This thread is a spin-off of
this thread. Its immediate trigger is the following post:
In real life, people move through a physcially-structured environment where events happen in accordance with causal processes. Notions of
request,
permission,
decision etc have no explanatory work to do in relation to real-life causal processes (except for a rather narrow range of phenomena involving interactions between human beings).
At a RPG table, in the situation being described in the posts above, the players give rise to an idea -
our PCs find some sect members at the teahouse - and they suggest that that idea should be an element of the fiction that is being collectively created at the table. The GM then decides whether or not that idea actually does become part of the shared fiction, and communicates that decision to the players by telling them what it is that their PCs find at the teahouse.
That causal process has very little in common with the causal processes that bring it about that, if I go to a teahouse looking for members of a particular sect, I find any of them there. The most obvious difference is that whether or not, in real life, I meet any sect members doesn't depend upon whether anyone takes up a suggestion I make about an interesting idea.
Whether or not the GM making decisions about the gameworld, and then conveying that to the players, makes for good RPGing seems a matter of taste. But whether or not such a process is like real life seems a straightforward matter of fact. It's not.