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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 7327699" data-attributes="member: 59082">Pemerton, this is why I see you as a bit of a purist: you don't seem to make any differentiation between GMing that uses fiat very sparingly, vs. frequent use.You seemingly use it 0% of the time. I use it <5% of the time, maybe 1-2%. Do you see a difference between that and someone who uses it liberally, say 20+% of the time?Again, fiat is -- at least when I'm GMing -- simply a kind of failsafe that I will only use if I feel that it would greatly improve the play experience or campaign. I'll give you an example - not a real example, but the type of situation where I will fiat.I often resorted to some kind of fiat in 4E combat, when it got "grindy." Even when we become proficient at it, reduced monster HP, etc, there was invariably a point in which the outcome of the combat was 99.99999% certain: the monster was going to die. Let's say the monster has 33 HP left and a rogue does a rather dramatic sneak attack and does 29 HP of damage...I would often call that a kill shot.Another example: There's about an hour before the end of a session, but there are several rooms before the PCs get to the room with the treasure and/or big bad guy. I might have one or two of those in-between rooms cease to exist, because I think the game experience would be better served by reaching the final room before the session ended.Or what about rolling random encounters - if I roll something that I think would be boring or tedious or detract from the game experience, I might roll again or choose something. Similarly with treasure. If I'm rolling treasure in a chest (because rolling for treasure is fun), and I roll a halberd +2 and no player is proficient in halberd, I might change that to something that a player can happily use.And yes, all options are available to an omnipotent GM: it just requires judgement and self-discipline. I understand why you feel the way you feel, but I also don't experience the need for that kind of purity in my game, or that it detracts from it in any way.Like you, I enjoy "finding out" what happens next - but that doesn't require being 100% pure about every single action resolution. I'm happy with 95% purity <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />.</blockquote>

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