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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8666048" data-attributes="member: 42582">Right. You've probably seen me post this particular rant before: there is a recurring assumption on these boards that player-driven RPGing means player "narrative authority" - whereas, as per your post, the key is actually restricting what the GM can say, especially by restricting when the GM is allowed to make hard moves.It seems to me that there are two relevant restrictions here:* By convention, in a sandbox pre-planned challenges are located at particular places in the imagined world (so no "wandering dungeons"); maybe this can be pushed against in various principled ways, like a die roll to work out where the jabberwocky is today, but it can't just be GM whim;* The GM is obliged to honour the fiction, including the fiction about where the PCs are and where they go; again this can be pushed against in limited ways, like teleport traps, but the GM can't just decide that the gods teleport the PCs into the dungeon - even if it's allowed that the gods are NPCs whom the GM controls, that sort of GM whim about what the gods do wouldn't be consistent with a sandbox ethos.I don't know if they're better, but they're different. Restrictions on hard moves, whether as seen in AW, or in the principle "say 'yes' or roll the dice", are key.Hence why Vincent Baker said <a href="http://lumpley.com/hardcore.html" target="_blank">this</a>:Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not. . . . So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function</blockquote>

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