Quote from: Arduin;708030If the player wasn't bright enough to realize that his PC could get messed up doing that maneuver, how is the player still alive walking around in the real world?

Perhaps he had been playing shitloads of Rastan and thought it would work?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;708039Perhaps he had been playing shitloads of Rastan and thought it would work?

As in the Rastan arcade video game from 1987?

Quote from: gamerGoyf;708008In this example the GM is inventing negative
consequences after the roll has been made.

Is your arrow of time reversed or something?

QuoteGM: [decides that he'll give John a to-hit roll. Success will let him get extra damage, but  failure will cause some sort of disaster.] "You leap off the ledge. Roll to hit."

The essential decision to impose "something bad"  occurred before the roll. The GM waited until he saw the roll to decide how bad it was. Also considering the exact circumstances as he didn't impose falling damage which has rules in classic D&D.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;708024wasn't made clear if it was communicated to the player. If the player goes for it knowing that he could be completely badass on a success or get hurt and look really foolish on a failure and STILL wants to try then more power to him.

I find it better to do this all the time.

GM: “You’re up on the ten-foot high ledge, and down below, the goblin is about to attack  Frank the Cleric.”
John the Roguish: “I grasp my sword, blade downward, and leap off the ledge, driving the sword blade deep into the goblin’s back using the weight of my body and the fall to cause tons of extra damage.”
GM:[decides that he’ll give John a to-hit roll. Success will let him get extra damage, but failure will cause some sort of disaster.]
GM: “You can do that but if you miss disaster will result. The lower the roll the worse it will be. But if you are successful it will be double damage.”
John the Roguish: ”Well I only need a 9 to hit I do it.”
Frank the Cleric: “Oh, hell, here we go again.”
GM: “You leap off the ledge. Roll to hit.”

It is an important way of minimizing the complaints you get later in the example.

The most important method is to establish a good reputation as a fair referee.

Quote from: estar;708051I find it better to do this all the time.

GM: "You're up on the ten-foot high ledge, and down below, the goblin is about to attack  Frank the Cleric."
John the Roguish: "I grasp my sword, blade downward, and leap off the ledge, driving the sword blade deep into the goblin's back using the weight of my body and the fall to cause tons of extra damage."
GM:[decides that he'll give John a to-hit roll. Success will let him get extra damage, but failure will cause some sort of disaster.]
GM: "You can do that but if you miss disaster will result. The lower the roll the worse it will be. But if you are successful it will be double damage."
John the Roguish: "Well I only need a 9 to hit I do it."
Frank the Cleric: "Oh, hell, here we go again."
GM: "You leap off the ledge. Roll to hit."

It is an important way of minimizing the complaints you get later in the example.

The most important method is to establish a good reputation as a fair referee.

That would have worked well in a recent game I was dming. A player wanted his character to leap on the back of a Belbelith spider demon and hack at it, avoiding its legs. The player figured it could not attack someone on its back.

I let him leap and attack it, and because it can teleport he could not stay on its back, so nothing fancy was required.

Quote from: ggroy;708043As in the Rastan arcade video game from 1987?

That would be the one. Downward jumping attacks with flaming sword FTW!!!

Quote from: Bill;708028Many gm's are quite capable of making a ruling based on common sense or what is most likely to occur, and not based on 'what the gm likes'.

You're assuming there a vast and meaningful difference what the GM thinks is common sense and what the GM likes, that's usually not the case when you're dealing with real people.

Personally I prefer play the gaming to playing the Game Master.

Quote from: gamerGoyf;708121You're assuming there a vast and meaningful difference what the GM thinks is common sense and what the GM likes, that's usually not the case when you're dealing with real people.

Personally I prefer play the gaming to playing the Game Master.

Groups who expect common sense outcomes will call out a GM who is just going with what he likes.

Quote from: gamerGoyf;708121You're assuming there a vast and meaningful difference what the GM thinks is common sense and what the GM likes, that's usually not the case when you're dealing with real people.

Personally I prefer play the gaming to playing the Game Master.

You must have played with really terrible gms.

Quote from: gamerGoyf;708121You're assuming there a vast and meaningful difference what the GM thinks is common sense and what the GM likes, that's usually not the case when you're dealing with real people.

Personally I prefer play the gaming to playing the Game Master.

Actually, I believe the assumption made is that common sense is common.

While I have played with 1 (out of 25) GM whose grasp of common sense was...distorted, the other 24 GMs grasped common sense nicely.

