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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9672944" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Alright. Let's take this example and run with it, shall we?You decide to go to the store. But before you enter, the store has you blinfolded, puts noise-cancelling earphones over your ears, and puts mandatory boxing gloves on your hands. Functionally, while you are inside, you are in sensory deprivation--except for what your Guide Merchant tells you through those earphones. If you bring other shoppers with you, they'll be able to hear your questions and your Guide Merchant's answers, but everyone has to wear the same blindfold+earphones+gloves setup. Your Guide Merchant is legally required to never lie to you about prices, so you'll always know exactly how much you're spending (no trickery on that front), but beyond that it is their discretion what products they decide to mention and what descriptions or judgments they might make.Would you say you still have full autonomy in this situation? I can certainly say that, at the very least, even if I were perfectly confident that my Guide Merchant would never for any reason lie to me nor hide anything I would want to know nor even exercise any judgment whatsoever that I wouldn't exercise myself, I'd feel like I'd lost a lot of my autonomy simply because I'm not allowed to observe myself. I am exclusively dependent on second-hand information through the Guide Merchant. But that situation is what players necessarily go through when playing a game of this kind with its radical dependence on GM-world-knowledge.So, no, I don't accept that there's an analogy here. When you go to the store, you are in full control over what (if any) information you might receive, assuming it's there to be received. There is nothing second-hand, and you make all of your choices for yourself, directly knowing the consequences as much as it is possible to know them. That is what makes it such that you have autonomy. Those things are not, and cannot be, present at the game-table. That doesn't mean that some kind of autonomy can be present. I am not in any way denying or even questioning that here. I'm simply saying that the analogy you've used is not even remotely applicable because of the fundamental, and dramatic, differences between "I went to the store to shop" and "I played in a traditional-GM-sandbox game".</blockquote>

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