NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8131827" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is the last of my slightly spammy replies, as I catch up on this interesting thread.Again, I think context is the determinant here.First, as [USER=6779310]@aramis erak[/USER] has pointed out, in some systems the only difference between Orcs and Sandpeople is in the fiction. This is not just Tunnels & Trolls, either - it's largely true in Prince Valiant and can also be true for many "mob" (ie non-unique) opponents in Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic. But if the fiction of whom the PCs encounter is different, and if the game being played is one where that fiction matters (in Prince Valiant it normally will; in White Plume Mountain it normally won't; so this too is contextual), then there is no illusionism: the players chose a trope/theme (forest rather than badlands) and the GM served up the appropriate fiction.I'm not sure that's the most epic demonstration of player agency ever - the fact that the results are different doesn't tell us much about agency, if the players were choosing essentially randomly. All I'm saying is that it doesn't have to be illusionism. (Eg if it's not illusionism and is also low agency, maybe we're seeing a potentially boring sandbox. Not my sort of game, but they do exist and back in the day I've run them - not on purpose, but because at the time I didn't know how to do better.)My view is that the game can be a total railroad - ie almost zero player agency - and yet your last sentence be true.Eg if the GM has planned everything out (like the sort of decision-tree [USER=7016699]@prabe[/USER] alluded to upthread), and then when the players choose A or B the GM moves down the decision tree, narrates the appropriate outcome, and frames the next choice, things will go differently if the players take Option A instead of Option B. But that game (self-evidently) won't involve any more player agency than a choose-your-own adventure book.</blockquote>

Verification