[D&D 3.0/3.5] Spells and swords - fight!

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Roger, in the rather rough spirit of interaction that I'm using for these threads, I'm now giving you a noogey.

The text you've quoted from the book is all well and good, as long as we're talking about swimming in pools, rivers, rapids, waterfalls, and water-filled tunnels. I've got a crucial point to make about that, which is ...

... it doesn't mean a damn thing when we talk about Ugly Pig the Bandit.

How hard should it be to make Ugly Pig stand down? Is that like, oh, doing a dead-man's-float in calm water? Or like swimming out to the raft and back, underwater? Or perhaps it's like swimming up a waterfall?

Who's to say which of these it is, and who's to say that decision is ridiculous in one case or another? The DM digs in his heels and says, "Hey. This guy runs a bandit crew and killed eight guys to do it, and he knocks over caravans all the time. He doesn't take shit from rag-tag adventurers. It is like swimming up a waterfall. You can't do it."

And here's the crucial, crucial point ... that there isn't any shared reference at all. For imagined physical actions, at least the player can say, gee, I guess leaping my horse over this chasm really is about as hard as swimming the rapids, or something like that - he's matching real-life physical stuff to real-life physical stuff, however inexpertly, and using that similarity to come to a conclusion about the SIS and the rules. But for social ones? Intimidation, Sense Motive, etc? What the hell is the shared reference point when Ugly Pig's psychology is absolutely inaccessible to anyone but the DM, who is, basically, his player? When what you're up against isn't Ugly Pig, but the DM's enjoined sense of "control" (urged by this same rulebook I might add), or the DM's sudden need not to look like a wuss in front of your girlfriend at the table, or the DM's genuine commitment to wanting Ugly Pig to be a bad-ass, and not wanting to risk that to a roll?

Absolutely none of the text you've quoted helps with this dilemma. You've tried to answer my question "how does he know?" by pointing to physical reference points ... but Ugly Pig's mind is no such thing. Ugly Pig's mind is as stubborn or as pliable as the DM fancies him ... and that fanciful quality may not be subject to revision. If the DM deems him "stubborn as an ugly pig," then dude, you're shit out of luck - because the DM may be working from intended results rather than parameters for conflict.

Geez, if I could make every person reading this post re-read that final sentence fifteen times, then sleep on it, and then write a five-paragraph essay due at noon tomorrow entitled "How this point has affected my role-playing value system," I'd do it.

My solution is to say it's all parameters for conflict. To borrow great wisdom from The Mountain Witch, "all conflict is a form of combat," and no, I didn't mix that up or get it backwards. That means I as DM/GM must abandon all results-first prep and play, and learn to abide by what comes out as well as my players are expected to abide by it.*

And the book says no such thing, nor any other thing which could serve as an equally-useful rubric for judging when and how skill checks are employed.

Best, Ron

* For those of you who think this means all is chaos and anyone can say everything, it doesn't. You'll notice scene framing, characters entering and exiting, and various spatial decisions are still my purview as DM. So is the scope of the social rolls. In the case of my game, Eladd's starting situation was so advantageous that an Intimidation roll could make him back off an immediate verbal attack, but it couldn't make him just run off and abandon all his loot.

[ffilz]

Ron, I can't promise that I'll read that sentence 15 times, or write an essay by noon tomorrow, but I'll certainly sleep on it. My gears are already cranking in thought.

I do have one question, though, and perhaps I should wait to ask it until I've slept on this, but how do you determine the scope of a social roll? That's been a stumbling block for me, but I have this funny feeling it's related to working from intended results rather than parameters for conflict.

Frank

[Roger]

How hard should it be to make Ugly Pig stand down?

This is not a difficult question to answer.  The answer is in the rules as written, sitting there as clearly and objectively as anyone might like.

Pages 76-77 in the PHB 3.5 describes the Intimidate skill.  It defines how difficult it is to intimidate someone.  It's a mathematical formula with no requirement nor opportunity for subjective DM fiat.

