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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8165959" data-attributes="member: 71699">Players always have involvement in and leverage over the narrative: that is expressly what the rules provide for. I think the question is more one of scale and validation.Reiterating for emphasis, players have fiat over the narrative no matter what level of authority a DM enjoys; unless that DM decides their actions for them and denies them any appeal to the mechanics their characters possess per RAW. Something so far outside my experience that I don't think as a 'possible world' it tells us anything pragmatically helpful (and my understanding of the thread is that no one is seriously arguing for it.)So then I think it worth considering what one might gain, and give up. With DM as authority and by following RAW/RAI in a consistent fashion, one gains validation. A feeling of arbitrariness is avoided. Successes are validated because they are achieved within limits. Pleasure may be had in accepting limits and overcoming challenges within them. This has all been commented on by ludologists starting with Bernard Suits and (to a lesser extent) Johan Huizinga. In this case however, one party at the table has much broader fiat: the DM. That one person's power is far less constrained, and they are responsible for deciding and upholding constraints for the rest of the table for that very purpose of giving them something to work within.When all participants are have the same power, they might have a dynamic game with rich engagement. But it is not true that they have narrative fiat where the other group do not. Both do, it is only a matter of on what terms and at what scale: how they can apply it.I mention this because I believe it is not a matter of losing anything on either side, it is a matter of sometimes preferring pears, and other times apples. There is nothing lost in not eating a pear when one wants an apple.</blockquote>

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