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Play in which the GM embodies the setting, and the GM sets player goals, seems to me to be obviously GM-driven/GM-centred in a way that some other RPGing is not.

I think you are reading too much weight here into relatively informal ways of speaking. Or imposing your own formal meanings onto those (like me) who aren't following them. As I'm sure you know, Edwards follows Tweet in dividing resolution systems into karma (compare numbers - eg the example...

In the fiction it seems to me that there is a causal link, in that but for the hope of getting to the top the character wouldn't have attempted the climb. And as you note, there is an obvious causal link, at the table, between the player's hope that their PC gets to the top, and the narration...

You don't need to conjecture - @Hussar has been explicit. He has said that GM's fills in the fictional details that the mechanics don't. That doesn't seem formalist to me. It seems to be a simple description of how D&D mechanics have been understood to work ever since Gygax wrote his essay...

Doesn't it? My experience doesn't really bear this out: players (again, in my experience) like to riff on, build on and interact with established fiction. An example arose way back upthread: I talked about an episode of my own play, where I narrated a sick room, purely as colour for what I took...

@Hussar has not said anything about what counts as game play. And has not really expressed any serious view as to what counts as a rule. What he has said is that, in D&D, the process of mechanical resolution typically does not specify what has happened in the fiction to bring about some...

In mainstream D&D, if you hope for your PC to climb the cliff, and you then succeed at your roll, your hope comes true: the fiction now includes your PC at the top of the cliff. What is different about (say) Cortex+ Heroic is what sorts of additions to the shared fiction can follow from action...

Agreed. Right! The players' actions don't matter, because all they do is change or add to the shared fiction. To truly matter, they must reveal the content of the GM's notes.

No he didn't. But very few posters in this thread, or on ENW, follow Tuovinen'sa (or Edward's) usage when they talk about "simulationism". Normally they mean some combination of "mechanical simulation" and "very strong GM control over backstory" and "neutrality by the GM in adjudication and...

I think it's funny how multiple posters who have attacked the cook and have repeatedly insisted they aren't interested in hearing how a good GM would provide the context to support it (eg telegraphing), are now defending the crumbling rocks by insisting that a good GM would have telegraphed them...

Huh? There was a whole sub-culture of complaint about 4e D&D - spearheaded by The Alexandrian - based on the fact that many 4e mechanics don't fully specify what is happening in the fiction.

Who is being petitioned? I mean, do you describe moving your piece in a chess game, or playing your card in a card game, using this language of "petitioning"?

What RPG, or whose RPGing, are you trying to describe here? I mean, the overall tenor of your posts suggests you think that you are "taking to the extreme" the logic of some RPGing that has been discussed. But who has described action resolution in terms of "praying to the Lord" other than you...

This is not true. The player described an action performed by their character: deciphering the runes, hoping that they would show a way out of the dungeon. What you might mean is that the making of the roll settled a piece of the fiction (ie what the runes say) which is not itself the result of...

What does "win" mean, here? I mean, I know what winning in AD&D looks like. What does winning look like in Burning Wheel? Or Apocalypse World?

So just to be clear: you map out all the ledges and protuberances, and whether or not they will bear a PC's weight, and ask the player to plot their PC's course?

If you are comparing two fixed values - passive WIS (Perception) and passive DEX (Stealth) - then obviously no roll is being made. My intuition is that not many D&D tables do surprise this way, though.

So am I. I think trying to use aspirations for an experience to describe particular techniques and processes is not that helpful.

Yes. The player affected the content of the fiction. That's what happens in a RPG. For a start, it's not GM-driven!

So adding colour is fine, but adding a cook as a consequence is out of bounds? As I said, I don't see the ostensible contrast.