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This is one of those interesting things that I took from Court of Blades / Ironsworn and applied it to my more "trad" running Edge of the Empire Star Wars campaign, which is to be more explicit about "position / effect vs. intent" with the players. This goes in hand with a major part of the...

Anyone sitting around the table. Try it sometime with rational, adult, creatively engaged people, and see how much joy and energy it brings to the room. Seriously. Oh but wait --- sorry, I forgot, this might detract from the non-GM players' all-precious "immersion," because oh noes, they're...

This post is profoundly misinformed and a complete mischaracterization of fiction first RPG play, and yet for some reason is always the first line of defense against player-facing agency mechanics. "Trust your GM; (s)he knows what (s)he's doing and will optimize for the greater good. But the...

** Waving to the winter wolf and its sombrero-clad pile of apples as I don't dally to the west on my stilts **

Ironsworn: Starforged. Starforged would handle this in a breeze, other than you'd need to create an Asset for each mutation just to give it some groundwork functionality, but the basis of them can all be handled through in-narrative fiction + the assigning of an asset card. Licensing is...

I don't particularly see the connection between "pre-authored fictional constraint" and the avoidance of GM fiat. "The stuff I made up before prevents me from making up other stuff now" is a strange paradox. It's all made up. If the changing of the "making up" makes the game better, who cares...

You too, huh? We should, um .... compare notes sometime.

Apologies, was not intended to be dismissive. Was merely trying to analyze @deleuzian_kernel 's point. Sorry, I just figured bragging rights was a lot fewer syllables than "enjoyment of the mental and social rewards of being seen as competent in a sphere of skill." Pretty well understood I...

Sure, no problem. I do think there was an exceptionally salient point made earlier by @deleuzian_kernel that the only thing creating an "objective mystery" does from a long-term gameplay state is create some "meta" externality status that the players can use as a "badge of honor" for their...

So .... it's exactly like every episode of Castle or House M.D. or CSI or Law and Order, or ....... Not exactly seeing the conflict here. If detectives are following Theory A because that's the evidence they have, then suddenly they're faced with evidence that changes everything to point to...

If we're talking about D&D the RPG? 14 years and counting. (Honor Among Thieves earned some of my cash. And I suppose at some point BG3 will as well.)

I know you aren't purposefully meaning to offend with this comment, but I have to say, your description here feels dismissive of the PbtA/FitD approach. Why is there an an assumption that in PbtA / FitD / Ironsworn the majority of "facts" or "truths" are yet to be made up? Like, somehow...

If the players don't know what I, the GM, have chosen as the conclusion, it doesn't matter what the conclusion is until it's revealed in play. Given the evidence board shown, which of the 3 conclusions are possible for the GM to author? The answer is all three. Sure, Solution Y is the most...

I think the disconnect here is the phrase, there isn't a solution yet. As a GM in Ironsworn, I will nearly always have potential solutions to a "mystery" already outlined in my head (*edit, or yes, even written down in my notes [the horror!!]). Possibly two or three avenues that solve the...

Ironsworn / Ironsworn: Starforged would handle this elegantly, simply, and dynamically as 1-3 "clocks", with success/failure running them up or down respectively. The Heavy would have a myriad of things to do via the maneuver "Gain an advantage" or aiding fellow player rolls for moves, or any...

See, this is the fundamental category error. There is no "new information" or "old information". There is only the construct of the in-fiction condition state. If the condition state of "the mystery" made up by the GM six months ago---the literal definition of fiat, something that happens in...

So .... why then in the 20+ years of playing "trad" games with "trad" GMs has it never once occurred to any of my GMs to actually do it? Because it's not an inculcated / enculturated value with regards to the "trad" play loop. It's talked about in "world building" and "session zero" and "ask...

... snip ... I think this plays right along with my description of character intent. It's not simply that characters have the "agency" to go around declaring they're looking for clues and hoping to find "the answer" to "the mystery." It's that the character actions have some additional...

So going back to the Monte Cook separation of "player agency" vs. "narrative control". I think there is a missing component that lives between the two, which is "player intent". I think this is the primary locus where GM fiat lives. It's entirely possible to have near-limitless player agency...