Players choose what their PCs do . . .

pemerton said:

Well, this goes back to the quote from Donald Davidson in the OP:

If the PC winks at the maiden and softens her heart the PC hasn't done two things (wink, and as a separate thing soften her heart) - that way lies madness because it will quickly lead to near-endless multiplication of the number of events that have occurred (eg you'll have each movement of an eyelash through each point of space as a separate and distinct thing that the PC did).

There is one action but it falls under more than one description. In the context of playing a RPG, which involves generating shared agreement on the descriptions that are true in the fiction, I think the question of who gets to establish which descriptions is quite interesting. And I think that saying the player gets to decide what the PC does isn't a useful way of answering the question.

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Eh, no. That's not the same thing at all. This is not the case where the winker is committing several micro-actions that are all connected to form one single larger action. He is engaging in the action of winking. And then after that action(and all of its micro-actions) concludes, there is the result of that action, the softening of her heart. The act of winking concludes before there is a softening of the heart.

In a game, I don't get to declare that I am going to pull out my sword, threaten the prince, have him concede half of his lands to me, go farm those lands, harvest the crops, and then sell them all as a single action.

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aramis erak said:

The premise statement is a longstanding falsehood, all too often unchallenged.

Players decide what their character attempts, not what they do.

GM's decide what the PC's do, based upon the stated attempt, the rules, and their common sense, and sometimes, their story sense.

Players may or may not be deciding how their PC's feel; many systems allow forced emotional states, which only works when players agree to those stakes, but can be fun for some.

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That is, indeed, one way it happens, and one of the ways [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] noted in his OP. There are other ways, though, like the other one in the OP, that you've dismissed as a falsehood. Given that it exists in a number of games, and can exist in even more, you should reconsider whether or not you've grasped the intent of the OP and whether or not you're the one engaged in a falsehood.

As [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] noted, Burning Wheel's core loop is opposing truth statements about the world, on the player's the other the GM's, which the dice then decide which occurs. If the GM wins, the GM get to both narrate their outcome AND any actions the PC takes to realize that outcome. If the player wins, they get to do the same. This fundamentally disagrees with your universal assertion. "There are other ways than these," to paraphrase.

I like Blades in the Dark, which does a similar thing. The player nominates both the action and the outcome -- what they want to happen and how they're doing it. The GM then sets the risk of that action (how bad will the consequences of a failure be) and the effect of that action (how much will it go towards achieving the player's goal). There's a negotiation that can occur, here, and the player has a number of PC resources to bring to bear to improve odds, but, when the dice fly, a success means the player gets their goal or gains ground towards it. On a failure, the GM uses the risk setting to level consequences. There's also a more likely middle ground where the player partially succeeds and the GM gets to level a partial complication. Many games that feature the player having the ability to set both the action and what a success looks like have partial success mechanics.

So, the intent of the OP, if I divine it correctly, is to get people to step back and think about which method they use, which they might prefer, and why that may be so. I know that doing so helped me better understand what it is both I and my players get out of games, and has made me more successful at GMing in either style (because I don't fight the system, which is a primary cause of system frustration for people). I, until rather recently, thought as you did. Turns out I was wrong. Not that play is wrong, but that it's the only way play occurs. It's hard to grasp games that place the authorities in different places if you've come from a D&D only background. It's a different way of thinking about games entirely -- which may or may not appeal to you and that's just fine.

Maxperson said:

Eh, no. That's not the same thing at all. This is not the case where the winker is committing several micro-actions that are all connected to form one single larger action. He is engaging in the action of winking. And then after that action(and all of its micro-actions) concludes, there is the result of that action, the softening of her heart. The act of winking concludes before there is a softening of the heart.

In a game, I don't get to declare that I am going to pull out my sword, threaten the prince, have him concede half of his lands to me, go farm those lands, harvest the crops, and then sell them all as a single action.

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Is there, maybe, a middle ground between 'I pull my sword" and the entirely of what you posit? Could, maybe, discussion happen about things in that middle ground? In other words, no, you can't do the bottom in any game, but that's because you're not engaging the fiction of the scene or the genre of the game and are, in fact, being a jerk. Can we please dispense with the "but if a jerk does it" arguments?

Stating the result of your action isn't the same as assuming success. That's why games have resolution mechanics. In your above, it fails because there are multiple goals. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s example doesn't fail because it's a single goal -- soften the heart of the maiden. The action is to wink. The difference between what you're trying to say and what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is saying is that, in your preference, the player can state their goal as information to the GM, but the GM will decide both what a success and what a failure will look like. The other way to do it is to take the player's goal as the only success option. In other word, if a success is rolled, then the GM's job is to narrate how they player's goal comes to be given the player's actions. The GM doesn't get to decide what success looks like.

That said, actions and goals need to be rooted in the fiction of the moment. Your example runs off into future goals that aren't established as at stake in the current scene. This is a player violation of the game construct, and is just bad play, not a problem with the player getting to say what success is.

Maxperson said:

In a game, I don't get to declare that I am going to pull out my sword, threaten the prince, have him concede half of his lands to me, go farm those lands, harvest the crops, and then sell them all as a single action.

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That sounds like it may be several actions eg that are separate in time and space.

But (eg) threatening the prince and having him concede lands sounds like a single action, again perhaps falling under multiple descriptions.

Whether or not one can do some or all of these things via a single episode of resolution in the play of a RPG would depend on the system.

