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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5716486" data-attributes="member: 42582">I had in mind a situation of free roleplaying, rather than turn by turn initiative. But even in the latter case, I don't see that it is the GM who is in charge. I see the mechanical apparatus of the turn structure as the common property of the table.I think part of the point of the smelly chamberlain example that P1NBACK linked to upthread is that it uses this thought to undermine a presumption in favour of GM authority.Here's the general form of the argument:The player controls his/her PC's volition; The volition of a rational person is intimately related to his/her perceptions of the external world; The external world is subject to GM authority; Therefore, the GM's exercise of authority is intimiately bound up with the volition of the PC.Now I've never heard of a game breaking up over an argument about an NPC's body odour, but here is a more typical example of the same phenomenon that can and does break up games:Player: "My guy attacks him.: GM: "Why?" Player: "Because he's evil and I hate evil!" GM: "But he didn't detect evil when you cast your spell."From here, it can be a pretty short path to a busted game. Is the GM going to override the player's authority over his/her PC's volition? Or declare the PC to be insane? Or is the GM going to give ground, and modify/retcon the broader fictional situation to make it something that the player wants to engage with rather than disrupt?A very interesting blog - thanks for the link!I want to try and rephrase the distinction I drew in my OP with reference to the idea of "moment-to-moment assent" (which, if I've understood it right, seems to be a restatement of the lumpley principle).When I see "rules as basis of shared fictional reality", and equate that in my mind to the idea of "rules modelling the fiction", I get the following impression: the game is intended to proceed by (i) getting an agreement on what mechanics will be used, and then (ii) using those mechanics to determine the content of the fiction. If moment-to-moment assent means that there is deviation from what the rules text says in respect of (ii), then some sort of drifting (perhaps very minor) has occurred.When I think about the HeroQuest reliance upon genre constraints as an input into framing contests and narrating their resolution, I get a different impression, that the game is meant to proceed by (i) getting an agreement on what mechanics will be used, and then (ii) moment-to-moment assent on genre issues has to be achieved, and then (iii) the mechanics are to be used to settle the outcome of a contest, but (iv) moment-to-moment assent again has to be achieved on the ingame fictional process that produced that mechanically-mandated outcome.HeroQuest seems to build in moment-to-moment assent as an aspect of the game itself being played as intended, rather than as giving rise to a possibility of drift from the game as written.I think this can be cashed out in relation to Vincent Baker's "smelly chamberlain" example. Suppose that the game has a "NPC body odour" chart, and the GM has rolled on it for the chamberlain, and the outcome is "no noticable body odour". Then, for the players' secret plan to work, the group would have to drift the game. Whereas a game that leaves the issue of NPC body odour as a matter for genre-compliant stipulation (which is, I think, true most of the time for the fantasy RPGs that I know) then the players in the "smelly chamberlain" example aren't trying to drift the rules, but rather to tussle over authority on who is the final arbiter of genre-compliant stipulation.Does that make any sense?</blockquote>

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