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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9662259" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, suppose that one important overarching goal of play is to advance your PC by accruing XP. But you don't know how the GM is going to make the decision to award XP. So now you don't know what your local goal of play should be, in order to achieve that overarching goal.One analogue would be a game very much like soccer, except that what counts as scoring a goal is varying from time to time based on an unrevealed decision by the referee - so you don't know whether it counts as good play to pass the ball forward, or backward, or to shoot towards the opponent's goal as is conventional, or perhaps to shot towards your own goal because the ref has decided that that is now what will count as a score for you - or maybe the ref has decided that you'll score if you kick the ball into the spectator stand on the full!Another example in the RPGing space, less stark than the uncertain criteria for XP example but one that I've experienced in play, is where the goal of play is (in broad terms) for the PCs to prosper in the milieu that the GM is presenting to them - but whether or not they prosper will depend on social dynamics within the milieu that the GM keeps secret, and so the players can't tell, at any given moment of play, what sort of thing their PCs should be doing to get ahead as they are expected to.The most crass version of what I've just described is the quest-giver who betrays the PCs - a bizarrely popular trope which I regard as the utter pits for player agency. But it can occur in more nuanced versions too.</blockquote>

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