Wightbred said:

I recommend Vincent Baker’s Anyway blog as a great place to read interesting ideas on games as conversations and authorship

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Yes, I'm a big fan of Anyway - although in my experience it's not very popular among ENworld posters.

You'll recognise my example of the safe in the OP as coming from Baker's blog. Though I think framing the matter in terms of who gets to make what descriptions true may be more helpful than framing it in terms of task resolution vs conflict resolution.

Ovinomancer said:

Yes? How does this advance a discussion about the differences in play who chooses makes?

A good example of a game that can go either way, look to 4e, which has a split personality depending on which method of outcome resolution you choose. So, no, it's not always about the game you've chosen -- there are opportunities in a number of games to let choice of outcome drift. I let this drift in my 5e games, where I, as GM, try to let the players choose outcomes more often than not.

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Yea, I agree, assigning the method to individual systems isn't really correct. Except for a few modern games, most game designers probably haven't even considered the question.

I don't even think it's uniquely the GM's purview as to what method is used (although they hold considerable sway, and will end up as the final arbiter if they decide to be). Even as a player, you have the opportunity to frame your declarations in terms of physical actions or in terms of overall intent. I know my personal play has improved when I switched to always stating my actions in terms of overall intent, as it leads to less confusion between myself and the DM as to where the play is leading. Ideally, you can steer the situation so that any resolution check can help you achieve the stated goal, but the question as to the extent of the resolution mechanics will still be primarily driven by the DM and the system. For most of the DMs I know, I can tell them that I'm looking in a safe to find the secret documents, but they probably aren't going to add them into the safe even if I succeed.

Ovinomancer said:

I like Blades in the Dark, which does a similar thing.

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I don't know BitD beyond what I read about it.

I've played a bit of DW and am slowly working my way through a close reading of AW preparatory, I hope, to playing it - it actually feels more compelling to me than DW, though some of that may be the visceral Vincent Baker prose!

In BitD does a failure permit the GM to narrate a PC's action at the "micro-"/thin level (eg you failed to wink)? My sense of AW is that the answer to that question is assumed to be no - that when the GM makes a move, even a hard/direct move, it draws on prep to establish stuff beyond the intentional bodily motions of the PC. Though (as in BW) it can extend to the PC's gear.

Which sends me off on a whole other tangent - in what ways is gear able to be brought under descriptions of actions, and by whom? I have a soft spot for the way that AW and BW encourage the GM to use effects to gear as part of their narration of failure; and BW's approach to this infuenced my GMing of 4e and similarly (but probably more cautiously, given how gear is part of PC build in 4e) making effects to gear part of my narration of failure.

(A variant of this is the Old School Primer's "Rule of the Ming Vase" - that is, the GM including threats or actual damage to valuable objects in the vicinity as part of the descriptions of PC actions.)

Wightbred said:

I totally agree. The Czege Principle ("When one person is the author of both the character's adversity and its resolution, play isn't fun.") means that the authoring of scene framing, adversity, action and result need to be shared around to keep the game fun.

A GM could set the scene - but not always. There are games like Hillfolk where anyone can set a scene, and games like Wrath and Glory and D&D 5e where spending points can add things to scenes.

A GM could choose the adversity - but not always. There are games where other players can add adversity to rolls such as Danger Patrol.

A non-GM player could choose the action a character makes - but not always. There are situations in D&D where a DM might say ‘your character can’t do that because they are charmed’.

A GM could choose the result - but not always. There are games where you roll to see who narrates the outcome, like John Wick’s Blood and Honor, where a player can win and choose to narrate their character failing.

in addition, any GM might rule that winking to impress someone is irrelevant and so allow it, or is important and require a resolution irrespective of the rules of the game. This is down to factors like the preference of the table, how late in the night it is, etc.

Since playing PbtA and Blades games I have become enamoured with the way these games cleverly move authorship around, and we have ported this concept successfully into the way we play more ‘commercial’ games. I recommend Vincent Baker’s Anyway blog as a great place to read interesting ideas on games as conversations and authorship - although my simple summary is not doing it justice.

We are living in a golden age of RPGs, where there are options to support many styles of play. Have fun with yours!

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XP for the username.

pemerton said:

I don't quite get this.

The player decides I wink at the maiden. Who gets to decide whether it's also true that I soften the heart of the maiden with a wink? They're too different descriptions of the one action, so framing things in terms of difficulty doesn't seem to help.

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I know the poster of this already replied, but I want to reply how this means to me.

Amount of uncertainty that can be dictated is the limit of player narrative control.

"I wink at the maiden" has a very low uncertainty. Unless you've been paralyzed without knowledge, this is very likely true. "I wink at the maiden attempting to melt her heart is the same" - low uncertainty, just providing more contact so others interpret correctly.

Melting their heart though may have a lot of unknowns. She's a recent widow, she's in a true love relationship, she secret hates something about the PC, etc.

"I drink everyone else under the table" - an established hard drinking dwarf at a table of halflings could probably make this statement in any game because it has low uncertainty. In some games it would be fine all the time. Other time, like when said by the 8 CON wizard, saying it requires the players to have a strong amount of authorial control, and others may dislike it if there isn't a narrative reason supporting it.

"I open the safe and find X" - again, needs very strong authorial power on behalf of the player. Some games have this as assumptions for the game. Others don't. (Even if silent in the rules, there's usually an assumption one way or the other.) It's few that either allow both natively, and if they do it's usually that there is some sort of limited narrative currency that needs be spent, like in FATE.