What is *worldbuilding* for?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Who framed the dilemma that put pressure on the players? If it was not the players, then it's the DM, who has chosen a crisis that the player have to react to. The players didn't chose that crisis. They must now make choices about what the crisis the DM framed.

Sure, but only in response to what the players WANTED to do. Had these issues not been of interest to the players then this detail would never have been created. In the context of a discussion of world building and backstory creation this is the central topic, how, when, and why do such elements come into existence and what purpose do they serve?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A better example might be this: let's say a party is in a castle and has via whatever means got itself into a combat it really can't quite handle. They've retreated into an old study on the ground floor, which the DM describes (or frames) as being musty, dusty, with two tall narrow windows big enough to let light in but not big enough for a normal person to fit through. The furniture is covered over with sheets, as if this place has somewhat been abandoned.

The enemies beat on the door, and it gives way. Foes pour in, and the party's front line prepares for a heroic last stand.

The party thief/rogue/sneak declares as an action "I search the outside wall for a secret door!". This is huge: success means some of the PCs can escape; failure means a likely TPK.

In a DM-driven game the DM is going to already know whether there's one there to find or not*. But in a player-driven game it would seem the roll for success on this action will determine whether a secret door is found...which means two things on a successful roll: 1) the thief's player just authored that secret door into the fiction, and 2) the thief's player has via this authorship just given the party an escape route they wouldn't otherwise have had, which skirts a bit too close to the Czege principle for my liking.

* - though even in a DM-driven game, if the DM realizes the pending TPK is her fault rather than the players' she might suddenly decide to stick a secret door there anyway even if there wasn't one to begin with...

Well, this is where the GM is called upon to use their skills in scene framing. Is this secret door really a thing that further's the player's agenda? It certainly addresses a situation in a way that is advocating for the PC (IE it helps him escape a sticky situation), but is that escape actually beneficial to the narrative? Now, a player is often likely to create some sort of action declaration like this without asking that question (because they're caught up in the scene and their immediate actions and favoring the PC). Still, it MAY be poor play on the part of the player. In that case the GM might try to address it in various ways. First of all he might simply set the DC very high, which is a bit of a cop out, but not terrible. He might simply declare this action to be incoherent WRT the framing of the scene (IE it is illogical for such a passage to exist). He might frame it in terms of 'Yes, and..." or "Yes, but...". Maybe now the character has to escape and leave his friends behind. Is this a price he's willing to pay? Will he invoke some sort of costly magic to bring them along? etc. The GM might also feel that, aesthetically, a secret door is silly, and recast it in different terms. The player should really have done this already if, say, the door is at variance with genre expectations or just illogical.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, this is where the GM is called upon to use their skills in scene framing. Is this secret door really a thing that further's the player's agenda? It certainly addresses a situation in a way that is advocating for the PC (IE it helps him escape a sticky situation), but is that escape actually beneficial to the narrative?

I'd say it is, in that without it there probably won't BE any narrative after the end of the battle, as there'll be no party left to narrate about.

Now, a player is often likely to create some sort of action declaration like this without asking that question (because they're caught up in the scene and their immediate actions and favoring the PC). Still, it MAY be poor play on the part of the player.

Which to me shows an advantage of a more DM-driven game: the player doesn't have to bother with these considerations but instead can just play her character and in so doing declare anything, trusting the DM's judgment to just say 'no' to anything that's out of line or ridiculous.

In other words, if I'm the player here I don't want to have to think on any sort of meta-level about "what's good for the story" or "is this beneficial to the narrative" when I'm trying to get my sorry character out of a jam...or at any other time, for that matter. And why is that? Because the moment I allow a thought of "what's good for the story" to change anything that my character would otherwise do, I've stopped playing my character as my character and have instead moved into meta-playing.

I-as-player should be able to just have my character do what it would do (or try to, subject to the DM's permission and-or the system's means of resolution), and let the story take care of itself.

As for the specific example:

In that case the GM might try to address it in various ways. First of all he might simply set the DC very high, which is a bit of a cop out, but not terrible. He might simply declare this action to be incoherent WRT the framing of the scene (IE it is illogical for such a passage to exist). He might frame it in terms of 'Yes, and..." or "Yes, but...". Maybe now the character has to escape and leave his friends behind. Is this a price he's willing to pay? Will he invoke some sort of costly magic to bring them along? etc. The GM might also feel that, aesthetically, a secret door is silly, and recast it in different terms. The player should really have done this already if, say, the door is at variance with genre expectations or just illogical.

