Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[prabe]

In terms of agency, the character does not matter at all. Being a construct that cannot make choices, it lacks the fundamental requirements to have agency. Instead, the character is a vehicle for the player's agency. Whether or not a game or a player chooses to treat the character as a pawn or decides to advocate strongly for the character is a completely separate issue from agency.

In fiction, a character without agency is the most boring type of character that exists. Fiction without interesting characters isn't worth my time.

EDIT TO ADD: This is why games where the characters have no real agency--where they can't really make decisions that really matter--are so boring, and so horribly bad. The players are bored, because the characters--the characters they're playing--are boring. It doesn't matter here whether it's because the system encourages the GM to steal the characters' agency, or because the GM is doing it in spite of the system; it doesn't matter if it's ignorance or malice.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So, how exactly does the player control which choice the GM makes, or even know what the GM's options are? The GM in AW doesn't seem to me (as someone who's just read the rules a couple times) to be all that much more constrained than the DM in 5E.

I think, then, you're missing something absolutely fundamental.

Again, let's look at the Burgomaster scenario. Let's assume play, for whatever reason, has reached the same (or very similar) situation in both games, however that works. So, what we have is a negotiation with a local power figure, and one player has chosen to escalate to threats and insults. There's been some information passed that the Burgomaster does not tolerate such from townsfolk, but nothing yet established in play (not notes) as to how the Burgomaster will react.

In AW, the GM has two options -- let the insult work outright (say yes) or challenge it (roll the dice). That's it, they can't look at any notes they may have (and prep can be a thing in AW) and declare an outcome. The player, by dint of the action chosen, has constrained the GM to either agree or let the mechanics take it. If the GM choses the mechanics, then we have three outcomes. First, on a success, the GM can only choose to have the Burgomaster capitulate or to not capitulate but instead suffer whatever harm is part of the action. In this case, a likely set of options would be that the Burgomaster backs down and proceeds accepting his unfit to rule or he resists but in doing so, the PC takes him hostage. Play can proceed from here.

On a partial, the GM must accept one of the partial outcomes, which the player chooses. The GM can then proceed with play, but this outcome is fixed.

On a failure, the GM is free to make however hard a move as they want, which would easily fit calling for the guards (show future badness).

Regardless, the GM is tightly constrained as to what the result will be, and only has the option to follow through on whatever prep exists if he first challenges the action declaration and then the check fails.

In 5e, the GM just decides what happens. They can decide to follow something that looks like the above, or they can decide to follow their notes. The GM is unconstrained and can outright negate the intent of the action, either by fiat or because of secret notes that detail how this interaction will play out. The best cast here for agency is that the GM decides to allow for it to exist. A quite often outcome, especially in a module that does what this one did and pre-scripts outcomes without the benefit of the input fiction, is to not allow for agency to exist and instead direct play to the predetermined outcome.

Again, I love to play 5e. It's just a different game and handles agency in a different way from games like AW. I'm not, at all, trying to say that play in AW is better for any reason. I'm just answering the claim that it's the same in regards to agency. It is not.

So, I'll let pass that by the DM deciding what happens, that's technically going to mechanics.

In 5e? Sure, so long as we're agreed the mechanic is "GM decides."

So, the AW player Goes Aggro and rolls. 10+ The BurgerMaster sucks it up (breaks) and calls for the guards. On a 7-9, the BurgerMaster "barricades himself securely in" and calls for the guards. On a miss, the BurgerMaster calls for the guards. A bad-faith GM can work inside AW just as easily--maybe more so, if the players believe otherwise--as a bad-faith DM in 5E. And the vibe I get from the book seems to me to encourage bad-faith (or at least dickish) GMing.

No, that's a bad outcome, and an immediately apparent use of Force. It's apparent because the 'suck it up' choice results in the target refusing the demand but suffering a negative outcome. Calling in reinforcements is not a negative outcome. There are a wealth of possibilities, but none of them should be the BM sucking it up and getting an advantage out of that. The choice to refuse the request on a success is to accept a different, but meaningful, penalty. This is the agency inherent in the AW way of doing things -- the GM is constrained on a success to either have the NPC accede to the demand or suffer for refusing. That the GM has the agency to choose between these two choices, and has some leeway on what harm is suffered if not clear from the fiction, does mean that the situation is the same as in 5e where the GM has no such constraints imposed by the player action.

