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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7075389" data-attributes="member: 42582">OK, so now you're agreeing with me that in [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s games there are important limits on the shared fiction that are being driven by the GM.Sure. But if they're established unilaterally by the GM, that makes it a GM-driven game, doesn't it?Eg there is nothing inherent to D&D, or other generic fantasy RPGing, that precludes a PC becoming a magistrate (a paladin level title is "justiciar"; fighters becomes lords and barons; etc). Or becoming leader of the mercenaries' guild. Etc.This is why I think that examples of looking for Porsche sports cars in Waterdeep don't really help us understand the dynamics of contribution to authorship of the shared fiction. Everyone agreeing to play D&D, or AW, or MHRP, or whatever, is making a collective choice about genre. (Of course marginal questions may remain and need to be settled during play - does our D&D have swashbucklers as well as mediaeval knights? Or even non-marginal question - does our D&D include androids and space ships? But I don't think the existence of these questions defeats the general claim. Nor do I think there is any universal presumption that the GM gets to settle them unilaterally.)The GM deciding that the options on offer are orcs, lizardmen, mercenaries or the dak tower, though - so that pursuing other goals is tantamount to retiring the character - is something different. It's not a collective choice of genre. It's a unilateral stipulation of shared fiction. That may be a good thing or a bad thing, but it's pretty clear what the thing is.</blockquote>

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