Something, I think, Every GM/DM Should Read

[Thasmodious]

But if the rule in question works in a different way - for example, if its function is to confer a certain sort of narrative authority on the player who has used it - then it seems to me that the GM doesn't have any special privilege of suspending or altering the rule. The whole point of this rule, after all, is to confer on the player a privilege that, in a mainstream game, tends to default to the GM. For the GM to purport to take that privilege back at the precise moment the player in question uses the rule looks to me at least prima facie like an unjustified breaking of the rules.

This is at the core of what I've been arguing. You just stated it much better than I have managed to so far.

I would add that the narrative control ceded to the player here isn't really any different than the narrative control the player has always had. The powers of 4e are, typically, contingent on a single roll, rather than a series of rolls or the use of charts, or a back and forth dance of rolls to produce a single outcome (like 3e grapple). Knocking something prone because your chosen power does that is not really grabbing some special control that PCs didn't have before. Spell effects, damage, feats, whatever, these are all examples of the player telling the DM what is happening to his monster. It's packaged a bit differently in 4e, expanded a bit, perhaps, through sheer volume (since most powers do damage +). But at the end of the day it isn't functionally much different to say to the DM:

"Thorax has hit your beast for 7 damage."
or
"Thorax has hit your beast for 7 damage and knocked it prone."

The arguments against knocking a snake prone have been pretty soundly defeated. At the end of the day, snakes do not have an immunity to special conditions in the system, so to deny the player the ability to apply one requires a pretty tight case. In this situation, the case has been solved, repeatedly, by numerous examples.

IS there a situation in 4e where a power applying a condition to a creature not already immune to such things simply can't be rationalized? I don't know, I haven't found one. Prone oozes, petrified stone golems, blinded bats, yeah, I can rationalize those, as player or DM.

To flesh this out with a concrete example: some event, narrated by the GM and resolved and adjudicated in the usual fashion results in the death of a PC. The player of that PC then declares "I'm spending my last Fate Point to save my PC's life". The GM says "There's no way anyone could have survived that!" The player then gives some contrived and or improbable, but by no means impossible within the fictional context, explanation of the PC's survival. Should the GM nevertheless be able to veto because s/he doesn't like the story? Doesn't look like it to me.

It seems to me that several of the people arguing the other side here would say that absolutely the DM could veto the Fate Point. I don't agree and you very well sum up the reason why:

If you GM a game with Fate Points, you've agreed to cede narrative authority at certain key points to your players. Part of playing the game, then, is putting up with their Fate Point usages and incorporating them into the overall shared fiction.

Exactly.

 

[Ariosto]

EnWorld is the wrong place?

No, that DM's table is the wrong place.

This is really just common sense, being in touch with reality. I do not see how WotC could exercise any more practical "game police" power than TSR!

Participants in a campaign have no recourse to the publisher, but they do have ultimate recourse -- since the most effective protest is withdrawal from the offending campaign. ...You, the reader, as a member of the campaign community, do not belong if the game seems wrong in any major aspect. Withdraw and begin your own campaign...

The problem with your assumption that the DM must capitulate to your demand is that IT IS THE DM'S JOB to be the final arbiter. That is why we choose to have a DM in the first place. If you want to be where the buck stops, then go for it -- but do not so confuse the different roles, trying to "have your cake and eat it too".

 

[Raven Crowking]

Then what does it say?

"Effects of powers may be disallowed in situations where they don't make sense."

 

[Thasmodious]

The problem with your assumption that the DM must capitulate to your demand is that IT IS THE DM'S JOB to be the final arbiter. That is why we choose to have a DM in the first place. If you want to be where the buck stops, then go for it -- but do not so confuse the different roles, trying to "have your cake and eat it too".

There is no demand. We are talking about a basic PC ability. In no edition of D&D has the player ever had to ask the DMs permission to damage monsters.

"If it pleases you, oh overlord, I have rolled 7 damage"
"Nay, worthless whelp! I will allow your roll of 20 to stand, but your damage is 2!"

Why have a DM? Certainly not just to pass proclamations upon the heads of the unworthy players. The DM is the player of the game who frames the game world, sets up the settings and the encounters, provides the basic fiction (hopefully, heavily influenced by player action), not to play overlord to the players, deciding, through his beneficence whether he will allow them to use their abilities to damage his creatures or not at will and without regard to their reasoning or imagination. You want to play "I am DM! And DM is GOD!", by all means, go right ahead. Don't bother reserving a seat for me though, I won't be there.

