Woah. This, right here, is the crux of this whole thread.
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You have given me much food for thought.
I'm always happy to have done that! Especially with a post with such a high quotient of throw-away snark!
I think narration rights are what most of us are really discussing in this thread when we talk about the 15-minute work day. The DM wants to narrate the story one way, the players want to narrate the story differently, and sometimes the two are in conflict.
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In an earlier post, I mentioned that the DM provides the plot and the setting, the players provide the characters and action, and both work together to write the story...but I didn't think of it in terms of "narration rights." I think you hit the nail on the head...sometimes there is a struggle over who gets to tell the story, and/or whether the story is being told to their liking. This can't really be mandated or regulated in rules; it is something that must evolve over time, and depends heavily on the preferred style of play and the DM/Player relationship.
I know that referring to The Forge is a bit tendentious on these boards, but I think it's hard to over-emphasise how significant some of the work done by The Forge has been in tackling this issue. (It's where I learned about it. Games like Burning Wheel and Maelstrom Storytelling tackle it in a pracitcal sense, but I don't think I could have understood those games - or 4e skill challenges, for that matter - without having read threads and essays at The Forge.) One way of understanding the whole Forge approach to RPG theory and design is to invent rules and methods of play in which these conflicts over narrative rights don't occur,
but nobody is being railroaded.
Of course you're right that, to some extent, it depends upon player-GM trust - the "social contract". But that's equally true of all mechanics and mechanical resolution (players not cheating die rolls, GMs not adding extra hp to their monsters part way through the encounter, etc).
I can't pretend to be an expert in all, or even many, of the techniques that can solve the problem. But I think that solving the problem is helped by being clear on some distinctions. Following
Ron Edwards' long post (reply 10) in this thread, I think it can be helpful to distinguish Background from Situation/Scene from Plot from (what Edwards calls) Narration.
Background is what it sounds like. In traditional D&D the GM controls it. Players can generally introduce bits and pieces of background - what their mother's name was, for instance - but often the GM has an overall veto over this stuff, in the interests of preserving consistency of the shared fiction. A wishlist is, in a way, a player introducing new Background - "There's a Shield of Whinging Screaminess out there somewhere with my name on it!". My own view is that there is one big plus to players introducing background - it increases their buy in and engagement - and one big potential minus - if they can establish all the circumstances surrounding their PCs, then they might be tempted to write in a background that makes their PCs' lives easier, given that their job is to "inhabit" and advocate for those PCs. But that would make for a boring game. (
This blog talks about this issue.)
The wishlist issue shows both the plus and the minus at work. Plus: players get items they want that suit their PCs. Minus: players might ask for stuff that is overpowerd.
4e solves this problem by permitting the wishlist, but relying upon the GM to use the scenario-building tools (encounter-building guidelines that regulate the award of XP which in turn determine the PCs' level, and treasure placement guidelines that establish the pacing of treasure acquisition relative to level gain).
But this leads to the issue of Situation/Scene. 4e's tools only work if the GM has the authority to establish situations/frame scenes. If the players can choose their own encounters, then the guidelines for GMs become pointless (and players can't be relied upon to apply the guidelines to themselves - even if they know this might make the game more fun, they have a contary incentive to make life easy and rewarding for their PCs). This is why 4e takes out spells and abilities that undermine GM control over scene-framing (eg no teleport, no insta-charm, no insta-diplomacy, no SoD on the PC side, etc).
The advantage of GM-controlled scene-framing is that the players don't have to worry about the conflict of interest between a fun game (which requires adversity for their PCs) and a cushy life for their PCs (which, when playing their PCs, they should rationally want). The disadvantage is that, if the GM frames crappy scenes that the players don't want their PCs to be in, then the game sucks for everyone. (I personally think 4e has lots of tools to help avoid this problem, at least for those who like a certain sort of mythic fantasy. But that's another topic.)
So in 4e the problem with the adventuring day - if there is one - isn't that the GM can't stop the PCs from resting - generally s/he can, because it is hard for the players to control or avoid or change adversity that the GM throws at them (not much Rope Trick, Teleport, Stone Shape etc). It's more that, if the GM frames a combat scene when the PCs/players are low on resources, then the scene may suck - in that the PCs can't do anything meaningful and have to surrender, or get TPKed, etc. (I'm not saying it definitely will suck. I've TPKed my party - by accident, not design - and it turned out not to suck at all. But I wouldn't want to do it very often, because the trick I used to make it not suck - a capture/escape scene as the next scene following the TPK - could get old pretty quickly.)
In AD&D, and I think 3E, the problem of the adventuring day is probably similar at low levels, but at high levels - once PCs get abilities like teleport, 8 hr Rope Trick, etc - the playes get a high degree of control over scene framing, and then they get to set the pace. And because they have an incentive to make life easy for their PCs (because they're meant to be roleplaying them as sensible people, at least in the typical case), they rest when they can. And now the problem is that the game becomes boring.
The suggested solution of wandering monsters looks to me like a technique for the GM to retake control of scene framing ("Hey, guys, here come some bulettes - what do you do?"). But whether that is good scene framing, or "I'm boring everyone to death with these endless encounters with bulettes" scene framing, will depend a lot on what sort of game everyone is looking for. Those might be good encounters in a certain sort of operational game, for example, but might be tedious encounters that spoil the game in a more heroic game.
Plot is something different again - it's about how scenes resolve - what happens, the big reveal. I prefer to let this emerge out of play - once the scene is framed, the action resolution mechanics are used to work out what happens. [MENTION=9037]Elf Witch[/MENTION]'s comment upthread, that she would hesitate before using the action resolution mechanics to Sunder a PC's uber-item that the
player saved for 2 years to enchant, shows a different approach to Plot. She is stipulating a key part of the plot - "your weapon won't get sundered" - without reference to the relevant action resolution mechanics. (To an extent this is a matter of degree - for example, by playing the monsters in an encounter I can shape the plot quite a bit - eg do or don't we play "stacks on the wizard". But there are no action resolution mechanics for "aggro" in 4e, so I'm not actually ignoring mechanics. One reason 4e drops mechanics like Sunder is precisely so the GM can choose to go hard without having to worry that the outcomes will suck. The 4e mechanics, in my view, create a bigger space in which the GM can let go of concern for plot, and focus more on framing the situation and then pushing the scene hard to see how the players, via their PCs, respond. Of course, there is a trade off - you will never get a story where a PC's beautiful sword was cut in two by a giant - whether the trade off is a problem or not is a matter of individual taste, I think.)
In the context of this thread, an example of the GM exercising strong authority over plot would be the PCs going to rest in a scene, and the GM just telling the players that the PCs wake up some time later but haven't recovered their resources. The GM is just stipulating an outcome without framing a relevant scene and letting the PCs engage the action resolution mechanics. (Sometimes this is OK - eg long distance travel is often handled like this. But it's probably not a good way to handle resting.)
Finally, there is what Edwards calls Narration. By this he means filling in the details of the action resolution - for example, who moved where exactly, and how, and what did it look like. (So this is different from the narration rights I talked about upthread, which are more like authority over situation and/or plot). I don't think that this, on its own, is such a big source of conflict at many tables, but it can sometimes cause confusion (eg I thought your PC was walking on his hands, and so fell head-first down the pit, when in fact he was walking on his feat and so feel feet-first, an important difference).
Sorry, that's a long post.
that it is in the DMG as a "suggestion"? That it rather interesting as that is never how I have ever read it portrayed anywhere. It's spoken of as a given...a "gimme given"...and that just irks me.
