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<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7599949" data-attributes="member: 97077">What some have decided to call &quot;goal and approach&quot; is about more than that and what you're specifically stating here is really more from the perspective of the player.The rules are clear on who gets to say what. The player gets to write a background during character creation. The DM helps him or her tie various elements of the background to the campaign, saying yes to the player's ideas if the DM can and suggesting alterations when the DM can't. This is laid out in the DMG under &quot;Master of Worlds,&quot; as if the title alone was insufficient to tell us who gets to decide what.During play, the player gets to describe what he or she wants to do. To that end, saying that the guard is Frances, an old friend, is a valid action declaration. But the DM is under no obligation to accept that the guard is, in fact, Frances or an old friend or both because the player has no control over this aspect of the game. Non-player characters are controlled by the DM, as per the chapter on NPCs in the DMG.If you want a D&amp;D game that overtly endorses a &quot;Yes, and...&quot; approach, where during play the DM accepts ideas from the players to change or add to the world, adventure, or NPCs in it, you're going to have to look to D&amp;D 4e. (And notably, I took a lot of heat for suggesting DMs do that in D&amp;D 4e on the WotC forums - despite it being plain as day in that edition's DMG. People coming from D&amp;D 3.Xe or older editions simply would not have it, another example of carrying baggage from one game to the next.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="iserith, post: 7599949, member: 97077"] What some have decided to call "goal and approach" is about more than that and what you're specifically stating here is really more from the perspective of the player. The rules are clear on who gets to say what. The player gets to write a background during character creation. The DM helps him or her tie various elements of the background to the campaign, saying yes to the player's ideas if the DM can and suggesting alterations when the DM can't. This is laid out in the DMG under "Master of Worlds," as if the title alone was insufficient to tell us who gets to decide what. During play, the player gets to describe what he or she wants to do. To that end, saying that the guard is Frances, an old friend, is a valid action declaration. But the DM is under no obligation to accept that the guard is, in fact, Frances or an old friend or both because the player has no control over this aspect of the game. Non-player characters are controlled by the DM, as per the chapter on NPCs in the DMG. If you want a D&D game that overtly endorses a "Yes, and..." approach, where during play the DM accepts ideas from the players to change or add to the world, adventure, or NPCs in it, you're going to have to look to D&D 4e. (And notably, I took a lot of heat for suggesting DMs do that in D&D 4e on the WotC forums - despite it being plain as day in that edition's DMG. People coming from D&D 3.Xe or older editions simply would not have it, another example of carrying baggage from one game to the next.) [/QUOTE]

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