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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6570596" data-attributes="member: 82106">My thought here is really "who knows much at all?" As a GM I don't assume I'm particularly knowledgeable in 2 senses. First of all I am just an ordinary person, I know a bit about some subjects, but nothing about others. I have some common sense, but any really significant question is quite likely to involve some factors outside my area of knowledge that I must perforce guess at. Secondly I don't know the circumstances perfectly. Albeit I am the GM, and @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=6775031" target="_blank">Saelorn</a> will insist I must know EVERYTHING, the truth is I don't. I don't know exactly which wildlife lives on the side of this mountain, exactly how much underbrush there is, whether the rocks are crumbly, slippery, firm, etc. There is simply no way I could determine all of the thousands of relevant details ahead of time which might factor in. This is what dice are for. Its also a great opportunity for the player to inject some sort of detail into the scene (IE making a nature check and asserting that indeed there are many pine boughs available from the stunty pine trees found on the side of the mountain to make a shelter and fire from). Of course all of this does exemplify @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=6668292" target="_blank">JamesonCourage</a>'s points about GM agency and its ascendancy over player agency. The issue then is how it would be resolved, particularly in a way that preserved his insistence on the authorial control being entirely in his hands. Frankly I'm mystified by that. I don't see how players can be empowered in the sense he means, where they can always construct a definitive mechanical answer to every situation without reference to the GM's judgement AT ALL. I just can't even conceive of the mechanical structure of said game. I can certainly imagine guidelines which spell out an approach and a general mechanical framework, but that's exactly what the 4e SC system is! Maybe he can enlighten us with an example of how this would play out in his system. I'm genuinely curious.</blockquote>

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