I don't get how a character can fail, if the DM doesn't have the ability to set up a situation where they might.
Here are two ways to bring it about that a player's "find secret passage" check might fail:
(1) Decide, as GM, that there is no passage there;
(2) Have the player roll the check.
The second method gives the player agency over (that component of) the content of the shared fiction: by declaring the check the player makes the existence of a secret passage salient (which is already an exercise of this sort of agency); and by actually making that check, the player has a chance to bring it about that the fiction is as s/he desires it to be (because if the check succeeds, his/her PC finds a secret passage as s/he was hoping to).
The first method is clearly an exercise of GM agency over the content of the shared fiction.
I don't get your statement that "the rogue didn't add anything to the fiction." The example was minimal, sure, but that's not the point. Where are they lacking agency? Maybe they aren't interested in "writing" something significant in the fiction.
My first response to this is just as it has been to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]: if there are players who don't want to exercise significant agency over the content of the shared fiction, of course that's their prerogative. But that doesn't mean they're nevertheless exercising such agency! They're clearly not, because they don't want to!
In your example, what does the rogue player add to the fiction - nothing except that his/her PC looked around and found nothing. As far as RPGing is concerned, that's the most minimal result a player can achieve by declaring a move -
my PC did this thing and nothing interesting resulted from it. I mean, suppose that a RPG session consisted of
nothing but that. What sort of session would that be?
There's a difference between writing whether something is there or not, and whether an orc beats you in combat.
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Things that "exist" within the fictional world are one thing. The results of actions made by the players is entirely different. Yes, searching for a secret door is an action that's taken by the characters, but the expectation is that a successful result is dependent on a secret door being there in the first place.
When you say "the expectation", whose expectation do you mean? Because you're not giving voice to my expectation.
But anyway, this was discussed at great length upthread. The bottom line is this: as acts of authorship, writing a story in which a rogue meets an orc and kills it, and a rogue searches for a secret door and finds one, are no different. We can break it down more:
event (1), there's a rogue wandering along; event (2), wandering rogue meets orc; event (3), rogue and orc fight; event (4), rogue kills orc;
event (a), there's a rogue wandering along; event(b), wandering rogue comes to a wall; event(c), the rogue searches the wall, hoping to find a secret passage; event(d), rogue finds secret passage.
The process of authoring these two stories is no different. The orc and the wall come to "exist" in the fiction because someone (typically, the GM) writes them in. The struggle between orc and rogue; and the rogue's search of the wall, also get written in (presumably by the player, unless the game is quite atypical). At the final stage, the orc's death gets written in too - because the mechanics tell us to do so; if the rolls had turned out differently, something else might get written in (the rogue is taken prisoner by the orc, for instance). There is no reason why the mechanics can't equally tell us to write in the discovery of the secret passage (or, if the check fails, to write in something else - maybe the rogue finds and triggers a trap instead; or finds a secret passage that leads to somewhere quite different from where s/he was hoping to go).
Fighting an orc is a totally different thing. The game clearly gives the player the "agency" to engage the rules to see who wins the fight.
Which game? In Cortex+ Heroic, or Burning Wheel, the allocation of agency is no different (I've already posted multiple illustrations upthread - eg the PC in my Cortex+ Heroic fantasy game who found an ox in the giant's barn, and who realised that the mysterious symbols in the dungeon hall were a map).
This thread isn't about getting clear on the D&D rules. Everyone posting in it knows that, by default, players in an AD&D game can't try to shape the fiction by declaring they search for a secret door (although Gygax does in fact author such a mechanic as part of the solo play rules in Appendix A of his DMG). The thread asks
why have such rules? That is, what is the purpose of rules which make a whole lot of action declarations depend, for their success or failure, not upon the check but upon what the GM has chosen to author about the fiction?
Going back your complaint is that the PC will fail to find a secret door because the DM determined ahead of time that there is no secret door there. From what I understand, you're saying that the player deciding that they will search for a secret door here should be possible simply because the player has decided that it's important to the fiction at that point in time. At some point the GM, or somebody, is saying "no." No? That not everything a player decides to introduce into the fiction is actually introduced? Or they can just randomly decide that they will go collect the wand that's hidden in that tree, or the hidden cache of gold in that log, or a secret door into the armory of the king. At what point does a player go beyond their narrative agency? And who decides that? Because all of this continues to sound exactly like what Eero was warning against.
[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has posted exactly the same things upthread. A lot of assumptions are built into what you both say.