I don't see how the character's success/failure on a resolution determining whether the door is trapped--meaning literally that the trap is present on one result and not on another--can be anything other than meta. If doors are only ever trapped if you look for traps, why would you ever look for traps? That's probably not the best example ... Anyway, I actually do understand the playstyle, and I even see the appeal of something like Gumshoe where you always find what's there to be found but you might not understand it correctly (and I realize that Gumshoe might not be exactly the right style of play, where the declaration "I open the box, looking for the Crown of Revel" is an action-declaration that can be resolved, which on a result favoring the player means the Crown of Revel is in the box--I can see the appeal of that, too-- finding the Crown of Revel isn't the point, figuring out what to do with it is). Meta elements don't always need to detract from focus on the characters, but focus on the characters doesn't mean the player or the character has agency. While the player might have used the game's mechanics to put the Crown of Revel in the box, there's no in-fiction way for the character to have done so; I find that mechanics like that push me out of character rather than pulling me in. Those mechanics to me feel far more focused on story than on character/s.

It's one of those hurdles you have to leap. If a player declares an action and fails, and it would make sense in the currently established fiction and the genre that a door being used in the failed action is trapped, then announcing a trap is perfectly valid. Randomly applying traps to doors that aren't part of a failed action is poorly done, and could be broken play, especially if it becomes a secret note against a future action.

Fundamentally, there's never a case in AW or DW where a door is secretly trapped before an action. A trapped door is either established in previous fiction, such as information gained in prior sessions about this door, or in scene framing. Never as something that the players have to check for or they fall victim to it. This is the nature of PbtA play. You're finding out that that door was trapped all along with the players, not determining it before play. Prep, in this case, would be notes for a possible failed roll to have things quick to hand, not as a planned or necessary part of play.

Describing things in-the-fiction is good GMing, I agree. I don't think of it as "misdirecting," though. There is a fair amount of explicitly-encouraged jerking-around of the PCs by the GM, it seems. But I've been pretty clear for a while (at least in my head) that I'm not antagonistic enough as a GM to run any of these sorts of games. I'm happy to instigate, but after that I'm very hands-off.

You're absolutely misdirecting if you're making one of those moves but not saying it's name. And, no, it's not antagonistic. One of the core principles of PbtA play is to be a fan of the PCs. You should root for them, and enjoy their successes. But, PCs can't have successes unless put into danger, so it's also your job to put the PCs into tough situations and see what happens. This is what we do when we root for a character in a movie -- we don't want to see that character having a boring but happy home life where nothing happens. We want to see that character put into bad spots and succeed! Think about John in Die Hard -- it's a boring movie if the terrorists don't show up, or if John doesn't lose his shoes and run around barefoot. John gets beat up, put in desperate situations, but everyone cheers when he comes out of it, battered but successful. This is what you have to do in PbtA. You don't jerk characters around, you faithfully play the bad situations they find themselves in, and then enjoy the hell out of them dealing with it. Using the mechanics to tell when you should up the ante, and the principles of soft and hard moves, really put this into a very good framework of play where you're not arbitrarily being a jerk, you're adding pressure and problems due to the PC's own actions. Simplifying this as antagonistic play or being a jerk to the players is completely not understanding the framework.

Again, I put my players through the wringer last weekend, and they loved it. Doesn't sound like me being a jerk or being antagonistic.

 

[Ovinomancer]

In fiction, a character without agency is the most boring type of character that exists. Fiction without interesting characters isn't worth my time.

EDIT TO ADD: This is why games where the characters have no real agency--where they can't really make decisions that really matter--are so boring, and so horribly bad. The players are bored, because the characters--the characters they're playing--are boring. It doesn't matter here whether it's because the system encourages the GM to steal the characters' agency, or because the GM is doing it in spite of the system; it doesn't matter if it's ignorance or malice.

Characters don't have agency, though. What you're calling character agency is an illusion, one that's fun to engage in fiction. However, nothing happens in fiction that isn't intended by the author -- no choice the character makes is actually a choice. What you're confusing is a plot where a character appears to make hard choices and suffers for them. I love those stories, too. But, that character isn't actually making a choice or suffering a consequence.

Why is this important? Because we're talking about agency in the sense of games, where the authoring of the story is shared out among participants and codified by rules. The only people that have agency in this setup are the players. Confusing this agency with the characters allows for confusion about what's actually happening.

