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I would add to this - at least back in the day (many days ago!), I found that when players (especially new players) did try to come up with motivations for their PCs, the GMs would tend to ignore them, or run roughshod over them. At worst, those sorts of players were characterised as "problem...

I've not watched more than a few minutes of Critical Role. But as best I understand it, from how I've seen it described, the answer is yes.

And yet I've done it! (A bit like refuting Zeno, by walking across the room.)

Agreed. It's a baseline of playing a RPG that the players get to declare actions for their PCs. This doesn't tell us how the scene was framed, what is at stake, or how outcomes are determined.

A lot of "open world" play remains very GM-driven: it is the GM who decides the significant content of the presented scenes, and the stakes, and the outcomes - the lattermost often by reference to backstory considerations known only to the GM. Right again.

As I've posted upthread, So how can I tell if this is happening? Because the GM decides, without regard to player concerns, the significant content of the presented scenes; the GM decides what is at stakes in those scenes; and the GM decides what happens next, without a meaningful degree of...

Why is gaming facing an actual problem? From time to time various individual RPGers, or RPG groups, fact actual problems: namely, GM techniques that produce play that is more GM-driven than they prefer. Many of those individuals have that experience while playing; some have it while GMing - they...

Either HeroWars/Quest, or Burning Wheel.

I'm not sure what you're referring to by "it". Do you mean railroading? I've never used the word "authoritarian". I don't think it's useful. I've talked about the methods used by the GM to decide what they say about the fiction. And my view is that most D&D play is very GM-driven. Which you...

But one can tell the difference. It's just not captured by your description "DM describes scenario, players react, DM tallies results, and then the DM or players describe what happened." If you think I can't tell when I am playing in a game I don't enjoy, because of the method the GM uses to...

That's why I think it could be different for different of these abilities. Like @UngeheuerLich posted.

Let's grant that this is true. It doesn't tell us very much about railroading. How did the GM decide what scenario to describe? Or what to describe as happening in response to the actions the players declare for their PCs? That is what makes the difference, when it comes to railroading. Back...

I don't see why you have to be able to see the target of Hold Person when you cast it. The spell wording is: Choose a Humanoid that you can see within range. The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or have the Paralyzed condition for the duration. That is all a description of the...

I agree about the weirdness. I think it can help to keep the fiction in mind: that the casting of a spell always involves first conjuring up the energy (by performing the appropriate verbal and somatic components, and expending the appropriate slot and material components) and then releasing...

I guess I'd characterise it as a reference to purpose - my interpretation deploys the canonical methodology of text, context, purpose.

A significant difference, for me, between readying and those subclass features is that the subclass features are intended to be power-ups: they allow casting a spell when it couldn't normally be cast. In 4e D&D, they would be free actions or no action (as is the case for the 4e Bladesinger's...

From what you've described, all I can infer is what @soviet inferred: you seem to be describing relatively GM-driven play. Though it's not entirely clear: who is the PC in the market? Why does the half-orc do what they do? Who decided that this half-orc is part of the PC's context/circumstances...

Right. Some narrativist play - eg Burning Wheel, to a slightly lesser extent Torchbearer, and in a bit of a different way MHRP (at least as I've played it) - relies on that player backstory authority to help make it work. Some - eg Prince Valiant - doesn't.

I hope it's OK if I elaborate a bit on this point. Even the most classic, pawn-stance approach to D&D depends upon a type of "creative synergy" between the players and the GM: namely, if the game is to work, the players must find the ideas of the GM - the clever maps, the ingenious and...

That last sentence is an interpretive proposal. It's not what the rules text actually says. What the rules text says is You take the Ready action to wait for a particular circumstance before you act. To do so, you take this action on your turn, which lets you act by taking a Reaction before the...