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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6729631" data-attributes="member: 42582">Although Gygax didn't use contemporary terminology, I think it's tolerably clear that when he talks about suspending the rules he is talking about content introduction rather than action resolution. For instance, in the passage about wandering monsters that Celebrim quoted, he says it would be contrary to the precepts of the game to have the monster turn up but then fudge the combat.In a later passage on managing play, he does canvass alternatives to PC death on zero hp, but stresses that they must still give effect to the monster's victory in combat. So the options would be unconsciousness or maiming in lieu of death. This is an early version of the 4e/5e rule that zero hp can be unconsciousness rather than death. (And the benefit is meant to be confined to players who played well but got unlucky - so there's a GM gatekeeper role that's absent in 4e/5e, and which also sits oddly with [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION]'s conception of the GM's function.)Somewhat similarly, when Gygax emphasises the priority of the GM's judgment in the game, I think he is mostly emphasising the role of the GM in adjudicating fictional positioning. I don't think he is saying that the GM is entitled to engage in some sort of dice-roll-ignoring free-for-all.With respect, this is a non-sequitur.No one is disputing that D&D depends upon the GM to manage backstory - drawing maps, generating content etc. But in Gygaxian "skilled play" the goal of play isn't to work out what method the GM used to create all this stuff. The goal, rather, is to work out the details of this stuff. From the players' point of view it is irrelevant whether the GM chose to put a troll in room 3 of level 4, or whether that was the result of a random roll.The function of the random tables is to help the GM generate content. But - to repeat - having played this game for over 30 years, and having read a lot of material for it (including material going back to the 1970s before I started playing) I have never heard it suggested that the goal of play is for the players to work out what random tables the GM is using to generate content.</blockquote>

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