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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 5719099" data-attributes="member: 17106">I'm all about giving the players narrative control and trying to reduce the power distance between DM and player.The DM is responsible for staying true to the setting and maintaining verisimilitude, but I don't think this is usually that hard.Personally, I'm a fan of the Cortex system (Serenity, BSG, etc.), which explicitly gives this sort of control to the players by letting them offer action points as a bribe to the DM in order for him to introduce favorable plot elements (and rewards the players with action points if they introduce new challenges for themselves).In the above example, I think it's easy to imagine a way that the player's suggestion could be fruitful. Compare the player's knowledge to the villain's. There could be a hidden alleyway, a network of mages with teleportation portals, or a yearly parade that the villain didn't know would cross his path. Even to the extent that this seems narrativistic at the expense of simulation, who is to say that the DM's map is the best and most realistic reality you could be playing in? Having multiple sources of input into setting elements enhances verisimilitude in my mind, because the real world is not the product of a single mind. The DM's job is to, in a split second, judge the merits of such a suggestion from the player, and whether it seems purely self-serving for that player or whether it actually makes sense that local knowledge could yield a better route. It's not an easy job, but that's why we get paid the big bucks.Hey, wait a second...</blockquote>

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