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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8647804" data-attributes="member: 42582">A GM can faithfully stick to their prep. I don't think anyone is denying that. [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] has specifically affirmed it, both in the abstract and as part of his play, in multiple posts in this thread. I've identified it, in this thread and in many other threads over many years, as crucial to making classic D&D work.That doesn't mean the GM is not the "glue" holding the fiction together. It reinforces that this is the case.In many threads over many years, I have also made the point that [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] has made in this thread: that once the fiction takes on a certain richness (eg cities rather than sparse dungeons), the idea' of "sticking faithfully to prep" becomes less and less meaningful. When a player whose PC is running down the streets of Greyhawk asks "Is there an alleyway I can duck into?" or "Is there a crowd of passers-by I can mingle into?" the GM has to make some sort of decision, and almost no amount of prep will help. In these circumstances, in traditional play, the GM remains the glue, but there is no longer an objective "puzzle" (the dungeon) which the players can hope to resolve.I don't think it's a coincidence that, for these sorts of scenarios, the 1977 edition of Traveller eschews task resolution: the rules for Streetwise checks, in the 1977 edition, are conflict resolution although without any clear advice to the GM as to how to establish failure consequences. (Only successes are dealt with.) The game is shifting the responsibility for deciding what happens off the GM's shoulders, and back onto the skill-based fortune mechanic.It's worth considering a bit of <a href="http://lumpley.com/hardcore.html" target="_blank">Vincent Baker's remarks</a> about task-vs-conflict resolution that I didn't quote upthread:Task resolution, in short, puts the GM in a position of priviledged authorship. Task resolution will undermine your collaboration.If a table is not looking to collaborate in their authorship, then the second of Baker's sentences will misfire, as there is nothing to undermine. But the point about task resolution, and about Harper's diagrams, and [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER]'s remarks about GM fiat and GM-as-glue, is not that the GM is arbitrary, nor that the GM is unconstrained, but that the GM enjoys a privileged position of authorship. The GM, by drawing on either (i) their prep and/or (ii) the current ideas, gets to decide whether, and how, situations are resolved. Whether or not the PCs succeed at the tasks they attempt will feed into this. But it is just another element of the fiction that the GM welds together (or intertwines, or whatever other metaphor seems apt) to produce a resolution.You seem to be intending this as a counterpoint to what I posted, but it is absolutely consistent with it, even confirmatory of it. What the check determines is do I open the safe?. It does not determine do I find what I was looking for in the safe?. Which is the whole of Vincent Baker's point. (The way you seem to elide this fact is by describing you open the safe as the consequence you want - whereas the desired consequence, that drives the whole example, is that certain documents are found within the safe.The fact that the GM can choose to follow up the resolution of the safe-opnening task with whatever framing they prefer - empty safe, locked safe, guards turning up, the heavens opening and angels appearing, etc - doesn't change the basic point.The fact that you point to extrapolations from the fiction - What NPCs or polities, with what motives, are implicated? Have the PCs avoided passing guards or magical alarms? What other means might those NPCs and polities have? - only reinforces my point. You are describing exploratory play. The GM is in a privileged position of authorship. That's how exploratory play works!  (I posted some examples of my actual play upthread, and linked to fuller play accounts.)I don't know whether or not you count yourself as among those who have picked up more sophistication, or familiarity with the whole Core.But in the posts I've quoted you're not describing anything fundamentally different from the example found on p 2 of the Basic PDF, that I posted upthread. Fundamental to framing, and to resolution, is the fiction established by the GM. There are no player-established stakes that are resolved via the fortune mechanic. The GM decides whether there is situation, what is at stake in it, whether it resolves, and how it resolves.</blockquote>

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