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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8431302" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't know what your framework for analysing RPG is. But if it can't distinguish between framing a scene, and narrating an outcome, it is underdeveloped. <a href="http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=20791.0" target="_blank">Here</a> is the one I am using: Content authority - over what we're calling back-story, e.g. whether Sam is a KGB mole, or which NPC is boinking whom Plot authority - over crux-points in the knowledge base at the table - now is the time for a revelation! - typically, revealing content, although notice it can apply to player-characters' material as well as GM material - and look out, because within this authority lies the remarkable pitfall of wanting (for instances) revelations and reactions to apply precisely to players as they do to characters Situational authority - over who's there, what's going on - scene framing would be the most relevant and obvious technique-example, or phrases like "That's when I show up!" from a player Narrational authority - how it happens, what happens - I'm suggesting here that this is best understood as a feature of resolution (including the entirety of IIEE), and not to mistake it for describing what the castle looks like, for instance; I also suggest it's far more shared in application than most role-players realize . . . There is no overlap between those four types of authority. They are four distinct phenomena. Do they have causal relationships among one another? Of course. The easiest version is top-down reductionist: because content is consulted, a plot authority decision is made, and then a situational authority decision/presentation must be made, and finally narrational authority must be exercised. I assume that for you, this is the most easy and familiar construction, and you're used to conducting them (or at least constructing them, idealistically speaking) as a single causal sequence in this order, with one person in charge - it's a "thing," perhaps the thing you call GMing. As a side note, other causal relationships exist, putting the authorities into a different order (to preserve the top-to-bottom causation, for clarity). For example, you can reverse them entirely, and remarkably it is very easy, although it's harder to catch oneself doing it because memory typically rewrites the act into the more familiar sequence I described above. We'll have to work on this idea later, because, for instance, Kickers and Bangs in Sorcerer rearrange the sequence far more drastically, putting situational authority at the top/starting position. . . . . . . in the Jasmine game, I scene-framed like a ******-******. That's the middle level: situational authority. That's my job as GM in playing The Pool. By the rules, players can narrate outcomes to conflict rolls, but they can't start new scenes. But I totally gave up authority over the "top" level, plot authority. I let that become an emergent property of the other two levels: again, me with full authority over situation (scene framing), and the players and I sharing authority over narrational authority, which provided me with cues, in the sense of no-nonsense instructions, regarding later scene framing. And similarly, like situational authority, content authority was left entirely to my seat at the table. There was no way for a player's narration to clash with the back-story. All of the player narrations concerned plot authority, like the guy's mask coming off in my hypothetical example above, or in the case of the Jasmine game, the one suitor becoming a popular rather than sinister guy through his actions. This is key. Functional role-playing requires that everyone knows who has what authority in all four kinds, and whether it switches around from person to person for any one (or more) of the kinds, and if it does, when and how. In Burning Wheel, the GM exercises situational authority by default. Players have some ability to exercise it instead (eg Circles - as you can see in my Sea Maiden thread, this is how the PCs met an Elven sailor when they were lost at sea following the Maiden bearing the Albers down to Hell.)If you read my Sea Maiden posts, you'll be able to see some of this (not all of it, as I didn't describe every moment of play in mechanical terms given I was more interested in talking about experiences of the module than experiences of playing Burning Wheel).What railroading took place. What outcomes were dictated ("roughly, or otherwise")?You'll note that the module did specify one outcome - ie the survival of the Sea Maiden first time round, so that it can attack again - and I didn't follow it in that respect.</blockquote>

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