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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8136212" data-attributes="member: 42582">First, and for clarity, the PCs do something that makes it happen means, in this context, the GM decides that something happens in the fiction.Second, and following on, and as you point to in the first sentence, the GM decides that something happens in the fiction in response to something the PCs do.Third, and assuming that it is the players who are narrating what it is that their PCs do, we therefore have the GM decides that something happens in the fiction in response to the players deciding that something happens in the fiction.That cannot count as player-driven. Because if it did, then every time the players declare an action for their PCs in response to some framing or event or situation that the GM narrates we would have something that is GM-driven! And no one in this thread has been arguing for that.The bigger picture: for the players to effect the fiction by prompting the GM to narrate stuff is a minimum condition for their being a RPG at all. Without that, it's just a monologue from the "GM" - and I use the inverted commas to signal that such monologuing wouldn't really be GMing at all, as there would be no game taking place.For such prompting to actually count as player agency to any meaningful degree, the player needs to be exercising some influence over what it is that the GM narrates. There are 101 ways that can be done - as per my post 355 not far upthread - but all of them put constraints, informal or formal, operating in respect of both timing and content, around the GM's decision-making process.</blockquote>

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