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

[Reynard]

Honestly, most of the RPGs I've ever run have assumed that, barring hidden influences, once you've gotten the basic information, you don't need any special permission to take an action.

But you need to tell the GM you are doing it, because they are the one arbitrating the consequences of all actions. That's their role. You can't "look under the desk" without the GM. There is no mechanism for that to work and give you feedback without the GM. That's true of the vast majority of things PCs can do. However, i had not considered book keeping and similar actions, such as item crafting per my example.

 

[Reynard]

Essentially, Traveller's equivalent to Rule 0 is, as in Frei Kriegspiel, that the Referee must remain fair.

That is entirely different than not having the referee involved.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Honestly, most of the RPGs I've ever run have assumed that, barring hidden influences, once you've gotten the basic information, you don't need any special permission to take an action.

Basically, the same. I might term them as passive and active permission: In most games the GM gives passive permission to take action based on established fiction, and the players only need active permission when they are unsure if an action is reasonable. The GM may also override the passive permission if required for the good of the game (e.g. ‘hidden influences”)

Even with a very controlling GM and a highly non-narrative game, players don’t need to ask permission to get dressed in the morning, drink beer without spilling it, or meet in the inn. Conversely even with a very open GM, the GM might interrupt a players narration to say “as you walk downstairs to the bar to meet your friends, you see one of Vila’s goons blocking your way”.

A lot of GM style and divide between narrative and non-narrative games comes down to a matter of degree — how often will the GM discourage or intervene in a player’s narration.

 

[Reynard]

Basically, the same. I might term them as passive and active permission: In most games the GM gives passive permission to take action based on established fiction, and the players only need active permission when they are unsure if an action is reasonable. The GM may also override the passive permission if required for the good of the game (e.g. ‘hidden influences”)

Even with a very controlling GM and a highly non-narrative game, players don’t need to ask permission to get dressed in the morning, drink beer without spilling it, or meet in the inn. Conversely even with a very open GM, the GM might interrupt a players narration to say “as you walk downstairs to the bar to meet your friends, you see one of Vila’s goons blocking your way”.

A lot of GM style and divide between narrative and non-narrative games comes down to a matter of degree — how often will the GM discourage or intervene in a player’s narration.

This has nothing to do with the topic of the thread. "permission" here doesn't mean what you are interpreting it to mean.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

But you need to tell the GM you are doing it, because they are the one arbitrating the consequences of all actions. That's their role. You can't "look under the desk" without the GM. There is no mechanism for that to work and give you feedback without the GM. That's true of the vast majority of things PCs can do.

Although that is one style of play — always asking permission, it’s not the only way people interact with the world — and in fact some games specifically state that it’s not the way they want to work. Another way players can interact is to state their desired outcome, rather than just asking a question of the state of the world. In an investigative game where the fun is discovering stuff, it’ll be common to work the way you suggest. But an equally reasonable player statement might be “I grab the key from under the desk”, if the fiction has established that such a key exists.

In fact, in general, it’s better for players to describe their desired outcomes rather than the steps they want to take. Otherwise it’s easy to develop misunderstandings or waste time:

Player: “I look under the desk”
GM: “nothing is there”
Player: “I look in the bookcase”
GM: “it has a bunch of books”
…
Player: “I look in the vase”
GM: “you find the key”

Versus:
Player: “I search the room to find the key, and open the door”
GM: “you find it in the vase; the door opens with a worrying click and gas starts hissing out”

Rather than asking for active permission for actions with no goal, it helps pacing and fun to have players assume passive permission and state their goal; the GM (as above) can then confirm their action and get straight to the fun!

 

[DEFCON 1]

I wonder if people are envisioning things as much more complicated in this whole gametype scenario than they really need to?

What if we think of this entire thought experiment like this...

We are playing D&D. Same way we always play it. Everyone runs their characters the same way... everyone makes choices and decisions and queries with the same logical consistency as they always do (in other words, no player ever bothers asking "Can I jump to the moon?" because they know full well what the answer would be, which is 'no', because they know what the internal logic of the game world is). Any time a player does make a choice for which there is a chance of failure-- a time when we would ask for dice to be rolled and check to be made-- the roll just happens to roll a success.

Every single time.

Every time there is a chance for failure, there just isn't. We don't know why this happens... and yes, this could result in a huge amount of weird coincidences or unlikely happenstances... but how does the D&D really change? Or even DOES it really change?

After all... whenever we as DMs ask for checks to be made, most of the time we are expecting that indeed there is a possibility of the check succeeding. Sometimes easily, sometimes a very small chance. And sure, we will occasionally see that rare occasion where a players asks to do something so unlikely that we DMs will just set the DC for the action so high it is basically is an undeclared 'No' (IE setting the DC to 40 knowing full-well no one can actually roll it, so you are ostensibly telling the player 'No' without actually saying it out loud)... but more often than not the players-- when playing within the logical confines of the ruleset and physics of the campaign world they are in-- will only make choices that could have a chance to succeed.

Knowing this... knowing that the game is played in such a way that-- odds-be-damned-- every time a player rolls to see if the choice they made did in fact work, it does... does that really change the game all that much? Because that is what @Reynard's thought experiment truly is representational of-- a D&D game played just like any other except every time someone rolled the dice, they won the roll. And in this particular scenario of Reynard's... we're just skipping ahead past the action of successfully rolling a die straight to the DM describing the results of what would have been the successful check.