The DM may, at most, provide a +2 DC modifier to reflect Pig's painful childhood or whatnot.

On some plane of existence, there might be a DM who just arbitrarily decides that it's impossible to intimidate Pig.  That DM is not playing the game as written.

the DM may be working from intended results rather than parameters for conflict.

Wait, what?  It took us five pages of a thread to get to the point in which Ron Edwards tells us "Hey kids -- DM's who railroad the players are bad." ??

Well, alright then.  I'm not going to disagree with you on that.  Nor will I disagree that there is no shortage of railroady DMs still out there. 

Do the rules as written require the DM to railroad?  No.  Do they recommend it?  No.  Do they allow it?  Yes.

The DMG has this to say about the topic:

"A bad event-based adventure is marked by mandates restricting PC actions or is based on events that occur no matter what the PCs do.  For example, a plot that hinges on the PCs finding a mysterious heirloom, only to have it stolen by NPCs, is dangerous -- if the players invent a good way protect the heirloom, they won't like having it stolen away just because that's what you had planned beforehand.  [...] No matter what, all adventures should depend upon player choices."

-- DMG 3.5, "Bad Structure", pg 45.

Which, really, is exactly the point you're trying to make here, isn't it?



Cheers,
Roger

[Caldis]

This is not a difficult question to answer.  The answer is in the rules as written, sitting there as clearly and objectively as anyone might like.

Pages 76-77 in the PHB 3.5 describes the Intimidate skill.  It defines how difficult it is to intimidate someone.  It's a mathematical formula with no requirement nor opportunity for subjective DM fiat.

The DM may, at most, provide a +2 DC modifier to reflect Pig's painful childhood or whatnot.

For those of us without the rulebook Roger could you clarify the rules.   Is there a list of target numbers given and what are they based on?  Level of the target?  Any ability modifiers?  Can they resist?  Can the same abilities be used on the pc's?  Have you ever seen a dm do this?

[Andreas]

For those of us without the rulebook Roger could you clarify the rules.   Is there a list of target numbers given and what are they based on?  Level of the target?  Any ability modifiers?  Can they resist?  Can the same abilities be used on the pc's?  Have you ever seen a dm do this?

Your Intimidate check is opposed by the target’s modified level check (1d20 + character level or Hit Dice + target’s Wisdom bonus [if any] + target’s modifiers on saves against fear). If you beat your target’s check result, you may treat the target as friendly, but only for the purpose of actions taken while it remains intimidated.

Found here. Friendly is defined here.

From the DMG, any ability that influences 'attitudes' can not be used on the PCs:

"However, NPCs can never influence PC attitudes. The player always make their character's decisions." (p. 128 of the 3.5 DMG)

I've never used these rules as a DM, but I have used interaction rolling along the lines of what Ron has described (though a lot less well-defined.) I've just realized that while a lot of the reason I don't use it as written is that I don't want to break the pace by looking it up, I would (and do) look up stuff in the middle of split second combat...

I think the quote above about PC attitudes may be a contributing factor here. The DM is informed very clearly that these are weapons which are useless against the PCs. At this point it's easy to say 'ok, I never need to learn how these things work.' There's something absurd about a great wyrm dragon having to rely on magical fear effects to scare PCs.

Drawing the parallel to physical combat again, a DM would be horrified to read that certain spells (charm person!) or weapons (long swords!) can only be used against NPCs, regardless of who they're wielded by. Even more absurd is that there are spells (like the aforementioned charm person) which do exactly what the DMG states NPCs can't do (and can be used by NPCs against PCs, in fact there's an example of it in the DMG2).

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Roger, you're getting sarcastic and using my own name as a scare-feature ... and what is this about "railroading is bad?" That hasn't anything to do with what I'm talking about, or at most it's peripheral.

