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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8010921" data-attributes="member: 16814">Ah, you're looking for those situations where the players make a mistake in judgement in deciding on a course of action.  I'd say that's an application of GM Force.  Not all such applications are bad or to be avoided, but having a course of action be an automatic failure regardless of approach is a matter of Force (provided the action is grounded in the fiction (as revealed) and genre appropriate, of course).  If, say, attacking the gate will result in the PC's being defeated, no matter what, with the intent that the PCs are forced into other options and this isn't made absolutely clear in framing, then this is an error on the GM's part, not the players.I have no problem with a situation that's well framed as impossible being found to be so if the players decided to do it anyway.  I do have an issue with the impossibility of the action being hidden in the GM's notes, because that's a gotcha, and I don't like gotcha play, at all.It's only a mistake is the other available options have been determined by the GM to be failures regardless of approach.  Which, if this isn't communicated, is a mistake by the GM.  I don't have an issue with a gate being described as well guarded to the point of being a suicide run to attack.  That's like describing a wall -- it's just a different flavor.  I have issue with there being no other options or the description of the gate as suicide not being sufficiently clear.  I, as GM, am not required to provide a pathway through the gate, but I shouldn't be hiding other solution paths or expecting my players to play 20 questions to find out what they are.  Nor should I be playing gotcha by not providing enough details or even hiding them.  It's unnecessary, and, for me, stems largely from constructing adventures in specific ways.  Granted, those are well trodden ways and there are many examples of such in published adventures.  But, you don't have to do it that way.  You can construct meaningful and engaging challenge without hiding information by making the challenge about getting what you want rather than divining what's in the GM's notes.I have absolutely no problem with players choosing actions that go poorly for them.  I'm just going to make sure that this is either because the dice say it does or that, at the end, the players clearly see that the decision was in spite of every indication otherwise.  My experience is that I can hand my players my notes, tell them things three or four times each, rent a few billboards, and they'll still find a way to screw up by the numbers.  I don't have to play coy with things because they're players.  So long as there's a different outcome on a failure, cool.  I do this kind of thing all the time in 5e.  The system is not well set up for it, and will fight you if you try to use it as a common resolution, but there's a lot of cases where you can let the players introduce new fiction and things work fine.  Ultimately, though, 5e is GM decides, and that structure means that player attempting to introduce new fiction is always at the mercy of the GM, which is not conducive to the player's being able to rely on a consistent adjudication if the GM is rejecting introductions not through the mechanics but through their authority.  Unreliable mechanics like that are critically based on table dynamics and trust -- it's very easy to start to feel like you're playing "GM may I?"</blockquote>

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