Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8016619" data-attributes="member: 42582">There was nothing inadequate about your explanation. In this more recent post you point out that casting a spell is a thing a character does in the fiction; whereas spending a fate/hero point does not. But the event that the expenditure engenders typically will correspond to something in the fiction: eg if I spend a fate/hero point so my PC can pull a handy skeleton key out of his/her toolbox, or can notice a chandelier to swing on, that does correlate to an event in the fiction.More generally, both casting a spell and spending a fate point let the player change the fiction, often in identical ways. Hence my post that I don't understand all this talk about players editing scenes. We just seem to be talking about players affecting the fiction.I described a procedure in which, first, genre and ficitonal positioning and the like are assessed to see if an action declaration is permissible in the context, and then - if it is - the GM decides whether or not to say yes or call for a dice roll. Distinguishing those two steps is quite important, because the role of players and GM in respect of each of them is quite different.OK. I don't see, though, how you can assert that these different approaches are irrelevant to the question of who is exercising agency in repsect of the shared fiction.Again, I say: how can this all be irrelevant to player agency.If the question of whether or not an action declaration is permissible - in the sense of being eligible to proceed to resolutoin by way of "say 'yes' or roll the dice" - depends on the GM's notes, and the GM's common sense, and the GM's inferences drawn from research, then the players' agency is clearly being subordinated to that of the GM.That may be good. It may be bad. I don't see how it can be denied.From this it follows that the AD&D game I played - in which no actions could affect the fiction unless they conformed to the GM's planning and expectations - was one with unconstrained player agency. I mean, when the NPCs knew nothing and could provide no help, that was because the fiction contained only ignorant and useless NPCs!Obviously that's an absurd conclusion. Which therefore shows that something has gone wrong with the premises. And what has gone wrong is the premise that player agency over the shared ficiton is not affected by the way the GM makes decisions about whether or not action declarations are able to have a chance of success.</blockquote>

Verification