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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 9471754" data-attributes="member: 85870">I literally DOUBLE DOG DARE YOU to download the Ironsworn PDF for the price of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING---literally $0.00, free, gratis. Then read the rules from page 1 through 109, and then sit down and play a solo session of the game for 90 minutes.What you will experience, if you approach it honestly and in good fatih, is the type of mindset and level of flexibility about the game world that PbtA gaming is all about. Since you're both player and GM in solo play, you have to find a balance between just deciding "stuff" your character does and automatically succeeds at, and stuff that you want to be narratively interesting due to the chance of failure.Once you discover that balance, and you're now both playing and self-GM-ing using Ironsworn's Oracles, you'll understand the mindset that is universally applicable to PbtA gaming generally, and how it IS possible to both have an idea that you like, but have it be loosely held based on how the fiction plays out in front of you.If you do all of that and it STILL doesn't make sense what we're talking about . . . then I guess it really isn't for you.But if you do all that and it clicks, it's dead simple to then take that mindset and apply it to playing Ironsworn, or any other PbtA game, collaboratively as a GM with other players. See, I used to think the same way. That "quantum gaming", or changing details to follow players desires and instincts, to further the story in interesting directions, was the ultimate sin of RPG GM-ing. It was anathema, a grave blasphemy against everything true and right about the way RPGs were meant to be played.Then I tried Dungeon World and Ironsworn. And then I had to ask myself---why did I place more weight and greater importance on something I made up completely in my head a month ago, or six months ago, or 2 years ago, versus something I just made up in my head, just now, in response to how a player action played out using Ironsworn's rules?Either way, it's still just something I totally and completely made up in my head that my players never knew or cared about until the very second it becomes relevant in play. Doesn't matter how long ago I made up this totally fictional "thing," it's still just something I totally and completely made up. It's authored fiction. The timestamp of when that fiction was authored has no relevance or bearing on its fictionality.This comment also, as noted by other posters in this thread, disregards the fact that the consent of the group as a whole is still required. And if you have a high-functioning, intelligent group, they are just as likely to help you as a GM steer the fiction in interesting ways while still maintaining fidelity to the game world and challenges presented.Another thing that's telling in this second comment---"Whatever the players randomly do is the 'right thing' to move the game forward"---is the embedded idea within this statement that somehow the GM's idea of how the game is supposed to move forward takes absolute and total primacy over any of the player's ideas of how the game should move forward.As if the GM, simply by virtue of title, can and should enforce his vision of "how the game should move forward," regardless of player desire, instinct, character design or development, fictional positioning, game world building, or anything else. REGARDLESS of whether anything the GM randomly made up in his or her head 6 months ago (or 2 years ago) will actually be fun and enjoyable for anyone at the table to experience given the current circumstances and fictional positioning.That when push comes to shove, if a player has a fantastic idea that will forward gameplay, if it conflicts with any backstory element previously made up in the GM's head, the GM must, by right, ignore the player's suggestion. For how could any GM possibly live him/herself if (s)he simply changes previously established fictional details just to, you know, make the game better or whatever?If you're really so maniacally dead-set on maintaining your absolute, tyrannical, iron-fisted grip on control over the game because I'm the GM, dammit, and I deserve to have control of the game . . . then yeah, I don't know what to say.</blockquote>

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