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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8162818" data-attributes="member: 16814">This has actually been a recurring point against your arguments, you've just missed it.  So long as the GM controls the narration of both success and failure, the player is losing agency.  They may retain some, but it's difficult to detect against manipulation like Illusionism.  Compared to a player that can enforce half of the resolution space, meaning they can assert what can happen on a success, this is most likely a lower agency position.  There's a weird space where the GM is allowing the players to define all success states in mainstream play, but this is difficult to do given how games like 5e structure play and require a level of necessary prep.  What typically happens is that even a good GM trying hard to allow players to define the success state still temper this against the needs of the game and their own consideration of what should/could happen.  This reduces agency.And, as has been said so many times but ignored, this reduction in agency comes with trade-offs.  The one that I get is that the game is more curated for a specific experience and often players enjoy the exploration of someone else's concepts.  This isn't available in games that expect players to be more active in directing the game.  For me, these games do different things, and scratch different itches, and so I'll keep playing both -- but it's pretty darned obvious that in a mainstream game, like 5e or Pathfinder 1e, that the GM has most of the agency in the game.  I mean, you're posting this stuff pretty strongly in the GM Authority thread over in the D&D forum, but here you're making an argument that players have as much agency in a game where the GM wields maximum authority over the game as in a game where the GM is restrained from negating player declared actions.  It's very, very odd.And, again, there's no trap here, no gotcha, there's no thing waiting to be sprung if anyone decides that maybe there is less agency in a mainstream, GM with maximum authority game.  Because, there are trade-offs and player agency isn't a moral or value statement until you are using your own preferences to select your game.</blockquote>

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