I think thats understood, but if you understand the counterpoint then what is the argument about?
I believe [MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION] is trying to show that there is no such style as the one I play in accordance with; that it is impossible to play an RPG without using the techniques that he himself is familiar with.
I believe that [MENTION=17106]Ahnehnois[/MENTION] is trying to show that, whatever it is, it does not involved GMing (in some stipulative sense of the term which seems, roughly, to encompass the techniquest that he is familiar with) and it is not playing D&D.
Its not DM force to have a chamberlain who is too powerful for the characters, its merely a matter of preferred storytelling style.
I can't remember if it was me or [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] who introduced the term "GM force" into the conversation. I agree that having a chamberlian who is too powerful for the PCs to affect is not GM force in the strict sense; because that is not the GM suspending the action resolution mechanics so as to narrate in a resolution to the conflict within the fiction.
I think it is a technique that works well alongside GM force, because by framing the PCs into a situation that the players lack the mechanical challenge to change the way they want, the GM has the power to narrate the outcome. For instance, the GM can narrate that the chamberlain is helfpul to the PCs; or unhelpful to them; and the players, ex hypothesi, lack the capacity to change that ingame state-of-affairs. So it is a technique that - like the use of GM force - gives the GM a high degree of control over the direction in which the game unfolds.
I think the debate around the Gate spell is on the borderlines - particularly what [MENTION=4826]Ranes[/MENTION] is suggesting. What should we make of the idea that a Gate spell, cast by the PC wizard to call in a noble djinn, fails because an NPC who is off-stage, whom the players have never heard of, and whose location and capabilities are perhaps not even spelled out in mechanical terms, prevents the players' intention being realised? One the one hand, it is not the GM literally suspending the action resolution mechanics; it is simply the GM narrating in new backstory (or making previously implicit or inchoate backstory explicit and highly choate). On the other hand, the resolution of the Gate spell is so intimately bound up with the fictional positioning of the caster in relation to various entities in relation to their extra-planer homelands in relation to their extra-planar rulers that to introduce or solidify new backstory so as to change that fictional positioning so as to thwart the player's intent is tantamount to interfering in action resolution. Of course it's not "rocks fall, everybody dies" - perhaps the most extreme form of suspending action resolution via changing the fictional positioning of the PCs - but it's a technique that, in its technical features, it is the same even if to a much lesser degree.
I think it is obvious that different tables and different players have different views about this sort of technique for keeping PCs balanced. I get the impression that you don't mind it and perhaps like it. I think [MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION] likes it. The OP clearly likes it and it underpinned the OP's thesis for balance. [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] clearly dislikes it; and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] calls it "Calvinball".
What about me? I generally don't like backstory shaping fictional positioning and thereby shaping action resolution and thereby shaping outcomes, in circumstances where the players don't know that backstory. Why not? Two reasons.
First, everything else being equal I prefer to show off my backstory and have the players engage with it. So if it is going to affect action resolution via fictional positioning I want the players to know about it. Then they might try and change their fictional positioning (eg send nice greeting cards to the djinn nobles) and thereby change the prospects of their attempted action resolution.
Second, as I've already indicated upthread, I prefer to frame scenes where the players can have a genuine prospect of changing the fiction via deploying their resources. The more that the consequences of resource-deployment turn upon elements of fictional positioning of which the players are unaware because it is unrevealed backstory, the less that they can do this.
Red Herrings, false trails, and social roadblocks are standard fare for a scenario of court intrigue, and/or mystery. Why should I tell players upfront things I would prefer their characters should discover for themselves via interaction with the game world?
it seems that mystery is not permitted in an Indie game, as the players must be fully aware of everything that is occurring
I don't think the indie style is especially well suited to traditional mystery play, precisely because the withholding of information that is part of standard mystery play is deprotagonising of players for the reasons I've already mentioned.
An interesting evolution in indie style around this very point can be seen in a debate between Jonathan Tweet and Robin Laws in the Over the Edge rulebook - Tweet talks about techniques for keeping secrets from players, and Laws talks about the benefits to play of having everything out in the open at the table even if the characters don't know, such as possibilities like irony, or ingame unknown but at-table appreciated interlinks, and generally everyone just having a good time laughing at the troubles their and others' PCs are getting into.
And flipping it around - I don't think it's a coinincidence that CoC - the paradigm mystery game - is seen as a poster child for high-quality GM authority, GM force, non-player-driven RPGing.
Now all of the above said, there are techniques that you can use for mystery or intrigue RPGing in indie style, as TwoSix indicates;
Sure, if the game is a social intrigue one, then it would make more sense. More importantly, they can use the obstinance of the Chamberlain to drive the fiction. You can use Insight checks to try to decipher what makes him nervous. You can Intimidate in the hope that he'll tell you why you can't see the king.
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I would make up those details in the game just like I made them up right here for this post.
In indie-RPGing intrigue-style play, the GM makes up the details of the intrigue as opportunities accompanying player (and PC) success, or as complications accompanying player (and PC) failure. So although, in the fiction, the PCs are discovering things, at the table the players are not discovering something worked out by the GM in advance (at least, not worked out in detail). The GM might have general parameters in mind, or these might be set by some other considerations (past revealed backstory, for instance; or genre considerations), but the details emerge in play, and their function is to keep the players on their toes and spur them to keep going.
(In this approach, there probably won't be many GM-introduced red herrings; these are supplied by the players' own changing speculations about what might be the truth of the situation, most of which turn out (retrospectively) to have been red herrings as the possiblities are narrowed down by more and more backstory becoming solidly established because "revealed" (ie narrated into the shared fiction) as part of the process of resolving action resolution. (Of course, this takes us back to "Schroedinger's NPCs" or, more generally, "Schroedinger's backstory". Keeping the backstory loose and flexible until it is actually solidified via narration is a pretty common "indie" technique.)
For actual play examples of GMing mysteries and intrigues in indie-style, see
these three threads.
