excised from your GM vocabluary.

"Can I jump to the moon?"
"Yes."

And "say yes to everything" would end up any more serious than that??

Oh I find the idea of saying yes to “everything” astoundingly ridiculous. I’m just saying I understand the premise of the original post. I feel one can understand the premise and not agree with it at the same time.

To my understanding saying yes narratively is not the same as ignoring the mechanics. People seem to think I’m wrong though so I must be.

It’s a thought experiment so no one will be harmed.

 

[pemerton]

"Can I play a half giant, half pixie from Mars?"
Yes.

"Can I convince the king to make me a baron?"
Yes.

"Can I sneak up behind the dragon and steal that cool cup?"
Yes.

It is still a roleplaying game. Assume everything works as normal, except the answer to every "can I?" question is "Yes."

The GM can still certainly a complex, challenging scenario and say yes to all the actions the PC wants to take. But "Can I beat this puzzle" is not a valid question.

One presumes that the GM has a solution in mind. The player still has to say, "I rotate the outer ring to the bear symbol" to solve it.

This seems like an overly negative framing.

"Door Puzzle: the door can be opened by positioning the dragon claw in the socket and putting the rings in the following order: bear, eagle, whale."

I'm not sure what the GM would say "no" to.

I'm one of those who is a bit unsure about what is being suggested.

I get the stuff about PC build. But the action declaration stuff has me confused, in part because I'm not used to seeing action declaration framed as "can I . . .?", as opposed to "I do . . .".

If the player declares, I wrack my brain to recall the solution to the door puzzle, how does that get resolved?

Likewise, if the player declares I turn the ring to "eagle" so as to open the door, how does that get resolved?

This sounds a lot like the idea of “say yes or roll the dice”, which I believe was first coined in Dogs in the Vineyard by Vincent Baker.

It may be a little different in that with “say yes or roll the dice” the intention is to simply grant success on all but the most potentially consequential actions. This helps avoid less meaningful rolls. It pushes the game to moments of consequence. You don’t call for rolls whenever the urge might strike. The player wants his character to scramble up a rope to a nearby rooftop? He succeeds with no roll. He wants to search a room? He finds what’s there. And so on. It’s about getting to the good stuff quicker.

So it’s not as much about “can I play this homebrew class” or what have you, but the spirit is largely the same.

I generally approach GMing just about any game with this mindset.

Well this I get!

Though even with "say 'yes' or roll the dice", there still needs to be some consideration of how the GM uses established but secret backstory, and how that relates to putting things at stake and calling for rolls. Vincent Baker talks about this in the rules for DitV, using the phrase "actively revealing [backstory] in play". This is how to make sure that the game is not going to grind to a halt on trying to work out how to twiddle the puzzle lock on the door.

 

[aramis erak]

Nope.

My only real objection is that it takes the "game" out of the role-playing game.

I've had enough players who don't get "stay in genre" as a convention of play that any such effort would soon exit genre and probably also common sense.

After all, several of my players try hard to emulate Whose Line is it, Anyway?...
those might work for a short while, but sooner or later, the PG 13 I require to be comfortable would be exceeded.

 

[FrogReaver]

I've had enough players who don't get "stay in genre" as a convention of play that any such effort would soon exit genre and probably also common sense.

After all, several of my players try hard to emulate Whose Line is it, Anyway?...
those might work for a short while, but sooner or later, the PG 13 I require to be comfortable would be exceeded.

But if the players ask for rated R - as a dm you must just say yes

*TIC

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

First thought: This might be a way to run my gaming white whale: A "Dawn of Creation" campaign where the PCs are the primordial beings at the very beginning of the world, where Earth, Sky, the World Tree, and the PCs exist, but everything else (wind, water, fire, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, animals, plants other than the World Tree and its descendants, mountains, rivers...) all have to be created by the PCs.

Second thought: How would conflicts between PCs be resolved in a "Say Yes" game?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

First thought: This might be a way to run my gaming white whale: A "Dawn of Creation" campaign where the PCs are the primordial beings at the very beginning of the world, where Earth, Sky, the World Tree, and the PCs exist, but everything else (wind, water, fire, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, animals, plants other than the World Tree and its descendants, mountains, rivers...) all have to be created by the PCs.

Second thought: How would conflicts between PCs be resolved in a "Say Yes" game?

I think this is all getting a bit silly. Games have rules and mechanics, everyone is bound by them. If a player says "I leap off the cliff" then the GM says "Yes, and you take 6d10 damage, your hit points are now -5 and you are dead." It is really that simple at the core of it.

Likewise in your hypothetical God Game there must be RULES OF ADJUDICATION, and enacting those rules has nothing to do with "saying yes."

I think where this entire conversation went off into lalaland (very far off I might say) is when people who assume that a GM is some sort of meta-godlike font of all game authority try to apply any sort of 'say yes'. There are RULES folks! Games have them. If your 'game' is fundamentally just "the GM makes up stuff" then you weren't playing a game to start with and you can't make sense of something like "say yes or roll the dice" because it applies to GAMES, which have RULES, that ALL the participants MUST follow.