Terminology - IIEE

If I do terminology posts, I will try to keep them short. This stuff sucks and it causes everyone to talk past each other, but whatever, it's still needed. If you're offended by anything, as always, refer to the fact that this is my own damn opinion and you can have your own.

IIEE
"What really happened in the game world?"

That gets into IIEE -- Intention, Initiation, Execution, Effect -- which is in all RPGs even if it's not called that (or not referenced at all).

You say what you're doing. You roll. GM describes outcome. That kind of thing. Say, as I take from an example I was reading, you're playing D&D 4 and you're a Fighter fighting a Giant. You do some awesome, resource-using special attack, you damage the Giant and he is moved back one square. GM's like, "Uh, dude's like 30 feet tall, you're 6, no way you could move him". Cue ten page argument on the Internet.

The specific situation was "Are we agreed here when the dice tell us what happened, or when the GM filters it through his narration?" Which damn if I can find an official rule for in most RPG books, but that's how people usually play. There's a ton of unspoken consensus in that kind of stuff, and when it's not there, these kinds of arguments can bring the game to a halt. You're, like, sitting there with half of the people at the table imagining the giant not moving, half moving, the game's essentially 'crashed'. You can try to move on, but it requires at least a little discussion.

I think "When something actually happens in the game world" is when everyone at the table assents to it. That doesn't mean they all wanted it to happen, but they're like, ok yeah, i ran out of HP, so I'm unconscious, whatever. A rule may provide the guideline, but that it actually happens in the imagined game world is based on everybody agreeing.

So when it comes to which is the arbiter of what actually gets agreed on, what the mechanics specify or how the GM personally views the scene and what he sees as plausible, well, that's up to the social contract of the group to decide. Neither's the wrong answer, but if everybody at the table doesn't assent to it (even just 'whatever, let's move on' kind of assent), you literally can't continue playing.

Most people who play totally pretend that this "just happens", which is utter bullshit. Again, it totally does "just happen" if your Awesome GM is a Good Host, because making sure everybody has cold beverages and gets through whatever minefield of social drama is happening at this particular party is the same thing as making IIEE look simple.

Nothing at the table ever happens in the imagined game world until everybody nods and is like 'Yeah, that's totally what happened.' Except that includes shit we might have been talking about a couple of minutes ago, that might have sort have nebulously happened or not happened, until we nailed it down. This kind of stuff drives me nuts but doesn't bother Aces at all, which I find interesting.

Her comments recently were "You bring the dice out pretty much after we've nailed down how things went. You should either do it earlier and more often, or way less." I think that was a IIEE issue. They're like, naw we established this shit, why are we rolling now? One thought I had for that was some kind of mechanic where if you said you succeeded, you succeeded, fine. But since you rolled low or whatever, here's some additional shit for you to deal with, new obstacles in your way or 'damage' in the term of consequences to relationships or whatever.