I consider TTRPGs primarily a mechanism for shared storytelling, because that's the one aspect of a TTRPG that cannot be replicated in a book or videogame. Someone has to develop the shared world in which that storytelling takes place, and it usually falls to the GM to do so.
I'm not sure about the
has to - can't the setting be generated in the course of the telling of the story?
I will admit, for the sake of argument, that any GM who declares ownership over the campaign is overstepping.
Well, that's what the poster to whom I was replying did.
[MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] also asserted that the GM is omnipotent in respect of the campaign: "One approach assumes that the GM is omnipotent, and the player's relationship to the world is akin to our own relationship to our world."
I think it's perfectly reasonable for a GM to declare ownership over the campaign setting. Many of us put a LOT of effort into developing our campaign settings to include NPCs, geography, situations, maps, motivations, etc. Most players put proportionally less work into the game; they roll up their characters, perhaps include a backstory, and show up with some dice. GMing a simulated living, breathing world in which the players can explore and adventure involves a ton of work.
OK - I didn't think any of this stuff about
effort was in dispute. Writing is hard and takes time.
But I'm not sure how that relates to the actual process of play. And the metaphors "exploration" is still in need of cashing out. The way that I "explore" Middle Earth is to read JRRT's books. How does a player explore a GM's world? Not by reading the notes - presumably by delcaring actions for his/her PC which prompt the GM to read or paraphrase elements of his/her notes.
The villains' primary function is to oppose the players but ultimately fail. The entire campaign world should be a challenge for the players to overcome - assuming they play intelligently, work together, and roll well when it counts. Failure should be an option for them, as well, or their victories will feel hollow.
If the villain doesn't fail, has something gone wrong?
And in what sense is the campaign world a "challenge" for the players to overcome? I'm not asking this rhetorically, or to deny it.
To elaborate - I understand how the Caves of Chaos are a challenge for the players to overcome. And in a slightly oblique sense, I can see how this is true for the trader in the Keep (after all, sensible equipment purchasing decisions is an important part of classic D&D). But I'm not clear how (say) the cleric in a contemporary game who sells the PCs potions on the cheap, or heals their wounds, is a challenge to overcome.
Or the NPC patron who sends them on a mission.
There are lots of parts of a "living, breathing world" that do not on the surface look like challenges to overcome. (In [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s language from upthread, some of them might be "levers" for the players to use, via their PCs. Some might just be flavour.)
I'll also admit that most GMs seem way too possessive about their settings and NPCs. It's immensely important to understand that the setting exists primarily as a vehicle for the players to reach their goals - to be heroes.
OK, this is the crux of it: how do players form goals and then achieve them. I posited an example not far upthread, about a player trying to have his/her PC influence a religious organisation. I know how that would work in some approaches to play - I'm interested in how it works in an approach to play in which the GM is omnipotent in the way that Mercuruis and others have described.
In the campaign style that I'm discussing--I can only speak for myself, but think it is basically representative of "traditional D&D" (not classic)--a PC has just as much agency as you and I have in this world
And I'm saying that this is unhelpful metaphor. In the world I can pick up a rock and throw it - the only considerations are (i) the existence of a rock, and (ii) the relveant mechanical forces.
In a RPG, for my PC to pick up and throw a rock (iii) requires it to be established, in the shared fiction, that a rock exists in the vicinity of my PC, and (iv) requires my action declaration, that my PC picks up and throws a rock, to be successful.
Those are completely different processes. Just to give two reasons as to why, (i) is frequently independent of human will, where as (iii) neer is; and (ii) does not require establishing any human consensus, but (iv) does.
Part of my agency, in real life, is that I can throw rocks. But my agency in a RPG is not connected to my ability to throw rocks in any form - as (iii) and (iv) make clear, it's about my capacity to contribute to the establishment of a consensus in relation to some shared fiction.
If the GM is,
in fact, omnipotent - ie never obliged to have regard to others' desires about the content of the shared fiction - then the player has no agency. I suspect no one actually plays RPGs in which the GM's power is so total, but one doesn't expain the limits on the GM's power, or the GM's obligation to have regard to contributions from other participants, by comparing throwing a rock in the real world to collectively generating a fiction in which a rock gets thrown.
you and I have less agency than a PC in traditional D&D-style game play
I'm not talking about the imaginary agency of an imaginary person - the PC. I'm talking about the actual agency of an actual person - the player - who is engaged in a social, collaborative endeavour, namely, the generation of a shared fiction by dint of playing a RPG with others.
In the traditional style, the GM is the creator and storyteller, and the players are actors within the world.
If the GM is telling a story, and the players are acting, who is wrting their script? If the answer is that they're free to write their own script, then
in what sense is the GM telling a story?
If we are going to talk about how RPGing works, and how various approaches work, we need to move beyond seemingly inconsistent generalities to actually analyse the process whereby different participants are empowered, as part of the collective enterprise, to make things "true" in the shared fiction.
The point is to simulate the experience of real life, but in a shared imaginary space. The player "inhabits" the character (or role), and acts as if they are the character within the setting. Thus role-playing.
Your approach seems more that of characters as game pawns utilized by the players
Well then you have misperceived.
Here is an excellent summary of the "indie"-style of RPGing, under the heading "The Standard Narrativistic Model":
1. One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise) by introducing complications.
2. The rest of the players each have their own characters to play. They play their characters according to the advocacy role: the important part is that they naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background. Then they let the other players know in certain terms what the character thinks and wants.
3. The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.
4. The player’s task in these games is simple advocacy, which is not difficult once you have a firm character. (Chargen is a key consideration in these games, compare them to see how different approaches work.) The GM might have more difficulty, as he needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences. Much of the rules systems in these games address these challenges, and in addition the GM might have methodical tools outside the rules, such as pre-prepared relationship maps (helps with backstory), bangs (helps with provoking thematic choice) and pure experience (helps with determining consequences).
Character-as-pawn is not part of the model. (It is the default for classic dungeoneering, however.)
As for immersion - it hardly gets more immersive than returing to your ruined tower after lo!, these past 14 years, then looking for the mace you left behind only to discover that your brother was evil all along!
If you can only immerse when you the player (ie at the metagame level, not from your PC's perspective) know that whether or not you (as your PC) will find the mace depends in part on what the GM wrote in his/her notes, and that whatever unhappy thing you (as your PC) will learn about your brother depdns upon what the GM wrote in his/her notes, well that's a psychological fact about you.
Personally, I find it easiest to immerse when I'm engaging the situation as my character would - so when I'm playing my Knight of the Iron Tower, riding through the lands that my order once controlled, I look for signs of any members of my order still being about. The GM sets a difficulty for my Circles check, and I roll it - and then the GM tells me what occurs as a result (either I do find a member of my order, if the check succeeds; or something goes wrong, if the check fails). What is relevant to my immersion is the relationship between the imagined situation and my character, as mediated through the gameplay. So when I put together my dice pool and roll, I feel the same hope that my characer does - is there a fellow knight somewhere here in the wilderness, to give me succor? Or have the gods forsaken it completely? When the dice fall, I get my answer, just as my character knows whether his hopes are realised or dashed. I'm not all up in the metagame headspace of worrying about how this fiction has come to be authored!
