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The idea that's it silly if a player establishes it, but perfectly reasonable if the GM establishes it, is to me a manifestation of an assumption that play should be predominantly GM-driven. I don't remember. I don't think it came up. As best I recall, once the PCs had established their bearings...

I'm not calling you a hypocrite. I'm just expressing some incredulity at the apparent gap between what you say you prefer, and the RPG you actually play. Especially because you keep calling me a hater of simulationism etc; yet it seems to me that I do more simulationist RPGing than you do!

How is it demeaning to point out that Battletech can't easily be played as a narrativist RPG? It's a bare statement of fact. And I don't even know where this comes from.

As in "fit for purpose". The character must be able to meaningfully engage in the conflict that is arising across a moral line. Just as in other fiction, so in RPGing I think there's a lot of scope here. Characters who are fit for irony, for instance, may be different from characters who are...

I'm telling you what actual goal he had, in the actual play of the game that I'm reporting on. There is no "simulation" to be broken. A "con" is a downside or a problem with something. The fact that the player was able to establish, via his action declaration for his PC, that the runes revealed...

Narrativist play is not hard to achieve. All the table has to do is (i) establish a moral line, and (ii) allow the players to establish and resolve conflicts that cross that line. The minimum requirement that this places on the PCs is that they be competent, within the rules of the game, to...

But at the table they don't change. They become more precisely specified. OK. I'm not familiar with that usage of the phrase.

Why not read what has been said by one of the greatest designers of RPGs intended to support narrativist play? I quoted it upthread, but here it is again: If you're designing a Narrativist game, what you need are rules that create a) rising conflict b) across a moral line c) between fit...

Except in combat? When everything - the time sequence of actions ("stop motion" initiative), the nature and consequences of actions (what is an "attack"? what is a "hit" or a "miss" (eg are some "misses" really "hits" that just fail to penetrate or hurt through armour)? what is damage? where are...

They are not the same thing. Your failure to distinguish them is why I say that you seem unable, in your analysis of RPGing, to distinguish events in the shared fiction from events at the table. The PC didn't roll. The PC deciphered the runes. The player rolled the dice. No more than the idea...

Huh? The game system has a rule for killing Orcs. The player invoked it. In MHRP, the game system has a rule for the player establishing what strange runes say. The player invoked it. What is the difference? The player's hope is what prompts them to invoke the mechanic. If they didn't hope to...

Players do this routinely in all RPGs. A player, in D&D, who chooses to attack an Orc is taking their PC's life against the Orc's. No. It differs from the Orc case because of the way that it establishes backstory based on a roll. It also differs from the runes case, because it is not clear what...

They don't. The PC chooses to read them, and learns what they say. They haven't changed depending on who reads them. If you mean the following - the shared fiction that is created at the table shouldn't change depending on what the players think is interesting to pursue as their characters -...

Sure. This is no different from any other action declaration, at least where the GM is obliged to honour the outcome. Yes they did! They decided to try and kill the Orc, and the corresponding action resolution system was employed to find out if they achieve their goal. For some reason, some...

In that case, I assume you can distinguish the following two things: *The character's reading of the runes causing the runes to be <this> rather than <that> as an event within the fiction. (Did not happen.) *The player's resolution of their declared action for their PC, which succeeds, thus...

I learned it from the 4e rulebooks. Read the DMG's discussion of combat and non-combat encounters (especially skill challenges), and also the rules in the PHB and DMG for player-authored quests.

But obviously the GM in MHRP does not have exclusive control over the setting. Because if they did, then the example would make no sense!

Is this the sort of game you enjoy? No wonder you're not interested in Burning Wheel then!

What is the theft in the example of the runes?

What is the false equivalence? Why is hope to kill an Orc different from hope to find a way out?