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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8154373" data-attributes="member: 42582">I want to disagree with this. Early RPG rule texts expressly or impliedly conferred more authority on players than became the norm in 80s and many 90s texts.In another thread earlier this year (haven't tracked it down, sorry, but can if you like) I posted an illustration of this from the evolution of the rules for Traveller: one edition of the 1981 version expressly confers authority on the GM to use illusionistic techniques to drive "the story"; whereas in the 1977 edition the referee's power to drive "the story" is expressed in terms of choosing to impose encounters (ie what today one might call scene-framing). But there is nothing in the 1977 version to suggest that the GM will exercise unilateral power to decide outcomes.My own explanation for this trend is that early RPGs were more explicitly modelled on wargames, and as there was a move towards "story" as a desideratum of play there was no real understanding of how this might be done except via GM control over the shared fiction. There was also a tendency for the mechanics to lag - so the 80s and 90s see many games whose mechanics are fairly close to classic D&D (map-and-key resolution, rules for interpersonal combat and interacting closely with architecture, etc) even though the ostensible goals of play are very different. GM agency is the device these systems use to bridge from their mechanics to their goals.</blockquote>

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