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None of what I said is about guaranteeing an outcome

Everything in your life is exactly as you wish it to be? You are unconstrained by social pressures, the law, financial considerations? You could choose to end global hunger or global conflict but you don't want to?

It seems to me that different games and play styles do provide different levels of player agency. It also seems to me that maximal player agency is not necessarily an unalloyed good. One might, perfectly reasonably, play in a manner that gives additional authority to the GM to veto or limit...

If the GM took control of your character and had it make ten really big decisions that drastically changed the setting while you watched... that doesn't feel like agency to me. Agency is about players.

Rolemaster is great, and does what it's designed to do really well. It doesn't do well the things it's not designed to do, and for sure trying to push it into spaces like addressing premise would be very difficult.

This might sound crazy but sometimes in MERP I do a pre-random encounter roll - that is to say, what was here before? So if the answer is Trolls, there might be smashed up trees, or a half-eaten corpse, or dropped loot, etc. It wouldn't morph into a troll encounter itself unless the players...

OK, in the stripped down example I provided I think you're right. In principle randomised outcomes such as skill checks do preserve agency because the player knows and can manipulate the odds of success, but you're right here it's just a coin flip.

And if you show me a goat and offer me the chance to switch, I should do so!

You're talking about things that are predetermined in GM prep rather than things that are decided in the moment. If you pre-decide in prep that the sports car is behind door one then fair enough, player agency is preserved. If you wait for me to choose a door and then decide no, that door has...

I don't think this is accurate though. In one method the randomiser determines the outcome and the setting details provide the flavour or justification. In your method you decide the outcome and the setting details provide the flavour or justification. In neither case is there an objective...

I think you misspelled 'GM'

How... how old are the people you DM for?

What you say here is reasonable but I have certainly seen many posts here (not necessarily this thread) that absolutely suggest that their GMing decisions are not really a decision at all but simply the most (or only) logical consequence of the gameworld, and that any other decision or a...

I think you're incorrect about what 'obligation' means. An obligation is an expectation, something you are 'obliged' to do. It isn't something you are forcibly prevented from not doing. If you enter a street fighter contest you absolutely are obliged to follow the rules. That is the...

I feel like Fiat should also be an option

It is always much quicker to consult the full world simulation running in my head in order to determine the likely prices of furs in the local market given macro-economic forces, prevailing weather conditions, patterns of herd migration, the impact of orc raiders on the effective reach of local...

Doesn't that mean, then, that this idea that GM fiat is strictly superior to any randomised method, is bogus? Disrupt the game? It takes seconds to think hmm, OK, he could die, he could be hurt, he could be trapped underneath, he could be knocked over, he could manage to dodge it, he could be...

Approach A 1. Imagine all possibilities 2. Choose one of them Approach B 1. Imagine all possibilities 2. Choose six of them and roll a dice

Great post, a lot of interesting stuff to digest. Thank you.

I wrote six possible responses to this post