All of these are of course possible; but many could be seen from the player side as being exactly the same as the DM consulting her notes and (with or without faking a roll) narrating failure on the search.

And further, even if a secret door there is illogical a character desperate to find an escape route might not see it that way in the heat of the moment...

Lan-"why is it that I simply cannot type the word 'secret' without messing it up and having to backspace-retype"-efan

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'd say it is, in that without it there probably won't BE any narrative after the end of the battle, as there'll be no party left to narrate about.

Eh, while 'classic' D&D seems to have persisted in encouraging a very final interpretation of 'character death' (defeat in combat) long after it stopped always serving the agenda, modern games don't suffer from that problem so much. I mean, sure, if the whole framing of the thing is "lets stake the lives of our characters on success, we'll hold nothing back, success or death!" then they're ASKING for death! So give it to them!

OTOH if they're maybe NOT asking for death then there's always logic in a parley. I mean, MOST bad guys are not averse to ransoms, slavery, etc. You can always kill 'em later. A GM can EASILY come up with a frame for a post-capture type of scene. I know the old, "you wake up some time later" thing is perhaps a bit old and tired and you don't want to use it constantly, but once the PCs are cornered there's nothing stopping them from tossing down there weapons, perhaps in a "we'll spare killing a whole bunch of your minions if you take us prisoner and let us live" kind of thing.

So, meh, I'm not sure most battles MUST be life-and-death struggles.

Which to me shows an advantage of a more DM-driven game: the player doesn't have to bother with these considerations but instead can just play her character and in so doing declare anything, trusting the DM's judgment to just say 'no' to anything that's out of line or ridiculous.

In other words, if I'm the player here I don't want to have to think on any sort of meta-level about "what's good for the story" or "is this beneficial to the narrative" when I'm trying to get my sorry character out of a jam...or at any other time, for that matter. And why is that? Because the moment I allow a thought of "what's good for the story" to change anything that my character would otherwise do, I've stopped playing my character as my character and have instead moved into meta-playing.

I-as-player should be able to just have my character do what it would do (or try to, subject to the DM's permission and-or the system's means of resolution), and let the story take care of itself.

Well, its easy enough for it to just be the GM saying "Nope, that isn't possible here!" which is NOT forbidden. I mean, these kinds of games are intended to be driven by "say yes" type GMing, but there's ALWAYS a limit to that! I mean, characters can only do certain things. Your average dwarf cannot just say "I sprout wings and fly away" any old time, and even [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is going to have some serious questions about that! I know it wouldn't fly (hehe) in my game! Actually it MIGHT, if you're level 27 and you appeal to your patron deity to save your bacon in a really important battle! Of course there WILL be consequences... I'd point out that there's a chart for this in the 1e DMG p111 where the guidelines work out that a character of level 15 who has never asked for divine favor before, and has reasonable alignment behavior has a 41% chance of such intervention! (15% for level, 25% for 'serving deity proximately', and 1% for 'diametrically opposed alignment'). It won't happen every time, but even crazy stuff is intended to be possible in D&D.

Point is, I don't think you're really imposing any consideration on the game that isn't already there in some form. Yes, players in a player-centered type of Standard Narrative game should consider the narrative, but that's why they're playing in such a game, right? Players in ANY game have a similar situation, they're expected to play in a way that shows some deference to the character as an individual. They aren't supposed to just commit suicide because it is fun for the player, or assassinate the other PCs just for the amusement of the player. I'd point out that this sort of problematic behavior is all too well known in games! So I would think that pushing the bounds in terms of player authority when they have narrative agency is really nothing surprising or new.

Obviously there may be some people who just don't want to play this way, but IME that is extremely rare. It may take presenting the game in a way that players relate to when they first encounter such a game, but in the form [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is espousing, which is really the mildest form, pretty much everyone I've tried it on just 'got it'. They produced much more interesting and useful backstory, they pointed out times and places in play which they felt related to their character's concerns, and took those concerns as a significant element of play to be exploited for their entertainment. I'm quite positive players exist who will absolutely refuse to play this way, but its not a huge percentage of those I've met.

As for the specific example:

All of these are of course possible; but many could be seen from the player side as being exactly the same as the DM consulting her notes and (with or without faking a roll) narrating failure on the search.

