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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8145437" data-attributes="member: 6696971">My iteration included the clause Player Agency excluding any Setting/Situation Authority precisely because I agree with you that, in the wild, the concept is gerrymandered.  There are clearly cases of setting and situation stipulation embedded in RPGs that have either been accepted or hand-waved for expedience, or players being used to their deployment because they've used them unexamined for so long...or they were quietly excised by players.  The same gerrymandering has long occurred, and we've had conversations aplenty on it, with metagame mechanics (and all of our conversations on "dissociated mechanics."I spelled it out alongside the other two for lexicon purposes to easier examine and discuss these concepts, discuss their application within a design, to achieve some measure of clarity and attempt to prevent such gerrymandering in our conversations.  I'd be glad to make revisions if they don't appropriately apply!Some thoughts:* Games that principally include "low resolution setting/backstory", "play to find out", and "ask questions and use the answers" fundamentally invest the players with a measure of both Setting and Situation Authority (the degree to which will vary in each actual instance/session of play, but it will be there). * Games that include player-dictated advancement (Quests + robustly thematic Theme/Paragon Path/Epic Destiny and Magic Items in 4e, Cortex+ Milestones et al, Dogs entire character setup and dice allocation, BW and PBtA family of games) fundamentally invest players with Situation Authority.* Streetwise in 4e vs Gather Information in 3.x have some key differences in terms of their nesting within their own system architecture and ethos:STREETWISE - Player-facing system, codified and transparent conflict resolution, the nature of the abstract conflict resolution framework (genre logic, broad descriptor abilities, principles/GMing techniques, etc) invest players with a not-insignificant-amount of Situation Authority over both initial framing and subsequent framing.GATHER INFORMATION - GM-facing system, GM mandate a la 2e and 5e, granular task resolution + process/causal logic, GM-block-caveat embedded in the ability ("assuming no obvious reason why info would be withheld").Sum-told, all of the ethos and system architecture surrounding Gather Information in 3.x cleaves toward any given deployment of Gather Information having Setting and (subsequent to a successful GI check) Situation Authority subverted by the GM.  Conversely, all of the ethos and system architecture surrounding Streetwise in 4e makes it approach impervious to GM subversion of Setting and (subsequent) Situation Authority for players.Disagree?</blockquote>

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