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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5404978" data-attributes="member: 42582">Hussar, I think the difference between page 42 and earlier versions of "rule 0" or "just make stuff up" is that page 42 sets a DC and a damage number such that, if the player makes the roll, then the damage is dealt - and the damage is a meaningful amount for an attack action at the level in question. So it no longer leaves the effectiveness of the player's improvised action to the hostage of the GM's mechanical whims (in the sort of fashion that you've talked about in other posts).Now generalising page 42 beyond combat actions to other sorts of actions, where resolution is not damage but some other less quantified change in the game state, is non-trivial. This is what skill challenges are for, and I'm one of those who thinks that the rules for these continue to be undeveloped compared to other games like HeroQuest or The Dying Earth. But even with skill challenges as written, there's the idea that all the player has to do to achieve a certain result in the gameworld is achieve a certain number of successful skill checks.The GM can of course still stuff it up by GMing the challenge badly, or (even worse) by ignoring the result of the challenge once the encounter is over (eg the NPC betrays the PCs even though the players won the negotiation skill challenge). Still, by D&D standards I think this is pretty revolutionary stuff, given the extent to which it codifies the capacity of the players to affect the gameworld via improvised actions. It leaves the GM still with the responsibility to actually narrate the gameworld in response to what the players have their PCs do, but takes the actual mechanical resolution out of the realm of GM whim (and, hence, GM thwarting/railroading).Rule zero has never done anything like this.</blockquote>

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