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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9109934" data-attributes="member: 42582">I take "character agency" to refer to a player declaring what their PC thinks, feels, does, and the like. What is an example of play from Dungeon World, Apocalypse World or Burning Wheel that involves a player establishing shared fiction other than by declaring what their PC thinks, feels, does etc?What clarity is added by referring to them as different types of agency?To me this seems like positing that different vessels for carrying water should therefore lead us to talk about different types of water. Why would we want to do that? If we were planning a very specific sort of dinner party, perhaps we might? (Eg we might want to serve water in carafes, while having buckets of water in the kitchen for dropping dirty plates into.) But if we were trying to measure the total volume of water available, the distinction between vessels wouldn't be very interesting as best I can see.In this thread I have consistently been interested in talking about the agency that players enjoy in respect of the shared fiction. That agency doesn't become different in character because there is a particular game rule or process that constrains it.I have posted multiple examples upthread of players declaring their PCs' actions and mental states:*I keep my eyes open for a member of my order who might help us; *I keep my eyes open for any family who might come by; *I seem to recall Evard's tower was in this vicinity; *I was working on the Falcon's Claw before we had to flee our tower; I wonder if it is still here?All these declarations either include, or presuppose, mental states, more-or-less along the following lines:*I believe that I am a member of an order whose other members are likely to be in this general area; *I believe I have a family, and that I'm in our home territory; *I remember that there is a great wizard called Evard, who - as is typical of wizards - lived in a tower; *I remember the Falcon's Claw, and the circumstances in which I fled the tower where I was apprenticed with my brother.In a game like Apocalypse World or Burning Wheel, the starting point for adjudicating the declared actions is to treat the presupposed mental states as veridical (ie as true beliefs or memories). It is thus ruled out, except in unusual cases where the player fails the roll to determine the outcome of the declared action, that the PC is deluded in remembering things about their order, their family, the history of the great wizards, what they were doing when they were an apprentice, etc.My very strong impression - confirmed by this thread - is that many RPGers believe that the GM has a veto over these veridical mental states. Eg that the player can't declare a true belief or memory about their order, their family, their knowledge of the great wizards, etc without first checking with the GM. Just one example of a post that confirms my impression is this from [USER=6801845]@Oofta[/USER] (post 177):In D&D, if the player makes a knowledge check, the DM gets to decide the details of what is remembered. The player remembers what's in the tower? Okay. The DM tells them what they remember. It's a totally different approach. I prefer the way D&D does it but that's not relevant to the fact that the player is making changes to the fiction of the world. We do that to a small degree in D&D when it comes to fluff and inconsequential details about their player such as hair color or general details about their clothes.That is not a statement about limiting players to "character agency". It is stating an additional constraint that is about GM authority over the content of veridical mental states. And the constraint stated is that unless the content of the veridical mental state is inconsequential, the GM gets to decide.A high player agency game can confine players to "character agency" - nearly every RPG that I play has that character. But the principle that Oofta stated back in post 177, and that I restated in the post you quoted, is not consistent with high player agency over the shared fiction, because it hands all the agency over things that matter to the GM.What changed? Within the shared fiction, what was altered?I'm am discussing a particular point: namely, whether or not PCs in these RPGs can "alter reality", or whether players can "alter reality" beyond declaring what it is that their PCs do, think, feel, remember, etc.On the issue of "a tower with useful stuff": exploring towers which might contain useful stuff sums up nearly the whole of the core D&D experience! (Except sometimes instead of towers they're tunnels.) The issue I see is not that the play of the game involves exploring a tower to potentially find useful stuff. It's that the GM is not the one deciding all the details of the towers and the useful stuff that they containt.What does it mean to be "in control" of the exploration? Do you mean they choose what to poke at, so they exercise some degree of control over prompts to the GM?Suppose that is what you mean. We can then talk about the process whereby the GM decides what to say when prompted. The most orthodox that I'm aware of is to state what is in their notes.</blockquote>

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