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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8648871" data-attributes="member: 42582">[USER=70468]@kenada[/USER], I've worked through your post basically in sequence, even though some of what you say later perhaps helps address questions or ideas I raise earlier. I've left it in the time-sequence of my thoughts so that you can see how I reasoned through the issues.I'm not sure how you're envisaging plot authority working in the hands of the players. How are they able to dictate "now is the time for a revelation!" in circumstances where authority over the content/backstory is in the hands of the GM?I don't think I'm quite following the details of what you've got in mind - and obviously the details matter.In the villain-behind-the-the-mask scenario, the GM uses situational authority to put the PC and masked villain in the same scene. The player declares an action for their PC to unmask the villain. And then I think <a href="http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=20791.msg216100#msg216100" target="_blank">Edwards is assuming</a> that the default here will be some sort of fortune resolution (though I'm not very familiar with The Pool):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.We could imagine Apocalypse World working similarly - the player declares I tear off the mask (Seize By Force) and then the dice are rolled. What happens next will depend on the roll: emergent plot.(BW is potentially different - the Adventure Burner discusses how to modulate a Masked Villains-wise check between the GM asserting or giving up content authority, ie in this case the power to decide who it is who wears the mask. The player has the potential to exercise content authority in the course of compelling the emergence of plot.)In the incriminating-mask-in-the-safe scenario, how is the scene framed? The presence of the safe is (presumably) part of the framing; but the presence of the mask inside it normally wouldn't be (unlike the villain case, where the fact that the villain is masked would be part of the framing). So when the players declare that they open the safe - potentially thereby triggering the plot revelation - how do we determine whether or not the mask is part of the scene? You say "that is what the GM would need to provide", but I don't think I quite get what the that is, nor quite how you are envisaging the GM will provide it.Not quite. I think that the stakes have to be known to them, and in setting-based stakes that typically means knowing the content in question.In the villain-in-the-mask situation, the stakes are who is behind the mask? and when a player declares I tear off the mask they know that's what is at stake.But as you can see from what I've said just above, I'm not following how you envisage the stakes being set in the safe case. [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER]'s answer, upthread, was that it is established that of course the <whatever> is in <so-and-so's> safe. I get that. And can see how it would work in a 4e skill challenge, or Classic Traveller. But in that case, the stakes of opening the safe aren't Will I identify the villain? but Will I get the evidence of villainy that I need? The villain was identified at an earlier point in play.I'm not sure if this is your own assertion, or if this is you trying to make sense of my assertions!But anyway, I think I agree - I think you're describing here what I described just above with reference to AbdulAlhazred.I don't know if it's the only way, given the unlimited possibilities of human ingenuity and imagination, but it seems the most obvious. The contrast would be the players opening a safe which is - from their point of view - essentially random, and finding the incriminating information just because the GM decided (prior when writing notes/prepping the scenario, or just now by way of improvisation) that the information is in the safe. (I note in passing that published adventures are replete with this contrasting case - the players are expected to search pockets, chests, tables etc on basic looting principles, and thereby find clues that are there as GM exercises of content authority and that help support a GM's exercise of plot authority, insofar as the GM is the one who decides to make the "revelation" take place, without the players having known that it was at stake or had any particular commitment to or engagement with it.)I don't know if that's what Vincent Baker had in mind, but it seems to fit. I've generally been having in mind that for whatever reason, the players are committed to having their PCs find this incriminating evidence.I think I agree. But I also think I'm starting to see elements of GM-as-glue here. I think this is where a BW-type approach (eg make a Perception check with the stakes clearly established), or a AW Read a Situation/DW Discern Realities approach, starts to show its strength for helping maintain player protagonism even though the GM still has principal content authority.</blockquote>

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