You're the one who said we were talking about GM-driven games - I'm just following your lead!
If, in fact, the players are contributing the key material (eg the stakes, the context, the motivations that are going to be actually salient in play - see my reply just above to @
innerdude - etc) then why would you describe it as GM-driven?
I actually am only describing it that way because my understanding of your views is that is how you would see it.
I don't necessarily allow player authorship of fictional elements through action declaration. I'm not necessarily against that in theory, and I may allow it in some ways (establishing a contact through some kind of Diplomacy or Gather Information check would be a good example). But it really depends on the action and goal in question.
I think that saying that "all games contain elements of both "styles"" is, in the context of a thread like this, mostly unhelpful. It adds nothing to the analysis, and tends to make everything dissolve into porridge. It makes it impossible, for instance, for @
innerdude to make the point he just made in his most recent post. It means that we can't talk about the difference between @
Lanefan's example of the GM making up all this off-screen fiction about the harlot, and the way that @
Manbearcat might conceivably have produced similar fiction using DungeonWorld.
So it is a binary choice in your opinion.
I disagree with that, and with the idea that thinking the opposite makes discussions or examples impossible. I think my game contains both elements, yet I could follow the D&D/Dungeon World comparison done by Manbearcat, and Innerdude's point just above is equally clear. I agree with him that when a player can add to the fictional world, they become more involved in the game.
I honestly don't know much about how you run your game. I haven't read a lot of actual play examples from it. You persist in calling it GM-driven (as best I can tell from your posts and my recollection of them) but you also say that the players have a lot of agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction, and I am left trying to understand what you have in mind.
All I can say is stuff like this: if, at key moments of crunch (eg trying to find the important map; trying to persuade an NPC to accept a bribe; etc) the outcome depends to a significant extent on what the GM decided about the fiction in advance (eg s/he wrote in her notes that the map is in the kitchen; she has already made a note that the only official in town who will take a bribe is Old Ludo the cemetery gatekeeper; etc), or what the GM secretly decides about the fiction at that moment; then the players are, at that key moment of play, exercising little agency over the content of the shared fiction.
This god-awful map example again. Devoid of any sense of context or why it matters or anything else. A hastily sketched example that unsurprisingly does not hold up to scrutiny.
Now, I know other folks have defended the GM denying the player the ability to author the map into existence. And that's fine. I may or may not agree. But without a more meaningful example, it's hard to say. The bribery issue is simpler....unless I had a compelling reason to have pre-determined all the guards in the location and their disposition toward bribery, then I would leave that up to the results of the player's roll. I'm all for that. I don't like to thwart players' ideas when it comes to solving their problems.
But that map example....how can one say? If the map is important to the players.....let's say it holds the location of one PC's father's sword, the recovery of which is an important stated goal for that character....then I would imagine that the discovery of the map is some kind of goal. Allowing the player to simply produce the map in a kitchen is horrible from a story point of view, and I woudl not allow that at all. Agency be damned at that point, although I don't think any of my players would actually attempt such a thing, so no agency would actually be harmed in the making of this example.
This is why I used the somewhat cheeky example of Boromir authoring the presence of Sauron at the Council of Rivendell. The player knows the goal, so the character wills it into being. It seems a horrible way to play, and I believe is the kind of play the Czege Principle points out as being unfun.
In my game, such a specific goal for the players would not be sitting in some random kitchen. It would likely have a specified location. In this sense, I realize I am being very "GM driven", but I don't really see the reason to avoid this. I don't really think it actually robs players of agency, either, except in the sense that they cannot author the presence of the map wherever they may like. Which to me, is a pretty broad application of agency. I also don't allow players to kick me in the nethers....but I don't think anyone would say that's denying them agency. Maybe a few people, but not most.
Now, if you're talking about a map that the player has suggested, that's different. Not something the GM has in mind beforehand, but an idea that occurs to the player and they run with it. So they find themselves in the gnoll warmaster's quarters, having killed him and secured the location. And one of the player says "I'd like to see if there are any maps that may show the areas the gnolls might be targeting?" In such a case, I'd likely be happy they suggested this and allow them to search, and have the result of the check reveal the presence or usefulness of the maps.
In this sense, my game would be very "Player Driven" I believe.
So it is a situational thing, depending on the needs of the game and the story. I don't know if granting players carte blanche to introduce elements into the fiction through action declaration is always a good idea. Or that it's agency in the sense that we typically ascribe to the kind desired in a game. Of course, principled use of such techniques can likely produce a great game experience...I wouldn't say it cannot. But generally, I don't think that having certain elements of the fiction being the GM's purview is a bad thing.
Or stuff like this: if your game is run in a similar way to what the Alexandrian describes with his "three clue rule" and "node based design", then you are running a game in which most of the agency over the content of the shared fiction resides with the GM.
If sometimes your game is like that, but sometimes like something else, then that means that sometimes the GM is the predominant author of the shared fiction, and at other times the players have agency over it. That sort of precision is - in the context of a thread whose aim is analysis - far more helpful than a bland statement that tries to average everything out. (For the same reason that, when you're analysing human thermal comfort, it sheds little light on the matter to describe the person whose head is in the fridge and feet are in the oven as having the same overall thermal experience as the person who is in a room heated to 40 degrees.)
I believe perhaps you missed my exchange with AbdulAlhazred some pages back where we talked about a skill check establishing a new player contact NPC.
I do move from one to the other. Almost everything that is happening in my game is based on elements my players have introduced through character backstory and connections they've established in play. But there is also a story I've come up with that connects all their stories, and weaves in and out of them. The actual play tends to depend on what they want to do. I wait until they've narrowed in on an area of interest, and that's what we explore. I occasionally, but not very often, introduce events that may occur that demand their attention, but when I do so, these are usually drawn from player cues rather than invented whole cloth by me.
So I do have "worldbuilding" elements as you describe them. Most of these don't come into play when it comes to action declaration and resolution, but are more macro and story related; e.g. Iggwilv has formed an alliance with Yug-Anark and Eclavdra, and what that may mean for the world (or words, really).
I don't really tend to think of my game as player driven or GM driven....it contains elements of both. What it may lack when compared to Burning Wheel or even Dungeon World is mechanics that support a more player driven style of play. Instead it's all in how we've come to play and the expectations that we have now.
