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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8802534" data-attributes="member: 42582">Linking this back directly to the OP:Does, and should, the rulebook for a given RPG tell the GM what approach to take here? And what is the result if it doesn't?Torchbearer 2e expressly tells everyone that the first time a PC visits the home of a friend or their parents, a roll is to be made to work out (roughly) whether it's a hovel or a mansion. The player can make up whatever they like about their PCs' backstory, but as the rulebook says (SG p 121), "The old place isn’t quite as they remember it". The book is clear that players' authorship of PC recollections is not binding in relation to the PC's current fictional position.This fits with the game including "hidden gameboards" and also a lottery element (found also, for instance, in the camp and town event rolls). Having these elements be transparent reinforces to the players that everyone at the table - them and the GM - is working under these same constraints.By way of contrast, Burning Wheel is quite different - the player gets to author backstory, and make action declarations (especially Wises), that do have the capacity to be binding relative to current fictional position. There's no hidden gameboard, and not much lottery, in Burning Wheel.The "non-prescriptive" approach, which I've connected in the OP to John Harper's diagram, does not permit players to directly author binding backstory. It has to be mediated by the GM. But (unlike, say, AW's "ask questions and build on the answers" which obliges the GM both to accept and to say "true" things about the fiction) there are no principles or rules that govern that mediation. So nor is there transparency. The GM is the one who holds it all together, treating player contributions as true or keeping the gameboard hidden as they think is appropriate.That's a distinctive (though quite widespread and very mainstream) approach to RPGing.</blockquote>

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