I've highlighted one key phrase you have used - "randomly decide". If a player is playing his/her PC, who has an agenda and personality (of the sort that Eero Tuovinen talks about in relation to "advocacy"), then why is the player going to suddenly ignore that and do something else? If the player's agenda is for his/her PC to find a wand, or to find gold, then s/he can just say so.
In my 4e game, one player does play a PC whose goal, since 2nd level, has been to collect the Rod of Seven Parts. But the player doesn't just look behind trees. First, that would be silly, and the player is not interested in a silly game. (These are the sorts of genre considerations that [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has rightly emphasised in many posts).
Second, the player knows that it is a 4e game, and hence that "plus" items (of which the Rod is one - +1 per part, and so the only +7 item in the game) are parcelled out on a level-appropriate basis. So he knows the rules of the game don't permit a 2nd level PC to find all the parts of the Rod.
Rather, from time-to-time I make it clear, from the framing, that a part of the Rod is available to be found (here are
two examples). The stakes for the player are not
will the PC find the rod but rather
is the PC prepared to do what is necessary to restore the rod, such as - eg - helping bring down the duergar by taking their fragment of the Sceptre of Law. The ultimate question about the Rod, not yet resolved, is whether the player will choose to have his PC fully restore it, even though this is prophesied to bring on the Dusk War.
A different example - from a different campaign using a different system - has already been discussed extensively over the past several pages. One of the players in my Burning Wheel game wrote, as one of his PCs starting Beliefs, "I won't leave Hardby without an item that I might use against my balrog-possessed brother". The opening scene of that campaign had that PC at a bazaar in Hardby, with a peddler offering to sell him an angel feather. What was at stake there was
whether the angel feather would in fact be useful against a balrog. It turned out that it was cursed (narrated by me as a consequence of a failed aura-reading check), and as a result the PCs was banished from the city by Jabal, a leader of his sorcerous cabal.
A third example - again from a different campaign using a different system - involves the skinchanger trickster in my Cortex+ Fantasy game. Having deciphered the map hidden in the mysterious symbols, the PCs travelled through the dungeon to the land of the drow. There, while his companions fought a fierce battle, the trickster was able to persuade a drow NPC to take him to the treasure chamber, where he tricked her out of the drow's gold. At the beginning of the next scene - some indeterminate time later, after the trickster had been living a fine life spending his gold while the other PCs had made their way out of the dungeon - the trickster PC has a persistent d8 Bag of Gold asset, as a consequence of his victory in the previous scene.
The relevant constraint on framing and action declaration is not 'What will happen if the PCs find the wands or gold they are after?" It's about what sorts of actions the system permits the PCs to declare, and what actions they
want to declare (given the PCs they are advocating for), and then how the GM is going to frame scenes that invite those declarations, and how consequences - especially consequences of failure, but sometimes (as in the Cortex+ example) also consequences of success - are narrated and given appropriate mechanical effect.
can you start an example of how you'd start a scenario, so I (and maybe others) can respond as a character and see how this really plays out? Maybe a new thread? I participated in a thread like this for Dungeon World and it showed my how, although the mechanics were different, and how the DM adjudicated things differently, we could end up with the same results. It highlighted a few things I liked (most of which I was already doing, although didn't always recognize), and some that I didn't like in that game's design. It's not just to see how it plays out, but after each step explain to us what you're doing and how.
Here are links to four reports of first sessions:
Burning Wheel;
4e Dark Sun;
Cortex+ Heroic;
Classic Traveller.
You'll see that they all start with character gen (except the Cortex+ one, where the four players chose from 5 pre-gens and voted for a Viking setting over a Japan setting - the pre-gens had been written by me to suit either possibility); and that the start involves setting up the situation in some way that is apt to those characters. In Burning Wheel this is based on the characters' Beliefs. In Traveller this was done by integrating a world that I rolled up with the PCs the players had rolled up with a random patron roll. In Dark Sun this was done by having the players author their "kickers", which reflected their PC races, classes and themes. In Cortex+ this was done by getting the players to come up with a reason they had all gathered at the village to be sent on a mission by the village chief.
First, does "no myth" mean there is no established setting, and it's invented by the players and/or GM as the game progresses?
The easiest way to think of "no myth" in this context is as the opposite of the sort of worldbuilding described in the OP.
The Cortex+ Heroic game described above is "no myth". We know it's Vikings, but other than that everything is established in play. The players establish the reasons for their quest (weird behaviour of the Northern Lights; signs from the spirit world; the "dragon's curse"), and then I make up some geographic colour (hills and valleys to start with) before establishing a giant steading as the first interesting thing the PCs encounter.
