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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5205479" data-attributes="member: 4937">It's worth noting though that to the extent that this is true, it doesn't contridict what I've said.  I said the player has the right to set his stakes in the story, and what you've outlined is one way that the player can do that.In the above case, the player has made the choice.  No one forced him into the role of betrayer.  The player has chosen his hooks and hinted at a stake in the story he'd be interested in.  All well and good.Well, it's not per se always objectionable to begin a session that way, but at least in my case it would probably be my last session with the DM and I'd quietly find some excuses for not coming back.  It's just not the way I want to play the game.  I might enjoy that sort of 'bang bang' style of play as a one off but the lack of freedom inherent in such a situation is going to prevent me from investing much in the character in the long term, and I'd just never get involved in a campaign length game where the DM went 'bang' and I danced the tune, and then the DM said 'bang' again.  That gets really old in a hurry for me, and as I previously indicated, in some cases once is more than enough.Sure, I agree, but I think there vast differences between the two 'bangs' you presented.  They are so far apart in my opinion that I don't even like to see them joined together.  In the one case, the world is unfolding around me and I may choose to participate in it.  In the other case, the world is unfolding around me quite without my participation and I've essentially been game-raped.  If I go into a game not knowing that its a game where sort of thing is going to happen, then don't be suprised if you lose a player.There are some high narrativist games where 'cut to the action' is part of the standard mechanics of the game, but mostly they are designed to be somewhat close ended and trade off that sort of scene framing imposition with various stake setting and scene framing powers being expressedly and mechanically put in the hands of the players.  More importantly, you go into that sort of thing eyes open.Yes.  This is so vague and so inclusive that it completely obscures the point.  First of all, there is absolutely no direct relationship between 'adversarial GMing' and 'scene framing power'.  Most 'adversarial GMing' I've encountered had little to nothing to do with scene framing.   You can get burned by adversarial GMing without feeling that the problem is that the GM is taking away your freedom with scene frames.  There are all sorts of ways of disempowering the player.  Secondly, a player might be perfectly willing and even excited about creating backgrounds, NPC relationships, and so forth without being happy to be told what there players have done or without being happy to have their own actions narrated to them.Seriously, I'm more than happy to create a background filled with all sorts of hooks and cede to the GM explicit permission to twist the hooks, without being in the slightest bit happy to hear my players actions narrated back to him without the slightest bit of input on my part.  Seriously, if the DM wants to play my PC, I'm going to cede the PC over to him and walk away from the game.  That has nothing to do with not wanting to trust NPCs or not wanting to have a background.  It simply is the desire to play my own damn character.False dilemma.  I refuse to accept your two buckets as being inclusive.  It's quite possible to play a game that doesn't resemble either of the two things you've described.   And, for my part I find it interesting that you think you have to play the player's character before the game is thematicly interesting to you as the GM.It seems to me that the GM narration, "You board the ship..." is only appropriate if the player has first asserted, "I want to board the ship."  If the player hasn't asserted the intention to board the ship, the DM is not in his rights to narrate that the player has boarded the ship.   If the PC hasn't asserted that its his intention to sail to Joppa and if possible cut the scene because sailing to Joppa is old hat, the DM doesn't really have a right to say, "Ok, so you've been at sea a for a week."  Hand waving is something that ought to happen by mutual agreement.   If you have that give and take between player proposition and and GM narration, then you don't have to worry about 'No, my PC would never board a ship', because the DM narrates nothing but the consequences of clear player intention.  "I board the ship.", "I greet the Captain.", "I retire to my quarters.", etc.  or even without the need for DM narration because the gamespace is, being familiar and controlled, now effectively player owned, "I board the ship, greet the captain, and retire to my quarters."It's possible to disempower players without deprotagonising them.  You can be the protagonist on a railroad and have nothing to do but view the scenary.  It's sort of like a Choose Your Own Adventure Book - occassionally the author decides that you can make a decision and in the mean time you can take in the story that's happening to you.  It doesn't follow that players are going to be happy with that level of control over the game just because events revolve around them.  If events are revolving around me but I have no input in them, its edging toward passively listening to a storyteller and away from actively participating in in a game.  Eventually when the game gets 'bang' 'bang' enough, the only participation a player has is Mad Lib fill in the blank in a story that is largely already filled out.Anything can be justifiied by 'everyone at the table consents to it'.  Probably everything works for some table.  Literally everything.  If that is going to be the guide and the standard, we might as well advise people to play F.A.T.A.L. Ron Edwards kills another mind.  I reject his theory, here repeated, that you can't get to story through proposition/resolution mechanics.  You can get there just fine in my experience.  And you can get there with out horned Trollbabes and tantric magic.  But, I guess those work fine at some peoples tables too. I don't see how.  To the extent that I think that oft abused phrase means anything, it has to do with how you resolve propositions.  You've been constructing an argument against allowing the players to have propositions except those that you provide for them.  It's preemptively saying 'no' as far as I'm concerned.</blockquote>

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