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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crimson Longinus" data-source="post: 8062937" data-attributes="member: 7025508">We are not really talking about the GM controlling the character's feelings, thought's and action in general. But ultimately I see no reason to differentiate how mental and physical tasks are handled. Mental restrictions (your character simply doesn't know how to do that) are just as real than physical restrictions and it is perfectly fine to enforce them in the rare situation it is needed.One thing I was thinking earlier is that a player describing the action in detail or in parts can kinda break the action declaration logic. Like if the player just said: "my character tries to make gunpowder" you would probably call for some sort of skill roll if you assumed that this was something that was at all possible (let's assume that in this instance it is possible by the physics of the setting) or just say they fail because no one in the setting knows how to do that. If the player instead starts to list the ingredients and tells how their character combines them, then they just succeed? I don't think so. I think that in the latter case the player is actually trying to declare the same action, just in more complicated way i.e. the character is trying to make gunpowder, and should be handled in the same way. This same issue applies to any task which is physically easy to do and the real difficulty is knowing what to do.I fully agree that the players being good sports is ultimately the key. If the GM actually has to often step in and say 'no, you can't do that' then there probably is some fundamental miscommunication about the premises of the game or the setting. That being said, sometimes wrong assumptions or miscommunication about the details of the situation or the setting happen and in such a situation it is perfectly fine for the GM to clarify things.This is a good point. A lot of people like to play D&D in rather gamist manner, as a game of 'solving' dungeons. In such an approach fussing about whether the character actually knows the monsters vulnerability might feel like an unnecessary burden. That being said, this goes back to what I have said may times: it is not good idea to make plot critical mysteries that hinge on things that the players actually know but their characters don't. Thus when setting up a mystery, whether it was what weapon can harm the monster or who the murderer is, the GM should endeavour to build it in a manner that such an discrepancy doesn't exist. I still feel that this is not the same than the players adhering to more tangential limitations of their characters' knowledge i.e. 'no one in this setting knows how to make gunpowder,' 'my character is uneducated idiot from backwoods of nowhere and thus cannot describe the exact details of the political system of Thay'</blockquote>

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