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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9626391" data-attributes="member: 42582">So if we're now talking about the GM rather than a player in the conventional sense . . .Upthread I mentioned The Vanishing Conjurer, a very standard CoC scenario (that even gets its own Wikipedia page: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Statue_of_the_Sorcerer_%26_The_Vanishing_Conjurer" target="_blank">The Statue of the Sorcerer & The Vanishing Conjurer - Wikipedia</a>).This has a whole lot of stuff in it that (i) the GM is expected to present to the players, and from which (ii) the players are expected to infer the solution (ie that they have to allow the gate to open, rescue Leclair, and then close the gate before an eldritch horror comes through it).On the player side of the experience, their job is to draw inferences from what the GM tells them in the course of play. The GM is constrained in what they say by reference to the module.Now suppose that the GM, in the course of play, instead of operating under that constraint, operates under a different set of constraints - say, the ones that govern GMing in AW or BW. The players can still draw inferences from that, and be moved as a result to declare actions for their characters and form beliefs about the backstory.I believe that [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] is pointing out that, given the previous paragraph, it is no more "objective" or "real" for the players to form inferences based on GMing that is constrained by notes that they wrote a week ago (or that they purchased from someone else, in the case of a module) than it is for them to form inferences based on GMing that is constrained in the second sort of way I've identified.I will refer back to this actual play report: <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/cthulhu-dark-another-session.658931/" target="_blank">Cthulhu Dark - another session</a>When Randall's player worked out that a crucial point linking business interests in Central Europe and business interests in East Africa (ie werewolves and werehyenas), why is this any less "real" or "objective" because the ideas have been introduced by me as GM "spontaneously", rather than by reference to something I wrote a week ago.When the revelation that the Earl is a werehyena came out - confirmed, ultimately, by Armand (as PC) finding him exhausted and sleeping in a stable (a fairly classic trope for a lycanthrope story), why is that less "real" or "objective" because I as GM was having regard to the same players decision, as Appleby at the start of the session, that the Earl was mysteriously absent and "indisposed"?To relate back to some things that [USER=7036985]@deleuzian_kernel[/USER] posted upthread, the reason why that PC was drawn into the investigation of the mystery was because of his loyalty (as butler and manservant) to his master. How does this become less objective and real because it is the player who has decided to play a character who is perturbed by the fact that his master is missing? Of course at that point no one (including me, the GM) knew why - and when I introduced the first lycanthropic clue (the silverware cleaning fluid being kept in cannisters) the players (and their PCs) didn't pick up on it, and so even at that point play did not generate pressure on me as GM to determine a precise solution.But no one has explained why the solution - that the Earl was a werehyena - is less real or objective in this episode of play, than is the solution to The Vanishing Conjurer.</blockquote>

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