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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 7641693" data-attributes="member: 177">I know.  I was setting it up to knock it down, to point out that "zero influence on story direction" doesn't exist.  This gets us past the usual polar divide that the internet drives conversation to, and perhaps into a better place to discuss the middle ground. I don't think anyone can actually go to *zero* story advocacy.  The GM, especially - the GM is in fact pretty much always engaged in at least short-term story advocacy, implicitly.  Every framing of a scene is gong to be advocacy for the type of story that's going to happen in that scene.  The only one of these that is in question in this discussion is about pushing characters in a particular direction. I think that there's difference in degree, because, really, as human beings, some amount of desire for the story to go one way or another is going to show up in the decisions.  Purity of thought is denied us.  Someone's going to go, "oh, wait, wouldn't it be cool if..." and make character decisions with that in mind.  It is my earnest opinion that dogma at the RPG table is a limiter of fun.  If you want to talk about guidelines and frameworks, sure.  But those things need a lot of bend and flex, or we deny ourselves the ability to reach a lot of fun for the sake of purity.</blockquote>