You're making a pretty good case for the text, so I suggest you not undermine your points with either (a) protecting D&D from evil me, or (b) attacking me in that internet way that crept into your last post. If you're frustrated with me and want to vent a little, just noogey me back. If you keep up the bullshit ("oh! So Ron Edwards is telling us ...") then the dialogue vanishes in favor of an ego-fight and playing to the gallery, and the valid points you're making, or that I might present in answer, will be lost.

For those who might be confused about this, I'm not trashing the game. I'll cop to finding most of the DM Guide pretty unhelpful, but this topic is well-suited by sticking to the Player book. I'm talking about a very, very problematic aspect of role-playing in general - my questions about skills - which this rules-set is helping us, here, to dissect. We could be using any of dozens, perhaps hundreds of other games instead of this one, but the interesting G/N interaction in my current game has brought the issue up.

For instance, I'm not too concerned about the care taken in the rules about not influencing player-character behavior via NPCs with massive interaction skills. That care seems well-placed to me. I'm more interested in whether or how the skills can be utilized as tactical items by the players.

On the other hand, this has gone on for five pages, and threads over three pages tend to lose general utility. And I'm not real happy with the turn in tone; I'm sensitive to how badly a thread gets poisoned when "he trashes D&D! protect it!" begins. And who knows, I could be unfairly trashing the game without realizing it. Rather than see the thread turn into an internet-fight about whether the book sux or rox, which is a fight I'm not invested in, I'd rather close it.

But I don't want to close this thread on the basis of you disagreeing with me and possibly refuting me. That'd suck. So, I want to state for the record: Roger has presented a very clean defense regarding the text itself, set against my claims regarding that text. I don't think we're disagreeing about the points regarding skills and role-playing, or at least that hasn't come up. Although I don't think you've refuted me, maybe that's just me being stubborn, and you've certainly made a good enough case for others to decide for themselves.

If you or anyone else would like to make further posts here, please do, but I'd like everyone to consider them final posts for this thread. I'd also welcome further D&D threads based on others' games that address the skills, both textually and in use.

Best, Ron

[Calithena]

Ron,

Especially in the splatbooks and supplements, there's a certain 'drift effect' where the skills, sometimes in conjunction with classes or feats, take on additional powers. Bluff for example allows Rogues with Quicker than the Eye to get an extra sneak attack in certain circumstances, or at least did in one iteration of the 3.0 rules. There are similar kinds of additions to what the skills can do in other supplements (e.g. Epic Level Handbook). So in this sense they become a kind of quantifiable thing the character has, like the feats (which I kind of like, although I still think that idea could be better implemented than it was in 3e or Exalted w/ Charms.

The skills don't in general become the kind of resource for tactical play that I think you're wondering about, at least they didn't in my years with the system. That is, some of them (esp. tumble, hide, move silently, perception skills) become 'mini-feats' that explicitly enter into the system to let your character do things, but there isn't a sort of 'skill warz' subgame like there is with feats and spells. Which is one more reason I agree with you that the skills aren't so hot an addition to the game for the space they take up. They have the usual 'skill tradeoff' effect: increased character personalization at the cost of increased crap to keep track of, a burden which becomes onerous for the DM. (You looked over my Arduin critters, right? I made hundreds of D&D monsters, some of which got published, before I ran screaming for the Forge. It's fun as hell to figure stuff out in terms of ability combos for 3e monsters, the same sort of fun as you get for Champions villains at a lesser investment scale), but then you have to pick skills for your Fugly Fighter Flayer and man, what a drag that is, investing 100 skill points for this 12 hit die behemoth that basically doesn't even need attribute scores except for attack and damage bonuses, never mind Knowledge: Etiquette or Spellcraft.

Anyway, love these threads, and your strong hand here has at least weakened the D&D attachment poison that has harmed some others in the past.

Roger's points are interesting and remind me of the real purposes of language restrictions in all versions of D&D: to prevent you from using your Diplomacy or Charisma or general playerly wiles to pull a Cugel on every monster you encounter. Languages are an encounter funnel. Tongues and a maxed-out Diplomacy skill could prove a very nasty combo indeed in 3e.

