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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8163312" data-attributes="member: 42582">Upthread I have described this as RPGing-as-puzzle-solving: the players declare actions for the PCs which elicit information from the GM, and they piece this information together to get a clearer picture of what the GM is imagining.I do not regard it as involving a very high degree of player agency, because it makes the GM's pre-established conception of the fiction the focus of play.My last few sessions of Traveller play have resembled this to a degree. (I posted about the second-last one quite a way upthread but I don't think anyone replied to that post.) Though the object of exploration has been an alien building rather than a NPC. In our most recent session I tried a few different techniques to try to shift things away from a GM-focus to a player-focus - those techniques included providing some more clarifying fiction of my own to try to round out &quot;the mystery&quot; and give the players all the information they seemed to want about it; narrating some instigating events (attacks by aliens which were also Aliens); and meta-level goading/poking - and those worked to some extent. I think we may also be starting to hit some limits of Classic Traveller as a system, but I'm not sure and I'm not sure yet if I can quite articulate what I have in mind. It's to do with the lack of player-accessible mechanics to engage the &quot;big picture&quot; - eg what are the Imperial navy doing &quot;off-screen&quot; - in a game that invites an escalation over the course of play to make that &quot;big picture&quot; of growing importance to the PCs.A contrast in this particular respect would be 4e D&amp;D, which has a resolution framework - skill challenges - that scales up nicely as the PCs move from Heroic to Epic tier.This is a slightly different point to the above but also connects to &quot;puzzle solving&quot; and &quot;big picture&quot;.As you know, I have a view that once the fictional scope of the action expands beyond the fairly sparse dungeon context, your constraint that actions should not be blocked by things that players have no chance to learn becomes harder to honour. I'm curious if you agree. And if you do, how does Stars Without Number handle this problem? (Or does it not, or perhaps not need to?)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8163312, member: 42582"] Upthread I have described this as [I]RPGing-as-puzzle-solving[/I]: the players declare actions for the PCs which elicit information from the GM, and they piece this information together to get a clearer picture of what the GM is imagining. I do not regard it as involving a very high degree of player agency, because it makes the GM's pre-established conception of the fiction the focus of play. My last few sessions of Traveller play have resembled this to a degree. (I posted about the second-last one quite a way upthread but I don't think anyone replied to that post.) Though the object of exploration has been an alien building rather than a NPC. In our most recent session I tried a few different techniques to try to shift things away from a GM-focus to a player-focus - those techniques included providing some more clarifying fiction of my own to try to round out "the mystery" and give the players all the information they seemed to want about it; narrating some instigating events (attacks by aliens which were also Aliens); and meta-level goading/poking - and those worked to some extent. I think we may also be starting to hit some limits of Classic Traveller as a system, but I'm not sure and I'm not sure yet if I can quite articulate what I have in mind. It's to do with the lack of player-accessible mechanics to engage the "big picture" - eg what are the Imperial navy doing "off-screen" - in a game that invites an escalation over the course of play to make that "big picture" of growing importance to the PCs. A contrast in this particular respect would be 4e D&D, which has a resolution framework - skill challenges - that scales up nicely as the PCs move from Heroic to Epic tier. This is a slightly different point to the above but also connects to "puzzle solving" and "big picture". As you know, I have a view that once the fictional scope of the action expands beyond the fairly sparse dungeon context, your constraint [I]that actions should not be blocked by things that players have no chance to learn[/I] becomes harder to honour. I'm curious if you agree. And if you do, how does Stars Without Number handle this problem? (Or does it not, or perhaps not need to?) [/QUOTE]

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