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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8595048" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I want to say a few things on this:1)  I very much agree that a significant cross-section of D&D materials from the last 35 years inform a culture of play whereby GMs have felt purposed with wresting control of the trajectory of play from the players to ensure either story prerogatives (GM's own story or the metaplot of the module/AP) or story imperatives (power fantasy and setting tourism for players primarily).2)  However, I don't believe that freedom (lack of premise constraint for instance) and agency are inextricably linked.  For instance, map-and-key D&D dungeon crawling can have maximal agency within the premise of the play...while simultaneously constraining the play space and the decision-space for the players (impinging on certain notions of "freedom").This actually gets into a fair chunk of varying conversations/positions taken in this thread whether it be Story Now design and play or Skilled Play design and play.In the lead post, I'm thinking aloud about the 5 different defendable statements.  Lets take a look at one of them:There is a IIEE + OODA relationship that foregrounds and orients content that impedes Story Now play.Let me throw out an example of this that intersects with agency:* GM frames a situation/obstacle which opposes player goals.* Player processes this information, navigates their decision-point, declares an action, and attempts to use the system's resolution mechanics to resolve the obstacle, thus furthering their goal.* The subsequent gamestate and/or fiction that results from this loop makes no sense to the player.  Maybe the consequences/stakes didn't follow from either/any/all of the the player's orienting themselves to the GM's framing or the player's understanding of their resources potential to impact the situation or the player's understanding of how the resolution mechanics should be employed to resolve this situation.* Now let us say, for certain, that the problem is neither system nor player.  The GM screwed up their end of the bargain.  They didn't communicate well/appropriately the dynamics of the situation or they didn't apply system correctly.So this becomes an agency problem which impedes Story Now play precisely because Story Now play is utterly contingent upon players consistently having maximal agency to control the gamestate (here that means that the IIEE + OODA relationship is correctly applied + the resolution mechanics are correctly deployed + the situation and its resolution foregrounds and orients content in a way that engages with the premise of play) and propel play trajectory...but this is all within the confines of the system/game we're engaged with.That last bit is the "freedom" piece.  If we're playing Dogs in the Vineyard, its an axiom of play that The King of Life and sorcery/demons are real things at the metagame level.  So while you might play a gun-toting paladin who is having a crisis of faith (and we get to find out how that crisis resolves...perhaps it resolves with a complete loss of faith and this paladin either abandons his service or carries on his duty but with a heavy burden of loss of belief), you don't get to play a paladin that fundamentally disproves the existence of The King of Life or that every exorcism ever performed on the frontier was just hocus pocus and snake oil.  The game is not about this.  There are boundaries and constraints upon the premise of play.Hopefully that all makes sense?</blockquote>

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