To point 1, news takes time to travel, depending on setting trappings. The Imperium is limited by required physical transport jumps each taking weeks of time. News from the other side will take months to reach the military and even longer to reach the civilian population.
To point 2, there's exciting things happening everywhere. Players with PCs based in the Spinward Marches make the choice that exciting things happening near the Zhodani border are more interesting than exciting things happening near Hiver space. When something newsworthy happens near Hiver Space and the news travels widely enough that the PCs can discover it, the players now have new information to base next choices upon. Are enough exciting things happening here to hold their attention or is what is happening way over there interesting enough and seems to have enough staying power to warrant the trek to the other side?
Again, tihs strikes me as exhibiting the degree of GM control over shared content.
It's the GM who has decided that event X happens in Place A rather than Place B, hence that when the PCs who are in Place B learn of it (which equals
when the GM tells it to them) it has already (within the context of the fiction) occurred, such that the player's capacity to affect its immediate context - given the setting conventions - is very limited.
It may be that exciting events (again, mostly = stuff that the GM is telling to the players) is happening in Place B, where the fictional positioning of the PCs enables them to make immediate action declarations that affects that stuff. But this exciting stuff is also stuff that was written by the GM.
The players are choosing which bit of the GM's fiction to focus on. If they choose A, there is then an extended process (at least if the travel is being resolved using the standard mechanics) for actually shtifting the field of action from A to B (in the fiction, this is the interstellar travel across the Imperium), where most of the activity on the way will be determined by the GM. (Either directly, or on the back of random encounter rolls.)
The authorial hand of the GM seems to loom very large.
in starting this thread, you're not merely saying that you're not interested in the comedians - you're declaring that you can't see how anyone might find them appealin
No I'm not. The question in the thread isn't rhetorical. And some posters have answered it - to reiterate some of those answers:
* Worldbuilding - designing a setting - is a worthwhile artistic and/or intellectual pursuit in itself, that bring pleasure/satisfaction to the GM who engages in it;
* The game can't proceed without setting, and one way to get it is for the GM to write it in advance;
* Some players don't want to write setting, and so the only way to get it is for the GM to write it, and this is easier done in advance;
* Some players want to know that the GM wrote up all the fiction in advance, because that supports their immersion.
And the OP itself offered one answer - to confront the players with a maze/puzzle (the dungeon) to beat.
The OP also suggested that, as the setting becomes a "living, breathing world" which exists mostly in the mind and notes of the GM, rather than maps and room keys that are - through various, mostly conventionally-established moves - cognitivtely accessible to the players, the maze/puzzle rationale tends to be lost. I think [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] doesn't agree with this, which is what our discussion in the thread is currently about (though it's moved on a bit from my starting maze/puzzle way of framing the matter).
By declaring that playstyles other than purely player-driven content amount to "being told a story by the GM" you very much are saying that other playstyles aren't viable as a co-operative play experience.
I haven't delared that those playstyles are "being told a story by a GM". I have asserted that certain aspects of play, which are often presented in metaphorical terms ("the player explore the setting") or in in-fiction terms ("the PCs travel from A to B") actually - when we analyse them as the play of a game among actual people sitting around a table - consist of the players triggering the GM reading them stutf.
This is how a typical CoC scenario works, for instance, and most of the Planescape modules I can think of (Infinite Staircase; Dead Gods). It's how the Alexandrian's
"node based design" and
"three clue rule" work. The GM frames a starting situation, tells the players some stuff about it then the players say "OK, we go to [such-and-such a place]" and that leads the GM to read them more stuff (descriptions of such-and-such a place). And then with that extra information to hand, the players declare "OK, we go and talk to so-and-so" - and then the GM reads them some more stuff, and so on.
The players are making choices that determine the sequence in which the GM reads them the stuff, and determines the precise details. (Eg maybe if the players don't ask a certain question, the NPC doesn't tell them a certain thing.) But all the significant content is being narrated by the GM. And if the players declare a move that the GM didn't anticipate in his/her notes - eg they ask a neighbour what s/he has seen going on next door - then either the GM makes up some more stuff, or the GM doesn't dispense any significant information ("Sorry, I work shifts and only come home to sleep, so I haven't noticed anything").