 

[prabe]

I think, then, you're missing something absolutely fundamental.

Again, let's look at the Burgomaster scenario. Let's assume play, for whatever reason, has reached the same (or very similar) situation in both games, however that works. So, what we have is a negotiation with a local power figure, and one player has chosen to escalate to threats and insults. There's been some information passed that the Burgomaster does not tolerate such from townsfolk, but nothing yet established in play (not notes) as to how the Burgomaster will react.

In AW, the GM has two options -- let the insult work outright (say yes) or challenge it (roll the dice). That's it, they can't look at any notes they may have (and prep can be a thing in AW) and declare an outcome. The player, by dint of the action chosen, has constrained the GM to either agree or let the mechanics take it. If the GM choses the mechanics, then we have three outcomes. First, on a success, the GM can only choose to have the Burgomaster capitulate or to not capitulate but instead suffer whatever harm is part of the action. In this case, a likely set of options would be that the Burgomaster backs down and proceeds accepting his unfit to rule or he resists but in doing so, the PC takes him hostage. Play can proceed from here.

On a partial, the GM must accept one of the partial outcomes, which the player chooses. The GM can then proceed with play, but this outcome is fixed.

The rulebook I'm looking at says, "When you Go Aggro on someone, roll+hard. On a 10+, they have to choose: force your hand and suck it up, or cave and do what you want. On a 7-9, they can instead choose 1:"

That tells me it's not the player choosing, it's the GM, so the player really has no control over the outcome. The example I laid out is book-legal, though it'd be horrible GMing--and I never said it was otherwise.

In 5e, the GM just decides what happens. They can decide to follow something that looks like the above, or they can decide to follow their notes. The GM is unconstrained and can outright negate the intent of the action, either by fiat or because of secret notes that detail how this interaction will play out. The best cast here for agency is that the GM decides to allow for it to exist. A quite often outcome, especially in a module that does what this one did and pre-scripts outcomes without the benefit of the input fiction, is to not allow for agency to exist and instead direct play to the predetermined outcome.

Again, I love to play 5e. It's just a different game and handles agency in a different way from games like AW. I'm not, at all, trying to say that play in AW is better for any reason. I'm just answering the claim that it's the same in regards to agency. It is not.

Oh, yeah, they're different games, aiming at generating/enabling different stories, and I have no doubt that Baker played in some deeply dissatisfying games in other systems before he wrote his own.

I don't think I've been unclear that published adventures, especially adventure paths, are problematic for character agency--for the characters mattering much, even--and I also don't think I've been unclear that 5E is designed to enable play through published adventures. So, it's probable that many players' experience of 5E is going to be ... less than ideal. I think, though, that there's support in the game to play differently; I don't think 5E is limited to that sort of play.

No, that's a bad outcome, and an immediately apparent use of Force. It's apparent because the 'suck it up' choice results in the target refusing the demand but suffering a negative outcome. Calling in reinforcements is not a negative outcome. There are a wealth of possibilities, but none of them should be the BM sucking it up and getting an advantage out of that. The choice to refuse the request on a success is to accept a different, but meaningful, penalty. This is the agency inherent in the AW way of doing things -- the GM is constrained on a success to either have the NPC accede to the demand or suffer for refusing. That the GM has the agency to choose between these two choices, and has some leeway on what harm is suffered if not clear from the fiction, does mean that the situation is the same as in 5e where the GM has no such constraints imposed by the player action.

The rulebook I have says "Force your hand and suck it up." BurgerMaster calls for guards and other party member attacks (tries to take him hostage). That genuinely doesn't sound all that incongruent to me. Yes, it's bad GMing in AW if any result of Go Aggro will have that result, and I've never said otherwise; I've just said it's possible to GM that way (and that the play examples in the book don't discourage it, actually seem to suggest it).

It's one of those hurdles you have to leap. If a player declares an action and fails, and it would make sense in the currently established fiction and the genre that a door being used in the failed action is trapped, then announcing a trap is perfectly valid. Randomly applying traps to doors that aren't part of a failed action is poorly done, and could be broken play, especially if it becomes a secret note against a future action.

Fundamentally, there's never a case in AW or DW where a door is secretly trapped before an action. A trapped door is either established in previous fiction, such as information gained in prior sessions about this door, or in scene framing. Never as something that the players have to check for or they fall victim to it. This is the nature of PbtA play. You're finding out that that door was trapped all along with the players, not determining it before play. Prep, in this case, would be notes for a possible failed roll to have things quick to hand, not as a planned or necessary part of play.

