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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7732470" data-attributes="member: 42582">This proves my point. If the only way you can use D&D to emulate Conan (or the Biblical stories) is by using it in a way that is so counterintuitive (eg 25th level PCs vs 1st to 3rd level opponents) then that shows that traditional D&D can't do the story tropes of Conan. Whereas, say, RM or RQ can without needing to use the system in such a bizarre way, although it will fail in other departments - eg Conan will probably die quite early one unless the dice deliver resuts that are astronomically improbable; and 4e can do it pretty straightforwardly if you use only martial classes plus some rituals, and stick to Heroic and perhaps Paragon tier.Comparisons to real life are in my view quite misleading.The way that it becomes true that I pick up a cup is that (i) some causal process has brought it about that there is a cup in my vicinity; (ii) perceptual processes bring it about that I am aware of said cup; (iii) other complex neural processes bring it about that motor functions in my body are triggerd (colloquially speaking, I decide to pick up the cup I can see); (iv) my arm and hand move (in virtue of various mechanical forces transmitted from my muscles through my bones etc) and, via various mechanical processes (to do with the rigidity of the cup, friction between my fingers and it, etc) interact with the cup such as to pick it up.The way it becomes true that my PC picks up a cup is that (i) some social causal process has brought it about that I and my fellow players agree that there is a cup in the vicinity of my PC; (ii) a complex neural process occurs within me (colloquially speaking, I decide to declare an action for my PC); (iii) a mixture of neural and motor functions results in my voicing the outcome of that neural process (ie I state my action declaration); (iv) some sensory processes lead to my fellow players, including the GM, knowing my action declaration; (v) further neural processes in my fellow players, including the GM, that then feed into social causal processes - possibly in conjunction with some motor processes (eg rolling dice) and external mechanical processes (dice falling to the table and coming to a stop) and sensory procegsses (ie reading the dice) - generate assent that my PC has, indeed, picked up a cup.The above are of course the barest of sketches, but they illustrate the difference between the activity of picking up a cup, and the activity of contributing to the authorship of a shared ficiton in which an imaginary person picks up a cup.As far as player impact on the game, railroading, etc are concerned, what is key is step (v) in the second of the above two paragraphs - ie how do we, as RPGers, generate assent that the PC has picked up a cup? What are the rules, habits, expectations, etc that guide this?In [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]'s game, the GM always has a veto at step (v). Hence the player does not have control over whether or not his/her PC picks up a cup - the best that s/he can do is make it true that the PC wants to pick up a cup.To say that the veto is exercised "fairly", or "neutrally", or by reference to the "truth" about the gameworld (eg the GM has secretly determined, at some point or other, that the "cup" the PC can "perceive" is really an illusion) is neither here nor there as far as my point is concerned - that the GM exercises the veto for some reason doesn't stop it being a veto. In other words, outcomes only occur in the fiction if they are consistent with what the GM is prepared to permit the fiction to be. The players don't have control over outcomes in the fiction - at best they can force the GM to choose between alternatives. (Is or isn't the PC going to be allowd to pick up a cup?)In the real world, an astronomer once said "This solar system has six planets; I'm looking for a seventh" - and low and behold, he discovered Uranus. Rinse and repeat for every astronomical discovery since.There is nothing remotely unrealistic or threatening to verisimilitude for a PC to discover a hitherto unknown astronomical phenomenon.As well as in the context of action declaration, players can and do contribute to framing and backstory authorship. I've already quoted the Gygax passage in which he encourages the GM to allow the player to establish geographic details for his/her stronghold. And in my Traveller game, in accordance with advice given in Book 3 (published in 1977), it was a player who decided that the best way to make sense of the randomly-generated starting world was that it was a gas giant moon.I appreciate that in your game PCs never discover things the GM didn't already pre-author; and, apparently, never contribute directly to estabishing any significant elements of backstory or framing. But I don't think that's particuarly typical at all. When I started my first RM campaign in 1990, one of the players authored the backstory for his PC's mentor, including living in a hollow tree, and being a wizard on the run from, and in hiding from, powerful enemies - hence why he was living in a small village tutoring a relatively insignificant young mageling.No one in our group regarded it as at all remarkable that a player would exercise that degree of control over what obviously was, and would go on to be affirmed as, a significant story element, although the only RPGs we were familiar with were the standard ones like D&D, RQ, RM, Traveller, etc.Again, this is a description of your method. It's not a description of how RPG per se work. The Classic Traveller description of the Streetwise and Bribery skills, for instance - written in 1977 - puts forward a different method from what you describe.With Bribery, there is a reaction check first, and if that comes up hostile (the player knows the result, and in my game rolls the reaction check) then bribery can't succeed. If the reaction is neutral or positive, then the Bribery check is made, and that is how we learn whether or not this NPC is amenable to being bribed.With Streetwise, the way we find out whether or not their are shady arms dealers on a world is by finding out whether or not a player's Streetwise check succeeds in locating them. The system does not use this approach for all such inquiries, however; when it comes to the Psionics Institute, the GM first makes a secret roll to find out if a branch is present on world, and then the player makes a check, with Streetwise serving as a bonus, to try and look for ti; but this check can only succeed if the GM's roll also came up positive. The practical difference is that, because of the interaction between dice rolls, it is much less likely that a given world will have a branch of the institute than a gang of shady arms dealers; and that the GM can know the truth about the Institute independently of the player knowing it, whereas if the check to find arms dealers fails it is left open whether that is because there are none, or because the PC failed to find them.So here we have examples, from 1977, where the details of the situation (social analogues of "are there firm handholds") are expressly determined not prior to the resolution attempt, but as part of the proces of resolution. I don't know what Marc Miller had in mind exaclty when he wrote these rules, but to me they are clear illustrations that the way I handle action resolution is a very intuitive way of adjudicating action declarations and establishing the fiction in a RPG - especially in contexts (like the social ones I've described) where it is (i) impractical for the GM to establish all the details in advance, and (ii) it is more interesting to establish details in the context of gameplay rather than prior to it.I find the passage I've just quoted from Saelorn largely impenetrable.But anyway, it is obvious that from the perspective of the PCs the gameworld exists. No one is suppposing that, in the fiction, the state of the handholds is a result of the PC's desire to climb the wall; or that the readiness (or otherwise) of the official to be bribed is a result of the PC's attempt to bribe her.But that is a banal point. It tells us nothing about how to establish those elements of the fiction; and absolutely central to the playing of a RPG is establishing a shared fiction. Someone has to do it; it won't write itself.I can treat the imaginary cup as though it does exist; hence, I know that it may be amenable to being picked up. But how do I know whether or not it has a hitherto unnoticed hairline fracture in the handle, such that when that is grasped the handle will in fact break off? Likewise for the handholds - treating them as real tells me that, for instance, they are probably made of rock or earth rather than (say) jelly or big piles of cinnamon. But it doesn't tell me what their weight-bearing capacity is.The established details of any RPG fiction are simply not sufficient to generate, by sheer inference from what is already established, all subsequent details that are relevant to resolution of declared actions. So we need to generate new fiction. There are different ways to do that.  The GM making stuff up, or rolling dice and reading off a table, is an out-of-game happening, just as much as is a player wishing for something to be true in the fiction; or just as much as the GM narrating something in the context of establishing consequences of action resolution. Which of these methods you prefer in your RPGing is a fundamental question of play and of design, but has no bearing on whether or not the game you're playing is a RPG. And the gameworld doesn't become any more "real" or "objective" because the GM does all the authoring independent of the processes of action resolution, or of the desires of the players.</blockquote>

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