And further, even if a secret door there is illogical a character desperate to find an escape route might not see it that way in the heat of the moment...

No, but I think they'd see the logic in something else. Some sort of 'deus ex machina', an offer to accept their surrender, or the sudden arrival of an ally, etc. is often quite plausible. It might, again, get a little contrived, but that's part of the whole concept, at least in many genre, that the heroes get these sorts of breaks, otherwise they wouldn't have survived as heroes.

And that's always how I look at it, the story is like an old tale that is being retold. You wouldn't even hear it if the orcs slaughtered the PCs on day 3 of their story and roasted them over a fire. Somehow they pulled through. Maybe not every time, maybe the story is about how they died heroically, but something interesting happened. So there must have been some fate involved to pull their fat out of the fire a few times (or not I guess if they're skilled/lucky enough).

 

[pemerton]

"Is there a vessel in the room that would allow me to catch the mage's blood?" isn't an action declaration, it's a query --- I'd call it a "scene frame query." It's asking for confirmation from the GM about a particular element within the scene frame.

An action declaration would be, "I find a vessel in the room that would allow me to catch the mage's blood, and I start capturing the blood." An action declaration of this type does include direct player authorship of something into the fiction---the presence of the vessel

I was treating it as equivalent to "I look about for a vessel in the room that would allow me to catch the mage's blood."

"I find a vessel . . ." I think is a valid action declaraiton only if (i) it's already established that the room is full of vessels, or (ii) the player is allowed to exercise fiat authorship.

From a practical, in-game perspective of actually GM-ing, this is where it starts to get interesting for me.

1) The GM can simply agree with the player without any consultation to game mechanics. "Oh yes, of course, there's a small ceramic pot with a plant in it, you can easily toss out the plant and collect some of the blood." (In some cases the GM may not even acknowledge the act of finding the vessel, but move immediately to the narration---"Okay, you're now catching the dripping liquid into an urn.")

2) The GM can consult a chart or establish an ad hoc probability and roll against it. "Oh, you know what, there might be a vessel --- roll a d20, on 7+ there is, on 6 or less, there isn't." Or perhaps, "Hmmm, I don't know, let me consult this 'stuff in a typical wizard's tower' chart and see what we get."

3) The GM asks the player to process the frame query through some relevant PC mechanics. "Sure, roll a search check, on a success, you've found a vessel, on a success of 5 or more, you find a perfectly clean, pristine pot or urn that will not taint the blood."

Which, if any of these, are you advocating for?

The standard approach to resolution under the "standard narrativistic model" is "say 'yes' or roll the dice".

What "roll the dice" looks like is system-dependent. Some systems don't have a "roll the dice" option for a range of standard action declarations (eg spell casting in D&D) which can create some challenges - 4e tries to circumvent this issue by having the fiat authorship of a ritual or a daily power count as only one success in a skill challenge, leaving dice to be rolled for other actions within the context of the skill challenge.

Your (1) is saying "yes". Your (3) is rolling the dice. Your (2) looks like a version of establishing notional (rather than literal) notes. Part of the difference between (2) and (3) is that (3) allows player decision-making (eg build decisions; resource expenditure, such as fate points in some systems) to manifest.

When this actually came up in my Burning Wheel game, I followed the rules of the game - say "yes" when nothing is at stake, and otherwise frame a check - and jhence framed a Perception check.

Of systems that I am currently GMing, the one that most strongly elides the contrast between (2) and (3) is Classic Traveller, because it has very little player control over PC build, and very few player-side resources (nothing like fate points, and nothing like fiat-authorship spells/rituals either). My principal response to this is to turn the (2)s into (3)s - eg the players roll the reaction checks (which thereby become influence checks), roll the encounter checks (which thereby become "avoid attention" checks), etc. Because each player is running 2 PCs, the most important player-side resouce allocation actually becomes which PC(s) to use in a particular context (eg which PC is going down in the shuttle?).

This relative lack of player-side resources, combined with a very high degree of dice-driven content-introduction, is what prompted me to start a thread a little while ago about Classic Traveller being a dice-driven game.

(All that said, there are bits of CT that are mildly incoherent - eg there are suggestions in the rules that floor plans should be drawn up in advance, and the published adventures tend to reinforce this; but I think the encounter rules work better if the details are established in response to the roll for encounter range - in other words, the "dice driven" elements are more powerful than other parts of the rules seem to give them credit for.)

