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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6817468" data-attributes="member: 42582">Somewhat pedantically, but still accurately: if the players are aware, then it's not secret backstory.(If the PCs are aware in the fiction, but the players aren't aware at the table, and it's important to resolution, then that's a different thing again. Something has gone wrong with the PC/player interface.)I think my concerns are fairly simple and straightforward: every time the GM draws upon pre-authored fiction to determine consequences within action resolution without that being part of the framing or the situation the players were engaging (via their PCs), it reduces the capacity of the players to push the fiction in the direction that they (playing their PCs) desire. And it increases the importance, to play, of the GM's pre-authored fiction.The same things happens when the GM pre-authors a sandbox independently of the players and the players are then expected to engage that material: this increases the importance to play of the stuff the GM wrote, and reduces the capacity of the players to make the fiction what they want it to be.A secondary consequence of a large amount of GM pre-authored backstory is that more play time gets spent by the players trying to learn the backstory (via talking to NPCs, or using divination spells, or scouting out locations, or whatever it might be). Which shifts the focus of play from drama to exploration. In a mystery/puzzle-type game, this is obviously a feature and not a bug, but in a character-drama type game I think the opposite is true."Fail forward", on the other hand, in which the fiction is kept loose or under-specified until it is either crystallised in accordance with player (and PC) desires - if checks succeed - or crystallised by the GM as part of the narration of failure - if checks fail - allows the players a greater capacity to influence the content of the fiction, by reducing the influence of the GM's pre-authored content, while still giving rise to a rich fiction with dramatic scope.I'm surprised that you can't see that this is Exhibit A for my point about player agency, and for the rationale behind techniques such as "fail forward" and scene-framing.You are saying that a sandbox should be engaging as long as the players engage with the stuff that the GM has offered them.The point of my preferred techniques is to generate an engaging story, by way of RPGing, but without the GM being the one who introduces and offers all the stuff. The players won't have to be "imaginative enough" to build the game out of the GM's stuff, because they and the GM will be conjointly building the game out of stuff injected by all of them.</blockquote>

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