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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9102627" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't understand why you, [USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER], are bringing out my example of a starting point for a PC, in order to try and rebut [USER=6790260]@EzekielRaiden[/USER].What does my example have to do with RuneQuest? It was not located within any particular RPG. I made it up in response to a post from [USER=7040616]@Raiztt[/USER]. Raiztt hadn't specified a RPG at all. I was imagning first and foremost Burning Wheel, and secondarily AD&D.Why do you think Ezekiel Raiden is in need of any explanation as to the basic GM function of coordinating opposition and antagonism in relation to the player's goal for their PC. This post is prompted by this from hawkeyefan:Some of us posting in this thread have provided endless actual play examples, tight descriptions of procedures of play for various games (eg 4e D&D, Dungeon World and Apocalypse World,  Burning Wheel, Torchbearer), and the like.It's about time that someone who wants to argue, say, that a player in a "GM story hour" game has as much agency as a player in a game of Burning Wheel GMed and played as per Luke Crane's instructions, to actually spell out how that works. Where does this player exercise their agency? What are they influencing or affecting or controlling.Here is how <a href="https://www.arkenstonepublishing.net/isabout/2020/05/14/observations-on-gns-simulationism/" target="_blank">Eero Tuovnin describes "GM story hour"</a>:GM Story Hour Or, “railroading” as it’s more commonly called – I prefer to use a different term to reduce preconceptions and draw attention to what’s pertinent for our purposes. (“Railroading” was conceived as a deconstructive critique of this practice; it’s the name an enemy grants to the phenomenon.) “GM story hour” is a roleplaying game activity where one of the players – the titular GM – prepares a structured agenda platter for the session of play, and the play activity itself then concerns processing through this pre-prepared content. The content is usually structured analogously to a linear narrative, so there’s “scene 1”, “scene 2”, etc. that are processed through play in the order pre-determined by the GM. The story hour is defined by the content authority of prepared material, delivered in fixed order. I’ve developed some modest story hour theory myself; to put it briefly, I believe that railroading play, despite how common it is, is generally misunderstood to concern itself mostly with the causal “A leads to B” path procession through the GM’s prepared material. This type of railroading theory leads to complex conceptualizations like hub models (alternate roads you allow the players to pick from) and magician’s choice (the players think they’re choosing, but really they’re not) and generally focusing your creative energies towards the dysfunction of trying to manage a GM story hour where the GM can’t tell the other players that it’s a story hour, and everybody else is trying their damnedest to jump the tracks. This kind of railroading theory is worthless because its central ambition is to make railroading do something it is not suited to – a pretense of the tracks not existing when they really, genuinely, practically do. What I would like to offer as a modest alternative to old-fashioned railroading theory is that the purpose of the GM story hour is not to cheat and create an illusion of freedom; it is to exquisitely prepare nuanced literary material for intimate consideration. The strength of the railroading game structure is not in hiding the tracks, but rather in ensuring that those tracks travel through scenes worthy of spending some time in. You’re literally only bothering with the railroad tracks because you don’t want to waste time preparing complex content and then just have the other players skip it; it’s much better to take the track as a given and focus on how to make your content worth the trip. I’ve written about this in more detail elsewhere, but the key consideration is treating your game prep the same way an adventure video game does: your core strength is being able to prepare carefully, and the freedoms you give to the player are carefully constrained to ensure that you actually get to show off your stuff. It is still interactive, as the player has the primary control over the pace (how quickly you go over your material) and focus (what parts of your material are particularly observed) of play, even as the GM by definition holds primary content authority. The GM decides what play will be about, but the other players decide how they investigate that aboutness. The GM story hour is an appropriate game structure for games where a single player introduces specific subject matter to the other players. It is extremely important that the introduced matter is good stuff, creatively relevant to the participants. Tracy Hickman understood this in his magnum opus Dragonlance, pushing the AD&D content delivery chassis to its extreme ends and beyond in an effort to deliver a true high fantasy epic via a game structurally very poorly suited for the purpose; Hickman understood that if there was to be a measure of grace to the project, it would be in the fact that the GM would in his interminable story hour be delivering actually legit fantasy literature. (Not discussing the Dragonlance novels here, note, but the adventure modules.) You never, ever want to be in a position to deliver a story hour with naughty word, trivial material. Respect yourself, respect your friends, and if you choose to play a game structured for the story hour, bring something you actually want to tell the other players about. Something that you can describe to them, and then let them ask questions, and then answer those questions gladly, confident that you’re engaging in an intelligent, meaningful activity. If you can’t convince yourself about your material being interesting, don’t expect others to care, either.Tuovinen clearly identifies the agency that the players exercise in this sort of play: they have primary control over pace and focus. Those of us who have played in railroads/GM story hours can reflect on his claims and form our own view as to how true they are: in my case, I think that there is truth to the claim about pace, but less truth to the claim about focus, which in this sort of play as I have experienced it remains under the primary control of the GM.What is an analogy for controlling the pacing? It's not unlike rewinding or fast forwarding when watching a video. That is not zero agency. I think it is rather low agency. I certainly think I can compare the degree of agency I experience in this sort of RPGing to the degree of agency I experience in (say) Burning Wheel, and in performing that comparison can observe that Burning Wheel affords me more agency as a player.If someone is going to argue that the degree of agency in the two games is in fact the same, or perhaps is not able to be compared, I want to see something more than just metaphor, or a reiteration of what Tuovinen has said, which I've already read and which is not particularly arcane.</blockquote>

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