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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9511143" data-attributes="member: 42582">That's an interesting way of establishing player-GM communication, and managing/eliding the "meta-"ness of it.I'll try to elaborate by describing some contrasting, and hopefully illustrative, ways of using a setting in play.(1) Over the past several years, when I've been using GH as my setting, if we need to work out where the PCs are on the map, and where they're going, I pull out the map(s) and we all look at where the PCs are, and where they want to go. So the map is not secret knowledge on the GM side: rather, we use it to collectively to make sure we are all on the same page about where places are in relation to one another, so we can maintain a broadly coherent shared picture of the geographic setting within which the PCs are moving and acting.That's not to say the PCs can't (for instance) get lost, but that is determined by resolving the appropriate skill checks (say, Orienteering or Pathfinder, depending on system). If that check is failed, then I tell the players where their PCs end up, which is not where they wanted to get to.The approach I just described of course won't work for a system in which PC movement is declared simply by the players describing which hex (or square or whatever) their PC moves into. It depends upon using check-based resolution (be that skill challenge, or simple checks, or whatever - again this will be system-dependent).(2) As well as sharing a map, there can also be sharing of lore. Sometimes this is implicit - eg in my Torchbearer game, the Dwarf player and the Elf players just take it as given, on Tolkien-esque grounds, that Elves and Dwarves have a "complicated" relationship to one another, and have built a lot of their fiction and orientation around that. Or when I introduced an Elf NPC who had journeyed to the "Outer Dark", I took it as given that this would prompt the players to think of the Abyss, the Void, the Silmarillion, etc and conjure up appropriate ideas around lich-dom (or, as it turned out, a Barrow Wight), demons, unholiness, etc. Which it did.Sometimes the sharing of lore happens explicitly. Early on in his exposure to GH as a setting for one of our games, one of my players did a bit of Googling. And so he learned that there are Suel nomads in the Bright Desert. Later on, when the PCs were marooned in the Bright Desert, he revealed that he had been doing some out-of-session reading: "Everyone knows that Suel Nomads are as thick as thieves in the Bright Desert!" And then proceeded to declare a system-appropriate action (it was Burning Wheel, so the action was a Circles check) to encounter some helpful nomads.As in that example, this sort of shared lore establishes a context, a "same page" for everyone to be on, that then permits action declarations that make sense and are easily incorporated into play without risking too much confusion or contradiction in terms of backstory, history, geography etc. It also helps establish the stakes that are implicit in a particular situation - eg when the players are having their PCs explore the last resting place of Celedhring who has journeyed to the Outer Dark, they know that their PCs' souls are at risk of being burned.(3) Sometimes the players are moving their PCs through an area, but the map is not shared (or maybe shared only in part) because part of the point of play is that the area is secret/unknown. So moving through it is part of, or at least a bit like, solving a puzzle. This happens in my Torchbearer game, because Torchbearer uses "dungeons". It has also happened a few times in our Traveller game, when the PCs have been exploring abandoned starships or mysterious installations.In this sort of play, the map - together with its key - helps me (as GM) coordinate how I frame the PCs into (hopefully) interesting scenes/situations. The consequences for the players' declared actions for their PCs will then pertain to, or in some sense, flow from those situations. When this sort of play is working well, the scenes/situations are interesting, and there is enough information conveyed in the framing (either expressly or implicitly/by inference) that the players can see (at least roughly) what is at stake in their action declarations. If the scenes/situations fall flat, or the players are struggling to grasp what it is at stake - and so don't have a sense of what is meaningful for them to do, or how the situation they're in relates to their goals for their PCs - then it's time to bail, or fast forward, or use some other GM manoeuvre to inject a bit of "oomph" back into play.One thing that can be interesting in this sort of play is when the players draw inferences about the meaning of a situation that is not the one that, as GM, I intended or anticipated when I prepared (or reviewed, if it's a module) the map and key. Generally, if I think the players are just wrong - for instance, I just can't see a way to connect their thinking to what I've prepare in the map-and-key - I will let them know. This is similar, I think  (at least in broad structure/process), to how you worked with your player about stealing the book vs the bit of paper. Otherwise - ie if I can see how the players' idea/inference fits with what I've prepared - then it becomes like the "common knowledge" I described above in (2), and establishes a context for action declarations, stakes and consequences. Often I find this works as a type of "unfolding" - at the early stage of the players, via their PCs, exploring the unknown area the focus is on the GM providing information, and then as the players form a picture of what is going on they "take charge" and start to impose more of their will on the situation.(4) What I have in mind when I talk about "GM-controlled way of establishing consequences" is when the GM uses their knowledge of secret setting information (an unrevealed map, or unrevealed stakes in an unrevealed key) to introduce consequences into the fiction regardless of what the players take to be at stake in their action declaration. For instance, the GM "knows" (= has decided), based on their notes, that there is nothing of the sort of thing that the PCs are looking for able to be found in a given place, but lets the players spend time futilely having their PCs search. Or the GM "knows" (again, = has decided) that a certain NPC won't accept a particular request, yet allows the players to spend time futilely trying to persuade or negotiate with that NPC. Or the GM "knows" (once again, = has decided) that a certain place is to the north of the PCs, yet lets the players (who are acting out of confusion, or on the basis of false information) have their Pcs strike out to the south hoping to get to that place, and adjudicates their travel just as would be done if the PCs were heading in the right direction, even though - from the GM's perspective - it is foregone that the journey will fail.The stuff I've described just above in (4) has some overlap with (3), in terms of the techniques used (hidden information, map-and-key). But it differs in the way the GM approaches the relationship between (i) that information, (ii) framing of scenes/situations, (iii) the players' knowledge of what is at stake in scenes/situations, and hence (iv) how consequences of players' declared actions are established.The approach in (4) is pretty fundamental, I think, to many people's ways of approaching RPGing, but is something I try to avoid. Hopefully you can see, in how I describe (3), that this avoidance can have an element of judgement and trial-and-error to it! But nevertheless is a real thing that one can aim for as a GM.</blockquote>

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