Then let's say a session later, the player who captured the blood says, "Hey, you know what? I bet that tainted sorcerer's blood has some cool magical properties. I bet if I sprinkle it on food, the food will become toxic." This would definitely be player-authored fiction. How as a GM would you determine whether this is "allowable" fiction?

Again, it looks like action declaration.

The details would be system-dependent. For the systems I'm currently GMing:

* In 4e it looks like an Arcana check - depending how the player elaborates as the GM teases it out, either for knowledge or for doing.

* In Cortex+ Heroic it looks like colour + fictional positioning - the player explains what is going in in making a Sorcery check to establish either a complication (Poisoned by Toxic Food) or physical stress on an opponent.

* In Burning Wheel, depending on how the player elaborates as the GM teases it out, it could be an Enchanting check, or an Aura-Reading check (to learn the properties of the blood), or even a Sorcery check (if that particular game is using free-form sorcery - mine doesn't).

The principle of the matter is, "Be open to letting players really advocate for their characters, and leave elements of the fiction open to letting them do that."

I think that this formulation tends to elide some matters that, at the table, matter - you can see this in the XP for your post! Because what counts as "really advocating" is up for grabs.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

(All that said, there are bits of CT that are mildly incoherent - eg there are suggestions in the rules that floor plans should be drawn up in advance, and the published adventures tend to reinforce this; but I think the encounter rules work better if the details are established in response to the roll for encounter range - in other words, the "dice driven" elements are more powerful than other parts of the rules seem to give them credit for.)

Simply because, at the time (1977) when Traveler was published it was literally inconceivable to do it any other way. I would imagine Marc Miller started working on Traveler virtually as soon as he saw a copy of D&D in 1974, since it would have taken 2-3 years to design, playtest, edit, and layout and print, a game in those days, and then get it to the distributors. Thus it was probably literally written before anything like even Greyhawk had been published. At that time the only example of a working RPG and process would be whatever you saw Gary do at a con, or what someone who had one of the early 'woodgrain box' D&D sets was doing. These were all wargamers, thus a scenario (adventure, dungeon, whatever) was laid out ahead of time for sure.

So, when it came to designing an adventure for Traveler, the only thing anyone knew how to do was to make a bunch of maps and keys, and some sort of story arc which would presumably propel the PCs from their starting point to the adventure location (or on to the next location if there was one). What I remember of the early Traveler adventures was that they were all location-based. It was all something on the order of "go to location X and explore the base/ship/ruins found there" with various permutations of how you got there (shipwrecked, hijacked, hired, misjumped, etc.) and of what exactly needed to be accomplished at the location (find something, blow it up, steal it, loot it, etc) if anything.

TBH I don't recall the specifics of any one single adventure, though I do remember that there were a number of products like 'Azhanti High Lightning' which had a whole bunch of maps of a large warship and various scenarios for using them (sneak on board to do something, find ship a floating wreck and explore, etc).

I don't recall that Traveler ever really evolved beyond that level. Its an odd aspect of that game, it seemed to be born whole in 1977 and it basically has been stuck there ever since. It never evolved even a tiny bit. I guess Megatraveler and maybe the newer Mongoose version have some very modest provisions for things like general action declarations ala the Streetwise skill check in CT, though I have never played any of those myself. Functionally they all look pretty much like very slightly tweaked updates to the CT rules.

That being said, Traveler is an easy game to modernize! For example you could go the 4e path and introduce SCs to it. At that point you could add in 'special benefits' for high skill levels (IE you can get extra advantages to certain types of checks with skill level 3+). You could also fold these benefits back into the logistics side of the game (make an Engineering check to see if you packed the right spare parts before leaving port when they're needed).

You could also allow some fun stuff with SS, like risking a loss of SS in return for doing certain things, or add a debt factor to it to represent calling in obligations or incurring new ones. Abstract wealth would also work well in Traveler, and you could basically establish a separate wealth stat which worked much like SS.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] - agreed completely on history of Traveller - my comment about incoherence isn't a historical analysis but just a comment about actual play when you look at how the systems (maps + encounter rules) interact.

Early Traveller adventures are pretty much what you describe only more boring if that's possible - they really are "poke at this situation and get the GM to tell you stuff until you figure out what is going on". It's like the early part of an Alien franchise movie but more tedious and with no payoff!

