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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emberashh" data-source="post: 9504462" data-attributes="member: 7040941">That's contextual as to whether or not imposing that on somebody is blocking or not. In a comedic skit, all that strictly matters is that its funny and you're not doing it to be a dweeb. In something more on the serious side of things, which includes most RPGs, that specific example very quickly becomes inappropriate.But! The idea of a participant imposing something on the others isn't. Thats how Narrative Improv, and thus RPGs as well, typically operate with regards to the Rules being imposed. For example changing your race if its really important to the player is something relatively innocuous that can be smoothed over with the right tact, even though its technically blocking. But randomly deciding you're no longer an Orc is a different story.And I've already covered how Rule Zero in of itself is also blocking, and theres no shortage of examples of how that can spiral into a host of other issues depending on the game.Narrative improv is important in particular because thats the specific kind of Improv thats fundamental to RPGs, but my reference to other types was to illustrate that blocking is contextual. Whats blocking in a comedy skit isn't necessarily the same thing as blocking in a narrative experience or vice versa.Exactly correct, yes. Its not always strictly a bad thing, to be clear. If one ever gets around to watching Dimension 20, Emily Axford in particular is known for the absolutely bizarre, scene killing choices she makes through her characters.But, because this is pretty much always hilarious, and very much in-line with the comedic tone of the games where she does this, it doesn't become an issue. Critical Role in comparison is much more melodramatic, but even they embrace absurdities and comedy and it doesn't become disruptive as a result, because the group is collectively maintaining the tone of their game. (Ie, they eventually focus back on the game without having to be herded by Matt)Naturally of course these are both tables with skilled actors and comedians, but they illustrate why game tone matters and why its important to focus on even if you don't have the wit to match these folks, because if everyone's on the same page then a lot of issues just don't manifest.This is already common advice, after all. The point of contextualizing it through its conceptual ancestor in improv is to more precisely identify where problems come from, and thus from a design perspective, how we can cut them off from occurring in the first place.The big thing about it always goes back to consent. If you're engaging in PVP you have to accept the possibility of fully losing, and embrace all that entails. I didn't end up going into it in my last post, but it was on my mind to point out that over in video game land, improv actually has some influence still, particularly when it comes to multiplayer games.To not get too in the weeds of exploring that, I'll just note that, related to the question of PVP, there's a reason the idea of the angry competitive gamer became a thing, and its not strictly because of immaturity or sportsmanship, though those are certainly big factors.Its that a lot of those people aren't actually consenting to the idea that they could lose.Oh they are, for sure. The idea behind what I call Interpretative Difficulty is that the cost of rolling low is Time, not failure, and that failure itself is generated through a separate mechanic that opens the possibility space to much more than just hard failure, but also supports its own opposite for rewarding especially high rolls.In otherwords, the whole thing revolves around a greatly iterated upon Tension Pool, where the Pool can generate not just Complications, but Encounters and Boons, which if one remembers, also forms the basis of my Living World system and is how Time is tracked.Meanwhile, the question of GM discretion is pretty core to why I've been talking about Game Tone, and having to adhere to Yes,And as the GM. The only reason the GM should be outright denying is in the egregious disregard of the groups chosen tone, but even then theres flexibility there.I've talked before about my Events system for travel/exploration, where players receive prompts that they're free to interpret however, and inclined players could use them to substantially alter the gameworld, such as conjuring a huge pile of gold into a forest.The GM in such cases has a lot of ways to handle something like that, it just depends on the context. If the player is just being a cynical dweeb who isn't respecting the spirit of the game, blocking is probably necessary to maintain the game tone, and this becomes a matter of addressing bad player behavior.But, it might not be like that. The player might be earnestly interpreting their Event, and the game tone might not restrict such nonsensical things just happening, and this conjured pile of gold can be approached in a lot of fun ways through how the Events system is resolved. The GM could straight up say the gold has disappeared when the players go to investigate, but the ground clearly shows a huge indent where it sat. They could also say the gold morphs and shifts into a huge Mimic or a sleeping Dragon. The gold could carry a terrible curse. The gold might just be straight up fake and it was dumped in the forest.If other players have Events, they could be combined. The gold may well be real, but when the party returns they stumble on the small but elite military outfit another player saw running through the forest loading it up, because their job was to recover it. Thats when they realize the bandits a third player overheard are hanging from the trees by the neck.And so on. The idea behind Events is that the group is collaborating on the things they experience as they travel or explore, and the GM is explicitly a participant in that collaboration (as they are in all aspects of the game). Its everyones responsibility to maintain their Game Tone, so especially egregious abuses shouldn't be happening to begin with, but edge cases can be embraced, and the momentum of play can continue. Those examples all open up to a variety of new adventures or events, which is the precise point of the system. I see no issues here, other than its just being weird to my virgin eyes to your system, but thats not an actual issue with it lol. There's a clear throughline from player input to GM input to the game's input and back and, barring misplay, there's nothing I can see where there'd be a conflict.</blockquote>

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