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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8135098" data-attributes="member: 42582">I absolutely agree that preferences are involved. And concerns about the play experience. But what's the fulcrum about which those concerns are pivoting? As best I can tell - given the expressed desire to be free to narrate consequences, and the expressed desire not to have a mechanical system for rationing/determining that - it is precisely the degree of latitude the GM has to introduce whatever fiction s/he wants.As [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] has posted (forcefully) in this thread, the world is a fiction. So "the world responds to the PC's successes", as you are using it, equals the GM establishes the fiction that s/he wants. In RPG systems that foster player agency, the GM's ability to do that is constrained - by dice roll outcomes (eg DW, AW, BW., 4e combat and skill challenges), or by a combination of those plus rationed resources (Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic, with its Doom Pool), or by principled restraint (the "set in stone" of DW's Discern Realities, Let it Ride in BW, in general honouring successful action resolution if the players haven't re-staked it).To pick up a concrete example, what does the merchant thief Iltan marks them as potential marks actually mean? Assuming that you are not referring here to an actual encounter (and by you reference to "other than having an NPC do something as a result of what sounds like a Perception-type check" I take it that you're not), then it is not part of the shared fiction. It's just a notion the GM has. A Burning Wheel GM can have the same notion, but should be having regard to the principles of the game: (1) does it speak to a PC's player-authored Belief? (if not, don't do it); (2) if it's something adverse, introduce it as a consequence of failure.Assuming that (1) is satisfied, then when can Iltan's plans be brought onto the stage? An obvious opportunity would be a failed Wises, or Circles, or perhaps Resources check - the PC is looking around for the <info, informant, goods, etc> and is having trouble finding them, when lo-and-behold, a cloaked NPC steps out of the shadows: Iltan can given you what you're looking for . . .This is player agency building and helping to drive the fiction - Iltan is not just a conceit the GM has and plonks into the fiction to determine its direction; but is an element in an unfolding story driven by the PCs' protagonism.</blockquote>

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