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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8431294" data-attributes="member: 42582">Nothing you are saying here distinguishes between 5e D&D and any other RPG. Do you agree with that?Also, by pretty close parity of reasoning, nothing in a RPG ruleset can guarantee a GM has agency without trusting the players - eg if all the players just ignore the GM and go along with their own version of the shared fiction, what is the GM going to do? But one would hardly conclude from that that the GM has no authority except to make suggestions. Thus that conclusion in the case of players is likewise false.The reason I think you are painting a zero-agency picture is because of how you paint Step 3. And I think your account of Step 3 is wrong. I think it's wrong for textual reasons, and on the basis of lived experience, and the basis of most of the actual play testimony I encounter. You are treating GM narrates in step 3 as if it meant GM narrates unconstrained by any rules. It doesn't literallly say that, and - given the vast quantity of rules clearly intended to shape and constrain the GM's narration - it is not to be read as implying that.</blockquote>