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I dunno - it's not that hard to find people posting about their dissatisfaction with their RPGing. But maybe they're not being sincere? In any event, if you accept my testimony as to my own play, than I don't know on what basis you are saying the design question I identified has not been answered.

Suppose that the game is one based on GM-authored backstory. The player knows that the runes their PC reads were not actually written 1000 years ago. They know that they were made up by the GM, either on the spot or perhaps in the course of preparation for play. In my MHRP/Fantasy Hack game...

I didn't say it is. But it is part of playing a RPG. There is not the least difficulty in saying how MHRP works: *The PC is subject to a Lost in the Dungeon complication, rated at d12. *The GM frames a scene, that includes a Strange Runes scene distinction. *The player, as their PC, has the...

On the contrary: you are ignoring the role of epistemic uncertainty, which makes the metaphysical aspect of the situation secondary. The character does not know what the runes say; but they have a conjecture and a hope. For them, epistemically, it is possible that the runes reveal a way out...

As I have posted, I understand your assertion. I disagree with it. The fact that the player's action establishes backstory elements that are, in the fiction, not caused by the PC, doesn't make the decision spaces different - beyond any general differences of the sort that I have been pointing to...

Really? The player doesn't (in 3E) pull out their Power Attack spreadsheet? Or (in any version of the game) check that the cleric has enough cure spells to keep their PC up? Or draw inferences from previous damage rolls made by the GM for the opponents, so as to inform decisions about which PC...

The player can't "dictate reality". They can contribute to a shared fiction. That's called playing a RPG. You seem to be thinking of the backstory (the "reality") as some sort of constraint that the players have to learn and navigate their way through. But that is not the only way to play a...

Performing mental arithmetic, and working out what fiction is dictated by feeding those numbers into the rules engine, is not the same thing as fighting an Orc. The player and character are doing different things. I'm not sure why this is supposed to be revelatory, or relevant. You posted that...

Yes. The player is playing a RPG. As part of that, the player authored some fiction. That's what happens when someone plays a RPG! The player calculates to hit bonuses, and estimates ratios of damage to hit points. Their PC, meanwhile, is fighting for their life and trying to read the Orc's...

The player authors a fiction. The character discovers a reality. How is that hard?

Yes they do.

From the post where I introduced the example: If you haven't read the example, or noted that the action declaration is about reducing or eliminating a complication - something reiterated by me in many posts in this thread, probably some in reply to you - why is that my fault? I've hardly kept...

You posted "The players is, if I successfully interpret these runes what do I want them to mean (given whatever constraints are in the game)." That's not accurate. As I've posted repeatedly, from when I first posted the example, and most recently in reply to you in post 20205, the player was...

Yet you have managed to say some sensible things about how it plays!

So, as I posted, this was a fantasy hack. In MHRP played literally as superheroes, something like Power-Dampening Collar might be more appropriate. Or Trapped in Arcade's Garbage Collector. But in something a bit more gritty, maybe Lost in the Tunnels of Nanda Parbat would make sense.

I agree.

I seem to have played and GMed more Burning Wheel, Torchbearer and Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic than any other poster in this thread. I have never encountered this ostensbile "negotiation" issue. Of course sometimes action declarations can take a bit of back-and-forth so that everyone is...

Nor did the character in my game.

No. That's just wrong. There is no "reversal of causality". There is the use of dice to track other correlations. Eg the archaeologist's conjecture and the runes now visible have a common cause, namely, the writing of the runes 1000 years ago. That event causes there to be runes here now; and...

Really? I don't think @Lanefan gets that the episode of play, involving the runes, was not from map-and-key based, puzzle-solving play. Because there are lots of RPGs that don't work out whether or not the PC falls down the pit or triggers the pressure plate by (i) tracking the PC's movement on...