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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8142019" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well it strikes me that some form of determinism is obviously true, in the sense that human behaviour, like other animal behaviour, is the consequence of interactions between biochemical processes and external input/stimuli. Whether this is compatible with free will (along GE Moore lines - ie that free will simply equals would have acted otherwise, had I chosen to do so) I don't have a firm view on, given I haven't read any of that literature for over 20 years.If we move from metaphysics to sociology, it's clear to me that I - as described in my post upthread - have more agency than (say) a peasant farmer or a factory worker: it's true that the farmer has a degree of immediate control over their economic and social life that I lack (given I live in a mass society), but that immediate control is utterly blunted by the bigger picture inability of a peasant society to control its own conditions of existence. Conversely, the factory worker is part of a society that is able to exercise that sort of control, but s/he is not having much say over it. In that sense, at least, I'm a classic middle class intellectual.I don't see that any of this has much bearing on the analysis of RPGing, though, for the reasons I and [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] have posted. RPGing is a leisure activity, like other gaming. Some games involve no agency beyond the choice to participate (eg Snakes and Ladders); others do.  I don't really want my leisure time to be spent hearing what someone else thinks makes for an exciting fiction. I've got ideas of my own I'm keen to pursue!Hence "if nothing has been written, to ad lib something as if it had been written up".The fiction comes from somewhere. Either the player narrates it, or the GM narrates it. There are various ways to allocate that task, and to set constraints on it. What you are arguing for is unless the fiction is the player's character performing an action, the GM narrates it. So all the player can do is say I do X and then trigger the GM to say something in response.As I said, it's a structured version of Dad, tell us a story about XYZ.I don't know how the combat rules of games like D&D and Runequest fit into your model - I'm guessing that you don't resolve I attack the Orc with my spear by just expecting the GM to make something up in response, even though the Orc is (in the fiction) a part of the external world which is outside the character's control and hence, per your account, fictions about the Orc are to be established by the GM and not the player of the character.</blockquote>

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