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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9116013" data-attributes="member: 42582">I have explained repeatedly.A rule which requires the GM to have regard to story elements, and protagonist goals, that the players have established as mattering to their PCs, is a rule which gives the players agency. As I said back in post 211,in the RPGs I know that have higher player agency, the players cannot "alter game reality" in the way some posters in this thread are talking about. Rather, they establish their own goals and aspirations for their PCs (including working with the group collectively to establish the appropriate backstory and setting elements to underpin those goals and aspirations), and then the GM relies on those goals and aspirations as cues for their own narration of framing and consequence.That's it. It's not complicated.It's not vague. It's quite precise. Well they look like typical sessions to me too! But given the visceral response they seem to generate from various ENworld posters, apparently they are not typical. The idea of the GM framing scenes, and narrating consequences, having regard to something other than the GM's imaginary conception of the setting and situation evokes a lot of controversy.In post 581 upthread, I posted an actual play report of a meeting between high level 4e D&D PCs and Yan-C-Bin; here it is again:And here is some further discussion, that elaborates on the agency exercised by the players:*The reason the Raven Queen and her Mausoleum were an element in play is because multiple players had built PCs who were Raven Queen devotees, and their relationship to the Raven Queen (as well as the more ambiguous relationship to her of the other PCs) had been an ongoing element in the game; *The Thundercloud Tower was an element in play because, first, a player had put it on a wishlist and his PC had found it: and second, because after it was abandoned in the Abyss the players had now declared action to try and recover it; *Yan-C-Bin is an element in play because one of the players had chosen to play a chaos sorcerer who is an Emergent Primordial, who is a servant of Chan the Queen of Good Air Elementals and hence an implacable foe of Yan-C-Bin; *The question of the Dusk War is in play because the whole trajectory of play, driven by the various PCs and their relationships to Law (Erathis, Moradin) and Chaos (the sorcerer) and Destiny (the Raven Queen) had made this a central focus of the campaign; *The stakes of the confrontation are the matters that have been brought into play by the players: will they get their Tower back? will Yan-C-Bin and the Djinn aid them or thwart them? is the Dusk War coming, or can it be held off? *The resolution of the confrontation is not pre-determined by the GM, nor is it decided by the GM based on extrapolation from what would "make sense" as a reaction by the Djinn or Yan-C-Bin; it is resolved by applying the skill challenge rules.I hope that provides a clear illustration and account of high player agency D&D play.This doesn't tell us anything about player agency. Why is a locked vault a focus of play? What is the PC hoping to find, and who - player or GM - made that a concern of play? And who decides what the PC finds if they successfully open the door?In addition, you seem to think that the "Door Action Ability" is something outrageous, whereas PC builds that have a percentage chance to open locked doors have been a part of D&D almost since the game's inception.I'm taking it for granted that the rules are followed, yes. On its own this doesn't tell us much about the degree of player agency, but obviously it's a necessary condition of the players exercising significant agency.What you describe here isn't true of any of my RPGing (as I posted upthread, eg post 224).If you read my actual play posts, you will see that they talk about the use of prep.As a general rule I do not have lots of detailed notes. For 4e, I do often have detailed stat blocks, because the game needs them for combat. And obviously I have the rulebooks, which include things like the DC-by-level and damage-by-level charts.I provided an example not far upthread of the way that I use prep in Torchbearer (which plays differently from both 4e D&D and from Burning Wheel, as I've also explained in this thread).As to whether it's possible to make up awesome stuff on the fly in less than a second: it's probably for others to judge whether or not the stuff that I make up is awesome, but making stuff up is not all that hard if the game rules are good and the themes are clearly established.This is why Burning Wheel tells players that, if the situation doesn't interest them, it's their job to make interesting situations. And I've posted actual play examples upthread: as a player, I have made Wises checks (thus making Evard's tower a focus of play) and Circles checks (thus bringing NPCs who are interesting to me into play).But even where a game doesn't have such rules, it's not that hard in my experience to come up with stuff that speaks to player-authored goals and aspirations for their PCs. The first Torchbearer dungeon I wrote up included the dream-spirit of a banished Dwarf, locked within an Elfstone. I was fairly confident that this would speak to the two players - whose PCs were a Dwarven Outcast and an Elven Dreamwalker - and I was correct.This is a fairly basic idea in any but the most simplistic fiction. Consider, for instance, Rick in Casablanca, or Han Solo in Star Wars.</blockquote>

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