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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grendel_Khan" data-source="post: 8596951" data-attributes="member: 7028554">I fully agree that the obsession with player agency is a bit ridiculous. We're all grown-ups here (I mean, at least in the games I'm in), and there's something inherently childish to me about playing RPGs as an adversarial or vaguely competitive activity--let's see what the mean GM throws at us, and how we can beat them!But I also really dislike when the pendulum swings too far the other way, and GM so clearly wants something to happen that they treat dice rolls as nothing more than stagecraft or flavor. The random element is truly the only thing that separates RPGs from improv exercises. There's nothing else. If a given storyline is so important, the GM could just set themselves up as the narrator in the improv exercise, and keep nudging the scenes back to their preferred narrative. To me, if the dice are coming out, why not lean into whatever they come up with, good or bad? Sure, the story might not have that season finale pacing or tidy plot thread resolution you imagined, but it'll be it's own weird, unique, not-TV, not-a-novel, not-a-movie thing.So when I say that I lose respect for a dice-fudging GM, it's not because it takes away my agency in the competitive sport of "beating" the adventure. I think it takes away what makes RPGs unique as narratives, which is that in certain key moments, no one knows what's going to happen, including the person who's usually in the creator or narrator role. There's electricity in those moments, that, in my experience, disappears when the GM doesn't like the numbers and we all hear the click as we're directed back onto the correct railroad track.</blockquote>

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