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We’re talking about extrapolation. There’s a starting point, which includes many relevant factors. A king, his disposition, his goals, his bond with his daughter, his enemies. All determined by the GM. The PCs then do something. The GM then decides what happens afterward, based on the PCs’...

And do you expect most events would yield only one possible result such that anything else would be illogical? Or do you think that most events would be likely to yield several potential outcomes?

The scenario is not one designed to prove my point. As I said, it was posed by @thefutilist not far upthread. I just used that. If the elements of the setting that the GM has created have been detailed enough that they can function as a “machine running on their own”, then I’d expect them to...

No, I’m considering player actions. Look at the example @thefutilist offered not far back. The arcane assassins fail to kill the cruel king… but kill his daughter. How does the king react? Let’s say the assassins are the PCs. How does the king respond to the PCs’ actions? This can be...

I agree with you that it doesn’t break world logic. But the GM picking one is the GM determining how things will go. Determining the direction of play. And when combined with the above, determining the direction of play does seem to lean toward GM as storyteller. I don’t think that it must be...

No, not at all. I’m surprised that’s what you took away from my post. My point is that the world doesn’t actually react, the GM makes decisions or uses procedures to depict how the world reacts. Which may seem silly to point out, but I’ve noticed a tendency for some folks to attribute such...

To clarify, it’s not the method that’s BS. It’s a GM making decisions and attributing those to “the world” that’s BS. As I said waaaay back, the GM should own their decisions. I don’t know if it does. I mean… usually more than one outcome is possible and plausible. If you’re just deciding...

It’s a cop out . It’s disclaiming decision making after play by blaming it on “the world” rather than disclaiming it during play by relying on dice or some similar procedure. It’s BS.

Yes, absolutely. My goal as a GM is to present a plausible world and scenarios that follow from what’s already happened in play and so on… but it’s also to provide the players with a game to play. That means my decisions about the world are not only based on plausibility and the fiction of the...

Didn't you just a few pages back exclaim how much you love the term meta-agency? Yes, this was my point! I see the two things as being very similar in that sense. I don't think anyone playing Burning Wheel or any game that handles things similarly to look at that moment of play and say "I lost...

Right, but I'm trying to view it in context... which you say is important to you. Losing control of your character is a form of agency loss. But my point is that it is an understood risk and so, when we look at play on the whole, it makes far less sense to call that instance of play a loss of...

Evading? I don’t even know what you’re on about. I was, I thought, clearly joking in my last couple of posts to you.

Then all games have equal character agency! That makes it quite a useful metric!

I’ve snipped your post up a bit, not in any attempt to change the context, but rather to focus on specific things that jumped out at me. If I as a player choose to put something on the line… if I knowingly take a risk… and it doesn’t go my way… isn’t that part of play? Is that a reduction in...

Shouldn’t this apply to you, too? Like… why is it a problem for anyone other than you to start out with a definition and assume it is the default? Don’t you see the issue there?

I would ask you to go back and look at the exchange again and see who is pressing who.

Thank you for addressing that very serious post in the serious manner it seriously deserved!

I’m focused on game play because that’s where player agency is found. Not doubling down. I’m asking because it makes no sense to me. Do you mean you’d just reject what the dice were telling you? Something else? I’m not following.

Why not? If you don’t know how a character will behave faced with a certain decision, and then we roll to find out… once the roll takes place, how is it you haven’t learned anything?

You forgot to count the time you and your players are staring at each other waiting for something to happen! No agency is happening during that time! So your game has the leastest agency evar!!!!