Yeah, I understand the mechanics, and I understand the ... rationalization of the mechanics--how the mechanics are meant to reflect/shape the emergent story.

OTOH: A 5E DM could randomly roll to determine if a door was trapped--the old school-ish random dungeons seem a likely application for this. He'd be finding out if it was trapped about the same time as the PCs. That's not my prefered playstyle, but it's not meta the same way as having it hinge on the outcome of a Perception check (or the equivalent).

You're absolutely misdirecting if you're making one of those moves but not saying it's name. And, no, it's not antagonistic. One of the core principles of PbtA play is to be a fan of the PCs. You should root for them, and enjoy their successes. But, PCs can't have successes unless put into danger, so it's also your job to put the PCs into tough situations and see what happens. This is what we do when we root for a character in a movie -- we don't want to see that character having a boring but happy home life where nothing happens. We want to see that character put into bad spots and succeed! Think about John in Die Hard -- it's a boring movie if the terrorists don't show up, or if John doesn't lose his shoes and run around barefoot. John gets beat up, put in desperate situations, but everyone cheers when he comes out of it, battered but successful. This is what you have to do in PbtA. You don't jerk characters around, you faithfully play the bad situations they find themselves in, and then enjoy the hell out of them dealing with it. Using the mechanics to tell when you should up the ante, and the principles of soft and hard moves, really put this into a very good framework of play where you're not arbitrarily being a jerk, you're adding pressure and problems due to the PC's own actions. Simplifying this as antagonistic play or being a jerk to the players is completely not understanding the framework.

Again, I put my players through the wringer last weekend, and they loved it. Doesn't sound like me being a jerk or being antagonistic.

Yeah. The GM's job is to place obstacles in the characters' way, and to present plausible opposition. That's ... pretty close to universal (there might be edge cases but I don't think they're the focus of discussion). Without the obstacles and/or opposition, there'd be nothing to center a story around--no decisions or actions that mattered. I think my sense is that having the world exist in a more or less objective sense (to use the most-current example, that door is trapped) makes it clearer that the GM is neither the obstacle nor the opposition; that seems to be true for me as a player, as well as as GM.

It's plausible I'm bouncing as much off Baker's writing as the game mechanics, but I did come to a similar conclusion about Fate (that the game needed the GM to be more antagonistic than I wanted to be), and that game is written ... more conventionally--and yes, I remember (I think) that you don't think Fate goes far enough.

I wouldn't say I've ever put my players through the wringer, but I would say the Masked Ones killed Imaktis, and more the Tundra Queen seems to have drawn their ire. The players have been coming back every other week for more than two years, so it's tempting to say they're digging it. There's probably some fundamental-ish difference in how we look at the stories that emerge from play, and the elements thereof.

 

[hawkeyefan]

In fiction, a character without agency is the most boring type of character that exists. Fiction without interesting characters isn't worth my time.

EDIT TO ADD: This is why games where the characters have no real agency--where they can't really make decisions that really matter--are so boring, and so horribly bad. The players are bored, because the characters--the characters they're playing--are boring. It doesn't matter here whether it's because the system encourages the GM to steal the characters' agency, or because the GM is doing it in spite of the system; it doesn't matter if it's ignorance or malice.

I think I know what you mean when you’re talking about character agency in fiction. However, ultimately, what happens in the fiction happens because that’s what the author decides to happen. So although the characters may say “This all happened because Pandora opened the box” and within the fiction that may be accurate....in truth, it all happened because the author wanted it to.

And if we were talking about fiction, I’d say that this distinction is pedantic and annoying.

But instead, we’re talking about a game with multiple participants who all contribute to the fiction. So understanding who establishes what and how is kind of important, and to keep returning to the idea that characters are deciding anything doesn’t help.

How does the GM establish fiction? In what ways is he limited in doing so? What about players; how do they establish fiction? How are they limited in doing so?

These are the relevant questions.

 

[prabe]

However, nothing happens in fiction that isn't intended by the author -- no choice the character makes is actually a choice.

I can find examples that contradict this--at least at the author's conscious level. Just off the top of my head: King has said for decades that he never meant for the kid to die at the end of Cujo, and Alice Walker explicitly thanked the characters in The Color Purple for showing up.

