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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7066233" data-attributes="member: 42582">But this is not a restriction that results from the GM acting as "storyteller", so I don't really see how it bears on  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s point. It's a "restriction" that follows simply from the group's consensus about the subject-matter and genre of the game.This isn't really giving enough information to draw a connection between your GMing approach and the categories that  [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] have set out. After all, my games have GM authored content - eg rooms in mage's towers where other unconscious mages are recuperating - and this content is among the elements of the shared fiction that figure in the "main plot". But my games are neither "referee" nor "storyteller" as those terms have been used over the past few pages of this thread.For instance, by "main plot" do you mean events happening in the gameworld that are (in some tenable sense) "interesting"? Or do you mean dramatic sequence of events in which the PCs will participate, as protagonists?If the former, then I can't tell - at this stage of the discussion - what effect (if any) those events in the fiction are having on the content and outcome of player action declarations for their PCs.  And I also can't tell whether those events are part of the framing of the circumstances of those action declarations (ie part of the fictional situation to which the players are responding), or are "secret" events or states of affairs that only the GM knows about, and uses as a type of "filter" for determining the success or failure of player action declarations.And if the latter - eg in something like the way that a module like Dead Gods or the Dragonlance modules has a series of events in which the PCs will participate - how do you manage the causal flow from event A to event B? Eg how do you ensure that player-generated consequences of event A don't destabilise your anticipated "entry point" into event B?These are the sorts of considerations that relate the use of GM content authoring, including perhaps GM force, to the outcomes in the shared fiction.Well, this connects to the transition from event A to event B.If the outcome of event A is literally hostage to the interaction between the choices the players make and the rolls of their dice, then the likelihood of a smooth transition to a pre-authored event B must be fairly slim. Eg to relate that to the OP example, one outcome of that episode of resolution ("scene", to use some jargon) was that one PC was trying to escape across town lugging two bodies while his companion is carrying a jug and a chamber pot full of blood, and with a severed head sitting in the chamber pot as well. That event, and the resulting consequence (on a failed check by the body-lugger to see how well the bodies are lugged) of encountering the night watch, couldn't have been pre-scripted, because until the scene was resolved it wasn't known, or even knowable, what its resolution would be (eg the PCs might instead have tried to reach some sort of accord with the mage whose tower it is and just leave all the bodies there).In my experience of reading modules and referee advice books, there are two main ways of avoiding making the outcome of event A hostage to the players and their dice.(1) Fudge results. This is White Wolf's "Golden Rule", and 2nd ed AD&D also advocates this fairly strongly (under the motto "Don't let a die roll spoil the story").(2) Use GM authority over framing and backstory to negate the consequences of players' declared actions for their PCs. Eg the PCs kill the BBEG, but a lieutenant steps in so that the actual signficance of the PCs' victory is negated. Or the PCs get arrested when the plot "needs" them to be free, so a deus ex machina NPC bails them out with no other costs, consequences or dramatic significance. Or the players sail off into the sunset, but a (GM-authored) storm occurs and blows them back onto the reefs and coast of "the plot". Etc.Some modules - like the incoherent one I mentioned not too far upthread - don't advoctae either (1) or (2) but seem to just assume that, somehow, event A will lead to event B even though - given the way the game works, in terms of action declaration, resolution systems, etc - it would be a minor miracle for things to just turn out that way.At this level of abstraction, we could be talking about a player-driven game or a GM-driven one. Eg if the player has built and played a PC who is hutning for his father's killer among the nobles of the court, then in effect you are following the player's hook (not vice versa) and framing the PC into situations that speak to the player's interests.Conversely, if the real action is all about whatever you as GM have conceived in relation to court machinations, so that the "father's killer" thing is really just a "bread crumb" (to borrow  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s term) to lure the player into your stuff - and if, no matter how hard the player tries to shift the focus onto the quest for the killer, it somehow always seems to lead back to the stuff you as GM are interested in - then I would say it is a GM-driven game.In practice, too, to achieve that sort of GM-driven game where all roads lead to what the GM cares about rather than the players' concerns is probably going to require using "secret" backstory (ie stuff that is not part of the framing of the situation that the players are engaging via their PCs) as an element in adjudication - eg the player has his PC look in a room for clues about his father's killing but has no chance of being successful because the GM has already decided that whatever is discovered in the room will really be about the GM's "main plot".To finish off: my take in this post, and especially the last few paragraphs, is really displaying my inclination towards a "scene framing" approach to GMing. I'll have to leave it to  [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION], if he's interested, to try and frame a response from the perspective of AW-style "principled GMing".Absolutely.</blockquote>

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