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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8648951" data-attributes="member: 70468">I think I started to get things worked out as I wrote though the argument. I left it mostly because I was too lazy to rewrite the post, but it also shows my work.That’s the important question. According to Edwards, they’re all separate. There’s causality between them, but that doesn’t mean players need to have content authority to have plot authority. He goes on to describe Trollbabe-style (and what we’d probably now more associate with PbtA because that’s what is popular now) conflict-framing as an example of a technique and suggests it’s not a required one (you don’t even have to use it in the games that do allow it).Paul T gives an <a href="http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=20791.msg216621#msg216621" target="_blank">example</a> on the second page of that discussion, which Edwards <a href="http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=20791.msg216650#msg216650" target="_blank">responds</a> as being, “Your summary of Plot Authority = 100% correct. Awesome.”This is where I was trying to go with my safe example. In my example, the GM has established as backstory that the there is incriminating evidence and that it’s in the safe. The PCs want the evidence (i.e., this is their plot authority), and so they use their situational authority to locate it. The GM would then, using their content authority, reveal the safe with the evidence.This is where I was struggling to reconcile the idea of the players’ exercised plot authority with the GM’s exercised content authority. You are right to ask the questions you did. The scenario is not well-formed. It’s framing a task-oriented scene (you find a safe, what’s inside?), but what’s at stake is whether the players find the incriminating evidence. By the time the safe enters play, assuming the GM’s backstory prescribe it as the source of incriminating evidence, and the PCs won their conflict to find the evidence, it must contain what the PCs seek (the evidence). Getting it open could be another conflict (can they do it without leaving evidence of their presence?), but having it be empty (containing no evidence), and turning their win into a loss would be (presumably) unprincipled on the GM’s part.This is equivalent to masked stranger scenario except “the location of the evidence” takes the place of “the masked stranger’s identity”. If the location in the GM’s backstory is something other than the safe, then whatever the real location would be the necessary response on a win. A safe without the evidence would then be a possible response on a loss.See above. I think we came to the same conclusion regarding stakes. <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="🙂" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" title="Slightly smiling face    :slight_smile:" data-shortname=":slight_smile:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />I think mostly the latter, and yes.This is the important question of what kind of surgery is required to make use of an established scenario. I am particularly fond of the ones Necrotic Gnome has published for Old-School Essentials because they are situation-focused and avoid prescribing outcomes. However, they do not shy away from putting the “incriminating evidence” in with the loot procedure. For example, there is a key needed to open a device to find the Blood King’s heart. The key is hidden away in a random armoir on another floor. You can pick the lock, so it’s not the only way of getting it open. But it’s just a random thing you may find before getting it open. In spite of having a thief in the party, my players were still very determined to find the key “to avoid metagaming”.I agree, and I think that’s where I was going with my logic. To avoid GM-as-glue, one would have to constantly doing information dumps to allow the players to exercise their plot authority.Thank you for your responses. I’m still trying to work out the play priorities for my homebrew system. I have some goals that I’m not sure yet whether and how well I can balance them, but this helps me understand things better and gives me a framework for making decisions about what I want to do. I’m pretty sure I will need to excise the “hooks” that the generators in Worlds Without Number are designed to provide. Whether I can preserve some of my other goals (e.g., the scenario thing I mentioned above) also seems uncertain without careful consideration of how authority is distributed and what style of play I am trying to create.</blockquote>

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