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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8436959" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Do you think that learning things through a cypher is organic? Everything the player knows about the situation comes from the GM, right? Their choices of description and narration and so on. Do you expect that most GM's can convey to a player the same level of specificity as their character would have actually observing the scene?Does the specificity sometimes mean player knowledge is more precise than character knowledge? Yes, it may at times. But generally speaking, I would say that concern is minimal compared to my concern over providing enough accurate information for the player to make truly informed decisions for their character.Having to constantly revisit things with the GM to confirm what my character knows doesn't feel organic to me at all.Thought policing is an odd term to use. Is the GM thought policing the players when he expects them to stick to the rules and follow the established procedures of the game?I prefer games that place limits on what a GM can do. This is as both a GM and a player. How things turn out is much more out of my hands as a GM than it is in games that don't do this, or that do it less frequently.If I'm playing in a game, I like to know the rules of the game, and how the different participants are expected to perform or take part. I don't think that's being obsessive. It's wanting to be informed.They're not random. They're the mechanics of the game, which have been designed. The GM makes a decision to share them. They matter to the resolution of the challenge that's being presented.What makes you think they're random?If your spouse cheats on you obviously, that's bad, but if they do it carefully and you never learn about it, then it's okay?Honestly, it's about expectations of the participants. If folks are indifferent to how the game works, and they just want to be there and follow the GM's story and occasionally roll some dice, okay cool. Railroad away, GM, and know that you're not in the wrong.But since the topic is about authority distribution among players and GMs in games, I would expect most people commenting here care about it. Discussing these things can help people understand better what they'd like from a game, and how they want to GM and to play. A lot of these discussions have benefited me greatly. They've helped crystalize my thoughts and spend actual time considering what I like and don't like.I would say that if obvious railroading is bad, then so is secret railroading. Either would seem to subvert the expectations of play in the sense that what the players declare actually matters.Because I want to be surprised by what happens, not just tick off a box on a checklist when the players get to that spot in the story that I've written.I'm much more enthused as a GM when I'm not in control of things. When I'm as in the dark about how things will go as the players. When I don't presuppose ideas about how problems are solved. I want that stuff to come from what the players do. They make the call, and the dice tell us how it goes. My job is to act as a bit of an intermediary there.As a player, I want to feel like any specific game session is different because I was there. That if you took me out and swapped in someone else, things would go differently. And I don't mean like oh the party went left instead of right.I don't just want to be one of the characters in the story, I want the story to be that of my character.These are generally my feelings about it. It does shift a bit based on what game I'm playing and with whom. Some games are far more suited to it than others. But overall, within whatever confines a game may have, the above is mostly what I'm striving for.When I GM 5e, I try to bring as much of that to the fore as possible. It's not as easy to do as it is with games that are specifically designed to do that.When I play 5e, I attempt to do that as well. I find this is much harder to do because most GMs don't operate with that mindset because they aren't really encouraged to do so, the rules aren't really written with the intent that they do so, and most players don't really play with the expectation that they do so. Which I think your comments drive home pretty clearly.So if I may ask that you return the favor; why? Why do you take parts in these discussions if you're not really concerned with how a game distributes authority or in how it's used or misused?</blockquote>

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