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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5539136" data-attributes="member: 42582">On the whole GM/human agency thing, I think I'm somewhere in between KM and RC. (And I'm not sure about LostSoul.) I think that human interpretive agency is important for a RPG. At least in my game, it's not just the GM but the players as well who have an important role in this - in that they are able to propose interpretations/options, and the GM is under some sort of onus to take them seriously.Where my greater proximity to KM comes in is that I think different systems can do a better or worse job of (i) providing players with the tools with which to frame their interpretations and options, and (ii) providing GMs with the tools to properly discharge the onus that falls on them.It's probably fairly obvious that I think 4e does a pretty good job in relation to (i) and a very good job in relation to (ii). I think Rolemaster does at least as good a job in relation to (i), but quite a poor job in relation to (ii) - in a lot of contexts a GM has nothing to fall back on but some very generic Difficulty descriptors and a very generic Static Action table. I think Basic D&D and AD&D rely a lot more on social contract and understood table context, than on the published rulebooks, when it comes both to (i) and (ii). For example, there is really very little in either Gygax's PHB - for a player - or DMG - for a GM - that would encourage me as GM to set up a scenario like White Plume Mountain or Tomb of Horrors, nor supply me as player with the sort of framework I need for tackling it. The contrast between these classic AD&D scenarios, and scenarios like D1-3 which, while written for AD&D could be ported with conception mostly preserved into a wide range of other fantasy systems, is to me pretty stark. (Ghost Tower of Inverness is probably midway between S1&2 and D1-3 in the extent to which the published rules/guidelines for encounter/scenario design and action resolution bear significantly on the way the module is actually built and meant to be played.)</blockquote>

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