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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8154380" data-attributes="member: 42582">Because it doesn't undermine or change the outcomes of action declarations? Because it builds on player-signalled priorities for the game and their PCs (and so is a form of "taking suggestions)? Probably other reasons too, but they're the first I thought of.GM force is not a synonym for GM authorship.As [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] uses the term - and I believe he's the one who brought the term into this thread - it's about the GM perturbing the (ostensible) method the system uses for turning participant inputs into shared fiction.For my part, when I think of GM force I think of the GM making unilateral decisions about the fiction that have the effect of either blocking or altering what would otherwise be player contributions mediated via the action resolution mechanics.Now there is a style of RPGing where what I have just described is essential: in classic D&D play the GM has to prepare the map and the key in advance, and has to refer to them to resolve exploration-oriented action declarations. The goal of the players is - quite literally - to recreate the GM's map and the GM's key by declaring exploration-oriented actions for their PCs which will prompt the GM to share his/her notes with them.As I have already posted in this thread, I think that the style of RPGing just described breaks down as soon as the fiction becomes rich enough that the players can't use straightforward exploration-oriented action declarations to recover the fundamentals of the fictional situation from the GM. Any "living, breathing world" will cause this issue: eg it's not feasible to learn every escape route assassins might have taken in a city, or to learn of every person willing to lend money to the improvident mayor, or to learn where every source of magical shapechanging in the duchy, simply by using exploration-oriented action declarations of the sort that are so fundamental to classic D&D.Given that I neither GM nor play in classic dungeon RPGs, and that every game I've run or played in since about 1986 has been of the "living, breathing world" variety, I'm not that concerned with the principled "force" of classic dungeoneering. My concern is with the impact that GM force has in the sort of games that I've GMed and played in over the past 35 years. And that impact is to reduce, and in some cases even eliminate, player agency over the shared fiction.Framing a situation - you see a passer-by fall to the street, and what must be the assassin escaping across the rooftops or the mayor asks you to lend her money or OK, so you're going to the wizard's academy to try and speak to an expert in shapechanging? - isn't force. It doesn't unilaterally establish a particular outcome in the fiction outside of the action resolution procedure. It's creating the context for actions to be declared.</blockquote>

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