 

[Ariosto]

Why is it ok for the DM to be the sole arbiter of what is "believable"?

Everyone else is free to make suggestions. It is "ok" for the DM to make the final decision because that is WHY we have a DM in the first place. It is a game of limited information, and the DM allows us not to know things.

You want to play a different kind of game? Suit yourself.

So, if the DM can veto something based solely on his interpretation of what is believable, why can't the player do the same thing?

They are different positions. That is why we call them by different names.

In what game does a player 'veto' a referee? Where do you get such unclarity on this concept?

 

[Fifth Element]

The problem with your assumption that the DM must capitulate to your demand is that IT IS THE DM'S JOB to be the final arbiter. That is why we choose to have a DM in the first place.

I agree that the DM is the final arbiter in cases where a decision must be made. The point Thasmodious is trying to make, I think, is that the rules state that when a player rolls damage, the monster takes that damage, no arbitration is needed. And in 4E, the same applies to th effects of powers: no arbitration is needed because the effect is cut and dried.

So allowing a snake to be knocked prone does nothing to take away a DM's role as arbiter. It only changes the specific things that require said responsibility to be used. This often happens when editions change.

 

[Raven Crowking]

There is no demand. We are talking about a basic PC ability. In no edition of D&D has the player ever had to ask the DMs permission to damage monsters.

"If it pleases you, oh overlord, I have rolled 7 damage"
"Nay, worthless whelp! I will allow your roll of 20 to stand, but your damage is 2!"

1e:

PC: I strike.....7 points of damage!
DM: You hear your sword strike with a clang against the gargoyle's stone hide, but sadly can see no sign of damage whatsoever.

3e:

PC: I strike.....7 points of damage!
DM: Sadly, the monster's damage resistance can take 10 points from the weapon you are using........



RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

I agree that the DM is the final arbiter in cases where a decision must be made. The point Thasmodious is trying to make, I think, is that the rules state that when a player rolls damage, the monster takes that damage, no arbitration is needed. And in 4E, the same applies to th effects of powers: no arbitration is needed because the effect is cut and dried.

So allowing a snake to be knocked prone does nothing to take away a DM's role as arbiter. It only changes the specific things that require said responsibility to be used. This often happens when editions change.

At any game that you are running, you absolutely have the right to decide that. However, you do not have the right to decide that no arbitration is needed for anyone else. Moreover, the 4e rulebooks explicitly state that the DM has the right to arbitrate in the manner in question.

Remember all of those early arguments about the 4e books stripping the DM's power to rule in this way? Remember pointing out that this was explicitly untrue? Should we drag up those threads again? Really?


RC

 

[Thasmodious]

Everyone else is free to make suggestions. It is "ok" for the DM to make the final decision because that is WHY we have a DM in the first place.

You are arguing something other people aren't. Final does not mean sole. No one has said the DM isn't final arbiter. What we are saying is it would be bad form for the DM to overrule a player with a reasonable explanation and to only account for HIS imagination and HIS preferences.

In what game does a player 'veto' a referee? Where do you get such unclarity on this concept?

Really?! Any game with action points, fate chips, or some other mechanic specifically designed to give players "veto" power. And there are a lot of those system these days. In Savage Worlds, for example, the use of a fate chip (called bennies) actually rewrites the results of an already resolved damage roll. So the DM may state "you take 4 wounds from that." But the player can respond with "I spend a benny, make a soak roll, and... actually take no wounds!"

 

[Ariosto]

There is no demand. We are talking about a basic PC ability. In no edition of D&D has the player ever had to ask the DMs permission to damage monsters.

That is very simply and obviously false. A player can do N O T H I N G in the DM's world without the DM's leave. The player's persona does not exist in the DM's world except as the DM wills.

Player proposes, referee disposes. I do not know that I know all there is to know about the situation. It is THE JOB of the DM to make sure that I do not.

That he or she fulfills that well is the reason I continue to be a player in his or her game.

Now, I must say that my DMs consider my views as a player, and I as DM consider their views as players. That is NOT the same as turning another player at his whim into the DM for only so long as he wishes to wield the power without the responsibility! Considering arguments is part of being a judge, but hearing the arguments is to the end of the judge passing judgment.

If you and your fellow participants do not treat each other with such consideration, then that is an interpersonal problem you will have to address among yourselves.