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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8139112" data-attributes="member: 42582">We are talking about establishing a shared fiction. The change in a fiction from live Orc to dead Orc is no bigger or small; no greater or lesser; than the change from dunno to what's north of the swamp, but given the swamp's not the edge of the world there must be some landforrms there to what's north of the swamp is some hills. It's just changing the shared fiction.RPGing requires filling in details of the fiction, changing details of the fiction, adding to the fiction. That's what it is! (Typically. Sometimes it's a type of small unit wargame. But I haven't done that sort of RPGing for 30+ years, and I don't see it as very common among ENworlders.)Another example: the PCs enter a town. A player asks Are there any mules for sale? Until that moment the GM has not given this any thought (if you're the GM who always writes up the stables in towns, make it duck eggs or limestone or some other thing that doesn't appear on the key to your map). She can say yes. She can say no. She can make a roll. In some systems - eg Burning Wheel, Classic Traveller - she can call for a check.I reckon that the mule example would barely raise an eyebrow at most D&D tables. And if you said, instead of the GM saying yes or no, we always call for a check unless it makes no sense at all, just like combat, I reckon some people might see that as a quirky option but I don't think it would cause any wild uprisings. It would just be an urban variant on foraging rules using Survival skill.Am I right to remember Evard's tower is around here is no different. The only reason I can see for the uprising is because (i) it contains a proper name ("Evard") and (ii) people think towers are somehow a bigger deal than mules (or food gathered in the wilderness).I have no idea how it undermines the weight of my choice to go to Evard's tower to first undertake the process of recollecting the existence and location of Evard's tower. Rather, the second seems like a precondition of the first.You are basically characterising RPGing here as solving puzzles (or perhaps in some context, especially combat ones, as solving optimisation problems), and the meaningfulness consisting in doing that well.Here are the Beliefs and Instincts with which Aramina commenced play:    Beliefs                    I'm not going to finish my career with no spellbooks and an empty purse!                    I don't need Thurgon's pity                    If in doubt, burn it!                                                  Instincts                    Never catch the glance or gaze of a stranger                    Always wear my cloak                    Always Assess before casting a spell                Knowing the location of a wizard's tower, which might contain spellbooks, isn't defining both the conditions and the reaction to those conditions. It doesn't both ask and answer a question to any greater extent than rolling to hit both asks and answer the question is the Orc dead yet.Knowing the location of a wizard's tower does allow meaningful choices to begin, though. Because we can now find out what will happen to Aramina in her quest for spellbooks.The evidence that I am provocative is that some other posters seem provoked. I do my best to be mild-mannered in response to the provocative things they post!There seems to be an assumption that the Evard's tower action declaration "asks and answers" a question in a way that the I attack the Orc action declaration does not. I don't see what that assumption is grounded in, though. Playing Aramina, I want to be in the vicinity of Evard's tower. So I declare an action. Playing Thurgon, I want to be in the vicinity of a dead (rather than live) Orc, so I declare an action. Both express a player's desire for the contents of the shared fiction.To characterise the difference cannot be done in terms of process, or abstract description of "narrative persepctives" vs <something else?>. I've repeatedly explained how and why these are in-character action declarations.The difference has to be characterised in terms of content. It's OK for players to declare actions which have, as their outcome, imagined changes to things that are already established as existing in the fiction, but nothing beyond that. With the exception of Gather Information checks, Survival checks to forage, and the like. But those don't involve proper names and unique locations. As far as I can tell that is what causes so much outrage about the Evard's tower example. Proper names and unique locations are - it is supposed - the GM's prerogative.A coda, by the way: in a framework in which only the GM can establish unique locations and/or proper names, I'm not free to have my PC go where I would like him/her to. If I want him/her to go to a wizard's tower to look for spellbooks, I can't do that if the GM doesn't establish any within my PC's scope of access. Exercising this sort of control over elements of the shared fiction is a pretty common way, in my opinion and experience, of constraining player agency.Of course, if the GM is prepared to take suggestions then player agency is restored. But now we're back with my mules example above: the difference between taking suggestions, and putting it under a mechanical umbrella, is not nothing but (in my view) hardly warrants the difference between wild uprising and placid acceptance.</blockquote>

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