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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9661955" data-attributes="member: 42582">[USER=99817]@chaochou[/USER]I've been thinking a bit over the past few weeks about this topic. Here's a set of ideas I've arrived at.There are two things that need to be distinguished: I'll call them authority and agency/control.My explanation is this: in bridge, each player (except the dummy) has authority to play the cards in their hand. But a good player, who gets a reasonable deal, is able to use their play to control the game (because there are rules, mostly about following suit and trumps, which allow a good player to exploit length and strength to control what others are obliged or encouraged to play). So the scope of a good (and moderately lucky) player's control (or agency) extends beyond their authority. (In card play, we even call this "controlling the play".)I think this model is applicable, without change, to RPGing: as a player, I can use my authority to make moves that then control/guide (in virtue of the rules) what the GM has to do in response. And so I can generate effects beyond my area of authority. In classic dungeon-crawling, this is how I first gain knowledge, by making moves that are low risk for me but oblige the GM to tell me stuff (eg listening at door). I can then use that knowledge to control what scenes the GM frames (by choosing which doors to open, having acquired knowledge about what is behind them). Gygax has an essay about this sort of play (not using my terminology) at the end of his PHB, under the heading Successful Adventures.To turn to a FRPG that's pretty different from what Gygax had in mind: in Burning Wheel, by exercising my authority over my PC's Beliefs, etc, I control and/or guide what sorts of scenes the GM frames, what consequences the GM narrates, etc. So I  have player agency that extends beyond my authority over my PC build and action declarations.What makes a RPG a railroad, in my view, is that I as a player have little or no capacity to control or even guide play via my exercise of my authority over my moves. This happens when there are no rules that connect what moves I make to controlling or guiding the GM's space for moves.In terms of your OP, this is a situation where there are insufficient known and inviolable rules connecting my moves as a player to outcomes and changes in the shared fiction. Meaning that there is nothing I can rely on to make moves in pursuit of my goals.</blockquote>

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