pemerton said:
I don't understand how this process of the players asking questions from you, or otherwise prompting you to share this sort of information with them, does not count as you communicating to them your conception of the fiction.
That makes it sound as though the fiction is mostly-mine, and the experience feels like entirely-ours.
It appears to miss the possibility that I don't know that I know the answer to a given question before asked (which is why I've talked about free-writing fiction as a comparison).
I don't understand why you assert the bolded bit.
I think it's very common in RPGing for the GM to not know an answer to a question before it is asked. The GM then makes up an answer, having regard to whatever constraints the system and the context require. For instance, in my most recent Traveller session the PCs travelled to a gas giant moon that they knew to have been of interest to psionically-inclined aliens 2 billion years ago. I therefore had to narrate something about the moon. Here's how I did that:
Looking at the information I had generated for this moon - an orbit barely more than 100,000 km above a small gas giant, with a rapid orbital period - suggested severe "tides" that would make it highly volcanic. I had also generated a population in the neighbourhood of 10,000 people. So I explained to the players that the moon is populated by miners engaged in mineral-extraction-from-magma operations, a bit like oil wells but using complex ceramic structures.
I didn't know this in advance. I made it up on the spot. And then told the players. There was probably some back-and-forth in that - one of the players is an engineer who sometimes winces at my "science" - but the quoted passage gives the gist.
In the same session, one of the PCs, Alissa, was put on trial by the NPC Toru von Taxiwan. The trial was being held inside a pinnace - a small spacefaring vessel with capacity for 8 passengers/crew. Here's how that unfolded:
I said that Toru stood at the bridge of the pinnace while the others (3 NPCs, Bobby and Alissa) sat on the couches. Alissa's player then asked (as Alissa) to be allowed to speak in her defence. So she went to the bridge while Toru went to the couches.
The description began with me. But it was Alissa's player who established that Alissa went to the bridge when she spoke in her defence, after having first established that she could speak in her defence. I went along with all of this as GM: I had no prior conception of how a Taxiwanian trial would proceed.
The bit about the moon I would count as an instance of
the players learning what is in the GM's notes. The bit about the trial I would not.
It seems to ignore that the players can change the fiction, or that they can change my conception of the fiction (which might be two different things, or they might not).
Obviously the players in my Traveller game might change the fiction, in the sense that (eg) they could use their starship beam lasers to destroy some or even all of the mining structures. (They probably can't change the orbit or volcanic character of the moon). In the case of the trial they did change the fiction - the player had his PC blow everyone else up with a concealed grenade. This was in fact why he wanted to establish that he went to the front of the pinnace.
But changing the established fiction (which I think is what you mean - as opposed to
adding to it as happened in the play of the trial) requires the fiction to be established. And that has to come from someone.
A possibly unrelated question: From where you are, how much difference do you see between the posters here who have advocated strongly for a "living world" and my self-description?
I find it hard to tell. I get the feeling that your play might be similar to
@Maxperson's, though I think you are a bit more self-conscious about techniques. I think both of you are different from
@Bedrockgames who is in turn, I think, different from
@Emerikol. But those are just impressions formed on a very thin evidence base.