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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7515190" data-attributes="member: 42582">I've boded a few words/phrases in your post that seem relevant to what I'm saying.If certain things cannot or must be done, that implies that outcomes of declared actions are not all at the discretion of the GM.If certain things are left up to the table, that implies that outcomes of declared actions may not all be at the discretion of the GM.Which in my view is quite consistent with (what the Basic PDF, p 3) calls the "basic pattern" of play:1. The DM describes the environment. The DM tells the players where their adventurers are and what’s around them, presenting the basic scope of options that present themselves (how many doors lead out of a room, what’s on a table, who’s in the tavern, and so on). 2. The players describe what they want to do. Sometimes one player speaks for the whole party, saying, “We’ll take the east door,” for example. Other times, different adventurers do different things: one adventurer might search a treasure chest while a second examines an esoteric symbol engraved on a wall and a third keeps watch for monsters. The players don’t need to take turns, but the DM listens to every player and decides how to resolve those actions. Sometimes, resolving a task is easy. If an adventurer wants to walk across a room and open a door, the DM might just say that the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But the door might be locked, the floor might hide a deadly trap, or some other circumstance might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task. In those cases, the DM decides what happens, often relying on the roll of a die to determine the results of an action. 3. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers’ actions. Describing the results often leads to another decision point, which brings the flow of the game right back to step 1.The description of (3) makes it clear that the outcomes of action resolution feed back into (1). In other words, the outcomes of action resolution are one crucial source of shared fiction. Step (2) is therefore the crux of it - it is the presence of step (2) that distinguishes the game as an RPG from (say) the GM just telling a story about some stuff that happens to some people.It's interesting to note that the full statement of Step 2 - including the bits that [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] left out upthread - includes the missing steps I identified, of (i) working out what actions the adventurers take, and (ii) working out what the results of those actions are. We can see this in the examples of opening the east door and perhaps having to deal with locks and traps.Moreover, and again quite consistent with what I posted earlier, nothing in the description of step (2), nor in the step (3) phrase the GM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions, states or even implies that the GM just makes stuff up about what happens to the PCs when their players decide that they want to do something.Likewise if we turn to the desciption of Ability Checks on p 58:The DM calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. When the outcome is uncertain, the dice determine the results. For every ability check, the DM decides which of the six abilities is relevant to the task at hand and the difficulty of the task, represented by a Difficulty Class. The more difficult a task, the higher its DC.Nothing in what I've quoted sets out the method or rules whereby the GM determines whether or not a declared action has a chance of failure, nor how the GM determines how difficult such an action might be. That said, other parts of the rules make it pretty clear - to me, at least - that the fiction is not the sole relevant factor here in deciding whether or not something might fail: clearly in the fiction it should be possible to sometimes mis-cast a spell, or fail to raise a Shield spell in time, but the whole tenor of the section on spellcasting is that under ordinary conditions these are things that cannot fail (because the rules don't specify ability checks associated with spellcasting, quite unlike eg grappling someone in combat, or stabilising a dying creature, or hiding).Interestingly, there is no discussion of if or when a GM might decide that something has no chance of success, although one assumes that such determinations might be possible.But in any event, there is nothing to suggest that the game mechanics, spelled out in (sometimes tedious) detail, are mere advice that the GM may or may not choose to follow. Nor that the players can't make various things true in the fiction, such as that I am casting a Shield spell, I am going up to the east door and opening it, I am talking to the Duchess hoping to induce such-and-such a response, etc.Maxpewrson, it would be really helpful if you would sometimes try a bit harder (i) to think clearly about what others are saying, and (ii) think clearly about what you are saying.On (ii) - what do you mean by saying that action has already happened in the fiction? Already is an adverb of time. But time in the fiction is not affected by, or part of, time in the real world. So let's just focus on the real world, where the action declaration is happening. Which takes us to (i): it would be helpful for you to pay more care to what I am saying about action declaration and action resolution.If a player declares I jump across the stream, we are now at step 2(). The player has said what the adventurer wants to do. As per the (unbolded) text of step 2 that I just quoted, we now consider how that declared action resolves. There are rules for jumping - they're found on p 64 of the Basic PDF. One would expect that the GM would use those rules, in conjunction with the rules for actions other than fighting and casting spells found on pp 58-62, to determine the outcome. If there are features of the fictional situation that the GM glossed over at step (1) - that happens from time-to-time - the GM might point those out (eg "The edge of the stream is pretty slippery and a bit steep too, so getting a run-up might be tricky.")In any event, working through these elements of step (2) will tell us whether or not the PC jumped across the stream. And there is zero reason to think that this is simply something the GM makes up. Eg the jump rules say "Your Strength determines how far you can jump." They don't say "The GM may pay attention to your PC's Strength in determining whether or not you succeed in a jump."Exactly how much liberty the GM has to spring unexpected elements of fiction on the players during the course of resolution (eg walls of force across othewise mundane-seeming streams, grey oozes concealed on the bank from which the player intends the PC to take a running jump, etc) will vary from table to table, although my personal advice to any new GM would be that even a little bit of such stuff goes a pretty long way. But even when a GM does that s/he is obliged to do it in certain ways - ie by using his/her authority to make such stuff part of the fiction. The GM isn't entitled to just make up outcomes willy-nilly.Once all this takes place - ie once the declared action has been resolved via the appropriate means and its outcome known - then the GM can move to step 3, and reframe the situation in light of what the PCs have done or failed to do.You're missing all the (unbolded) stuff in between, in step 2, which talks about "resolving [the] task" that the PC is undertaking. Even in 5e, action resolution is not just the GM makes it up.How does the GM make that determination? Ie what are the rules and principles that govern step 2? That is what I am talking about.Like 5e, AD&D has many rules. When a player delcares (for instance) I cast Knock on the door, the GM is not just at liberty to declare Your spell has no effect because that's the outcome s/he would prefer. And that's not "social contract"; that's rules.Furthermore, this was taken for granted back in the day. Hence repeated invocations never to include anything in a dungeon that you weren't prepared for the PCs to obtain; because you could never predict what resources and plans the PCs might come up with (eg one example from Roger Musson was of the inaccessible diamond-studded room; a PC turned up with a Ring of Wishing and got the diamonds that way, thereby wrecking the campaign). If the GM was just at liberty to decide whether or not actions succeed, such advice would be needless!But the idea that players just make suggestions to the GM, and that the GM just makes up the fiction s/he likes in response to those suggestions, hadn't really come about yet when Musson was writing. It is an artefeact of the 80s, and even moreso the 90s - Dragon Lance is just one early poster child for it. You can play 5e that way if you want to, by treating Step (2) as a black box for GM fiat and ignoring some other stuff (like Your Strength determines how far you can jump). But the game text doesn't mandate it. (Thankfully!)</blockquote>

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