NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8648769" data-attributes="member: 42582">Yes, I referred to this a bit of a way upthread: <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/supposing-d-d-is-gamist-what-does-that-mean.687974/post-8635710" target="_blank">D&D General - Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?</a>A paradigm example of a game in which the players have situational authority is classic dungeoncrawling D&D: if the players open a door and don't like the look of things, they shut it; if the players use their rumours and their wands of enemy detection properly, they can choose which monster to loot when; etc.A BW Circles checks is another device for allowing player situational authority: it differs from the classic D&D approach in at least two ways, namely (i) it is gated behind a particular fortune mechanic, and (ii) it is an exception to the general rule in BW that the GM exercises situational authority.Conversely, the more that the GM is free to bring NPCs onto the "stage" at any time (either BW-style, or "living breathing world" style), the less situational authority the players have. But that doesn't exhaust the analysis: in the same thread Edwards discusses the GM "taking suggestions" (<a href="http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=20791.msg216100#msg216100" target="_blank">this post</a>, which on further reflection I think is the same one that you linked to) in their exercise of situational authority. Beliefs in BW are just one way of formalising the idea that the players get to make suggestions to the GM about how to use their situational authority.The same thing of course can be true of content authority: the GM might take suggestions. (And one way of formalising this would be Read a Situation or Discern Realities-type moves in PbtA games. Another would be Wises in BW.)The key to linking content authority to protagonism is found in Edwards discussion of setting-based "story now": the content has to be known to the players, so that it something everyone shares and "basks in" during play.So if the game has a device for the players suggesting to the GM that the documents are in such-and-such a safe (as [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] has been posting about for the past few pages) and can know that the GM has taken up that suggestion, then protagonism is preserved. I've often posted an example of this from my own BW play: Thurgon's sidekick Aramina conjectured that Evards's tower was in the general neighbourhood, and succeeded on a Wises check, and hence the player's "suggestion" to the GM about what content the setting contains becomes locked in as true.The next player-side move, of course, is to travel to the tower. In my case, that was resolved as conflict resolution via a successful Circles check to find someone who could take us there: so Circles to exercise situational authority, then drama resolution - ie dictating how the friendly NPC helped us - to oblige the GM to then frame a scene involving our arrival at Evards' tower. (It started with a demon!)I think this sort of thing is all pretty clear. I've not got the least clue so far how it is being done in 5e D&D, though.</blockquote>

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