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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Enrahim2" data-source="post: 8949329" data-attributes="member: 7039850">I have not heard about GM agency either before this. I find this quite intriguing. My first hunch was that this might be more about cultural streams tending toward thinking of leaders as servants and facilitators in a democratic fashion as opposed to the more autocratic view more prevalent in early D&D. But it strike me that the rules actually might be relevant as well.A there are a lot of rules explicitely allowing certain actions for players. On the other hand the GM has hardly any concretized permissions beyond absence of restrictions. Hence a player might "get away with" certain behavior a DM might not under the argument that the rules allow it. Cheesing some combination of rules that were never designed to interact might for instance be lauded as "well played" if a player pulls it off, while it might be considered abusive if the DM employed the same trick.What this points toward is that a well-working game appear to at least require some sort of "self-censorship" on the DM. There are obviously boundaries to what is OK for a DM to do and still get a good game - but the rules do not provide such boundaries at all. Hence the DM bear the full responsibility for not overstepping. And the irony is that as everyone is aware of this, the DM can become de-facto a lot more restrained than the players.For instance if it come to decide what type of content to pursue. If the players want a dungeon crawl, the rules clearly indicate that they are free to direct their characters to start searching for stories of caves filled with monster and treasure. A DM not obliging by providing such information is sabotaging the game, as it is clearly within their power to make such content. Had there for instance been a rule that said that "The DM choose one of the following kind of scenarios at the start of a new arc" along with descriptions of story classes like "Dungeon Crawl", "Political drama", "Mystery" and "Heist" fleshed out with details of what they can include to a similar extend as character classes - that would definitely have done something with that dynamic. There would of course still be a social component to it that a DM would be wise to take into account. But in this case the social pressure could be easier counterweighted by cold hard rules if the DM really didn't feel the dungeon crawl vibe right now. Importantly this would provide rules based pressure on the players to play along (or be sabotaging the game the same way the DM would have been sabotaging the game by not providing the dungeon crawl when there are no such rules).Add in the Mat Mercer effect, and the expectation of the DM tailoring the experience around backgrounds written by players, and the DM suddenly sit with almost no agency at all when it come to a lot of the more high level concepts of the game. This appear to be a trend several analyzers have pointed to in the context of trying to understand the DM-shortage. The DM is effectively treated as a game facilitator and entertainer expected to flesh out a story mainly determined by the players. A sort of writer for hire (for free). Definitely food for thoughts!</blockquote>

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