In my experience, with a GM who is skilled in vibrant descriptions and characterisation, and if the stuff in the notes isn't obvious - so there's interest and/or amusement in learning it - then this can be fun. I've played in convention games that are like this. Personally, though, I prefer it if the style I've described is used to set up the framing of the "big finish" - and so, in a sense, really serves as an extended framing process for the
real scene of the game - and then the "big finish" is all about the players making substantive choices. CoC games don't work for this, because the "big finish" is nearly always just "Do or don't we have what we need to stop the cultists". But I've had good experiences in Stormbringer one-shots where, at the moment of crunch, the final action declarations aren't just about "how well can we put the clues together to defeat the culties" but more like "OK, so now we know that what's really going on here is a cult ritual, the question is - do we stop it, or do we join it!" If the scenario designers have done a good job, then different PCs should either start with, or (even better) develop over the course of the "exploration" phase of play, reasons to stop the cultists or join them that are in conflict with one another.
(It's hard to set up a convention game with two such moments of crunch, because the fallout from the big finish isn't predicable at the outset, yet a convention game depends on being able to start each session at a pre-established point.)
I personally don't enjoy a whole campaign which has the general form I've described - the players declare actions for their PCs which are primarily about triggering narration from the GM and then putting those pieces together to stop the ritual/find the McGuffin/etc. The one time I played an extended campaign having this sort of character, the real action of play was in the interaction between the PCs. (I get somewhat of a similar vibe from [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s accounts of actual play.) The GM's narration was really just a backdrop for this. But I don't count this as an example of strong player agency in a GM setting-driven game, as it was completely orthogonal from the GM's setting. (Eg we had fragments of a prophecy, and we spent a lot of time debating them, imagining how we could read various PCs into various roles outlined in the prophecy, etc. I assume that the GM had some conception, in his mind, of what the prophecy meant and how the events of play related to it, but they were absolutely irrelevant to what we players were talking about. We could have done our stuff just as easily if the GM had simply handed us three random prophecies downloaded from a Google search.)
Clearly, you don't trust that players have any form of agency in any game that has substantive GM backstory and adjudication. You're denying that they do all over the place here and in your response to Lanefan. And you don't really seem to trust us when we say that player do have agency in the games we're running in which we do make use of substantial backstory and adjudication. Your response to MarkB here is fairly dripping with it. "you think it is" makes it very clear that you don't believe him or think it's true. It's like you're calling him out but acknowledge he's not technically lying because he seems to believe it's true.
We're doing analysis here. Trying to dig down into the processes of play is not "calling someone out". I don't think [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION] is lying. I do think that the suggestion that I don't trust GMs is (i) false, and (ii) irrelevant - as if the only reason someone would play DungeonWorld rather than 2nd ed AD&D is because they don't trust GMs!
But anyway, on to the issue of agency:
Here is one of my assertions -
if the GM is entitled, at any point in the process of resolution to (i) secretly author backstory, or (ii) secrety rewrite backstory, and (iii) to use that secret backstory as if it was part of the fictional positioning so as to (iv) automatically declare an action declaration unsuccessful ("No, the map's not in the study") - then I assert that
every action declaration is simply a suggestion to the GM as to how the fiction might go. The GM - by deciding how to handle (i) to (iv) above - is actually making the decision as to what the shared fiction shall be.
(Perhaps in your game the GM doesn't enjoy any such entitlement. OK, fine. Then in making the above assertion I'm not saying anything about your game. But clearly there are some games in which the above entitlement is enjoyed by the GM.)
