The game is about the characters, the setting is merely a frame to place their goals and drives into context.
<snip>
if you pre-author an uncrossable canyon in the middle of the desert, or that the all the waterholes have been fouled by a Dark Elf so that the characters have to turn back, you as a DM have just c***blocked your players out of their protagonism. You made their statement of intent to cross the desert NOT MATTER, because it was more important to you as a DM to make your world have a canyon in it, or to illustrate that the dark elf is a cunning tactician who's also totally gross.
No one is saying that campaign world detail isn't a worthy goal for many styles of play, or the players and DMs who enjoy them. But for a game focused on narrative play, all it does it create hassle that's in opposition to the heart of the play style.
That Dark Elf that pemerton was pondering outside of play? That could have come in many shapes or forms. The play wasn't about the Dark Elf. He became a part of the setting mosaic when he was introduced into the fiction, yes, but it wasn't about him. Play turns on the Situation (a) challenging a Belief (or multiples) and (b) forcing the players to address the What (do I want out of this Situation) and How (am I going to resolve it). The Dark Elf is just the means for pemerton to facilitate that proper GMing (which isn't his bias). It isn't a story about his Dark Elf. It is a story about his players' Beliefs being tested in the crucible of high/dark fantasy conflict (over and over and over) and seeing what shakes out of it (character progression/evolution and story emergence). In this case, the introduction of the Dark Elf complication was just another system-coherent (and genre-coherent) means of doing that.
I agree with both these posts. If you want the focus of the game to be on exploring the setting, then pre-authoring makes sense. So does adjudicating action resolution by reference to secret backstory.
But if the focus of the game is meant to be on the protagonism of the PCs (and their players), establishing and pursuing their dramatic needs, then pre-authored fiction can become a stumbling block - a
hassle, as TwoSix puts it. The point of setting, in that sort of play, is to serve as a backdrop and context within which the character's dramas unfold.
Of course a given GM might use a bit of one and a bit of the other. I've already explained that I use pre-authored geography in my BW game, and pre-authored cosmology in my 4e game. But this pre-authored material isn't secret. And nor is it the main subject-matter of the PCs' dramatic needs.
Start with the Protagonist. Each player is their own protagonist, and this is, as you said, a character who is going to take up the Dramatic Need. However, at the start of the story, the Protagonist doesn't really have much of a Dramatic Need. Their life is going on basically okay, until you...
Add the Antagonist. This is the character(s) that provide the Dramatic Need - something the Antagonist is doing changes the world in a way that creates a Dramatic Need the Protagonist takes up.
I submit that this is actually how much heroic fiction is structured.
<snip>
With my construction, how pre-authoring and scenario design fit in becomes obvious - it is providing a series of large and small scale dramatic needs.
Now, again, the GM needs to have pretty solid grasp of the characters to provide such a series, or conversely, the player needs to be not terribly picky about what will provide a satisfying need.
I think this approach poses some challenges for RPGing. Which you recognise in the last sentence that I've quoted, I think, but which I want to explore a bit more.
In the approach to RPGing that [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION], upthread, called "mainstream", the second disjunct of the final quoted sentence comes into play. The GM - via the authoring of the backstory, the BBEG, etc - provides a menu (perhaps a very short menu) of possible dramatic needs, and the players (via their PCs) are expected, as part of the social contract of play, to engage with an item on that menu. I think this is the sort of approach that [MENTION=27570]sheadunne[/MENTION] has called "pinballing", because of - in his case - the lack of connection he as a player feels to the stuff that, in the fiction, his PC is meant to be engaged with and caring about.
What about the first disjunct? I'm not sure that the GM's solid grasp of the characters is enough, because - as per your Luke Skywalker example - the character may not be fully "given" or fully revealed when play begins. No matter how well the GM knows that Luke Skywalker's dramatic need is
to get off this podunk backwater desert planet, that is not going to tell the GM that Luke's future dramatic need will be
to become a Jedi like my father. So where does that change in need come from? Someone will have to deliberately choose it.
In the context of a film or novel, it is the (sole) author who makes that choice. But in the context of an RPG, who makes the choice? If the GM makes such a profound choice for a PC, that seems to interfere with the player's prerogative to play his/her PC. Suppose, then, that the player makes the choice. What happens then? If, in the campaign world, it is already established that Luke can't become a Jedi - that there is no in-fiction possible pathway that takes Luke from his present situation to the state of being a Jedi - then in a sense the story is over before it has begun. I think part of the motivation behind the RPG designers who gave us games that are very self-conscious about "fail forward", scene-framing and the like is to come up with techniques that avoid this sort of impasse. At a certain point during the campaign, the player signals (via whaterver formal or informal method is appropriate to the table and the system) that his/her PC has a new goal, and the GM - in accordance with the basic GMing principles of the system - is obliged to frame the PC into situations which will put that goal under the spotlight and the PC's mettle to the test.
It's always a bit invidious to rewrite an established piece of fiction as an RPG, but here's one way I could see Luke evolving in a BW version of Star Wars:
The player creates the PC. He has some lifepath and/or trait that indicates that he is an orphan/adoptee. His Beliefs include "I must get off this backwater planet" and "I will pursue my true heritage". Perhaps the third one is "I will do a good job on the moisture farm" - this engages him tightly into the opening situation, and provides fodder for conflicting Beliefs down the way.
The GM engages Beliefs 1 and 3 by framing Luke into the droid acquisition and cleaning situation. Luke wants to do a good job on the farm, by buying good droids and getting them cleaned up and working well. But the mysterious message from R2D2 is not only an obstacle to this - because it impedes R2D2's work - but also seems to offer a way off the planet.
Luke's player then tests Hermit-wise or Desert-wise or some similar appropriate skill to establish that Luke knows of a Ben Kenobi who lives not too far away. The actual check to get to Ben (Navigation, Survival, Driving/Piloting or whatever else seemed appropriate) fails, though, and instead Luke is caught by the Sand People. The GM plays the failure fairly soft, though: Luke is knocked unconscious and rescued by Ben Kenobi, so he gets what he wants - he finds the hermit - but he is at a disadvantage, not having the upper hand in the social encounter and also having lost some time, which then gives the GM licence to advance the timeline in other respects (eg have Stormtroopers come to the farm and shoot Luke's uncle and aunt).
The GM then decides that Ben tells Luke of his heritage, and presents him with his father's light sabre. This presents Luke's player with the choice of accepting Ben's version of events, and pursuing the Jedi path as his heritage; or contesting that - maybe Ben is lying, or mistaken, or confused about Luke's identity (as with the Black Arrows in my BW game, the ultimate in-fiction truth is not pre-authored). In the game that follows the movie, the player accepts what Ben has to say, and starts to pursue this newly-revealed heritage.
Much later on in the story, though, Luke confronts Vader, whom - to date - he has believed is the killer of his Jedi father. Having Vader declare "I am your father" must be the result of a failed check - it is moving the fiction in a direction that Luke (and Luke's player) did not want. Thinking about how that scene in The Empire Strikes Back might occur within the system framework of Burning Wheel, it looks like some sort of social/negotiation contest: having won the physical conflict, Vader is trying to persuade Luke to join with him and overthrow the Emperor, and Luke's player declares some sort of resistance or rebuttal action - "You killed him [and hence I can't join with you]" - and fails. If Luke's player had succeeded, the story would have moved in a different direction.
Not entirely on point for Luke's personal development, but also helpful to think about in imagining Star Wars as an RPG (and relevant to pre-authorship of geography): that Alderaan has been destroyed would be another instance of failing forward - the PCs arrive at the right interstellar coordinates, but the planet they were hoping to arrive at has been destroyed.