[Joel P. Shempert]

Yeah, Ron, I must confess I'm a bit lost in all this "D&D-fighting." Let me try and untangle (for myself if nothing else) the salient points of the "Call for Skills" discussion:

The main question is, when and how are skills used in games?

This subdivides into several issues, e.g. who, in actual practice, calls for skill rolls in games--the GM, the players, or some combination? or, how do game texts facilitate clarity in skill usage?

I'm going to assume that "skill" applies to about any ability that does not have an "automatic" usage with no negotiation needed, which in many, probably most, games means anything outside the mechanics for combat. And the "current state of the art" (at least as applies to game texts) seems to be "the GM tells you (the player)  when, though you can maybe ask for it yourself." But game texts are pretty vague on the subject: "it works this way, except when it doesn't."

And the "state of the art" as regards play groups, is of course, "each group has their own system worked out," which is a symptom of the aforementioned muddled texts.

So then there's the classification of skills, Color, Effectiveness and Plot Hooks, basically. I'm not sure what else to say about that.

The question, "under what SIS conditions does the non-DM have the right  to demand a skill check?" still seems unanswered. I would tend to say the most desirable conditions, for me, would be "anytime, though the results may still be filtered through the DM's understanding of the SIS." There are obvious situations where a skill check may have no effect, just as the combat rules have no meaningfulfeedback for a character swinging a sword at empty air. But given a fit character presented with a fit target for a skill, he should alwaysget the check.

I still prefer the model of "Player describes action, GM calls the roll." If the player describes an action, and the GM says "yeah, and?" this represents a Social Contract breakdown: "whaddya mean, 'and'?! I just described my awesomely awesome Lie of Total Deception, and you ask me what now? Bluff check is what!" IF the DM is cooperative ("Oh, Bluff? OK, cool") then play can at least proceed, but the person-to-person interaction is undermined in the long run. Better by far that the DM be always at the ready for when dice-rolls are required. The "always for conflict of interest" rule should serveadmirably. And as Ron pointed out, a combat action would never be manhandled by the GM in the fashion that other interactions often are.

It's hard in this discussion to differentiate the general points for all roleplaying, and the specific niggling bits wrt D&D, especiallywhen we start getting into DCs for waterfalls or goblin tracking or whatever. one point I'll make in favor of D&D is that having all these skills out on the sheet in front of God and everybody at least gets everyone on the same page regarding what resources there ARE, even if where and how to use them is murky. In contrast, I offer my BESM example from earlier, where I was being denied a roll because the attribute in question was unique to my character, and my GM thought of "I can't keep track of everyone's specific abilities" as somehow equivalent to "I don't need to call for a roll on that."

One thing I'm confused about:

I'm not sure I understand how this topic is unrelated to railroading. . .all the play examples, real or hypothetical that we've been using, have been about the DM quashing Players' ability to contribute to an outcome ("I wanna intimidate him!" "no, he attacks!"). Perhaps railroading isn't the only problematic issue in this skill use topic, but seems a key one. If you could clarify, Ron, I'd appreciate it.


Well, let me know if I'm off base or missing something in the above concepts. Other than that, I'm out.

Peace,
-Joel

[Roger]

If you're frustrated with me and want to vent a little, just noogey me back.

Yes, I think that's what happened.  I got frustrated and I handled it badly.

So, I want to state for the record: Roger has presented a very clean defense regarding the text itself, set against my claims regarding that text.

Thanks, Ron -- that means a lot to me.  Maybe I just needed to hear that.  To everyone else:  that is what intellectual honesty looks like. 

Getting back to the topic at hand:

what is this about "railroading is bad?" That hasn't anything to do with what I'm talking about, or at most it's peripheral.

Huh.  It's the first thing I thought of when you wrote:

the DM may be working from intended results rather than parameters for conflict.