Why is this important? Because we're talking about agency in the sense of games, where the authoring of the story is shared out among participants and codified by rules. The only people that have agency in this setup are the players. Confusing this agency with the characters allows for confusion about what's actually happening.

I agree that confusing what the players do with what the characters do makes for problems. Those problems seem inevitable in games that allow (or encourage) PvP, which is why I pretty much don't allow it at my table. I don't think it's as confusing to think of the characters as having agency as you at least seem to, though, in any sort of fiction.

 

[prabe]

I think I know what you mean when you’re talking about character agency in fiction. However, ultimately, what happens in the fiction happens because that’s what the author decides to happen. So although the characters may say “This all happened because Pandora opened the box” and within the fiction that may be accurate....in truth, it all happened because the author wanted it to.

Ah, if only it were that easy to get the characters to do what you want them to do, say centuries of novelists. Sure, if you're writing some sort of allegory, you can yank your characters around a fair amount, because they're symbols and not people; anything else, though ... they'll fight you if you try.

And if we were talking about fiction, I’d say that this distinction is pedantic and annoying.

I believe I've been called pedantic. Everyone who has known me ever is shocked. Shocked, I tell you! </sarcasm>

I'm not trying to be pedantic, honest, and I'm absolutely not endeavoring to be annoying. I'm a failed writer (among other failings) and I've studied this a lot. I see the character as a thing that exists and is different from the player--and my thinking here parallels my experience. Not everyone plays the way I do, or thinks the way I do; but I think the way I do.

But instead, we’re talking about a game with multiple participants who all contribute to the fiction. So understanding who establishes what and how is kind of important, and to keep returning to the idea that characters are deciding anything doesn’t help.

How does the GM establish fiction? In what ways is he limited in doing so? What about players; how do they establish fiction? How are they limited in doing so?

These are the relevant questions.

Those are indeed relevant questions. I'll take a shot. I'll try to keep it as system-neutral as I can, and I will explicitly not be talking about published adventures--especially long ones.

The GM establishes fiction by framing the scenario for play. This can stretch all the way up to worldbuilding, but it needn't do so. It usually will include at least one instigating event--which can be a parallel to the "Declare Badness" MC moves in AW. It usually will include at least some facts of the setting, such as an apocalypse, or Elder Gods, or things of that nature, but there are games that are effectively in the here-and-now. The limitations will vary somewhat, depending on the game being played--a Keeper in Call of Cthulhu has a lot more freedom to prep an adventure to go where they want it to, an MC in Adventure World will be expected to stick to their Fronts and only make moves that make sense in the established fiction. The GM is usually responsible for at least most of the NPCs that will appear, and is expected to prepare them (there are differences what "prepare them" means, system-to-system).

The players establish fiction by creating (or generating) the main characters, and by determining those characters' actions. Some (or most) of those actions will only need to be declared; where more is needed--where the outcome is in doubt--there will be some system of resolving that doubt, such as rolling dice or drawing cards. Like the GM, the player is limited by the rules of the game. The player will at least be able to narrate their character's actions if the resolution is in their favor; in some systems they are able to declare outcomes or other facts in the fiction (such as the Crown of Revel being in the box). Often (maybe usually?) the players are limited by things their characters can do, or at least by things their characters interact with or know about, but that is not always the case. They are usually limited in their ability to narrate the results when action-resolutions go against them, but there are systems that at least occasionally allow the players to narrate the results of failed action resolutions.

That seems like at least a start.

 

[hawkeyefan]

@prabe To clarify, I wasn't saying you were being pedantic or annoying. Sorry if that’s how it seemed.

What I meant was that I understand the idea of “characters writing themselves” and that pointing out that an author controls the fiction and not the characters would be pedantic and annoying in that light.

But the distinction becomes important for a RPG because there are multiple participants involved in authoring the fiction.

 

[prabe]

@prabe To clarify, I wasn't saying you were being pedantic or annoying. Sorry if that’s how it seemed.

What I meant was that I understand the idea of “characters writing themselves” and that pointing out that an author controls the fiction and not the characters would be pedantic and annoying in that light.

But the distinction becomes important for a RPG because there are multiple participants involved in authoring the fiction.

I apologize for misunderstanding you, but I assure I was genuinely amused, not bothered or offended--being both annoying and pedantic is well within my ordinary range, and I know it.

