I've told [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that several times, but he continues to ignore it in favor of his biased opinion of my playstyle. I know that there are differences in the playstyles, but those differences are as many or as great as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] wants them to be.
What counts as effective difference obviously is relative to things that matter to people.
It's not about "wanting" there to be differences. It's that, on the measures I care about, there are fundamental differences.
I get that you don't care about the same things I do. Hence you don't notice, or care about, the differences that matter to me. Pointing out this thing about
you isn't going to change anything about
me, though!
Yes, because the DM told him stuff. Then he does something else, and the DM tells him stuff. Players using their agency in order to get me to respond by telling them stuff happens in my game, too.
In the actual bit of gameplay I described, the game begins with the player confronted with a situation that puts his PC's belief to the test: is this feather the thing you want? what will you do, and risk, to get it?
In the hypothetical bit of gameplay you have described, the game begins with the player confronted with a situation that requires him to learn stuff from the GM, and make logisitical and tactical choices to try and have the chance to actually put his PC's belief to the test.
That's the difference that matters to me.
I think the key difference is it was the PLAYER who started this process, by describing his goal, to rescue his brother from a demon. The GM then reacted to that by INVENTING the bazaar and the angel feather
Correct.
The players start processes in my game as well
But by your own account, they do not generate or shape the content of the shared fiction. When the PC's goal is to find an item, you don't start with a situation involving the question -
is this the item I'm seeking - which is a fiction that has been read straight off the player-authored goal. You start with a GM-authored description of a place with libraries and oracles and sages and the like, and the players start working there way through this GM-established fiction.
Based on their goals and actions, just like in your game. Only the motivation is really different. They aren't exploring character the same way you are.
Nor are they exercising the same sort of agency over the content of the shared fiction, as the GM is not authoring the framing components of the shared fiction
so as to speak directly to the player's evinced conception of the character.
its true that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] probably started the action in Hardby for whatever reason, but again we don't know really the details of how these decisions were made. In effect Hardby is just a name of a town that comes with some regional geography attached. Even this choice must ultimately be made with the player's agenda in mind. Maybe they established WoG as an overall setting beforehand and created character backstory with that in mind, or maybe Pemerton just whipped out a map he happened to have in his bag. I think he did mention that Hardby was selected based on some general criteria as an interesting place to start an adventure. I would say these COULD be GM driven choices, within certain bounds, but they seem to play a fairly limited part in the end result, being color in essence.
Hardby is colour.
The player had already circulated a picture of the tower where his PC had been an apprentice wizard studying with his brother (pre-possession). From memory, the photograph in question is of an Indian castle. The landscape is moderately arid. In GH terms, this suggests the Abor-Alz.
The wizard PC is called Jobe the Blue, and is meant to evoke Alatar of the Istari, who travelled to the East of Middle Earth. This suggests a town which is more like Zamora in Tower of the Elephant, or Hort Town in The Farthest Shore.
Plus there needs to be a forest nearby for another PC to come from, and Celene not too far away for the Elf PC to come from.
When yu look at the GH map and keep the above three paragraphs in mind, Hardby stands out. But as you say it's just colour - a name to be given to the place where events unfold.
in Pemerton's game, where NO MATTER WHAT the player's agenda, it will become a focus of play. I guess there could be the usual sorts of limitations here based on the concurrence of the rest of the table with whatever the player is wanting. There will perhaps also sometimes be a question between player agendas and needs as to exactly how an adventuring party can be constructed from the result, or if it can. I recall this was an ongoing theme of Pemerton's long-running 4e campaign, where several characters had almost diametrically opposed interests at certain points.
Conflict between PC goals, to a greater or lesser extent, is a recurrent element in my RPGing. Apart from its inherent interest (think eg LotR, where the fellowship needs to go to Mordor but Aragorn's main desire is to go to Gondor) it's an effective way to generate meaningful choices and a bit of drama at the table.