On more modern versions, I can't comment on Mongoose Traveller but MegaTraveller is (I would say) an objectively bad system:

* it turns nearly every entry on the skill chart into a cascade skill, with choices like (say) Liaison vs Carousing as opposed to the Wheeled vs Grav Vehicle type stuff that you get in Classic, thus losing the quirks and virtues of random PC gen without getting a coherent (say, points buy) alternative;

* it replaces the interesting rules for skill resolution in CT (where, say, 1 rank in Vacc Suit means something different depending whether you're trying to avoid tearing your suit running across a moon, or you're trying to emergency patch your suit having torn it; and where, say, unskilled driving is easier to pull off than unskilled Streetwise, let alone unskilled Medicine or Engineering) with a complicated and utterly bland universal skill resolution system;

* it replaces the intriguing and workable ship design system from Book 2 with some unworkable descendant of the barely workable High Guard system;

etc.

Basically, at every point where the game could lose its charm and playability and become more like a poor cousin of GURPS, MegaTraveller makes that move.

The only innovation it has that I think is worthwhile is the "special duty" line on the PC gen charts, which gives starting skill loads out a bit more in line with Mercenary/High Guard-type characters.

I haven't had occasion yet to use "loss of Social Standing" as a stake in my game, but I think it's completely viable, and Andy Slack had a version of it (connected to criminal convictions) back in his early White Dwarf Expanded Universe series.

 

[pemerton]

I would say that other PC actions are similar aren't they? I mean, you did say that dicing to find the map is identical to killing the orc, in a game-theoretical sense (and I agree).

I agree in a theoretical sense. The post you've replied to was particularly in the context of D&D, which tends (especially in its 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and 5e incarnations) to be weak on finality for non-combat action resolution.

If you have a skill challenge, or 1st ed AD&D-style "no retries" (or retries with cost, like passage of time = wandering monster checks), then other PC actions become similar to combat. But a lot of "living, breathing world" play also rejects those sorts of "no retries" mechanics on grounds that they are "unrealistic".

This is really why I give players the ability to AUTHOR fiction, it is the true unequivocal way in which they can become equal in their participation to the GM. Only then is it "everyone's game." It isn't easy to reach this conclusion, it takes a lot of analysis, but it is the endpoint, for me, in terms of RPG analysis. NOW I can talk about ways in which restricting that authorial power, or wielding it in different forms, can shape what can be done.

I can see the logic of this. For me, full equality suggests a game like A Penny For My Thoughts that I posted about upthread. Once you start having distinct player and GM roles, there have to be different functions to establish that distinctness. I see those differences of function to include, at least potentially and - given my habits - by default, different sorts of authority over content-introduction.

For instance, I think player content introduction - again, by default given my habits - is circumscribed by the PC as some sort of centring device. So eg a player can say, "I reach out to Jabal, the leader of my sorcerous cabal", therefore making it the case that the fiction includes Jabal as a leader of the cabal. But the player probably can't just declare that Jabal has a step-child who is a magic-using prodigy; nor just declare who the head of the butcher's guild, to which the PC has no connection, is.

I think all the above is often very informal, and as I've said guided by habits and assumptions. But I hope you can see a certain logic to it!

 

[pemerton]

there's players out there who will abuse the hell out of any loophole they can find, just because that's how they play, and any system that allows for direct or even indirect player authorship leaves itself wide open for such abuse.

This is a strange argument for worldbuilding - it stops player's abusing their power, by removing it!

What if the GM abuses his/her power?

Personally I think I prefer to think about different techniques based on the play experience they are intended to deliver, rather than what happens if game participants turn bad.

It's a fine distinction, but your players are - from what I can see - empowered to indirectly author elements of the fiction, as follows:

DM: <describes the room and its contents, including a bleeding mage on a table>
Player: "I search the room for a container to catch the blood!"
<dice are rolled, search is successful, blood is caught>

The container wasn't in the DM's initial description of the room, so the DM didn't author it. Who authored it, then? The player, of course, indirectly via the successful search action.

Yes. I've posted the above example (or variants on it) about 100 times upthread!

That's a key part of what distinguishes RPGing from shared storytelling: the player doesn't have to do anything but delcare actions as his/her character. The resolution mechanics mediate the process of establishing the content of the shared fiction.

