This statement actually seems to confirm my belief that you believe there is this rigid, "proper" way to prep in order to infus ones games with protagonism. On the other hand I don't believe that there is one true way to prep said games but am concerned only with whether the result is
I haven't said much at all about how to prepare a protagonistic game. I did say, in post 159, that in protagonistic play "the GM's pre-play notes
do not serve the function of establishing the principal parameters for framing or for action resolution." Which is true.
Prep in AW or DW mostly consists of preparing fronts. (I say this based on reading the respective rulebooks.) Prep in Burning Wheel mostly consists of "burning" NPCs and/or monsters. (I say this based on both reading the rulebooks and having GMed the system.) In AW, DW and BW, the principal parameters for framing emerge out of previous moments of resolution, not out of the GM's pre-play notes. In AW and DW the parameters for action resolution following from that framing plus the framework of the various moves; in BW they follow from that framing plus the intent and task declared by the player in declaring the action.
Map-and-key prep of the D&D sort has no role to play in either system. Of the 7 sorts of prep that you mentioned as typical for your D&D prep, the following three do not figure in prep for AW, DW or BW:
2. Suggestions for what the result may be for certain decisions or actions the players/PC's may or may not make during gameplay.
3. Includes maps for geography and/or structures I expect the players/PC's to encounter and interact with.
6. Various tables for random generation of things such as neighborhoods in a city, weather during travel, random encounters, etc. Depending on what direction I expect the game session to go in.
And the following works quite differently from how it works in typical D&D prep:
1. General facts about people places and things the players may or may not encounter.
In standard D&D prep, those general facts are treated as constraints upon action resolution, whether that be in determining the success of a search for a secret way into the temple, or determining whether there is a guard atop the wall where the PC is trying to hide, or whether there is coin in the chest that the PC searches. The GM may be at liberty to "change" these general facts at the time of play, but that is a unilateral permission.
In AW, DW and BW - as I have stated - GM prep notes do not play a role in framing the outcomes of action resolution.
I disagree with all of this. If the player and DM are transparent with one another and communicate well outside of the game a player can have goals & needs that are addressed in game without having to author much, If any, of what you claim above.
A player might prefer to fully create the assasin who killed their clan one fateful night leaving them the last of their bloodline with a burning need for vengeamce...or they could just state their clan was assassinated and they seek revenge on the murderer as backstory and goals while leaving it up to the DM to create it all.
From your second paragraph, it follows that the shared fiction contains a central NPC - the assassin - and a central past event - the murder of the PC's clan members. This is an example of what I said upthread in post 163: the player has exercised "a significant degree of authorship responsibility in respect of key NPCs, places and events in the shared fiction."
Is there a specific statement of this as a rule in 4e? Mainly that the DM can not override, introduce hidden fiction that affects or alter the outcome of a skill challenge?
From the 4e D&D PHB, p 179:
In contrast to an obstacle that requires one successful skill check, a skill challenge is a complex situation in which you must make several successful checks, often using a variety of skills, before you can claim success in the encounter. . . .
Whatever the details of a skill challenge, the basic structure of a skill challenge is straightforward. Your goal is to accumulate a specific number of victories (usually in the form of successful skill checks) before you get too many defeats (failed checks).
From the 4e D&D DMG, pp 72, 74 76:
An audience with the duke, a mysterious set of sigils in a hidden chamber, finding your way through the Forest of Neverlight - all of these present challenges that test both the characters and the people who play them. The difference between a combat challenge and a skill challenge isn’t the presence or absence of physical risk, nor the presence or absence of attack rolls and damage rolls and power use. The difference is in how the encounter treats PC actions. . . .
Define the goal of the challenge and what obstacles the characters face to accomplish that goal. . . .
Level and complexity determine how hard the challenge is for your characters to overcome. The skill challenge’s level determines the DC of the skill checks involved, while the grade of complexity determines how many successes the characters need to overcome the challenge, and how many failures end the challenge. . . .
What happens if the characters successfully complete the challenge? What happens if they fail?
When the skill challenge ends, reward the characters for their success (with challenge-specific rewards, as well as experience points) or assess penalties for their failure. . . .
Begin by describing the situation and defining the challenge. Running the challenge itself is not all that different from running a combat encounter . . . You describe the environment, listen to the players’ responses, let them make their skill checks, and narrate the results.
When the characters overcome a skill challenge, they earn the same rewards as when they slay monsters in combat - experience and perhaps treasure. The consequences of total defeat are often obvious: no XP and no treasure.
Success or failure in a skill challenge also influences the course of the adventure - the characters locate the temple and begin infiltrating it, or they get lost and must seek help. In either case, however, the adventure continues. With success, this is no problem, but don’t fall into the trap of making progress dependent on success in a skill challenge. Failure introduces complications rather than ending the adventure.
This is all pretty clear, as clear now as it was a decade ago: a skill challenge is the resolution of a particular challenge/situation that arises in the fiction; the players (and their PCs) succeed or fail based on their checks made within a "clock" framework of successes-before-failures; and the success or failure is just that: either the players (and PCs) achieve their goal within the situation, or they do not.
As has been extensively discussed in many threads over the years, a number of which I would imagine you have participated in, the challenge in GMing a skill challenge is narrating movement towards overall success with each individual skill checks (this is essential or else a final overall success will not make sense within the fiction) while leaving open the fictional "space" for narrating both individual failures (if subsequent successes do not succeed) and overall failure (if the "clock" reaches an overall failure state rather than an overall success state). This is a context where pre-play prep may play a role, as notes of possible consequences and complications can help with managing this task. A key difference between the role of notes used in this way, and notes used in a map-and-key style, is that the notes do not serve as any sort of constraint or, or determiner of, the success of action declaration. That is determined via the die roll. Rather, they are a type of "aide memoire" for managing the fiction that emerges on the way through the challenge - the
narration of results referred to on p 74 of the DMG.
You are laying out a method/preference but not the only method/preference for achieving protagonism in play.
I am talking about the methods used - including the role of GM prep notes - in the games that I am familiar with, and in the case of BW and 4e have experience with, that support protagonistic RPGing.
I haven't said much about Prince Valiant yet in this thread, but I'm happy to do so: the short version is that pre-prep notes in Prince Valiant consist of establishing a single situation that will (1) engage the players who are, by default, playing knights errant, and (2) has a trope-ish NPC or creature as its core antagonist. There is no use of map-and-key in resolution, and no general apparatus of notes concerning geography, architecture etc that is typical of D&D play. We could also talk about Cortex+ Heroic/MHRP, which like Prince Valiant eschews map-and-key completely, and which deals with some of the challenges of skill challenge-type narration by using the Scene Distinction device (and hence does not benefit in the same way from pre-play prep of aides memoire) but poses its own GMing challenges in managing the Doom Pool.
If someone else wants to talk about other ways they are doing protagonistic play they should by all means do so. But in the context of this thread actual play examples are going to be far more interesting and relevant than abstract speculation.
