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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7732975" data-attributes="member: 42582">This isn't right. In BW, for instance, the player declares intent and task ("I am searching the study for the map.") The GM sets the difficulty, which might involve clarifying with the player precisely what the PC is doing; this will also determine what the skill/ability is that is tested. Then the player rolls the dice, and from that it becomes evident whether or not the check succeeded.If the check succeeds, and yet the GM then goes on to narrate something which departs from that success, the failure to follow the rules will be evident.If 4e is played using a similar approach, then the same will be true. For instance, in my main 4e game, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?309950-Actual-play-my-first-quot-social-only-quot-session" target="_blank">the players succeeded in a complex dinner-party skill challenge</a> to establish that the Baron's advisor was a villain, without alienating themselves from the Baron in the process. One aspect of this was that, as a result of the final success in the skill challenge, the advisor was goaded into showing his true colours.That moment was the end of one session; the next session began with the advisor attacking the PCs in front of the Baron and his dinner guests in the banquet hall. Early in that session, I started to describe some reaction or remark from the NPC guests and one of the players pulled me up, reminding me that the players had succeeded in the skill challenge, and one component of their success was that the advisor had revealed himself to be the villain. He was concerned that my subsequent narration wasn't honouring that success.That player was correct, and I corrected my narration to properly and fully incorporate the players' success.This wasn't about "significant social impact" of the sort you describe. It was a simple case of the GM (me) making a mistake in my narration by contradicting (in part) the players' prior success, and a player pulling me up on it. It's really no different from me rolling the d20 and reading it as a 9 and then one of the players pointing out it's actually a 6.Again, this isn't right in my experience. For instance, you seem to be assuming that the GM doesn't make rolls where the players can see them (not true in Cortex+ Heroic, in BW or in 4e as I play it). You seem to be assuming that the GM is not under any rules-based constraints on narration (not true in BW, not true in 4e as I play it, as the above example illustrates). Etc.</blockquote>

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