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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Campbell" data-source="post: 7796267" data-attributes="member: 16586">Fifth Edition has a formal resolution system. Players describe what their characters do and DM decides what happens is a formal resolution system. It is even broken up into steps in the very first part of the Player's Handbook. This has all sorts of implications on play.First and foremost it means that we are at no point playing to find out what happens. It means that the DM must decide what happens and if something bad happens to a character it is because the DM decided it should. If a character triumphs it is because the DM decided they should. You can use checks and other rules to guide your decisions, but ultimately it is your decision to make. Meaningfully being a fan of the player characters and providing honest antagonism become difficult in an environment where you are responsible for determining outcomes.Honestly this is not even the case for games like B/X Dungeons and Dragons that embrace rulings over rules. The implication of rulings over rules is that the rules apply except in cases where the demands of the fiction override it. You are supposed to take note of your rulings and apply them again whenever similar circumstances come up. Moldvay is emphatic that you must carefully consider your rulings and carefully annotate them.One of the strengths of the sorts of loose formal resolution systems found in games like Blades in the Dark is that they provide a lingua franca to talk about the fiction in a way that can help us communicate and negotiate about the fiction. It helps us to come to a common understanding. In Blades when I tell a player what they are about to do is desperate with a minor effect they can use that as a jumping off point to find a way to make it less desperate or increase the effectiveness. It lets them know what kind of fictional positioning they have and lets them revise what they were going to do or make a case that it should not be desperate. This sort of active negotiation about the fiction is central to free form play in my experience of it. Stuff like countdown clocks also serve to keep the fictional consequences firmly in a player's mind.</blockquote>

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