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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imagicka" data-source="post: 3171706" data-attributes="member: 4621">Greetings… You know, I wasn’t going to reply to this one, and I just read the thread wonder why everyone was replying to it.   Is there a problem with the DM Fiat?  Isn’t that some sort of  European car?    But seriously… the fiat is unavoidable.  GMing and gaming is not governed by committee, and nor should it.  Certainly the storytelling is subject to committee input of all the players and the GM.  But ultimately, it comes down to the fact that the GM has to be final arbiter of the game.  Just like Rodrigo Intalindir said, the fiat doesn’t imply arbitrary judgment or capriciousness, and if you find yourself in a game that has such things, then I suggest you get out before it becomes a problem.  No game should be held together by the DM Fiat.  If you have to resort to using it, then something is wrong.  Mostly I see it as a lack of vision and/or communication with the players.  If, as a GM, cannot convey the vision and the necessity that required the GM to go outside the Rules as Written (RAW) I know someone out there is probably going ‘what the heck is RAW?’, and there is some sort of conflict with the players over it.  Then of course, you have a problem. One of my GMs was constantly going outside of the RAW.  Why?  Well, mostly because I thought that he didn’t know the rules well enough.  He was just ruling situations because he didn’t know or couldn’t remember the rules in the book.  Which of course lead to a lot of assumptions on the part of the players (and myself being one of them) that we were expecting to happen; which of course didn’t because the GM had changed the rules on it.  This problem was of course resolved through communication.  Both with having the players and the GM compromise in most situations.  Simply because the GM wasn’t changing the rules arbitrarily, but because he wasn’t aware, or couldn’t recall some sort of official rule in the book.  With just what Shroomy said, the players should be informed of any and all deviations.  Because, how can you play a game when you don’t know what the rules are?   ”God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e., everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.” Would I allow a GM to ‘hide behind rule 0’?  Well, I don’t think I’d call it hiding.  But when I (or anyone) can trust the GM to be fair and honest and forthright, and be able to run the game without regards or the crutch of the rules, then that can occasionally lead to something quite magical; a game where people don’t think about the rules, and just play. Saying that the players have the final word because they can always ‘walk’ is rather like a BDSM session with a bad top.  Yeah, sure… you can always call the safe-word, and get out of the ‘play’.  But it’s a bad session when you have to resort to that.  Do you really want to be in a game where it has to result in players leaving the table?  Do things need to fall apart that much? – In a philosophical sense, yes… the bottom has all the control, and the players have the final say.  But it’s a poor game when the players have to exercise that control.</blockquote>

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