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Message: <blockquote data-quote="chaochou" data-source="post: 7728927" data-attributes="member: 99817">I agree that there can be many processes used for action resolution. But Saelorn's position is unambigious. The players get to do nothing beyond give the GM their ideas and suggestions. The GM then plays, using or ignoring action resolution mechanics, inventing new ones, or simply deciding outcomes.I think there's a danger here, in that postulating this kind of granularity helps create the illusion of agency which doesn't exist. In fact, I'd go further and say that GM controlled, zero player agency games rely exactly on the illusion of agency provided by (B) in order to be accepted by the players.For instance:Player: I walk across the roomGM: You fall down a pit and break your armThe change in gamestate is discrete - from person in a room to person in a pit with a broken arm. The fact that you can momentarily imagine the walking and falling didn't give you agency, although the illusion is strong enough that people will argue otherwise.The illusion is broken when you understand the GM, in Saelorn's game, can say anything. Your feet are stuck to the floor. You explode. You fall asleep. You're sucked into a mirror. You spin round three times and end up in Kansas.All the play - the changes in gamestate - are on the GM side. What the players do is ask the GM to read them a bit more story.In (1) I think 'participation' is weaker than 'play'! I say that to be a player you have to have the ability to change the gamestate. I could be playing a game and ask a passer-by the roll the dice for me and they have now participated. But did they get any say in why we rolled the dice or what the outcomes mean?You know as well as me that games designed to offer player agency provide transparency in resolution (so the stakes and outcomes are defined) and make it clear that the MC /  narrator / DM is just as bound by the action resolution process as the player(s).In any event, we can see from Saelorn's posts ('actual resolution is left up to the GM') that he doesn't just believe (2) but discounts anyone else's right to do otherwise and still call it roleplaying.</blockquote>

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