And I shouldn't have been so dismissive about it.  If that is a good working definition of railroading, then it has some real value.  It's easy to give advice to DM's like "Railroading is bad -- don't do it."  But it doesn't really get into the guts of what railroading is, or what to do about it.  "Railroading is working from intended results rather than parameters for conflict" says a lot more about what railroading consists of, and gives DMs a much more concrete way to avoid it.

It's tangential to the main thrust of this thread so far, but I consider it as important as anything else that's been said.

I'm talking about a very, very problematic aspect of role-playing in general - my questions about skills - which this rules-set is helping us, here, to dissect.

I agree that it's a worthwhile approach to a worthwhile topic.


Cheers,
Roger

[greyorm]

I'm not sure I understand how this topic is unrelated to railroading. . .all the play examples, real or hypothetical that we've been using, have been about the DM quashing Players' ability to contribute to an outcome ("I wanna intimidate him!" "no, he attacks!").

Ron, et al., can correct me if I'm completely wrong on this one, but I don't believe the specific situation being described has anything to do with railroading. It seems more like a Typhoid Mary behavior than it does railroading.

And now to be hypocritical: I think talking about railroading/not railroading/how is it railroading? is completely useless in the context of the current discussion. It's like arguing about what color the sky will turn when the meteor strikes and destroys all life in a 200-mile radius. The more important discussion, the more relevatory stuff about play, regarding skills and how they are used around the table by players and GMs, is going to be buried and forgotten underneath it.

We hear "railroading" and the brain shuts off. "Oh, railroading, that's it?" and think we've got it now, missing any context that might be included because we "know" what railroading is, whether or not the subject is really about railroading or not.

[Ron Edwards]

Roger and I are chatting privately and when our conclusions are ready, I'll post them here.

Best, Ron

[Callan S.]

I think Roger gives an excellent textual case, but it shifts Rons issue one step down the road.

Previously Ron stated the issue was that the GM can just decide whether there is or isn't a roll to be made. Roger's snipet of text puts that to rest.

Reading through the text, succesful intimidate rolls mean you can treat the target as 'friendly'. This means they 'Chat, advise, offer limited help, advocate'

This results in the same issue as before, except rather than decide if a roll happens, the GM decides just how helpful a chap Ugly Pig is.

I'm probably very wrong about what Ron is looking for. But in my mind it's a resolution system that determines who gets the lions share of input on a given matter (not absolute control, but is listened to alot even while everyone else throws suggestions to him which he draws on when making up the next bit). These rules do determine whether a target is helpful or not. But they don't determine who has the lions share when determining the matter.

It defaults to the GM at the start. Since it only talks about a target being 'helpful' and says nothing about who gets the lions share, the default remains. The resolution system hasn't resolved anything.

[Ian Charvill]

I played for the first time in a while last night -- the D&D Adventure Game (a simplified D&D rule set intended as in introductory product) with an old university friend and his step-kids.  With this discussion in my head a few minor things occurred to me.

Rolls that did not affect one of the three big player resources -- treasure, hit points, experience -- felt tacked on, a procedural irrelevance.

In that light, the point of the GM calling for a roll is to frame a challenge.  The point of a player calling for a roll is to frame a challenge to their benefit.  Part of what's going on is players positioning their characters imaginatively to take advantage of what they're good at, either individually or as a group.  Someone playing a fighter might act intimidating so he gets to use his character's Intimidate skill, or defer to a cleric who might have a better Diplomacy skill or so on (the D&D Adventure has a limited skill set so we were seeing choices of who swings rather than which club to use).

In that light, who gets to call for which skill (explicitly or implicitly) is a huge deal in terms of tactical play.

[David "Czar Fnord" Artman]

On Morale

Basically, I want a rule that determines whether, at the point when the tide turns against my monsters or NPCs, they cut and run.