I don't know if that's really resulting in that big a change to the game? Especially considering that... at least for my tables... most of the time players are making successful checks anyway because the people that have the best modifiers and are most likely to succeed are the ones making the checks in the first place.

To me... the biggest stumbling block I can see for some people to really wrap their head around this idea are those DMs who do in fact play with players who are prone to making choices that ARE logically impossible to succeed within their particular game world. Where the need to say 'No' is important and necessary because the players just can't help but "try and introduce a ray gun into Dark Sun" and other such world-breaking actions. And for those DMs, I absolutely see their need to be able to say 'No', because the players aren't willing to police themselves. But for other DMs-- ones with players who are self-policing of their choices and actions to things they think could actually be possible? Just skipping past the "successful die roll" straight to the resolution I don't think would really make the game all that different personally.

 

[Theory of Games]

 

[Reynard]

I wonder if people are envisioning things as much more complicated in this whole gametype scenario than they really need to?

What if we think of this entire thought experiment like this...

We are playing D&D. Same way we always play it. Everyone runs their characters the same way... everyone makes choices and decisions and queries with the same logical consistency as they always do (in other words, no player ever bothers asking "Can I jump to the moon?" because they know full well what the answer would be, which is 'no', because they know what the internal logic of the game world is). Any time a player does make a choice for which there is a chance of failure-- a time when we would ask for dice to be rolled and check to be made-- the roll just happens to roll a success.

Every single time.

Every time there is a chance for failure, there just isn't. We don't know why this happens... and yes, this could result in a huge amount of weird coincidences or unlikely happenstances... but how does the D&D really change? Or even DOES it really change?

After all... whenever we as DMs ask for checks to be made, most of the time we are expecting that indeed there is a possibility of the check succeeding. Sometimes easily, sometimes a very small chance. And sure, we will occasionally see that rare occasion where a players asks to do something so unlikely that we DMs will just set the DC for the action so high it is basically is an undeclared 'No' (IE setting the DC to 40 knowing full-well no one can actually roll it, so you are ostensibly telling the player 'No' without actually saying it out loud)... but more often than not the players-- when playing within the logical confines of the ruleset and physics of the campaign world they are in-- will only make choices that could have a chance to succeed.

Knowing this... knowing that the game is played in such a way that-- odds-be-damned-- every time a player rolls to see if the choice they made did in fact work, it does... does that really change the game all that much? Because that is what @Reynard's thought experiment truly is representational of-- a D&D game played just like any other except every time someone rolled the dice, they won the roll. And in this particular scenario of Reynard's... we just skip ahead past the successful die roll to the DM describing the results of what would have been the successful check.

To me... the biggest stumbling block I can see for some people to really wrap their head around this idea are those DMs who do in fact play with players who are prone to making choices that ARE logically impossible to succeed with in their particular game world. Where the need to say 'No' is important because the players just can't help but "try and introduce a ray gun into Dark Sun" and other such world-breaking actions. And for those DMs, I absolutely see their need to be able to say 'No', because the players aren't willing to police themselves. But for other DMs-- ones with players who are self-policing of their choices and actions to things they think could actually be possible? Just skipping past the "successful die roll" straight to the resolution I don't think would really make the game all that different personally.

While not untrue, this once again focuses on action resolution in a way that my original post was not meant to. There are a lot more things happening in a RPG session beyond rolls to see if you did a thing. Shaping the world and the PC are just, or more, as important.

I think folks are getting a little hung up on "permission" too. We managed to avoid that snag for 200+ posts so I don't know why it is coming up now. "Can I?" was just a way to get to "the GM says Yes" to be clear. Not everything the player does must literally be formed as a request, but that is essentially what it is in the majority of traditioned RPG play (with some interesting exceptions, as noted previously).

 

[DEFCON 1]

While not untrue, this once again focuses on action resolution in a way that my original post was not meant to.

I know. But I figured that if people were indeed still getting stuck focused on it... better to try and "solve" that issue for them first, so that they would then be willing to move past it and consider your additional points. One can't discuss Chapter 8 of the math textbook if everyone's still trying to wrap their heads around the concepts of Chapter 1, LOL!

 

[Thomas Shey]

But you need to tell the GM you are doing it, because they are the one arbitrating the consequences of all actions. That's their role. You can't "look under the desk" without the GM. There is no mechanism for that to work and give you feedback without the GM. That's true of the vast majority of things PCs can do. However, i had not considered book keeping and similar actions, such as item crafting per my example.

I'm not sure even that's true. If I decide to jump across a chasm, once I have the width of the chasm, the quality of the edges, and know my sheet--what is it the GM is going to tell me? The success or failure is defined by the roll. In a degree-of-success system there might be some partial-success things to adjucate, but that's an "if". Otherwise the system is already telling me everything I need to know. The GM has set up the situation in the first place, but he's usually not actually needed for the basic resolution.

Edit: Seeing your discussion a couple of posts up, I understand I'm using a very limited case here, but my only point is that there are a fair number of games where those limited cases are a non-trivial part of the play experience, and I'd say in most of those what you have the GM doesn't "say" anything; he's only involved at all in many cases out of force of habit in the hobby after setting the initial conditions.