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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5205030" data-attributes="member: 42582">Yes and no. Suppose a player builds into his PC's backstory "I was trained by a mysterious sorcerer to act as his agent in his revenge against the wizards' guild that expelled him. But the morning after my final lesson in the words of power, I awoke before dawn, collected my spellbook and familiar, and ran off to pursue my own destiny in the world". This player seems to me to have given the GM licence to initiate a scenario about betrayal and loss - "As you turn off the main street on your way to the tavern, you see your former mentor out of the corner of your eye, and he sees you too - his eyes blaze with anger, but he is swept out of sight by the crowd." If I was that player, and I didn't have my spellbook and familiar on me, I'd be hurrying back to them to make sure they're safe!Or to give a different sort of example - it's not per se objectionable for the GM to begin a session with "Rember last session you had returned to your rooms in the inn after a day spent talking with your contacts in the city. Well, you wake up - but you're not in your rooms anymore. It's dark, but you can feel metal shackles on your arms and smell the dampness of the baron's dungeons."In either sort of case, I agree that once the GM frames the situation, it's up to the players to react.I also think that different sorts of game mechanics have different sorts of implications for scene framing. If the game has rules for relationships, "hunted", etc, this has implications for setting up the conflict with the former mentor. If the game has a strong "action resolution mechanics = gameworld physics" approach, this has implications for the GM simply stipulating that all the PCs have been captured and imprisoned.And just as important as mechanical issues - maybe more important - are shared expectations among players and GM as to what the game will be about and how the GM may proceed in scene framing. And I think this gets back to what the OP was concerned with. If players have been burned by adversarial GMing in the past, then they can be very hesitant to cede any scene framing power to the GM: their PCs have no backgrounds, no relationships, trust no PCs etc, and the players always insist that they have a roll to awaken in the tavern room, a (game-mechanical) chance to draw their weapons and fight off the would-be captors, etc. While this is one way to play an RPG, it is not the only one, and (in my experience) it tends to lead to games which, while perhaps tactically and even strategically interesting, are not all that engaging at the thematic level for either player or GM.In short - if an RPG uses a fairly traditional, GM-centered approach to scene-framing, and if the participants want to move beyond the GM asking of the players "what do you do", then it can be helpful for the players to repose a degree of trust in the GM to frame scenes that will provide opportunites for protagonism (via the GM providing antagonism) but which are not themselves antagonistic on the part of the GM.In addition to GM as antagonist and referee, then, we also have GM as scene-framer, guided by a sense (gained explicitly or implicitly) of what the participants want out of the game.The solution here is to frame the scene at the right level and at the right point in the action. Depending how hard the GM is allowed to be (ie depending upon the preferences of the group), when the GM says "You board the ship and have been at sea for a week when a storm approaches" the players may be obliged to start from that point, or alternatively to treat the GM's description as a suggestion, from which the players may pull back if they want to - "No, my PC would never board a ship - she gets seasick - I would have coughed up the money for a teleport instead". Different approaches to GM power here obviously matter for the shape of the game, but don't have to involve deprotagonising players.Mechanics also matter - does the Augury spell allow the PCs to predict and avoid the storm - ie its priority in gametime is mechanically implemented as a priority in realworld play time - or is it instead some sort of augment/secondary check that the player can call on when resolving the storm challenge itself? A game with the second sort of approach makes it easier to skip to the chase with dramatic scene framing. D&D, of course, has tended to use the first sort of approach.I think D&D has some mechanical features that can militate against this - simulationist tendencies in action resolution of the sort I've canvassed above - but in general I think this is a pretty reasonable way to go, assuming that it fits with the preferences of those at the table. If everyone is content for a certain seem to be framed - or actively wants it to be framed - then just do so. Don't faff around hoping that the action resolution mechanics will get you there. (This can be seen as another implimentation of the motto "say yes or roll the dice".)</blockquote>

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