Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
What am I ignoring? And on what am I wrong?
Much of what I have said in this thread.
Standard book authority is not overwhelming. And as I have said(and you ignored), I don't even engage in the full book authority.Are you asserting that you don't accord overwhelming authority to the GM in ddtermining what PCs know?
Are you denying that such an approach would be a very strong form of GM-gating?
Why do you think DM gating is always a bad thing?
Do you disagree that thin PC background produces pawn stance? If so, what's the basis for your disagreement?
Probably because they aren't pawns. They are in actor stance. You are incorrectly attributing pawn to my style of play. Pawn is specifically an aspect of Author stance, and one can which involve metagaming.
Relevant quote from the link, "In Author stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities, then retroactively "motivates" the character to perform them. (Without that second, retroactive step, this is fairly called Pawn stance.)"
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/4/
So without your weak justifications, the Author using personal knowledge to determine character decisions based on that person's priorities is making his PC a pawn.
There is nothing about how I run the game that removes the PCs will about what he engages in during game play. That's what Pawn stance is. It's having the PC act without a reason in the game to act in the way that it does. Nobody who plays my game does that, and if someone did, I would talk to them about it. Either to explain why metagaming isn't allowed, or to help them understand how to roleplay better(for my game) for those who aren't metagaming. The stance in my games is primarily actor.