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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 5654284" data-attributes="member: 26473">Please forgive me for re-ordering things a bit, Janx.<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/305503-using-mythic-game-master-emulator-refereeing-tool-two-actual-play-examples.html" target="_blank">Here's one way to handle it.</a>Of course I'm exerting influence over the game - I run the world and everything in it, so how could I not?What I think is important isn't that referees make decisions - it's that referees may use very different criteria for how they "wing it."Some referees rely on 'teh rule of kewl.' Others take ideas from the adventurers' backgrounds and poke them with them (eg, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]). Some decide based on what's 'best' for the unfolding adventure plot. Most rely on some combination of these and other criteria.My approach is to take what I know of the situation and the game-world and apply them to my decision-making, usually with some random element thrown in so that even I'm kept guessing at the outcome. A good deal of my preparation for a campaign is establishing how I will "wing it" - I outlined this in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5472756-post24.html" target="_blank">a reply to you</a> awhile back. My preparation often provides (self-imposed) limits to my decision-making, such as the laws and customs of the game-world or the personality of a non-player character - my preparation often constrains the range of options available to me when I "wing it."Now here's what I think is key: many of these setting-imposed constraints are transparent to the players and the adventurers alike. Frex, a player can ask me, in- or out-of-character, what the penalties are for dueling, and I can give them an appropriate answer - what are the relevant edicts? how are those edicts enforced? what are potential consequences for violating the edicts? This isn't "my opinion" - it's an objective fact of the setting, known to everyone at the table, knowable within the context of the game-world, and should the adventurers engage in a duel and be found out by the authorities, then the potential consequences can be weighed in their decisions.And no, this doesn't mean that everything is known just by asking; the process of discovery is part of playing the games I run.I think this framing is all wrong: it's not about biased versus unbiased.In my experience, what we're talking about is a spectrum of transparency in the referee's decision-making. How much agency do the players and their characters have? To what degree does the setting constrain the range of likely consequences and outcomes? Is stochasticity a factor?Framing this as bias seems calculated to set an impossible bar to cross.</blockquote>

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