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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9109755" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, suppose we talked about different sorts of constraints on driving? Maybe in Washington I can use a right turn lane on red without necessarily coming to a complete stop, but in Vermont I can't do that. Are these different KINDS of driving? I wouldn't say so. Not to say that 'constraints' and 'kinds' could never have a similar character, but I think the more you move towards kind the less easily you will be able to describe the difference purely in terms of constraints. I mean, yes, racing around the track in the Indy 500 involves a different set of driving constraints than driving around my town, but racing and ordinary driving cannot simply be described as a different set of constraints on driving, they are fundamentally different processes with different goals, etc. Yeah, they share some common features, and we may derive some value from that comparison, but constraints cannot describe that fully.He said 'primarily', and as I mentioned in a recent post, where a game like TB2 (based on BW) goes beyond that, it does so in a highly circumscribed fashion. If I want to find my friend in a town, I must pass a test and the details of that test are governed largely by the narrative plausibility of the assertion. Honestly, how different is this than D&D? I doubt you would consider it a violation of the principles of GMing for a player to say "Hey, maybe my friend is in the bar in this town, he hangs out in bars and sometimes he travels." My bet is, the GM will use a VERY similar process as what TB2 does to adjudicate this possibility.He's saying that in games which he is describing as lower agency over fiction the GM normally exercises veto authority over what the character's mind contains. That is, take my example of the bar and the friend above, in a typical trad D&D game there would be no violation of the game's process or principles for you to simply say "this suggestion is absurd, there is no possibility of finding your friend in this bar, he's listed as being one of the NPCs present at place X." (and you needn't state that last part). Now, maybe you will assert that as GM you have no control over the player asserting things that are incorrect, but effectively the value of what is in the character's head belongs to the GM.But you have asserted time and time again that your notions of what rules should govern doesn't include mechanics which are dissociated from the game world. So I can see you questioning the BitD stress cost, but nothing in the flashback rule seems 'dissociated', it is simply an example of playing scenes out of order, temporally. I mean, if that is objectionable, it is objectionable on its own for purely different reasons than being an example of 'meta-game' or of player power over things outside of the character.Honestly, what I get out of this is that there is a strong vein in a lot of this trad play of GMs feeling insecure about their role in the game and being upset with the idea that its a viable notion to have different dynamics than trad.</blockquote>

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