Given that there are no 3.0/3.5 rules, it seems like you need two inputs: when to check morale and what is checked. Right?

I think you can find a useful mechanical hook to hang this issue on, even in 3.0/3.5. I could give a ton of cases which check the when against the Int of the NPC, (can it tell the tide is against it?), against the nature of threat (is it being battered--Fort check--or is it being controlled--Will check--or is it protecting something--Loyalty (?) check), and against the NPC's notion of future advantage/delayed gratification (would retreat "buy" it anything other than time?). Ditto for the what.

Ultimately, without a hard-and-fast stat for each monster/race, there is no way this won't somehow be GM fiat. NPC motivation, future plans, loyalties, etc are the purview of the GM's notion of the NPC. In a Sim-motivated game, the GM's players might require a justification--hmmm... much in the same way a GM might require a justification/acting to use a social skill, eh?--but ultimately in a game like D&D, too much of the SIS is in the GM's bailiwick.

On Calling For Rolls
In all of my actual play experience, in nearly every RPG, we have used a "secrecy protection" basic rule. Put simply, if the roll was to detect or be aware of something, the GM always made it in private and only revealed successful results. We even made a point of using PC Record Sheets (yep, this was Hero) so that the GM could note all the GM-rolled skills.

In any other case--the players want to do so, they are trying to gain some credability (ex: Lore use with no GM-provided answer), or they are backing narrated actions with a resolution system (do I find a secret door?)--the players were totally required to state the attempt. Earlier, someone posted that they could use "blanket action statements" like the Rogue will always Listen and check for traps at every door--we would have never used. In our opinion, the expenditure of a resource (time) to accomplish something (gain information) was always the player's responsibility to call for. It just rankles our sensabilities to presume that every 10' of travel was going to burn up 10 minutes of in-game time; it felt very unheroic and, frankly, like a bunch of paranoid obsessive-compulsive disorder victims.

In my opinion, a game system should clearly dictate "GM-rolls, passive" skills versus "player calls, active" skills. D&D clearly does not do this on a skill-by-skill basis, random quotes from skill-use rules notwithstanding.

Hope this helps the database;
David

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Roger and I had a nice chat which ended up being fairly brief. Here are some of the points I made which I think are crucial understanding this thread. Roger, if there are points you want stated that I left out, post'em. Everyone, please remember I'm trying to wind this thread down, though. Any objections or reactions really ought to be handled with actual-play threads of their own.

One concern of mine was that all of Roger's most recent points - his strong defense that I acknowledged - relied on the DM opting for the opposed roll method of skill resolution. Whereas I am stepping back to the slightly bigger picture, in which the DM decides which of two methods to use for any skill check. He can either use an opposed roll, or he can use (and state) flat difficulties. I understand that the +2 is the maximum he can tack onto an opposed roll ... so if he goes that route with Ugly Pig, then yeah - it's Ugly Pig's Intimidate score (or whatever the DM chooses to defend with) +2.

But if he goes the route of the flat difficulty, then, well, I think it's back to that whole "swimming up the waterfall" situation, and my point stands that the DM is taking a results-driven approach to the scene. In fact, whatever value he picks, even a low one, he has to be taking such an approach.

Unless I'm grossly misrepresenting something, Roger agreed with me about this and so our dispute over the text is resolved. He also rightly pointed out that choosing a 50/50 difficulty would be an exception to that generalization, which is true, but not, I think, especially relevant to real-play situations in which the DM takes this option.

Now for this business about railroading. The following is more-or-less exactly what I posted to Roger privately.

Boy, everyone is reading that Ugly Pig account as if it were railroading. And yeah, one possible version of it could be railroading. But lots of functional possible versions exist too, and I want to concentrate on them. For instance, if the DM were merely offering Color for Ugly Pig's opening speech and had no intention of doing anything except fighting. So this whole Intimidate roll is feeling to him as if the player is seizing the molehill (Color) and making a mountain out of it (Situation). Much as a player might feel if he had said, "My guy laughs a little" at the king's court just as a bit of side-Color to everyone at the table, and the DM makes a federal case out of it and has the player-character clapped in irons.