I'll admit I approach TRPGs more like writing fiction than anything else. Mostly, I suspect, because that's the model I have and the language I think in. Having done group-collaborative writing and played in garage bands, playing a TRPG feels to me like being part of that sort of gestalt.

 

[pemerton]

The fiction that emerges is a property of play and the entire point of the play. I'm surprised you can be so dismissive of it.

I'm not dismissive of it. I'm trying to talk about who gets to create it. I am noting that different approaches to RPGing give different participants more or less authority, or agency in that respect.

The player in AW knows the GM will make a choice but has no control over what the decision will be.

The player in 5E knows the GM will make a choice but has no control over what the decision will be.

I do not see a difference between the two conditions. I do not see a difference in agency.

So, how exactly does the player control which choice the GM makes, or even know what the GM's options are? The GM in AW doesn't seem to me (as someone who's just read the rules a couple times) to be all that much more constrained than the DM in 5E.

If the player has his/her PC go aggro - that is, threaten someone - and rolls 10+, then the participant who controls the threatened character has to make a choice, either to suck up the threat or to relent.

That is how the player controls the decision.

Likewise, and as we've already seen in this thread with the example of Marie discovering that Plover is the real threat, a sucessfull roll to read a charged situation allows the player to require the MC to answer a particular question.

In the 5e example, the player does not get to force the GM to tell them eg what's the biggest threat here (apparently the guards). Nor to force the burgomaster to either relent or be set back (in the OP the burgomaster id not relent and was not set back in any fashion). The difference seems pretty evident to me.

So, the AW player Goes Aggro and rolls. 10+ The BurgerMaster sucks it up (breaks) and calls for the guards.

This is what makes me think you are not familiar with the rules of AW. Because you are not describing the Burgomaster sucking it up. From AW p 193:

If the target forces the character’s hand and sucks it up, that means that the character inflicts harm upon the target as normal, determined by her weapon and her subject’s armor. At this point, the player can’t decide not to inflict harm, it’s gone too far for that.​

Calling for your guards isn't sucking it up.

On a 7-9, the BurgerMaster "barricades himself securely in" and calls for the guards

From p 194, here is an example of "barricading in" on a 7-9:

Keeler’s hidden in a little nest outside Dremmer’s compound, she’s been watching the compound courtyard through the scope of her rifle. When I say that this guy Balls sits down in there with his lunch, “there he is,” her player says. They have history. “I blow his brains out.” She hits the roll with a 9, so I get to choose. I choose to have him barricade himself securely in: “no brains, but he leaves his lunch and scrambles into the compound, squeaking. He won’t be coming out again any time soon.” I make a note to myself, on my front sheet for Dremmer’s gang, that Balls is taking himself off active duty. I think that we might never see him again.​

In the OP example the burgomaster does not retreat or fall back. Rather, he brings pain down on the players (in the form of the guards). That is not an example of a 7-9 on go aggro.

If the burgomaster, in the face of the insult, runs from the players into his secret chamber and surrounds himself by guards - like US Presidents do with their secret service agents in all those films about attacks on the White House - that would be an example of barricading himself in. But the OP manifestly did not do that.

I don't see how the character's success/failure on a resolution determining whether the door is trapped--meaning literally that the trap is present on one result and not on another--can be anything other than meta.

What do you mean by "meta"?

In Classic D&D (OD&D, B/X, Gygax's AD&D) the question of whether or not there are monsters behind the door, or down the corridor, can depend on the roll of a wandering monster die. That's how those games work - some fiction is authored in advance, some fiction is authored on the spot in accordance with the mechanics. Appendix C of Gygax's DMG has charts not only for wandering monsters but for random wilderness encounters which can include monsters in their lairs, ruins, castles, etc. None of those things, in the fiction, comes into being because the PCs encounter them. But they are authored, at the table, on the spot and in the moment of play.

In AW, likewise, or in Burning Wheel, or Maelstrom Storytelling, or Cortex+ Heroic, some fiction is authored in advance - eg in AW PCs have gear lists and relationships and there is at least some local geography established and probably some prominent adversarial NPCs also - and some fiction is authored on the spot in accordance with the mechanics.

That's how a RPG works. There is, and never has been, any requirement that all elements of the fiction which have, in the fiction, a causal origin prior to current events must be authored in advance of the current moment of play.

