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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6306703" data-attributes="member: 42582">That is not a true description of D&D as I play and experience it. Nothing in the guidelines pushes me towards the ordinary - for instance, Moldvay Basic tells me that a fighter can be Hercules and a magic-user Merlin - and I don't GM a game involving primarily treasure hunters, and haven't for over 30 years.But this actually isn't true. There are plenty of people in Australia who can get cabinet ministers on the phone if they want them. That's not true of me, but there are some current and former members of Parliament whom I can walk up to and expect to have them interact with me. If the players' conception of their PCs is as having the requisite lineage, bearing and visible sense of urgency to make them worth talking to, I don't see any reason why that possibility shouldn't be resolved in much the same sort of way as we work out whether or not they are able to defeat a dragon in combat.The players are playing a game. Whether that game involves hobnobbing with gods (as my last Rolemaster campaign did) or involves hanging out with baser persons is a question about what sort of game me and my friends want to play together, and what sort of fantasy situations we want to figure in that game. It's never occurred to me that it is a character flaw for a player to prefer to play a game involving royalty rather than peasantry.By the same token, I don't see that there is any virtue in the game focusing on fighting kobolds rather than demons - nor vice versa. They're all just made up. It's a fiction. There's nothing more self-aggrandising about playing out a fiction involving gods, or kings, than playing out a fiction involving children, or peasants.If the players care about it, then presumably they will either (i) wash up before trying to make an appointment with the king, or (ii) have a reason why it is so urgent to see the king that there's no time to clean up. In the latter case, maybe they're right! (I'm thinking of the scene in Peter Jackson's Two Towers, when a bleeding, dirty Aragorn throws open the doors to Helm's Deep to tell Théoden of the orc hordes outside.)Not quite. The assumption is that, if the players and GM get out of whack in respect of these things, the GM's view is not automatically to be preferred. (This will come up again below, in the context of action declarations and resolution.)This is not a matter of definition. It's a matter of playstyle preference. It is possible to run an RPG in which this is not so, and in which it is the GM's job to respond to, integrate and help realise the players' conceptions of the gameworld.There is in my view a huge distinction. For a player, on my conception, at the heart of playing the game is declaring actions for one's PC, and then determining what happens via application of the action resolution mechanics. Those mechanics constrain what the GM is free to narrate as an outcome. Using the mechanics is inconsistent with the GM having a pre-defined result in mind.I prefer a game in which there is no such thing as the "real plot" distinct from what the players think is going on. This makes it hard to run certain sorts of mystery-driven or Call of Cthulhu-style scenarios. That's a cost that I pay. And it's not the case that mystery is impossible - it just has to be handled in a non-CoC-ish way.Here's a little bit of a self-quote, to try and illustrate what I mean in a concrete fashion:This is an example of "no hidden backstory" - none of the resolution turns upon secret information known only to the GM and not known to the players. For instance, the mystery of the portraits of the rescued-in-the-past apprentice is important to the resolution of the situation, but as an object of investigation by the players (via their PCs), not as a causal factor in resolution.You can also see that the players (and their PCs) learn about the Baron, but not by finding out what works and what doesn't. Rather, the successful or unsuccessful skill checks plus the broader dynamics of the scene, including the duty on me as GM to keep up the pressure on the players, provide the occasion for presenting the Baron's desires and personality as this or that.And there is no "real plot" or "sidequest". The identity of the apprentice in the paintings is not a sidequest. It's just something that matters to the players and their PCs. There is no goal of keeping the baron safe, or not, or of mollifying the evil advisor, or fighting with him. There are the players goals, and their attempts to realise those goals via their skill checks. When the goal turns to one of provoking the advisor into revealing his true colours by attacking, that becomes the focus of play, and skill checks - ie the action resolution mechanics - are used to work out whether or not the players get what they want. They nearly didn't, but then one of them decided to spend resources (an Action Point) to change the outcome. That's what player resources