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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7561594" data-attributes="member: 16814">The point is that "say yes" is a fundamental of all styles.  Questioning it is silly.  What you seem to want to ask is "why is 'no' not also valid?"  That's an interesting discussion that this thread has been avoiding.I think that you have to accept that the GM being able to unilaterally say "no" based on their interpretation of the fictional position is MMI-alike.  So long as the GM retains said authority to negate, all actions are subject to this and therefor can only occur with permission, explicit or implied.  But, this doesn't mean play cannot be prinipled or hella fun.  A GM in this concept can apply strict principles in play and communicate them to players in a way that they can understand the avaiable play space and enjoy play well.  This takes a huge amount of work, though, and the GM must shoulder a massive workload to make it happen.  Not to mention the need for good social skills and the effort to maintain trust.  I think that most posters here have only played this kind of game and so are somewhat blind to the level of effort this kind of play demands from GMs.It's actually much easier to run games that don't allow the GM unilateral negatipn authority.  This isn't because it takes less work or is strictly better, but because that overhead is shared out among all players.  I've seen a number of posts that are focusing only on GM power and responsibility that don't grok this difference.  In "trad" play, the GM has the overhead burden to create and model the world fairly, while the players have little burden to do so, as they are exploring the GM's world.  This requires the GM to be able to negate action declarations that violate the fiction, which may often be not fully known to players, but also that the fiction be well established in the GM's understanding so that a consistent world is presented.  The player's only duty is to poke and prod the world, and they expect to be negated from time to time.Non-trad play, though, puts much more of the burden on the players to engage and create a world.  It does this by framing, mostly.  Negation is removed from the GM's toolbox but replaced by a duty to frame players into danger at all times.  This means that, yes, players can declare whatever they want as actions (within the limits of the fiction and theme, again assuming principled play as baseline) but if they don't engage the danger, the GM can pay it off, meaning players are strongly incentivized to engage the danger in a scene and use their tools and effort to do so.  This reduces the GM overhead because they're now only responsible for the initial scene framing and then adjudicating outcomes.  They don't have to plan or hold the world in their head to develop believable and consistant outcomes; they only need to frame danger and then pay it off if not resolved while adding more dangers on failed checks. Sonce the GM is now following the development of play that the players now have the duty to bring, GM workload is much decreased.These styles create very different play at the table.  The non-trad games accept a looseness of world and a frenetic pace of play which isn't to everyone's taste.  Trad games accept GM fiat, but can also provide a feeling of depth to story that non-trad games can lack*.  Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your playstyles will help you to become better GMs, on either side, because you'll know where the potholes are and can better steer around them.*I know [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] often puts his play up as rich and detailed as a counter to this point, but that ignores that he has a lot of experience steering around the potholes.  There seems to be a lot of players out there that have bounced off of non-trad games because they failed to get the narrative depth they find in trad games.  Those play examples shouldn't be ignored.  If bad play examples are going to be referenced for trad games, we should also look at where non-trad games fail as well, not just where they succeed.  It takes a whole table to carry a mon-trad game (or most of one), but a trad game can be carried by a good GM.</blockquote>

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