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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8496310" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is consistent with what I posted earlier: those "open-ended" knowledge/perception checks are really request for more prompting/content-injection from the GM. That's why I'm generally not a big fan.To me at least, this suggests an approach similar to Lanefan's, where the GM's conception of the fiction is a focus-point for player action declarations, at least some of which have the purpose of eliciting more of that conception from the GM.On the whole that is an approach that I try to avoid.In some of the systems I play (eg Burning Wheel, Prince Valiant, to an extent Classic Traveller) fictional positioning factors in as a bonus die (or perhaps bonus dice) on a check. It doesn't factor into the "say 'yes'" decision, which is based on narrative considerations.In MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, fictional positioning only matters to resolution if it has been "mechanised" in some fashion, whether as a Scene Distinction or by someone creating an Asset. This can have the effect of turning some of the fiction into nothing more than a fig leaf. It certainly dials down the grittiness!In a 4e skill challenge, fictional positioning can effect difficulties, but it's bigger influence is on how checks are framed and consequences narrated. This is a little bit like its role in AW or DW.Your first category of action declarations - genuine asinine and blind-to-game-world - typically are not a big issue for me. I see that more as something that comes up in club-style games with players who don't take the game or the medium very seriously.If a declaration is based on genuine confusion, among sincerely engaged participants, as to what the fiction of the game is, then that can be worked out via conversation. The GM's voice will obviously be important in that discussion, maybe even the most important contribution, but I don't think a conversation like that is going to be resolved simply by a GM's exercise of authority.Your second paragraph raises different sorts of possibilities that seem apposite in various different RPGs. Although the stakes you have in mind look like they might be "procedural" rather than "dramatic"/"narrative" stakes - eg like the chance of falling that [USER=29398]@Lanefan[/USER] has posited as inherent stakes in climbing a wall. My preferred approach to "say 'yes' or roll the dice" is the BW approach (itself derived from DitV), where the focus is on narrative stakes and not procedural ones.</blockquote>

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