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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8014222" data-attributes="member: 42582">I want to offer a slightly different perspective here from Campbell's.First, a bit more about chess. When we play chess no one unilaterally sets the rules. The rules reflect a consensus among the participants, an agreement to play according to a common framework for what is permissible and what is forbidden.  No particular participant has the power to decide, unilaterally and at each and every moment of play, what is legal and what is not. There is therefore, from the start, no useful analogy to GM decides as an approach to action resolution in RPGing.Second, a bit of a tour through some possible decision procedures that might be used if a group of us get together to see a film. This is a more useful analogy because, ike RPGing, it involves a group making a decision about a collective endeavour.Maybe we all want to see the same film: in which case, as soon as that information comes to light, unless something has gone badly wrong in our discussion, we all go and see that one.Maybe we discuss it, thrash it out, and arrive at a consensus. Among good friends this can work well. Sometimes it leads to bullying, dominant personalities getting their way a lot, etc. When it works well everyone gets to exercise their agency through the negotiation process.Maybe we identify our different preference rankings, and we make a list of all the top two or three films and toss a coin or roll a die. This procedure means that not everyone gets what they most wanted; but everyone has a say (in setting up the list) and everyone had a chance.Maybe we draw lots and whoever wins gets to decide this time. Next time we'll draw lots but last time's winner will be excluded - ie a system of randomised rotation. This procedure does not involve any sort of negotiation or consensus, but rotates decision-making power.Maybe the most bossy or popular or loved person in the group decides, and we all go along with him/her.That last one clearly does not distribute decision-making agency among the group, either on this one occasion or over multiple occasions of going out together. The fact that soeone chooses to go along with it - because they love the leader, or are scared of the leader, or think the leader has excellent taste in films, doesn't affect this basic feature of the decsion-making procedure. This is a procedure in which one person has the agency and the others go along with it. (A more formal version of this is a film club or similar: the organisers/convenors set the program, and the other members go along and view whatever is being presented that night. Their reaason might be friendship with the convenors, or a desire to support the club, or trust that the convenors will run a good season. They're not exercising agency in respect of which films are viewed at club events.)We can see analogues of all these approaches in RPG decision-making. The first is what happens when the GM "says 'yes'". There is no difference of opinion and everyone gets what they want.The second is pretty common, at least in my experience, for establishing genre constraints, and resolving disagreements or uncertainty about fictional positioning. The GM often plays a leading or "chairperson" role which can be more formalised than among a group of friends going out to a film.The coin toss across preference rankings has its analogy in the use of randomisation to settle action resolution.Rotation of who gets to choose is probably a bit less common in RPGing, but might be seen in some games that rotate scene-framing responsibilities and maybe is also one way of understanding some approaches to "spotlight balance".Decision-making on an ongoing basis by the one dominant personality looks like what we see in a consistent application of "GM decides". As I said, it's obvious that this does not involve any sort of sharing of agency. Just as in the film case, other participants might have good reason to not exercise their agency and to go along with the GM. That doesn't change the fact that that's what they're doing.</blockquote>

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