are for! (And the spending of the action point means that it's not available in the subsequent fight - which, as it turned out, might have mattered - to beat the advisor in combat the players ended up deciding to use the single charge in their Ring of Wishing to render everyone in the hall immune from being blinded for a short time, in order to protect themselves against the advisor's multiple blinding spells. Maybe with an extra action point up their sleeves they wouldn't have felt the need to use their ring.)And finally, notice how the issue is resolved of whether or not the PCs can goad an evil advisor into attacking by way of taunts and more-or-less veiled threats to out him: namely, the dice are rolled and the attempt resolved! This does not pose any threat to the consistency of the gameworld. How is the gameworld less consistent because it does rather than doesn't contain a taunted and provoked advisor? People lose their cool all the time in the real world over lower-stakes matters than being the secret general of an army invading the town of which one is purporting to be the chief minister.No. "Those things" are "predictability and consistency with 'everyday assumptions' and genre'. Those things are achieved by no one framing situations, or making action declarations, that violate them. For instance, in a standard D&D game no one declares an action "I fly to the moon by flapping my arms".Sometimes there are interesting borderline cases - eg "The artificers are having trouble taking control of the magical hammer in the forge? Then I shove my hands in and hold the metal steady so that they can grip it with their tongs". On that occasion - <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?324955-Whelm-reforged-as-Overwhelm-and-other-recent-skill-challenges&p=5944359&viewfull=1" target="_blank">which came up in my game</a>, when the dwarf was having his Dwarven Thrower artefact reforged - I had to decide, as GM, how to respond to the player's action declaration. I decided that, as a mid-Paragon fighter/cleric of Moradin, and probably, at present, the toughest dwarf in the mortal world, that this was a viable action declaration (resolved via an Endurance check against a Hard DC).It wouldn't have occurred to me as viable before the player declared it. But as with goading the advisor, it doesn't render the gameworld inconsistent. This dwarf is tough. It had already been established, for instance, that he could single-handedly hold off a phalanx of hobgoblins. These player-driven action declarations are, in my own approach to playing the game, as important as anything the GM does in establishing what is and isn't possible within the gameworld.No it doesn't. The relevant passage says that "it’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation. If a player asks, “Can I use Diplomacy?” you should ask what exactly the character might be doing . . . Don’t say no too often, but don’t say yes if it doesn’t make sense in the context of the challenge." It is not solely the GM's job to decide what makes sense in the context of the ingame situation. The GM has an important role, undoubtedly, in managing fictional positioning and unfolding backstory. But it is not an exclusive role.The 4e PHB tackles this issue in its description (on p 8) of the functions of the DM:Referee: When it’s not clear what ought to happen next, the DM decides how to apply the rules and adjudicate the story.Sometimes it is clear what ought to happen next. On those occasions, the GM's referee function is not required. And even when the referee function is required - eg in deciding whether or not a tough dwarf can hold down a hammer in the forge so the artificers can grab it with their tongs - there is no reason to suppose that the GM's role is simply to apply his/her own conception of the gameworld. At my table, that is not how it works.I would not run an encounter in which an outcome adverse to the players' desires is fore-ordained. To me it negates the pleasure in RPGing.Part of the reason is that I care not a whit about the PCs. They can prosper, or suffer, or neither, as the whims of the dice and participants dictate. I care about the players. If the players have chosen to declare an action which, in fact, can't succeed, then that implies they don't know something relevant to the adjudication of that action. (Eg there is some hidden backstory that the GM will draw upon as part of the resolution.) It's as if the players are being tricked, into thinking an option is open to them within the game, that in fact is not.Another part of the reason is that exploration of the gameworld - for instance, learning what is and isn't possible - is not part of the pleasure of play, for me. The fact that the GM narrates the scene well, or that the players enjoy the experience of immersion in their PCs, is not sufficient, if in fact the whole appearance of choice, and of an attempt by the players to change the ingame situation, is in fact illusory.</blockquote>

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