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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9066218" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Right, that's why I made a distinction between the two. So what you said was "to be interested in the world and the things going on in it" but what that seems to mean, to me, is "to engage willingly with the GM's plots". Does that seem correct? If not, why not? What's the distinction between "what's going on in the world" and "the plots of the GM"? And to be clear, there's nothing at all wrong with engaging with the GM's plots. It's just that it's not an example of a game with player agency. Doesn't mean it can't be fun and engaging. I'm not saying that there can't be limitations to play. Having a premise or core idea is fine. Plenty of games have a premise... the characters are all soldiers trying to get home from behind enemy lines, or the characters are a group of criminals, or the characters are spies... and so on. How is the premise selected? What say do the players have in how they engage with the premise? What are the goals of play? Who chooses those goals? So D&D has this vague notion of "adventuring" as its most common central premise. When it comes to agency, this can be both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing in that it allows for a wide range of activities for the players to engage with. It's a curse because most of those activities come in the form of hooks for the GM to dangle and which they must "agree" to follow. I have played and run plenty of games where the social contract is nothing like this. This has already been answered. It's to let them make an informed decision. So they can evaluate their different options, and reliably know the odds for each. This allows the player to understand the state of the game. What is the virtue of not giving the actual number?</blockquote>

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