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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8165715" data-attributes="member: 42582">I want to contrast two approaches to how a GM frames a situation. One is the worked play example from the Apocalypse World rulebook; the other is my actual play of Prince Valiant, that I've already mentioned upthread.Vincent Baker's example (AW pp 154-55)[spoiler][The example begins with Marie the Brainer causing some trouble among Plover and his friends by kinda-inadvertently hurting Isle] “Sweet. Plover thinks she’s just leaning her head on his shoulder, but she’s bleeding out her ears and eventually he’ll notice his shirt sticking to his shoulder from her blood. Do you stick around?” I’m telling possible consequences and asking. “[Heck] no.” “Where do you go?” “I go home, I guess.” “So you’re home an hour later?” See me setting up my future move! I’m thinking offscreen: how long is it going to take Plover to get a crew together? “Hold on, it was only 1-harm—” “I know. She’ll be okay. It’s Plover who’s the biggest threat.” This is what honesty demands [because of a prior read a situation result which established Plover as the biggest threat]. “Are you home an hour later or where?” “[Damn]. Yes, home.” “Having tea?” Ask questions like crazy! “No tea. Pacing. I have my gun and my pain grenade and the door’s triple-locked. I wish Roark were here." Here’s my big plan, by the way. Isle’s listed in the cast for a threat called Isle’s family, which is a brute: family (naturally enough). Its impulse, accordingly, is to close ranks and protect their own. What’s most fun is that I’m acting on that impulse but I’m using Plover, Church Head and Whackoff — members of Keeler’s gang! — as Isle’s family’s weapon. It’s just like when Keeler uses them to go aggro or seize by force, only I’m the one doing it. If Keeler lets me, that is. Keeler thinks about imposing her will upon her gang to stop them, her player thinks about it too. She twists her mouth around, thinking about it. Finally, instead, “knock yourself out,” she says. Marie’s player: “damn it, Keeler.” “So, Marie: at home, pacing, armed, locked in, yeah? They arrive suddenly at your door with a solid kick, your whole door rattles. You hear Whackoff’s voice: ‘she’s expecting us I guess.’” I’m announcing future badness. [From here, the situation escalates into a fight between Marie and Plover et al. Marie ends up winning by using her weird powers.][/spoiler]What I've quoted is about one page of a nearly seven page play example. It's the transition from the first scene in that example - the initial situation where Isle gets hurt - to the second scene, the attack by Plover and crew on Marie in her house. I would say it's the high point of GM agency in that example of play.What exactly does the GM do with that agency?The GM prompts Marie's player - where do you go? - and confirms that she's home. The GM exercises his (Vincent's) own initiative in using another PC's gang members as the antagonists in the next scene. This is an example of interweaving the stories and interests of multiple PCs; the other player - Keeler's player - could have intervened in relation to this, but chooses not to. And the GM operates under certain constraints beyond this one that arises from sticking his fingers on Keeler's player's stuff: he has to stick to the established fiction (that Plover is the biggest threat); he has to think offscreen (does Plover have enough time to get a crew together?); and he has to follow his prep in relation to Isle's family, the brute family with the impulse to close ranks and protect its own.Notes are referenced - the GM's notes about Isle's family; and also "public" notes about Keeler's gang membership. But there is no map-and-key involved, nor any random tables. The understanding of time and place is real, but loose. Did Plover et al walk to Marie's house, or drive there in a dune buggy with a mounted machine gun? We don't know, and nor does Vincent though maybe he's thought about it. Or maybe he hasn't, yet.My actual play example (link <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/prince-valiant-actual-play-our-most-recent-sessions.668770/" target="_blank">here</a>)[spoiler]Our last two sessions of Prince Valiant have seen the PCs trying to make their way from France to the Holy Land. . . . The second of these two sessions - which we played on Sunday - began with the decision to liquidate all assets (incuding the captured pirate ship) on the grounds that the PCs didn't have the resources to maintain a chapter house of their order in Sicily. They then set sail again. Exercising GM fiat, I declared that as they were crossing between Italy and the Balkan Peninsula the storms were incredibly fierce, and the captain of their ships decided to cut his losses, and dock and sell his cargo in Dalmatia. The PCs therefore set of on the overland trek to Constantinople. This was a fairly obvious contrivance to seed some scenarios. The players didn't object. The core rulebook has three scenarios that involve fighting Huns, and I used the first of them: the PCs and their band (by this point 13 mounted men-at-arms plus the three knight PCs, and 42 footmen) were crossing through fairly rough and mountainous country when they were set upon by a band of 50-odd Huns. . . . The way the scenario is written it assume resolution via single combat, but this was clearly going to be a mass combat, and I improvised