If doors are only ever trapped if you look for traps, why would you ever look for traps? That's probably not the best example ... Anyway, I actually do understand the playstyle, and I even see the appeal of something like Gumshoe where you always find what's there to be found but you might not understand it correctly (and I realize that Gumshoe might not be exactly the right style of play, where the declaration "I open the box, looking for the Crown of Revel" is an action-declaration that can be resolved, which on a result favoring the player means the Crown of Revel is in the box--I can see the appeal of that, too-- finding the Crown of Revel isn't the point, figuring out what to do with it is).

Frankly everything here suggests a radical failure to understand how to play a game like AW or BW or Cortex+ Heroic or any game that does not depend on discovering the content of the GM's notes.

I posted an actual play example upthread. Here it is again:

In one of our BW sessions the PCs had arrived at a tower which - as per established backstory - had been the home of the PC sorcerer when he was studying under his brother's tuition. As part of the same backstory, the tower had been attacked by orcs and the brother, in trying to summon a Storm of Lightning to fight off the orcs, had failed in his casting and been possessed by a balrog. (How the PC had escaped to actuall be there at the beginning of the campaign, some years after those events, had not and still has not been established.) Now the tower was ruined and abandoned.

The player, at about this point, told us more of his PC's backstory: while living in the tower, as a pupil of his brother, he had been working on a nickel-silver mace called the falcon's claw. But it had been left behind when the tower fell to the orcs. Now that the PC was back, he wanted to recover the mace. So they searched the tower for it. Mechanically, this was a Scavenging check.

The check failed. So I - as GM - had to narrate some adverse outcome. I narrated that the PCs did find something, but not the mace. Rather, they found - in the area of the tower which had been the brother's workshop - a stand of black arrows, very like the one broken arrow still carried by the elven PC in memory of his former captain who had been slain by an orc shooting that arrow.

The ensuing play established that the brother had made those black arrows. The significance of this was that it revealed that the brother's evil preceded, in some fashion at least, his possession by a balrog. He had already been making cursed arrows that orcs would take and use.

In structural resolution terms, this is strictly parallel to the box and the Crown. And the point, absolutely, is to find the mace. But that didn't happen. Instead the PC learned unwelcome truths about his brother.

Why would a player in an AW game hae his/her PC look for traps? Because - as his/her PC - s/he wants to know what is going on around her. What the threats are. What the opportunities are. The point of play, in AW, isn't to beat the GM's scenario. The is no "GM's scenario". The point is to inhabit a character in a shared fiction.

As a player in AW (or BW, or in a lighter game like Cortex+ Heroic or 4e D&D) you know that the GM will be throwing adversity at you. That's his/her job. If you want your PC to be safe then you don't play the game! But if you're playing, there's going to be adversity. It's not as if you can protect your PC from adversity by never looking for it!

"Misdirect" seems to mean one of two things. It either means describe what you're doing in terms of the fiction (as in, having NPCs put PCs in different places, rather than saying "they separate you"--the principle is, IIRC "Make your move but never speak its name" or something close) or it means something more like narrative sleight-of-hand, where the connections between cause and effect, action and result, are muddied, to keep the players (and I suspect ideally the GM) guessing. The former is less about transparency than immersion; the latter is ... well, I don't entirely grasp what the point is, but I don't think it can be fairly be said to be about transparency.

Describing things in-the-fiction is good GMing, I agree. I don't think of it as "misdirecting," though.

Vincent Baker is crystal clear what he means by "misdirection". He means overlaying real-world authorship decisions with in-fiction explanation. Perhaps you don't like his word choice, for whatever reason. That doesn't make his explanation any less crystal clear.

You seem to have confused two MC principles. Never speak your moves name is one of them. That is an instruction to narrate fiction (eg, from p 111, "Maybe your move is to separate them, but you should never just say that. Instead, say how Foster’s thugs drags one of them off, and Foster invites the other to eat lunch with her.") Misdirect is an instruction to narrate fiction that establishes in-fiction causation and connections. I already quoted this text from pp 110-11:

Of course the real reason why you choose a move exists in the real world. Somebody has her character go someplace new, somebody misses a roll, somebody hits a roll that calls for you to answer, everybody’s looking to you to say something, so you choose a move to make. Real-world reasons. However, misdirect: pretend that you’re making your move for reasons entirely within the game’s fiction instead. . . .
Make like it’s the game’s fiction that chooses your move for you, and so correspondingly always choose a move that the game’s fiction makes possible.​

There is no muddling of connections between cause and effect. Everyone at the table knows that the cause of the GM saying stuff is that something happened in the real world. Just like, in the OP, the players know that the reason the GM describes the burgomaster being angry is because a player described his/her PC as insulting the burgomaster. The point is that the GM is directed not to talk about those things. Rather, the GM is directed to narrate fiction that illustrates causal and similar (eg constitutive) connections. So, eg, in the example of play when Marie learns who is the biggest threat the GM establishes that Mill is 12 and no threat.

