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Message: <blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8023378" data-attributes="member: 7016699">I guess it depends on the scale of the choices you're looking at, and the kinds of choices the PCs are making. I've never really been a big fan of any sort of adventure that has the word "crawl" in it, so I'm almost certainly not going to prep one in any sort of "approved" way. I'll still try to run it honestly, but it'll probably come down to larger-scale choices (which section of the dungeon-esque area they go to next) the PCs make.In such an instance, the setting might belong to the GM, but what happens--that's the actual story--would belong to the PCs. The only way the GM can retain ownership is not to allow the PCs to change it.I agree that prep can look very different from a keyed map. My own prep rarely includes anything like any maps. It's concerned far more with what has been going on before the PCs arrive, and what is likely to happen in their absence, and usually the consequences of what seem to me to be the most likely PC courses of actions (which are not of course the only things that can happen, but they do serve as something to base other reactions on).Eh. Any GM who's gong to make up ... whatever, probably isn't going to be constrained by mechanics.Or, if it's been mapped, and the PCs have encountered it. If a PC attempts to jump it anyway, it's probably worth making sure the player understands that this isn't some little groove in the ground, but an actual large-scale geographic feature. If that's clear and the PC attempts to jump it anyway, the possibility it's an out-of-game problem starts to rear its head.Basing the fiction on the outcome of the roll seems eminently appropriate for the games you've shared play examples for, but I don't think that having the in-fiction reality be more objective necessarily removes player agency--it just adds some burden to the GM that the players know the situation before they act (or at least, they know that's how the game is being run). If I'm running a mystery that I've prepped (where I know at least what the core situation is, if not all the details) and I run it honestly--I answer the PCs' questions forthrightly, skipping between player skill (roleplay) and character skill (Ability Checks, in 5E) as needed--I don't think I'm removing the possibility of player or character agency. It's plausible-shading-to-probable that you disagree.</blockquote>

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