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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9087822" data-attributes="member: 82106">I don't think this is usually a very substantive issue. I mean, where you generally run into questions of there potentially being MANY courses of action is actually in social sorts of interactions where you could say any of a zillion things. Still, most game systems have good ways of categorizing stuff. Like, in 4e you have Diplomacy, Intimidation, Bluff, and perhaps Streetwise. Any of those could represent 'something I said', but ALL possible utterances are going to come down to one of those checks. The player will have already declared their objective, and if its not perfectly clear that something is possible it is nothing like "rat bones" that is simply absurdly implausible.No move happened because no fictional conditions were described under which it would be plausible for the player's desired outcome to result from their actions under the given circumstances. Now, if a player can describe to me how it is plausible, that's different. When proposing an action the burden is generally on you to explain how the fiction supports it. There are variations on this, which are interesting to talk about. I ran Agon for the first time last night. In Agon there's a fairly standard narrativist loop, GM describes the situation, players act on it, any conflicts are resolved using the contest rules, rinse, repeat. However, the contest rules themselves are fairly high level. So, the GM will note that a 'worthy opponent' exists (IE something significant is at stake and there's an obstacle/threat). The GM might even have framed in this opponent and forced the conflict, or the players might have said "we engage this guy in conflict!" Either way, the GM decides the 'domain' (relevant skill set). Is it a melee, a debate, a poetry contest, etc. based on the situation and whatever action precipitated it. Now, interestingly, the GM generates his dice pool and uses it to set the target number for success. The PCs now declare which of them is engaging (some could sit out, or might not be present). They each state their name and heroic attributes, and then build their dice pools, using those, possibly secondary attributes, resources like bonds and divine favor, etc. Then they roll their dice and describe the fiction from lowest performing hero to best, with the GM describing how the opponents act/react. The players have to factor in all the attributes they used, resources, etc. and describe how they were part of the story. If a given hero beat the GM's target number she describes victory, otherwise defeat (and may take harm). This proceeds until all the heroes have described their part in the action. If no hero beat the target, the contest is lost, otherwise the PCs are victorious overall.The interesting part here is that Agon doesn't make you explain your actions ahead of time, it uses a 'fortune first' model in which you spend resources first, and then explain how you did it and what the fictional effects were, at the end. Finally there could be a sort of 'fallout' at the end where any additional consequences happen. The heroes might have gained a boon, angered a god, or if they lost then they would presumably suffer a setback.</blockquote>

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