I have no idea what you see as non-transparent here. Quite the contrary: the player now knows that Mill is 12 and no threat. And that Plover is a threat. The fiction is not secret from the players. This is a fundamental difference between games like AW, BW, Cortex+ heroic, Prince Valiant, etc - games which in some other respects are quite different - and RPGing-as-puzzle-solving.

The fiction that emerges is a property of play and the entire point of the play. I'm surprised you can be so dismissive of it.

I'm not dismissive of it. I'm trying to talk about who gets to create it. I am noting that different approaches to RPGing give different participants more or less authority, or agency in that respect.

The character didn't change the ficiton. The character exists within the fiction and does not author it.

The GM changed the fiction. S/he did so because s/he was prompted to by the player's action declaration.

Well, if I wanted to play the game and ignore the character I'd play something like Gloomhaven or Eldritch Horror or Pandemic (all of which I like, for what that's worth) where the "character" is just a bundle of abilities with a picture attached. That is neither how nor why I play TRPGs, though.

To be more responsive, at the same level of remove: The fiction changed as a result of the player's decision, which rounds to the player changing the fiction. Since the decision ended up being an action that the character takes, it works just as well to think of the character changing the fiction, since the action and the result are connected in the fiction.[

As @Ovinomancer has already explained, the first paragraph of this is just flat-out wrong.

The second paragraph is ironic, given your repeated complaints about the use of the word "misdirect". Because you seem to have been successfully misdirected!

Fiction can change as a result of a player's decision without the player changing the fiction. In the post of mine you quoted I even gave an example: the GM changed the fiction because prompted to be a decision made by the player.

As far as the character's action is concerned, that doesn't change the fiction. The character's action was to insult the burgomaster. The effect of that was to anger the burgomaster. Unless you're playing a RPG with 4th-wall/meta aspects to is fiction (Over the Edge is an example), character's can't change the fiction because they exist within it, they don't operate upon it.

It is my opinion that all decent RPGing instructional text is written having regard to that basic fact. It tells real people what things they should do or say in the real world. It doesn't pretend that imaginary things are having real causal impact.

How'd the characters get there? What'll they do next? Aren't the answers to those questions fictional content? Didn't the players/characters have input to those answers? Aren't the characters in the fiction trying to figure out what's going on in the fiction?

<snip>

In the example of the Crown or Revel being/not being in the box, there's no way the character has any control of that, whether the Crown being in the box is decided by the GM, erm, deciding, or as the result of an action-resolution check (where a success allows the player to put the Crown in the box). I'm not inclined to deny that I find it easier to play if I'm not having to think so much outside my character, nor that as a GM I find it easier if the facts of the world (such as whether the Crown of Revel is in the box) are in my head as opposed to yet-undertermined, but I don't think I've been impervious to the idea that others might prefer it otherwise.

in the fiction, yes, characters are trying to work things out. In the fiction, they typically don't create the answers to those questions.

This resembles the real world, where - when I eg pan for gold in a creek - I didn't make it true or false that there is gold in the creek bed.

But I am not talking about causation in the fiction, ie imagind causation, which in most RPGs correlates pretty straightforwardly with causation as it occurs in the real world.

I am talking about causation in the real world. Or, in other words, how fiction is created.

As I replied to @Campbell already upthread, in a game like BW where the question of whether or not the Crown is in the box is answered by resolving the declaration I look in the box for the Crown, this does not require the player to think outside of his/her PC. And when you say "as a GM I find it easier if the facts of the world (such as whether the Crown of Revel is in the box) are in my head as opposed to yet-undertermined" what you are saying is that you prefer GM over player agency in respect of those sorts of elements of the fiction.

it makes as much sense to have the player narrate what's in the box as it does to have the GM do so--but they lead, I think, to different types of stories emerging.

Maybe, maybe not. No one in this thread has posted actual play examples that would bear on this.