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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8162035" data-attributes="member: 42582">On this, I think we agree.A lot of discussion of stance approaches it as if stance were a psychological (or, as you say, cognitive) state. But clearly its not: it's possible to engage in director-stance play (eg by making a Wises check or Circles check in BW) without entering any psychological state different from any other time when one says what one's PC is doing.Stance is, rather, a type of "logical" relationship or "authorial" relationship between player and shared fiction. It's not possible to simultaneously be in Actor and Author stance, simply because as defined they are contraries, but it's quite possible to be in Actor and Director stance (as you say) and probably also Author and Director stance.You might remember my example of the paladin who was turned into a toad and then turned back, by the Raven Queen, as my example of simultaneous Actor and Director stance from the epic "dissociated mechanics" thread.I've cut out the discussion of AW failure, and also of 5e - I'm not sure where exactly you want that latter example to go.If I succeed at reading a charged situation, then - as a player - I am able to oblige the GM to narrate some new fiction. As you say, that will enrich/develop the setting, the situation, or perhaps both. (I'm not sure if that can be the case for any single question, but I might get 3 of them!)I certainly think that is a type of participant - in this case, player - agency. As I've already posted, I see it as being a certain cleverly-structured form of making suggestions to the GM which the GM is not free to disregard. My use of the concept "making/taking suggestions" comes from <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=20791.0" target="_blank">this post</a> by Ron Edwards: I'll expand those authorities I talked about into a list, with a key addition and with the order changed for greater clarity: Content authority - over what we're calling back-story, e.g. whether Sam is a KGB mole, or which NPC is boinking whom Plot authority - over crux-points in the knowledge base at the table - now is the time for a revelation! - typically, revealing content, although notice it can apply to player-characters' material as well as GM material - and look out, because within this authority lies the remarkable pitfall of wanting (for instances) revelations and reactions to apply precisely to players as they do to characters Situational authority - over who's there, what's going on - scene framing would be the most relevant and obvious technique-example, or phrases like "That's when I show up!" from a player Narrational authority - how it happens, what happens - I'm suggesting here that this is best understood as a feature of resolution (including the entirety of IIEE), and not to mistake it for describing what the castle looks like, for instance; I also suggest it's far more shared in application than most role-players realize . . . I'm suggesting that you look at it from the total opposite viewpoint - that these four things are separate, they will always be separate . . . Do they have causal relationships among one another? Of course. The easiest version is top-down reductionist: because content is consulted, a plot authority decision is made, and then a situational authority decision/presentation must be made, and finally narrational authority must be exercised. I assume that for you, this is the most easy and familiar construction, and you're used to conducting them (or at least constructing them, idealistically speaking) as a single causal sequence in this order, with one person in charge - it's a "thing," perhaps the thing you call GMing. As a side note, other causal relationships exist, putting the authorities into a different order (to preserve the top-to-bottom causation, for clarity). For example, you can reverse them entirely, and remarkably it is very easy, although it's harder to catch oneself doing it because memory typically rewrites the act into the more familiar sequence I described above. We'll have to work on this idea later, because, for instance, Kickers and Bangs in Sorcerer rearrange the sequence far more drastically, putting situational authority at the top/starting position. Please don't get distracted by this paragraph. It's intended to be a distant signpost to future discussion. The real point, not the side-point, is that any one of these authorities can be shared across the individuals playing without violating the other authorities. . . . Well, let's look at this [ie another poster's bad RPG experience] again. Actually, I think it has nothing at all to do with distributed authority, but rather with the group members' shared trust that situational authority is going to get exerted for maximal enjoyment among everyone. If, for example, we are playing a game in which I, alone, have full situational authority, and if everyone is confident that I will use that authority to get to stuff they want (for example, taking suggestions), then all is well. Or if we are playing a game in which we do "next person to the left frames each scene," and if that confidence is just as shared, around the table, that each of us will get to the stuff that others want (again, suggestions are accepted), then all is well. It's not the distributed or not-distributed aspect of situational authority you're concerned with, it's your trust at the table, as a group, that your situations in the SIS [ie shared imaginary space, or shared fiction] are worth anyone's time. Bluntly, you guys ought to work on that. It seems to me that, if the GM is obliged to take suggestions, then even though the GM has formal authority over (say) situation, the players clearly have a great deal of agency. Edwards also gets at this in an earlier post in the same thread:GM: "All right, you guys see the lamps of Apple Town up ahead. You've arrived." Player: "I spend a Story Token. My uncle lives here! We go to his cottage." In games with such mechanics (or, in fact, games without such mechanics but in which such suggestions are welcome as suggestions), the GM pretty much has to be ready for some footwork, once in a while. If his prep, for instance, includes the assumption that no one in this town knows any of the PCs, well, he might have to think a bit. But on the other hand, and presuming that the group is fully aware of these mechanics or these suggestions, it's really not as prep-destroying as you might think. The GM might have been wondering how the hell to get these guys into the conflicts of the town, and the uncle will be a much better entry into an informational scene than the random encounter with a talkative pickpocket the GM had been planning. Or maybe he can make the big villain of the scenario into the uncle! Perfectly fine and more fun to GM, frankly. The shift from suggestions being welcome to being obliged to have regard to suggestions is real, but in many ways I think a matter of degree.Now to return to your post - whether I would agree that being able to make suggestions in this way counts as manipulating the situation and/or setting as a game piece I'm not sure. What payoff am I getting from going along with you here?</blockquote>

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