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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8234248" data-attributes="member: 16814">No, else we're back to Monopoly featuring protagonism.  To use my prior example, Infinity Wars features Iron Man making choices, which drive the emergent story, but he is not the protagonist of that film, Thanos is.  That story is entirely about Thanos meeting his dramatic needs, his goals, and the trials and tribulations he faces along the way to realizing them.  Then, he does, and his protagonism ends, and the second Infinity Wars movie switches back to the Avengers being the protagonists.To leverage this example into RPGs, if the primary thrust of play is for the PCs to decide how they will deal with this or that threat (introduced by the GM), then they aren't the protagonists, but they may have agency in determining how the play will turn out.The ability to affect the play is about agency.  What the play is about is about protagonism.  If play is about exploring a dungeon the GM thought of and created, then there's no protagonism here, because the play is not about the dramatic needs of the PCs.  This is true even if the player manage to find ways to insert their own desires and wants, and is so because what the GM presents is orthogonal to the players doing this -- it's up to the players to find ways to do this, the game doesn't focus on this.You keep mixing "the player can do what they want" with what the game is about.</blockquote>