My phrasing didn't help when I made that reference to the DM's plans for them finding a clue, because although I wanted the reference to be merely one of many, many reasons for the DM digging in his heels, it's obviously the one people are fixating on.

It also looks as if more than one person thinks that my depiction of the player with the fighter/rogue vs. Ugly Pig was about myself and a specific way that I thought the rules are bad and wrong. They are mistaken. It was about one way that an interaction could go south while dealing with the rules-as-written. I fuckin' hate the internet sometimes ...

I'm talking about a much larger issue than railroading, inside of which railroading represents a breakdown of function, but which itself is not a broken issue.

That larger issue is that unless at least some contributions to the SIS can be made by someone(s) without constant disputation, then nothing can happen. I'm talking about the context in which resolution occurs.

The mechanics of such a context are scene framing, entry and exit of characters, physical distance positioning, perceptions by characters, and establishing conflict. None of these can be handled as "resolution" (IIEE). They all establish the imagined circumstances in which any IIEE mechanics can then be applied.

(Side point: confounding perception with conflict is a serious problem throughout role-playing. The lesson is, if you want classic out-of-conflict perception rolls, then make sure you understand that they will affect which conflicts occur, and how they occur, and be ready for that effect. Or if you want resolved-conflict perception rolls, then treat them as minor features among the rest of the conflict rules. "Surprise" in D&D is actually a pretty good example, as far as it goes.)

What I'm saying is that all such mechanics need to be either effects-first or thrown up for grabs. And I can hardly imagine, or barely, a form of game-play in which all of them are totally up for grabs.

Therefore some form of "someone says it's this way, OK?" is absolutely necessary or no SIS is possible.

If the DM's head-space is currently saying, "Bang time! Fight with Ugly Pig!", then grabbing the Color he offered merely to get everyone in the mood (not force them, just for fun) demonstrates confusion about the boundary between the scene and the conflict in the scene.

I'm not saying the DM is right or the player is right or that either is wrong. I am saying they're confused about what they're doing, and each one is going to claim the other is unfairly fucking with the SIS.

If we're all in the mode that "we're not in conflict yet," and if this is a game in which the DM holds pretty much solid sway over that issue, then his effects-first narration should be unproblematic, as long as we all know when conflicts start. It works absolutely best when subject to inter-personal checks - "Unless you want to argue with Ugly Pig about it, but I was pretty much planning on going into the fight."

I realize this goes against every imaginable Ouija-Board ideal out there, in that conflicts are suppose to arise "naturally" from pure role-playing and so on, but that ideal is bullshit. OB play is overwhelmingly characterized by long stretches of nothing interspersed with unavoidable (and often unintelligible) clashes.

One benefit of this technique is that it usually doesn't require rolls, but even if they do want to stick with the rolls, the nigh-insurmountable difficulty of convincing Ugly Pig can be treated as consensual between DM and player, because the DM has already expressed his desire for this to be a fight scene. "I dunno man, I think my guy would at least try to talk him out of it." "OK, let's roll for it, but the difficulty is monstrous, OK?" "Sure!"

See what just happened? The player in this case, at the moment, is primarily concerned with depicting his guy - he's not really trying to get out of the fight after all, and so any DM pushiness that says "quiet! you're fighting!" is not necessary. And the DM in this case has preserved his desire for Ugly Pig to be mainly about the fight ... even if, in this case, the player rolls a natural 20 and the fight is averted. (His best solution at that time is to save Ugly Pig for another day, now that he has a relationship with the fighter/rogue who made him lose face.) No one loses face or "control," whatever that is in role-playing.

What I'm saying is this: my statement about effects-first is veeeery broad and railroading should be considered a small, wretched, rickets-afflicted district in that big country.

Best, Ron