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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9080253" data-attributes="member: 42582">If I said "I see little real difference between being able to roll for hit and damage against an Orc and being able to conveniently declare that I just shot and killed Odin", people would laugh at me.Yet these conversations happen again and again on premises that make no sense, and that are imputed to other RPGs and RPGers by posters who seem to have zero familiarity with how any other sort of RPGing works.In my 4e campaign, the player of the invoker/wizard routinely told the rest of the table how magic works, what was happening with a particular magical phenomenon, what it might be possible for magic to achieve in a particular situation, etc. Here are just a couple of examples:The RPGs that I play have effective procedures and mechanics for resolving these player action declarations about what their PCs recall, or that are premised on assumptions about how (say) magic or griffons or Elven society or whatever works.Roughly: if nothing is at stake then the action declaration succeeds and the posited memory is true. If something is at stake, then an appropriate check, or skill challenge, or whatever other mechanical resolution method is appropriate, is called for. If that check (or similar) succeeds, the player gets what they want for their PC. If it fails, the GM has licence to turn their premise or their hope back up on them.These techniques have been well known for quite a while now - for instance they're found in the 2004 edition of Burning Wheel.EDIT: My memory was faulty - the BW edition is 2005.</blockquote>

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