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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8303785" data-attributes="member: 71699">Good examples. As an aside, stochastic effects tend to smudge out skill in small samples. In large enough samples, even a small skill quotient is detectable. It is easy to picture a case with no skill whatsoever: e.g., dice rolling with no modifiers possible and no choice over when and which dice to roll.I feel sure that I have seen module text of this ilk, albeit I'm trying to recollect a specific example. Would module text advising to take characters hostages rather than killing them outright count? We're picturing here a set (all possible DM decisions) of which a subset might be (only decisions having regard to what players did). Both sets are logically infinite. What this sort of abstraction (let's call it, for me it is making more concrete) suggests is that quibbling will be around what counts as "having regard to what players did". There isn't a way to know the contents of the subset unless we have a filter in common.Which indicates to me that you probably need to say something about what counts as "having regard to what players did". One case is that you have a written rule or principle - say printed in a module - that reads "disregard what players do: do X instead". One reason that is done is to deal with a common problem where the designers of finite content needed to ensure that whatever players do, they are gated through to the next piece of content. There are no doubt other motives - I'm not sure we need to discuss them.The more interesting situation is where we lack such written rule or principle, and the DM is free to make any decision. That is where it needs to be fleshed out what counts as "having regard to what players did". This is one of those cases where everyone will say it is completely obvious, but somehow not be able to really define it. I'm not ruling out a definition, and am even open to a soft definition: I'm interested in what that is though?</blockquote>

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