This sentence is hard for me to parse, because when (in the fiction) the Gorechain devil treats another person as a marionette, in the real world, at the table, the GM will be telling a player what that player's character does.
It's not the least bit clear to me.
In Fate, for instance, if the GM offers a compel, then in the ficiton something is tempting or motivating your character. Or, perhaps, something about your character is motivating others.
I'll try it again, because there's a distinction that's clear in my head that I apparently haven't been able to make clear to you--I don't need or expect or even want you to agree with me, just to understand.
Effects that come from the in-fiction opposition--things like being charmed or paralyzed or petrified or dominated or frightened (I know that's a negative condition in 3.x and 5E, don't know about 4E) or whatever, coming from what my character in the fiction is encountering in the fiction, such as a harpy or a gorgon or an illithid or a dragon--do not bother me at all. They are happening to my in-fiction character in the fiction, because of other things in the fiction that are behaving according to their natures as established in the fiction. The marionette-style dominate effect/attack described as something the Gorechain Devil does, as something that happens in the fiction of the game, wouldn't bother me. I would think of the DM in that instance as reporting what is happening (yes, I know he's running the Gorechain Devil, and he's deciding to use that attack, and he's choosing to target my character with it--it's his job to put things in between my character and my character's goals, and if he's running the Gorechain Devil that way, he's doing his job). Even something like a Berserk Disadvantage in Champions, where every time X happens you need to roll to see if your character starts attacking everyone and everything around them, doesn't bother me, because the events that trigger the Berserk chance arise in the fiction.
Effects that come from around the table--whether they come from the GM or another player--things like Compels in Fate, or the strings or whatever in Monsterhearts, or IIRC the various ways Stress is applied to characters by the GM in Blades in the Dark--bother the heck out of me, because though they represent things in the fiction (I'm clear on that, really) they aren't emerging naturally from the events in-fiction; they're emerging because someone else around the table has decided to use them to force my character's story to change. Yes, I know that a Fate GM's job is to offer Compels to my character, and I know the other players in Monsterhearts have among their jobs to pull on my character's strings--that doesn't change how I feel about it, though. The closest thing I can come up with for why is Chekhov's Gun (if a gun is onstage in the first two acts, it must be fired in the third; if a gun is fired in the third act, it must be onstage in the first two): Whatever effect is being placed onto my character by GM as GM (not as opposition) or fellow player (not as character) by metagame mechanics does not feel to me as though it is emerging naturally from the events preceding it; it feels as though a gun is appearing onstage during the third act.
No, the item is cursed because it was stolen from a mummy's tomb. And the character did read its aura - that's how he learned that it is cursed!
So, what happened in the fiction was that the character read the feather's aura and discovered it was cursed. What happened at/around the table was that the player rolled dice and didn't get a result that gave him (the player) authority to declare what the feather was, so the feather's properties were determined ... I'm guessing by table concensus? So the test to read the aura wasn't about properties the feather had, as established previously in-fiction (whether in play or in notes) but instead about who was going to decide what its properties were?
Is that a more accurate description?
To be clear, those are propositions stated within the context of the fiction.
In the real workd, the item doesn't exist but various actions of rolling dice, comparing numbers of successes to target numbers, narrating imaginary things and events, etc really do take place. I as GM narrated that the item is cursed because the player made a roll and failed (ie didn't meet the target number for success).
I'm clear on the difference between fiction and reality. Thank you. If I am talking about something in fiction having an objective reality, it's because the word for what really happens in. e.g., a novel, as opposed to what, e.g., an unreliable narrator tells you happens, has fallen out of my head, apparently irretrievably. I know there's a word, but I can't remember it (and it might be obscure enough that even using it might not help with communication.
If the GM already decides that the angel feather that the PC will find at the bazaar is cursed, then the game becomes a puzzle: the player has to work out whether or not the angel feather his/her PC has purchased is cursed.
Well-known examples of RPGs and allied game forms which feature a fair bit of this: Tomb of Horrors; any dungeon designed along the lines set out by Moldvay and Gygax in their well-known and classic D&D rulebooks; Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks like Warlock of Firetop Mountan and The Forest of Doom.
Using the approach to narration that I have illustrated in my example of play does not have even a hint of this. The player doesn't need to solve puzzles. S/he needs to inhabit his/her PC and engage the fiction.
So, if something exists in the fiction, and it wasn't put there around the table, that's something you'd describe as RPG-as-puzzle? That seems to imply that if I as a GM decide anything about a scene and don't tell the players about it, it's instantly RPG-as-puzzle, which (heh) puzzles me.