Here's a bit more about this.
Consider the example I was using upthread: the PC enters an inn ut of the rain, and the player casually narrates "I hang my wet cloak on a hook at the door". That is the player authoring new fictional content (ie the existence of hooks at the door of the inn). Does the player have to get the GM's permission first? Does the player have to ask "Are there any hooks at the door? If so, I hang my wet cloak on one."?
If the answer to those questions is "yes", then to me that is immersion-breaking: because instead of my PC being at home in the gameworld (being able to see things, make reasonable judgements eg about the standard layout and facilities of inns, etc), the PC is like an alien in a foreign land who needs the GM to affirme, to the player, verything that the PC sees and can do.
It's a bit extreme, I think, but I get your point. If the PCs frequent a certain inn, then I know I personally wouldn't mind a player establishing a minor detail like where the coats get hung. Or even something a bit more substantial.
But what if the player says "I hand my drenched coat to...my long lost brother who is standing beside the door!?!?!" Cue the dramatic music.
Again I think it comes down to GM judgment. If your GM is reasonable, then they'll likely let you establish coathooks in the local inn. They may kind of expect to be asked "I hang my drenching cloak beside the door...oh, is that what they do here, or some other way of hanging coats?" and the GM would likely just agree and ask you to continue.
I don't think that a bit of confirmation on the DM's part is all that disorienting to the player that it would carry over to their role playing.
The same thing is true with NPCs: if the player is always dependent on the GM to explain who NPCs are, what their connection is to the PC, etc, then it is as if this character has no friends, no family, no one who is not a stranger to him/her.
I think most games likely allow at least a little input into NPCs by players...supporting cast and family and the like are something I always try to use in my games. Typically, I let the players decide the basics, and then I may take it from there.
I feel like this is something that the GM has to mitigate to some extent. The example I gave above of the long lost brother showing up out of the blue...that was mostly a joke, but if the players are free to introduce such concepts in play, then what's to stop them?
I suppose the argument could be made that since nothing is predetermined by the GM, then no plans are being spoiled...the story that emerges is simply what happens.
My argument against that would be that story takes craft. A revenge story isn't made better or more pure if the protagonist sets out on what he expects to be a long, arduous journey....only to find his nemesis before he takes five steps.
I'm exaggerating for effect, but aren't these concerns to have? Or at least, aren't they as valid as being concerned with the impact that having to ask the GM for basic world details will have?
It's not a coincidence that so much fantasy RPGing involves Conan-esque characters who are strangers in the lands they travel through. (And see [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s responses upthread to the idea of a PC becoming a magistrate - that this is incompatible with the wandering that is the norm of a PC's life.) REH chose to make Conan a stranger - the only Cimmerian who ever figures in the stories - as a deliberate narrative and thematic device. The hobbits in LotR, for different reasons, are likewise framed as strangers into the situations they encounter. But this is not a necessity of fantasy RPGing. Or fantasy fiction. Ged, in the Earthsea stories, is not a stranger to his world. He knows his way through it. Han Solo is not a stranger to the world of Star Wars. Etc.
In my experience, if a player is going to play a character who is part of the world rather than alienated from it, then it's not viable for every bit of the fiction to be mediated through the GM, as if the PC was learning about the world for the first time.
If I took this approach, I would feel like I was GMing blind. I wouldn't know what the player was hoping his/her PC would achieve. I wouldn't know what was at stake. I wouldln't know how to apply pressure.
I feel like all of that could be addressed by having a discussion with the players ahead of the game, or in between sessions. I feel like having the game world feel more lived in, more dynamic would be more supported by planning ahead a bit rather than allowing everything to be established on the fly. I mean, I am forced to improv all the time by my players...but I find the improv fun and more constructive because of the amount of "prep" I've done with the world building. The planning is what allows me to more easily improv when needed.
So when one player explains to me that he has a brother and they were in a mercenary company together, but that his brother left the company for some mysterious reason, and he's been searching for him ever since....that's great. I love that the player came up with that. But doesn't the GM kind of have to decide how the brother comes into it? You've given an example of the "GM reading a story to the players" as a criticism of heavy handed GMing....but isn't that better than the players reading a story to themselves?
I am sure many games have a very similar style to the Conanesque vibe you described. But I know that's not remotely true of my game, and based on the discussion, I don't expect it's true of most of the other folks posting here.
Y'know, I feel like a much more pervasive use of passive scores, Perception and Insight, of course, but also Arcana, Dungeoneering, Nature, and Religion for monster ID, than what I currently do is probably the way to go. Make this part of scene framing by the DM but, of course, influenced by player decisions regarding their PC build.
Although in another thread (discussing whether or not to include a surprise round that excludes PCs with lowish passive Perception scores), the consensus from the player agency advocates (and I agree with the logic!) is that denying PCs an active roll partakes of DM Force and thus denies player agency.
How about using the passive approach and then deciding tiers of success? Like, for a lore check of some kind, DC 10 reveals X, DC 15 reveals X and Y, and DC 20 reveals X,Y, and Z. Depending on the system, you may need to tweak it a bit or use slightly different numbers. But instead of forcing a roll where a proficient character could fail and then a non-proficient character could succeed, you instead just let the player know what their PC knows based on 10 plus their skill rank. It makes learned characters seem learned and dumb characters seem...not so learned.
I find this works for knowledge checks and the like. It may require a bit of work beforehand, but I think it can still be abdicated on the fly.