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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8202033" data-attributes="member: 42582">System is much more than this. Consider:* Who gets to establish initial fiction? Who gets to establish which characters are in a scene/situation? Who gets to decide what is at stake in a scene/situation? * What is the range of permissible player-side moves, and who polices that? * Who gets to establish consequences of player moves? How does this change, if at all, depending on whether the player succeeds or fails on a check? * Who has access to "off screen" fiction and is able to bring that on-screen or leverage it in other ways? * When a participant does introduce new content into the shared fiction, what constraints operate on that? This is especially important if the game includes a GM-type participant, whose participation in play is not channelled through a particular protagonist in the shared fiction.In 5e D&D, the answer to nearly all those who questions is the GM, and the answer to the question about constraints on the GM is generally none that are not either self-imposed or established by informal social understandings.There is a big contrast with (say) MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic in this respect. The GM establishes the initial fiction, and can establish what characters are in a scene, but that is rationed (via the Doom Pool). There are mechanical constraints too on the GM introducing new fiction, including consequences: this either has to flow from Doom Pool expenditure or be the result of successful actions by GM-controlled characters. Players other than the GM can access "off screen" fiction, by spending resources and/or succeeding on action declarations.The answers to these questions aren't irrelevant to running a gritty futuristic sci-fi horror game, either. For instance, the more that the system gives players control over which characters are in a scene/situation, the harder it is to do that sort of horror. The more that the system looks to the GM to establish consequences in all cases, and not just failed checks, the greater the risk it comes across just as the GM hosing the players. The more gonzo the range of permissible player moves, the harder it is to maintain a gritty horror feel. Etc.These are some of the matters I addressed upthread in my discussion of using Classic Traveller to run a gritty futuristic sci-fi horror scenario. None of them is about the way of working out how likely something is to succeed or fail. The fact that that phrase doesn't even have a personal pronoun that might refer to one or another of the participants in the game shows how inadequate it is as a way of thinking about RPG systems.</blockquote>

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