Of course, I am under the impression that what you believe to be common sense is something other than that. This doesn't alter your message much, though, as outliers are more likely to be ruled upon in an inconsistent manner and many of the most important rulings when playing elves and wizards are likely to involve outlying activities.

At that point, a GM worth his salt is going to do his best to rule fairly and consistently. Of course, it is entirely within your rights to choose a system where the rules protect you.

Quote from: gamerGoyf;708008In this example the GM is inventing negative consequences after the roll has been made.

And?  Is it in any way an illogical consequence, one not following from the action the player took?

IOW, if you were to ask someone the possible results of doing that action, don't you think "screwing up the jump and falling down" would be on that list, and actually relatively high in terms of likelihood?  This isn't like the GM in question decided that on the way down the character tripped on the veil between worlds and summoned Cthulhu.

Again, the only way this in any way is harmful to a player's decision making power is if you define the ability to make 'meaningful decisions' as the ability to mathematically determine the optimal result.

I do agree, that the GM probably should have told the player how he was going to rule it before rolling.  But I don't think it's terrible in any way.

Quote from: Bill;708128You must have played with really terrible gms.

Yep.  I mean, I've played with bad GMs before.  I think we all have.  But the vast majority were OK people who were more than reasonable and used common sense.  And if they weren't, then someone else decided to GM instead.

I really don't get people who act like they are trapped with a shitty GM.  You have complete control as a member of that group to fix that.

Quote from: gamerGoyf;708121You're assuming there a vast and meaningful difference what the GM thinks is common sense and what the GM likes, that's usually not the case when you're dealing with real people.

Personally I prefer play the gaming to playing the Game Master.

Common sense will be shared by the group thus the "common". If the group is at odds constantly with the GM as to the definition of common sense the magic 8 ball says someone else will be running the game soon.

Quote from: gamerGoyf;707726Now you can say that you personally like playing that sort of game, but you can't claim it encourages player skill because player decisions don't actually matter.

Missed this bit.
Generally a rule will give more 'reliable' results that a rule of course...if anything the results may be too knowable to the PCs i.e. metagameable.

However, I think what's being valued isn't necessarily 'player skill' so much as 'player engagement'. The theory being that players who are dealing with the game world as if they're characters in it, are engaging with the session on a deeper level than if they're mentally cross-referencing rules and processing numbers.

As another example of this, I was recently running the Undermountain dungeon using Savage Worlds, rather than the original AD&D. In retrospect I think one of the things that made it tiresome is that instead of getting the PCs to explain how they intend to examine room features or the like they were just making Notice checks, the rule (calling for a die roll) reducing some of the action to just die rolls, whereas making a ruling on whether they find things would needs more player description of what they're doing.

In any case, rulings vs. rules isn't quite as clearcut as people who prefer rulings doing so because they want to use illusionism or Oberoni Fallacy how great their favourite game system is. A reduction in consistency isn't necessarily that much because GMs do use data other than just rules to come up with an adjudication, but its a side effect rather than the intended effect.
A good part of it however is really debate over rules-lite vs. rules-heavy preference - a Your Mileage May Vary preference, rather than anything that can be objectively wrong- and another part of it is playstyle preference as to whether an RPG session is primarily thought of as just a game or more about exploring a virtual world.

Quote from: Archangel Fascist;707662My reaction a few years ago would have been, "That's not fair!  How can the DM just decide whether he sees the trap or not?  This is terrible and bullshit."

The Old School Primer is a cancer. It is literally one of the worst pieces of gaming advice I have ever read. It is not only wrong most of the time, it manages to be wrong in a completely caustic fashion that obscures actual truth. It is particularly notable for the absolute stupidity of false equivalency, which I discuss at length here.

As far as the passage in question is concerned: When a player states their intention to take a particular action, the GM must decide whether that action is:

a) Impossible;
b) Possible, but not certain; or
c) Trivial

A rulebook or the GM's previous rulings may provide guidance in making that decision, but it's ultimately an judgment call that every GM must make every single time an action is proposed. (In some cases, the GM makes that judgment call before play begins: For example, in assigning a given armor class to a goblin he is making a judgment call about the possibility or impossibility or triviality of damaging that goblin.)

The reason why the Old School Primer is so incredibly bad is that it compares a GM making a ruling that something is possible but not certain (and therefore makes a ruling about how to use the mechanics of the game to adjudicate the possibility) to a GM making a ruling that something is impossible and/or trivial (and therefore does not have to use the mechanics of the game to adjudicate the outcome). It then claims that the former is uniquely "new school" while the latter is uniquely "old school". But this, of course, is complete and utter bullshit.