That's very true. There are many decisions that must be made in play. My doubt is around a supposition that those countless decisions don't arise in RPGs generally. Choice of twist or condition in TB2, or rulings as to Good Ideas. It seems to be turtles all the way down.
When a colleague MCs Monster of the Week or I GM Torchbearer 2, there are many points where we make decisions and author fiction. A player fails an ability test. I decide whether to introduce a twist, or that they accomplish the task but receive a condition. If I introduce a twist, I author that twist. In all cases, I aim to say what follows (from fiction, description, system.)
I meant to address these two posts awhile back.
These two statements (and statements like them) assume something like "all GMs make decisions while running games and therefore all games inform and constrain a GM's decision-space similarly." That is to say "not much at all...the GM can just do pretty much whatever the eff they want."
This is just self-evidently not only not true, but its not even nearing the truth.
Take last evening's Torchbearer Town phase (which was their Respite phase; a special Town phase like "Seasons Change" or TB1 "Winter phase" where time passes, you reflect on play, characters, you make relevant thematic changes to PCs, and costs for Town phase are amped up).
The PCs went to Market (+0 Lifestyle Cost normally, but +1 during Respite when all LSCs are +1 above normal) to loadout for their coming Adventure.
@AbdulAlhazred 's Elven Ranger Awanye was primary w/
@kenada 's Fighter Jakob and
@niklinna 's Mage both helping the Resouce test to buy Flasks of Oil for their Lantern. They knew their Ob Rating that they had to achieve to make the purchase (table-facing).
* They spent enough dice in Coin to insulate them from Tax as a complication.
* I had Taxed them recently as a Resources complication.
* I recently had given them both a Twist and a Condition on failed tests.
* You're supposed to distribute these consequences at near parity.
* They failed. In a prior Town phase, a Market purchase failure yielded a Twist with some brigands (basically a "Stickup" trope as a conflict). A scrap ensued and Jakob called his Enemy ("The Bear", a Captain in The Watch). Things went off well and The Bear + The Watch descended upon the brigands and off to the stocks they went. Later, due to a Town test Twist in the Flophouse, The Bear brought the lead brigand in as the sentence was passed; he was to lose his hand. The Bear was going to make Jakob perform the grizzly affair on the block w/ a Health test to determine if it repulsed him. Jakob agreed and performed the severing of the brigands hand (I can't remember whether he succeeded or failed and took a Condition).
So we're back in Town (Respite) phase in the Market last night. The Resources move fails. Jakob has taken on his Creed during Respite:
"Loose ends must not be left untied lest they promulgate injustice."
Further, his Belief is:
I don't always do what I'm told, but I always do what seems right." (this is what got him kicked out of The Watch and earned him The Bear as Enemy).
Alright. So I create some fiction; there is a shortage of Oil so they have to go to a shady dealer to get some. This guy ends up being a Fence...a Fence that was friends with the brigand that was sent to the stocks by the PCs and lost his hand courtesy of a cleaver swung by Jakob.
Awanye is up front. He pulls a dagger and is trying to get to Jakob to eviscerate him, but he has to go through Awanye to get to him. Fight vs Fight. Jakob throws himself into the violence to help his friend w/ Heart of Battle 3 and with Awanye's help, they win the contest with beefy Margin of Success. They disarm him and have him pinned. They don't want to kill him because they'll have to deal with the bureaucracy of the law even if they're defending themselves. Jakob's Creed is at tension here because he also doesn't want to get The Bear involved; Enemy + Lifestyle Cost to Find Someone. But what a loose end this might be.
They decide to threaten him with Persuader vs Persuader. They again win and the Fence swears not to bring harm to them in the future.
So sort of a conflicted "loose ends status."
He's still is in play to be a problem for Strond at large (their Hometown). He still is in play to be a problem for Jakob's Friends (The Spectral Mother and her Daughter, The Lomborg Family, Watch Members Olga/Einar/Helgi) or even his Enemy (which would come back to Jakob) in Strond.
So yeah. Not a direct loose end, but an indirect one.
He did what "felt right"...but was it "right?"
We'll see. This "loose end" will surely come back in play later.
So we learned a lot about Jakob in this sequence (and we've learned a lot about him in prior sequences as well).
Sum told...
This GMing moment wasn't governed by anarchy. It wasn't a nearly autocratic brand of "GM decides" fiat. It was as far from arbitrary as a moment of GMing can be.
It was system-directed, system-constrained, rule-and-principles-and-best-practice-observing, conscientious GMing. I reflect intensely on play afterward; particularly where I feel like I was lacking. I'm quite confident that, of the suite of possible moves I could have made to that failed Resource Test, this was "the best" move I could have made given all of the system inputs I'm informed and constrained by. And they informed and constrained 100 % were dominating my decision-space and winnowing my possible moves made down (as they always do) to a very small subset of moves down to
this particular move that I ended up making.
I would hope this demonstrates how profoundly different this cognitive workspace is from another matrix whereby I can set the Obstacle Rating to whatever "feels" right (vs summing coded Factors), whereby the players don't know what they're rolling against, whereby the players don't know (a) if I'm honoring their input/the system's input or if I'm instead subordinating it with my own input, whereby I'm neither constrained nor informed by very specific GMing parameters but rather I'm given broad-sweeping-powers to "find the fun/story (based on my conception of it)" and "honor/veto rules/results (and the GM-facing means to do so)."
Both the experience GMing and playing these distinct games are profoundly divergent.