Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8013073" data-attributes="member: 42582">If you ask me to pass you the salt, and I do, I haven't negated your agency. I've facilitated it.If a player says (speaking for his/her PC) I go to the shop and buy some rations and the GM answers OK, write them down on your equipment list the GM has not negated the player's agency. The GM has allowed the player to decide what happens in the fiction.If the GM says, instead, Rations are hard to come by in these parts. Make your Acquiring Stuff check! then we have an example of the action resolution framework that [USER=99817]@chaochou[/USER] has already described upthread.If the GM says, instead, There are no ration venders around here - it's a wild and desolate place we now have two paths we might go down. Is this the GM taking the lead in establishing constraints of fictional positioning and genre? That's something where the players can participate in the negotiation, thus exercising their agency in reaching a consensus.Is this the GM unilaterally exercising control over the content of the shared fiction, based on his/her prior conception of what that fiction does and doesn't look like? Then we have no player agency, as [USER=99817]@chaochou[/USER] has said. In this case it's obvious that the GM is the one who is controlloing the content of the fiction.Again: it may be a good thing or a bad thing for the GM to unilaterally exercise control over the content of the fiction. But it can't be true both that the GM is exercising unilateral control and that at the very same time the players are exercising their agency.I've made many posts about this already. The established fiction is not something that the GM unilaterally imposes. It is something that is understood and can be negotiated by the whole table. It is established by the interaction of all the participants, as in any other shared or collective endeavour.This happens all the time in my experience: different participants make different suggestions about what might be the case in the shared fiction and we work it out. Eg in my game on Sunday the application of action resolution mechanics dictated that one PC had fallen off the boat into the water. The player of that PC then wanted to use his sword to fight the dragon that was responsible for tipping over the boat. But that can only happen if the PC still has his sword on his person!For Prince Valiant - the game we were playing - that's generally a matter of fictional positioning, ie there is no canonical resolution procedure for retaining or losing possession of one's gear. (Contrast, say, Marvel Heroic RP which does have such a canonical resolution procedure via the Gear limitation.) We quickly agreed that the player did still have possession of his sword, and hence could declare actions about using it to fight the dragon.In the same session the PC who is Master of the PCs' military order lost an argument with a NPC count about who would lead the charge in the next day's battle. None of the PCs - and none of their players' - was happy with this outcome. They wanted to circumvent it. I had to remind them more than once that the argument had been lost and conceded. They therefore ended up circumventing it by leading their forces out for a night-time raid on the enemy, with the goal of making it be the case that there would not be a charge the next day. This is an example of negotiation and consensus on what exactly is or isn't consistent with the established fiction.None of this involves unilateral GM decision-making about what might happen next.</blockquote>

Verification