The Traveller game is also "no myth". We know it's Traveller, ie science fiction adventure in a far future where jump drives exist but communication technology is around 1970/80s levels (the players laugh at the mass of their PCs' "communicators" and the starship computers). And so we know there is an interstellar navy, an Imperial Scout Service, and the like. The starting world is rolled up, as is the patron, and it's one of the players who suggests that the starting world is a gas giant moon. I have some other worlds pre-generated, and place them onto the (notional) star map as the logic of play demands.
The Burning Wheel game uses a map - Greyhawk - and so the broad geography is established. I start with Hardby because it allows for the hills where the mage PC lived in his tower before his brother was possessed by a balrog (player-authored PC backstory), and also for forest for the PC bandit to come from, and is not too far from Celene, which is the home of the PC elf. (I don't think it's a coincidence that the centre of Gygax's GH maps has basically all the geography one needs to support the standard range of fantasy and S&S tropes.) The players have already established, via PC build, that certain persons (eg the balrog-possessed brother) and organisations (the sorcerous cabal) exist. Within these broad parameters, it is a "no myth" game.
The Dark Sun game also uses a map - we started with the Tyr city map - and a particular take on the sword-and-planet genre tropes. One of the PCs is a Veiled Alliance member, and a preserver; and that PC and another are both eladrins, that is, people from the Land Within the Wind. One reason for using "kickers" to start this campaign was to offset the weight of all this pre-authored setting by allowing the players to set up the initial situations that get things moving for their PCs. This game still uses "no myth" techniques - eg the details of the templars, the merchant houses, the geographic minutiae of Tyr, etc are all established as needed for framing or in response to action declarations - but is less "no myth" than the other three.
As a player I'm interested in the experience. That is, when I go home I want to think back and remember the stuff that happened. I like to feel like I'm in control of my character. That I thought like them, made decisions like them, and took actions as them. I (and the other PCs) are in control of what we do, where we go, etc. within the setting that's presented by the DM. I really don't care how they do that. Published adventure, pre-authored notes, improvised, random determination, fudging rolls, whatever. It literally makes no difference to me. I don't even care if they cleverly manipulated us. If the story of the characters is interesting and we felt like we were acting as our characters, then we're happy.
I get the sense that you, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and many others feel the opposite. That the how the GM does all this matters as much, if not more, as the results themselves. That if the GM somehow made a decision that actually turns your "control" into an illusion, that it ruins your experience. I think that's reasonable, but I really don't get it. Why would that be important?
I am currently a player in a Burning Wheel game. My number one priority is inhabitation of my PC.
I want to play my character.
Here are some key elements of my PC:
Beliefs
The Lord of Battle will lead me to glory
I am a Knight of the Iron Tower: by devotion and example I will lead the righteous to glorious victory
Harm and infamy will befall Auxol no more!
Aramina will need my protection
Instincts
When entering battle, always speak a prayer to the Lord of Battle
If an innocent is threatened, interpose myself
When camping, always ensure that the campfire is burning
Character Traits
Disciplined
Fanatical Devotion
Relationships
Xanthippe (Mother, on family estate)
Aramina (sorceress companion)
Reputations & Affiliations
+1D aff von Pfizer family
+1D aff Order of the Iron Tower
+1D aff nobility
+1D rep last Knight of the Iron Tower
+1D rep infamous among demons - intransigent demon foe
(That last reputation was earned in play rather than part of original PC build, after my PC stood in battle for several rounds against a demon before it was called back to the hells.)
My PC's skills include a bunch of knightly stuff (sword fighting, armour and shield training, riding, command, etiquette, etc) plus religious training, plus cooking.
The sum total of this means that I am not remotely interested in [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s intersections. There is nothing in any of that that speaks about architecture. Spending time on intersections would not let me inhabit my PC; it would be a distraction from it. I want the GM to put me into situations which make me think about my family, about my order, about my god, about Aramina. About cooking and campfires. These are situations that will let me play my character.
) who is interested in fine wines and with an agenda to get drunk on fine wine in every town he comes to. Without telling the DM any of that, I can seek out taverns in every town, looking for fine wine. My dour personality will become apparent in my interaction with the NPCs and other PCs. If a tavern doesn't have fine wine, I can grumpily exit and seek out a place that sells fine wine, showing that it's important to my PC that the wine he drinks be fine.
