Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6212612" data-attributes="member: 42582">In my case, I am disputing the need for GM force as the arbiter of action resolution. That is a fairly specific thing.I've made it clear, I hope, that in my game I favour GM authority over scene-framing - because I don't want the players setting their own challenges, which encourages cautious rather than dramatic play - and also take it for granted that the GM will have primary (though not sole) authority over backstory.What I don't like is (i) secret backstory that affects fictional positioning in ways the players don't and can't know, thereby placing the results of action resolution outside their control, and (ii) GM fiat at the point of action resolution to dictate outcomes.These are all fairly clear preferences, I think. In play they produce a style that I have labelled "indie". You can vary some of them and still have variants on that style - eg give players some degree of authority over scene framing, and greater authority over backstory  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] did that in his chamberlain scenario upthread, and is doing the same in the current chamberlain play-by-post), and you will still have a version of indie play.But give players too much authority over backstory and scene-framing and you turn your game into shared storytelling rather than what I have labelled "indie RPGing". Action resolution becomes a subordinate consideration, because all the real work of generating the outcomes is done via authoring of backstory and scene-framing.My experience in the play-by-post scenario that Manbearcat is running at the moment has made me think about this some more, because Manbearcat gives his players more authority over backstory and (elements of) scene-framing than I am typically used to. We're in a transition scene, and so there hasn't been much mechanical action resolution, and hence a lot of the outcomes are the result of round-robin narration. But I don't think it counts as shared storytelling in the relevant sense, as Manbearcat has framed the scenes, with player contributions being to backstory, or to challenge down the track, rather than directly to the immediate challenge. So the round-robin narration is really just the GM "saying yes" repeatedly and then reframing in light of that - ie traditional freeform roleplaying. And the player contribution to backstory is helping build up a context and a "vibe" for the action scene to come in an efficient way, which is particularly helpful for this sort of one-shot.I have certainly felt like I'm playing my character rather than co-authoring a story - I said the last rites over dying soldiers, inspired others with rousing words, and got myself a herald to announce my presence to the chamberlain! And at least the first and last of these were unexpected by me going in - which is a key goal of distributing authority over the different participants in the game.What hasn't happened is any assertion of GM force over outcomes. This is the thing that is toxic from the point of indie play. What is the point of me playing my character, and pushing hard into the situations the GM has framed, if the GM has already decided what will happen?EDIT: [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] - something strange with the mention tag in this message.</blockquote>

Verification