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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 8139687" data-attributes="member: 85870">That illusion [that the game world exists as an "objective reality"] matters to some of us great deal. When the players can shape the game reality, the illusion of it being objective shatters. You might not care about that, some people care about it a lot.I don't know which poster [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] was quoting here, so I apologize in advance for that.In response to this quote I would say, "Of course."Of course it's important for the world to feel "real." To feel as if there's a sense of "concreteness" or "objectivity" to it. One of the reasons I despise "planar hopping" adventures is for this very reason --- they never feel concrete and understandable. I find them tedious to play, because it's never clear as a player what my character would implicitly be aware of, and the GM is nearly always inadequate to fill the gaps.I also think the above quote smartly recognizes that the "objective reality" of an RPG fiction is just an illusion. The "objective reality" is the sum of the imaginations of those engaged with it. Whatever is true, must be agreed upon to be true.The question is, who has the formal power to authoritatively state what is true in the fiction?Traditionally, there are two arbiters of "What is true in our fiction?" --- 1) the GM, and 2) the rules.But as I've progressed in my journey as an RPG player and GM, I am less and less convinced that it is the GM's sole responsibility to maintain that illusion, and more and more convinced that the players should have as much "fiction state arbitration rights" as possibleI would even go so far as to say I think it a bit presumptuous of a GM to think that (s)he is the only game-participant arbiter. These days I would be highly wary of playing in a group where the GM insisted that they had absolute authority over the full content of the in-game fiction.*Edit --- Very often in my experience, when a GM insists that they have full control over the setting, play can only go so far before it breaks down entirely . . . unless the group as a whole is willing to go along as unwilling participants in an on-going Abilene paradox experiment.</blockquote>

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