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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8013035" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think you're confused about what is going on in the discussion of actions that violate the credibility test.Go back to Robin Laws's example from HeroQuest Revised:As Narrator, you are never obligated to allow a contest just because two characters have abilities that can be brought into conflict. If the character's proposed result would seem abusrd, you disallow the contest, period. . . . Read it carefeully: if the character's proposed result woudl seem absurd [ie if it violates genre or fictional positioning constraints] then you disallow the contest [ie no check is made; the action resolution mechanics are not invoked].The player is free to describe his/her PC shooting an arrow into the sky aiming at the moon. But (outside the context of some sort of epic fantasy) that does not generate a check to see if the moon is hit.The premise of Laws's remark is that a system is being used similar to what [USER=99817]@chaochou[/USER] mentioned upthread: namelhy, that if a valid action is declared then the dice are rolled and on a success the player gets what s/he wants for his/her PC, and otherwise the GM narrates a failure.In a system in which that is not true - ie in which there is no particular connection between use of the action resolution mechanics and what happens in the shared fiction - then Laws's point becomes irrelevant. But that takes us straight back to [USER=99817]@chaochou[/USER]'s other point, that where there is no such connection players have little agency.And this also brings me back to the distinction I drew upthread: the credibiilty test is something which can be negotiated between participants (so players get to exercise their agency just as much as the GM does); action resolution, on the other hand, is a die roll to see whose vision of what happens next is made true.</blockquote>

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