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Message: <blockquote data-quote="chaochou" data-source="post: 5722432" data-attributes="member: 99817">I agree with this, and want to highlight that the idea of checks and balances is very important.When you give players narrative control you move away from GM authoirity - but not to player authority. You end up with play based on consensus, where everyone at the table (including the GM) has to agree to a suggestion for it to be incorporated into the fiction.In my experience, the implications of this kind of gaming by concensus do not receive enough attention.It does not, for example, lead to a situation where players automatically try to narrate away in-game challenges. Why? Because players want those challenges. How could you possibly claim as a player to want a challenge and then narrate it away the moment you get the chance?In my experience, players with narration rights tend to talk themselves into more trouble, not less. Just trouble of their choosing, which interests them, which will help define their character.Also, it does not allow players to 'mess up' the GMs carefully planned ideas. Why? Because if you GM in this style you don't tend to have carefully planned ideas. You don't tend to have a detailed map of the city.You have a loose framework of characters and their motivations, and some tense situations in which the PCs have a stake. GM-ing in this style feels like being a player  - you have to react, to adapt, to take new ideas and changes to the landscape on board and roll with them, to be just as willing as the players to discover things you didn't know about the gameworld. You sit down with ideas, but you create the world at the table with the players.So it has some real strengths.In fairness, it has some weaknesses to. Play can begin to feel directionless - the GM has less authority to keep 'the story' going, so if the players aren't careful in what they create you can suddenly find yourself with 10 'story arcs' none of which are being resolved. Games can feel like a never-ending soap opera rather than a movie.It also relies heavily on players engaging with it. Quiet players, players who want to take a back seat, who won't put something out there - they can be difficult to deal with if they also have narration rights. As a playstyle it assumes pro-activeness on the part of players.Tying into that, in my experience, you need players who make characters with weaknesses. Characters with beliefs that can be threatened, problems to be exploited, friendships to be tested - all that stuff. Reactive players, who don't provide such hooks, lead to difficult games.This turned into a longer post than expected, but I guess - in answer to the OPs question... giving players narrative control is as good as the players make it.</blockquote>

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