Here is my other main assertion -
if the GM is entitled to uniatereally and secret establish elements of the shared fiction, which therefore become part of the fictional positioning for action declaration although the players may not know about it, then there is the
potential for players to lose agency. In this thread I have explained in detail how I think that classic dungeoncrawling avoids this problem: (i) in that approach to player agency is not about "story" but about
winning; and (ii) the players have the capacity to learn the secret backstory through their direct engagement with the game without being dependent upon the GM's preconceptions as to what is salient, how elements of the backstory relate, etc - this is because the backstory is very simple and stylised (dungeon maps and rooms, with strong play conventions around these), because there is fiat detection magic, because there is the possibility of repeat attempts at the same dungeon (this is an obvious presupposition of Gygax's advice in his PHB), etc.
I have explained why the "living, breathing world" appears to create problems for (ii) just above: the backstory is not simple and stylised and governed by robust play conventions, but is rich and verisimilitudinous and opaque to the players (look at [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s example not far upthread - the players get involved in a minor street altercation and all these ramifications follow of which they had no knowledge and over which they had no practical control); exposition of information is extremeley dependent on GM opinions as to what is salient (the GM tells you the weapon the NPC carries but not how his/her shirt is tailored; the GM describes the desk in the study but not the paper clips or map pins sitting on it, nor their absence - in real life the degree and nature of clutter on a desk is one of the first things that gives you some clue as to what activity takes place at or near it; etc).
There has been quite a bit of reference, in this thread, to the PCs exploring or discovering the world. Given that the world is a fiction that exists only in the GM's notes, that can only mean that: the players declare actions for their PCs which trigger the GM reading some notes. Typically, the GM has control over which bits of the notes get read (eg suppose the players declare that their PCs break into the NPC's study and rifle through her books and papers: in a GM backstory-driven game it is the GM who will decide what the players learn about the shared fiction as a result of that action).
How can it be otherwise in a game in which it is the GM who authors the backstory, and does so in advance of play? I don't regard having the power, as a player, to oblige the GM to read you bits of his/her notes
which s/he gets to choose is having much agency. The contrast with dungeoneering is clear here: when a player has his/her PC use a Wand of Metal and Mineral Detection and obliges the GM to inform him/her of stuff in the dungeon neighbourhood, that is all stuff within the player's immediate field of action. It is part of the player unravelling the puzzle of the dungeon and getting ready to make a winning move (ie looting the detected treasure). If the player learns that there's not treasure nearby, that's also helpful: it helps the player work out where more profitable moves might be made. (Like turning over an unhelpful tile in Forbidden Desert - you'd rather get a helpful one, but still you've learned something that helps you make your next move.)
But triggering the GM to read you stuff which correlates to what, in the fiction, some NPC has in her books and papers, is not increasing agency in the same way. Whether or not it pertains to the current field of action is entirely up to the GM. How it might be made use of may well be up to the GM too (eg the players learn that the NPC has a cousin in a town across country who once saw someone with the widget - now they have to make the game moves that will bring it about that their PCs are in the town and talking to the cousin; or will have to find the cousin in the phonebook - and it will be up to the GM whether or not the cousin has a slient number, or has changed his/her name, or whatever; etc).
Here's a third assertion: to kick it off, let's suppose that the map that the players are hoping their PCs will find is known to be etched on a metal plate. And let's consider the following exercise of player agency: the players decide to have their PCs set fire to the house with the study in it, and then to impersonate fire fighters and thereby recover the metal map from the burning house (or maybe from it's ashes).
And let's suppose that this forces the GM to narrate fiction independently of his/her notes - s/he didn't anticipate this, and has no challenges made up aroudn dealing with the fire brigade, searching the ahses of the house, etc.
OK then - I don't regard it as an explanation of how a strong role for GM backstory supports or fosters player agency if
the putative example of agency involves departure from or disregard of the backstory. And frankly, if the players are allowed to circumvent the mystery of the map in the breadbin by declaring the action of burning the house to the ground, then why not allow them to circumvent it by declaring the action of looking for the map in the study?
So those are my assertions. You think they're wrong. And you have a lot of relevant actual play experience. So why not write up a little play account that exhibits the agency and shows me what I've missed?