stats for the Hun leader (making sure he was weaker than the notorious Hun leader who figures in the third of these Hun-fighting scenarios). I had also decided (via extrapolation from the scenario set-up) that there were 20-odd huns in an ambushing flanking manouevre . . . . [The PCs forces are victorious, with some effective leadership by the PC knights.] Sir Justin failed in a Healing check to save the lives of injured soldiers on his side, and so the forces were slightly depleted, but Sir Gerran gave a speech to the captured Huns explaining the greatness of St Sigobert and the order's cause and made a very successful Oratory roll, with the result that 32 Huns joined the PCs' forces, giving them a highly useful mounted archery capability. I asked the players who would be with the four of them if they were scouting ahead to verify whether the band could pass safely through the forest, and they nominated their two NPC hunters - Algol the Bloodthirsty who is in service to Sir Morgath, and Rhan, the woman who had joined them at the end of <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/another-prince-valiant-session-report.667558/" target="_blank">the last session I posted about</a>. I was using the Rattling Forest scenario from the Episode Book, and described the "deep and clawing shadows [that[ stretch across the path, and the wind [that] rattles through the trees." The PCs soon found themselves confronted by a knight all in black and wearing a greatsword, with a tattered cape hanging from his shoulders, and six men wielding swords and shields, their clothes equally tattered. The scenario description also mentions that they have "broken trinkets and personal effects" and I described rings and collars that were worn, notched and (in some cases) broken. The description of the collars was taken by the players as a sign that these were Celts (wearing torcs), and I ran with that. . . .The players, and at least some of the PCs, had decided that there must be something in the forest that would be the anchor or locus of the curse, and Twillany's player spend the earlier-awarded Storyteller Certificate to Find Something Hidden ("An item which is lost, hidden, or otherwise concealed is discovered almost by accident by a character. The thing must be relatively close at hand, and the character must be searching for it at the moment."). The published scenario doesn't say anything about this, so I had to make something up: as Twillany and Rhan were riding along the path deeper into the forest, Twillany's horse almost stumbled on something unexpected underfoot. Inspection revealed it to be a great tree stump that had been cut close to the ground, levelled and smoothed, and engraved with a sigil very like one that Twillany had noticed on the Bone Laird's cloak as the two women had ridden past him. It seemed to be a mysteriously preserved wooden dais of an ancient house or stronghold - and looking about it there were still visible signs of posts and postholes of a steading wall. . . . The resolution here was unfolding fairly quickly . . . the upshot was that Twillany's player decided that the curse couldn't be lifted simply by working on the dais - the Bone Laird would have to be brought back there to confront it . . . Twillany and Rhan therefore returned to where they had left the Bone Laird, his warriors and the other PCs. . . . Sir Justin had the idea of converting these ancient Celtic ghosts to Christianity and the reverence of St Sigobert - "a Celtic saint" as he emphasised several times - and he also thought that their bones could be put in the reliquary that had been made for martyrs of the order . . . [The encounter ended with Algol going back to the PCs' main force and returning with the reliquary, and the PCs persuading  the Bone Laird that he and his men would find rest and release from their geas if they acknowledged God and St Sigobert and had their bones placed in the reliquary. The Bone Laird beheaded his men, and then Sir Morgath - a PC - beheaded the Bone Laird with the Bone Laird's own enchanted blade.][/spoiler]I've edited my actual play report to try to bring out the moments of high GM agency. Like Vincent Baker's example, there is the asking of questions - in this case to establish who (the PCs and their hunters) rather than where (Marie's house). There was no map-and-key used - the only map was an ordinary map of Europe which we all looked at together.There were notes used, in the form of the two episodes (the Huns and the Rattling Forest); these informed framing, and yielded NPC stats, but did not inform resolution beyond that. In the Rattling Forest episode certain key elements - that the NPC spirits were ancient Celts, and that there was an anchor of the curse - were established by the players.When I compare this actual play example to the AW one, the main difference I see is less thinking offscreen. The idea of the ghosts as ancient Celts comes from the players thinking offscreen rather than the GM, and it doesn't generate significant constraints - what it does do is produce material that is relevant to downstream action declaration and resolution.I don't think either of these examples fits the definition of "true sandbox". They both show "interactions of ripples" - but the method for determining what those interactions look like is quite different from the method of GM extrapolation from pre-prepared fiction.</blockquote>

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