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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6306722" data-attributes="member: 17106">Can be, or is by default? Big difference.Which is fine, but if we're talking about what the game itself is for, isn't it about treasure hunting?That's fine. Write what you know, as they say. Or worldbuild what you know. If some DM wants to have a more permissive culture, that's fine, and it does change the parameters of Diplomacy.My point was never that every player trying to speak to every royal must fail, but that given one particular scenario where the DM has decided that this is an impossible check, the player has no recourse. Again, there's saying yes and there's saying no, what I'm talking about is who gets to say yes or no.I think a fiction involving gods inherently conveys a greater sense of self-importance. Which can be fine, depending on one's individual preferences. Again, I'm not talking about all possible campaigns, merely an example wherein the players are conceivably exceeding their own place. What their place is can vary.It is a huge distinction. To my knowledge, there is no textual basis in any version of D&D for this type of sharing of narrative control. In other rpgs, there is. To my mind, the utter lack of shared narrative control is a-if not the-defining feature of D&D as such.The culture and the books' recommendations on how to use that authority vary, but if there are explicit exceptions to the idea of DM authority in any version of the rules, I've yet to see them.That doesn't much match up with the fantasy fiction I'm familiar with though.I certainly wouldn't want to pay that cost. Even when the scenario is not explicitly mystery or horror, the players' uncertainty is a tremendously useful commodity (and, in my experience, a large part of where their enjoyment comes from).And who decides whether or not it is clear?The question I'm getting at is in cases where there is a genuine disagreement between the player and the DM on any aspect of applying the mechanics to the fictional world, and that disagreement can't be resolved by talking it out, is there any textual basis for the player's opinion explicitly overruling the DM's, with the DM having no recourse? Any intermediate case isn't relevant; most of the time people will be on the same page, and it won't matter who's in charge, or some amicable resolution will happen without the need to resort to these types of rules.Is that not a contradiction? If an adverse outcome can't happen, what choice can there be?One of the reasons I pointed this out is that my players have called BS on the simple rolling of Survival to find food and killing a creature in the process. The way I look at it, it's cheating. Creatures have hit points and saving throws, and they don't die unless those are overcome. They have free will, and won't do something suicidal unless it makes sense through their decision-making process (which is perhaps what you're suggesting; I can't tell). It's a perfectly fine sort of cheating of the sort most of us do all the time, but it's really against the, as they say, rules as intended.</blockquote>

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