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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 7821679" data-attributes="member: 75787">So, reading through the thread it looked like you were just espousing a preference for a simulations style of game -- where the GM designs the world and runs the game, and the players choose how to interact with it; neither the GM nor the players adapt the world once it is set in motion; essentially the world doesn't adapt to the characters. It's not my preferred style, but a lot of people like it, and if you find a group that does, it can oven click nicely and have long-running campaigns. It's certainly a lot easier to GM when you don't have to consider your characters, so at the very least it helps with burn-out and lessens the load on the GM.But you seem to be straying into a more adversarial position. The idea that a GM cannot set the parameters of the game up front is a very extreme position. I'm not talking the obvious extremism of "you cannot play a Jedi in my medieval fantasy game", but saying that any restrictions on the characters a player can create is equivalent to requiring suppression of character goals is, fundamentally, simply wrong.For your previous posts I think you mainly run long campaigns, so maybe you just don't have experience of how this works for most people. Like Umbran, I ask my players to make characters that will work with the setting and genre I have in mind. If I'm running a 4-color hero game, you cannot play evil people, for example. Sometimes it's very loose ("Play a character with a reason whether are facing execution"). Sometimes it is medium ("Play a character who has an emotional reason why they must return to the present time from the past"). Sometimes it is very strong ("You will play an ex-spy from a European or American agency who has some experience of the supernatural, and as a team, you must cover virtually all of the following investigative skills").This has nothing whatsoever to do with "individual character goals being suppressed in order to avoid characters actually coming into conflict with each other". In fact, in the last campaign, two players played characters who actively worked for major opponents of the team's goals. One of them stole a key item from the team, leaving them to die, and the team spent a while tracking him down and getting the book back. Another member was a secret double-agent the entire, multi-year game.I think your preference for a certain style of play is making you view other styles of play with squinty lenses. I've played in sandbox simulations games that were way more restrictive on player agency than story-first games; it's just a different kind of restriction. In a simulation-first game, as you espouse, player agency is restricted by the GM's conception of what the "rules of the world" are. So if I want, as a player, to start selling ice-cream on a military space-station, you might restrict my agency by saying that I could not get the permits, or that the components are not available, or any of a variety of reasons based in your conception of the world rules. A story-first GM would restrict agency by how it affects the story -- maybe it's too silly, or the GM knows the plans cannot come to fruition because the SDF-1 is going to finally be given permission to land on earth next turn and so it'll just be a waste of time and frustrating to start a doomed arc.It's a GM's job -- no matter what their style -- to say what is possible. That's a good thing. But your proposition that using up-front narrative restrictions is more aggressive than in-game simulations restrictions simply says that you prefer simulation to narrative. Nothing more.</blockquote>

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