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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doctor Futurity" data-source="post: 9518196" data-attributes="member: 10738">I've been mulling over your examples and this. Let's reframe the concept that there's a power dynamic/conflict between the players and the DM, and instead suggest that there's a storytelling dynamic in which we seek dramatic tension and uncertainty. In improv, they use the similar concept of "Yes, and..." which is meant to say "Sure, you can do that....and I am going to add to the circumstance this way." In RPGs, a big part of the fun is the narrative uncertainty, which is instituted by a combination of randomized mechanics and mutual player/DM participation in a storytelling tug-of-war designed to generate a novel experience, which is superior to a simple acceptance monologue. "Can I be a Half-Dragon/Half-Pizie from Mars?" can be answered with "Yes, and you should decide how you arrived in the Forgotten Realms, and what your goal is." "Can I steal the chalice from the dragon by sneaking up on him?" should be accompanied by "Yes, and you should either describe how you plan to do it, or make a stealth roll, to see if you pulled it off." But if you remove the player's right to uncertainty in their success, then you remove the reason a player might enjoy the game in the first place. Likewise, if you remove any agency of the DM beyond acting as permission-giver, then you also remove any necessary role of the DM in providing a dramatic and uncertain path to the narrative. At this point, you are playing a different kind of game, one in which the elaborate mechanisms typical of an RPG like D&D are no longer necessary or maybe even desirable, as they may get in the way of the freeform collaboration. I'm not saying this can't work, but my experience has been that games which do this tend to be storytelling games, often using cards or gimmicks to enable players, and are often aimed at younger or more inexperienced participants for whom the goal is not an elaborate synergetic simulation of an unfolding fantasy novel, but instead is more of a lighthearted collaborative tale telling, with no specific stakes beyond having a good time. Such is a completely viable method of role playing, but it is also a different kind of game than, say, D&D and its many conventional counterparts, which are attempting a different kind of experience entirely, one which requires a much more elaborate framework and agreement to expect uncertainty and narrative limits.</blockquote>

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