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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5715795" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is very strong stuff, and I'm curious as to whether you mean it literally.For example, in your game, suppose (i) it is already established that a PC is not gagged, is not in an airless environment, has not had his/her throat ripped out, etc, and (ii) the player of that PC says "I say XYZ". Does the player really need the GM's permission before that statement becomes true in the fiction?Or suppose that (i) it is already established that the PC has a sword in hand, that there is an orc a few feet away from him/her, etc, and (ii) the player says "I swing my sword at the orc". Does the player really need the GM's permission before that attempted attack becomes part of the fiction?I think most games, and most game tables, anticipate that the players have a degree of authority over at least some aspects of the fiction very intimately related to their own PCs (as in the examples I've given above, and perhaps others as well - eg the patterns of the stitching on the boots my PC starts with, or the style in which my PC's hair is cut).Vincent Baker's point, as I understand it, is that the core of an RPG is the participants agreeing on what happens in the shared fiction - and the rules contribute to the process of reaching that agreement. (Ie they facilitate the "negotiation" - as it is trite to note, they replace the "I shot you"/"No you didn't" of childhood cops and robbers.)The contrast I had in mind in pointing to the two AD&D rules is this: the open doors rules are not only (i) a mechanic that determines who has the authority to say whether or not the door was opened by a particular PC (if I roll high enough, we are all obliged to accept that the door is opened by my guy, and if I don't then we are all obliged to accept that the door remains shut) but (ii) the mechanic also models the gameworld in producing that result - namely, it tells us why, within the fiction, the door is opened or remains shut: either my guy was strong enough, or s/he wasn't.The saving throw rules in AD&D are different, though. They do the first job - of settling the question of whether the fiction contains one outcome (my guy got poisoned) or another (my guy didn't get poisoned). But they don't do so by modelling the gameworld. They don't tell us what happened, in the fiction, to bring it about that I did or didn't get poisoned. Gygax is quite clear, in the discussion in the combat section of the DMG, that it is up to the participants (he is ambiguous as to whether the player or the GM has final narration rights) to work out what happened in the fiction such that my guy did or did not get poisoned (eg maybe my guy was tough enough to survive the poison, or maybe the stinger didn't actually hit my guy at all, or perhaps it did but didn't inject the venom, etc). This is an early instance of a fortune-in-the-middle mechanic.In 3E I think saving throws are different - by making poison saves a Fortitude saves, I think the rules do dictate not only an outcome but an ingame process (namely, my guy was or was not tough enough to cope with the poison). This change in the role of the rules has other implications, too, like making it much harder to take the view that a hit that mandates a poison save did not involve physical damage (because, if my guy was never scratched, why would the question of toughing it out even come up?), and therefore making the non-physical model of hit points, which the game at least hints it is carrying over from AD&D, harder to implement.This is one example which, for me, shows that the purpose of the rules has not been the same across all editions of D&D. In AD&D the saving throw rules do not serve the purpose of determining how, in the fiction, the character survives or fails to survive. In 3E they do aim at that purpose. (And I think other, comparable, differences can also be identified.)</blockquote>

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