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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6301976" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, given that I use the phrase "GM fiat" to describe the GM dictating an outcome, GM fiat is discounting outcomes.As with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], I tend to agree that derision is somewhat in the eye of the beholder. I personally don't like GM fiat as a resolution mechanic - if there is going to be fiat, I prefer player fiat - but I recognise that there are whole systems built around GM fiat as the principle resolution technique (eg 2nd ed AD&D - a module like Dead Gods, or many of the Ravenloft modules I've seen, are paradigmI don't agree with this. If, in practice, relative to the resource suite available to the players no one can tell in what way the likelihood of success has changed (up or down) then their is no sense that the GM is determining the outcome in one particular way rather than another.What the choice of framing tends to do is to increase the "heft" of the event in play, because of the sorts of choices and consequent results of those choices it brings into the resolution.For instance, choosing to resolve a social interaction as a skill challenge rather than a single Diplomacy roll is going to result in more conversation taking place, more decision points for the players, and more nuance to the outcome. Whether or not it is mechanically more difficult is not the main issue, and very hard for anyone to assess, given that extremely complicated mathematics of skill challenge resolution with all its bells and whistles on. Were does that possibility come from? I've talked about toggling between skill checks, skill challenges and combat resolution. "Rocks fall and everybody dies" is not an instance of any of those.These seem to me all to be statements of preference. They are not true generalisations about RPGing as such.For instance, the fact that the mechanics permit a participant in the game (GM or player) to make N action declarations which result in a particular character being declared unconscious does not, in and of itself, tell us anything about what is happening in the gameworld. It might, if we took the view that every player action declaration maps in some discrete fashion onto events in the gameworld. But that view is not universally held (as we've already noted in this thread, for instance, Gygax didn't seem to hold to it).Similarly, it is objectively true as matter of action resolution mechanics that a 2W power does more damage than a 1W power. But that need not correlate to anything real or observable in the gameworld. For instance, consider the following two events: a 2W power that does 20 hp damage and reduces an NPC from 50 to 30 hp; or a 1W power that does 2 hp damage and reduces an NPC from 1 hp to 0 hp. In the gameworld, the second event is the one that is an observable severing of a head, or disembowelling, or whatever ther mode of death takes place. Whereas the first did not even bloody the enemy, though no doubt it forced them to exert themselves in self-defence.I've always described my 4e game as light narrativism. It is not emotionally supercharged, and as I've often said I'm sure that Ron Edwards, Vincent Baker and other Forge personalities would regard it as rather juvenile.What I enjoy is a game in which the events of play are dramatic, unexpected, and are driven by the concerns of the players as expressed through the build and play of their PCs. My actual experience tells me that obstacles to this are the sorts of rules that Hussar calls "bean counting" (eg tracking rations, micro-managing the passage of time, etc), and rules that will produce anti-climaxes unless the GM fudges (2nd ed AD&D has this problem big time; so do systmes that favour scry-buff-teleport).</blockquote>

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