I-as-player should be able to just have my character do what it would do (or try to, subject to the DM's permission and-or the system's means of resolution), and let the story take care of itself.

Sure. That's why you just delcare actions! It's the job of the resolution system to take care of story - that's the whole point of it!

If the resolution system isn't up to the job, that's a different thing (see further below).

it's also an attempt to author something into the fiction

All action declaration is an attempt to author something into the fiction - a dead orc, a discovered secret door, whatever it might be. That's the point of action declaration - to change the fiction!

The enemies beat on the door, and it gives way. Foes pour in, and the party's front line prepares for a heroic last stand.

The party thief/rogue/sneak declares as an action "I search the outside wall for a secret door!". This is huge: success means some of the PCs can escape; failure means a likely TPK.

<snip>

in a player-driven game it would seem the roll for success on this action will determine whether a secret door is found...which means two things on a successful roll: 1) the thief's player just authored that secret door into the fiction, and 2) the thief's player has via this authorship just given the party an escape route they wouldn't otherwise have had, which skirts a bit too close to the Czege principle for my liking.

I think [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] posted some thoughts in response to this.

My first thought is that I don't see how what you describe violates the Czege principle at all - the player is not framing his/her own conflict, the GM did that (by establishing that the enemies have beaten through the door - I am assuming that this is being established by the GM). The player is simply declaring an action that addresses the conflict - "I look for a secret door so I can run away!"

Second, you are making assumptions that you have not spelled out about the significance of finding a secret door. In some systems (eg some forms of D&D), perhaps this is a "get out of jail free" card. But then in those systems so would a Passwall spell be, so whether or not finding a secret door is unbalanced depends upon how the system allocates a range of other similar action possibilities.

In Cortex+ Heroic finding the secret door establishes an asset which will give a bonus die to subsequent appropriate action declarations, but doesn't constitute a "get out of jail free" card at all. In 4e, it might be part of a skill challenge, and until the challenge overall is resolved the players are not entitled to any assumption of success in escaping their enemies.

More generally, I think there is a need to distignuish between abuse and unbalanced moves. The latter are a big deal in D&D (less so in nearly every other RPG I'm familiar with), but that just tells us something about a peculiarity of D&D. If D&D can't support player-driven RPGing because it's got no appropriate way of balancing moves, managing action economy, etc, again that's mostly just a fact about D&D. (I know from experience that 4e doesn't have problems along these lines, besides the niggling infelicities that can be found in many complex RPG systems with many moving parts. I wouldn't be surprised if 3E is very different in this respect, nor 5e either for that matter. And 2nd ed AD&D has its own issues that AbdulAlhazred has already mentioned at length in this thread.)

Go back to the reliquary example in your game. The PCs met with some angels who agreed to show them the way to the reliquary, and from there you jumped straight to framing the scene at the reliquary. While this leaves open all the options for what the PCs do once they arrive it denies any and all options for what they might have wanted to do on the way (e.g. further conversation with the angels, making note of any interesting things seen in passing for later investigation or looting, etc.), and removes any options for pre-scouting, information gathering, or additional exploration before reaching the reliquary itself.

Yes the immediate drama might be waiting at the reliquary but - and this only just now occurred to me - what's being denied is the ability for the PCs to become distracted by something else, or to distract themselves. Isn't this just another form of railroad?

Do you mean PCs or players? There is no player agency in the PCs being distracted - I mean, I as GM could narrate "You [the PCs] become distracted by some piping minstrels, but soon regain your focus on the task at hand."

As far as the players being distracted, I find it hard to characterise "being distracted" as a form of agency - it is a way of being led by someone else's exercise of agency! (That's practically inherent in the meaning of what it is to be distracted.)

If the players want to do something other than go to the reliquary, than that is on them - they can call for us to back up, or they can retropsectively resolve some situation where they collected some information, or whatever. You seem to be presupposing a type of rigidigy about play, and the handling of the passage of time and of movement from A to B in the fiction, that is different from my experience.

 

[pemerton]

Who framed the dilemma that put pressure on the players? If it was not the players, then it's the DM, who has chosen a crisis that the player have to react to. The players didn't chose that crisis. They must now make choices about what the crisis the DM framed.

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] posted a response to this not far upthread.

What I would add is that you are now positing that having a GM is a burden on player agency. I guess there is a sense in which that is true, but it seems a necessary element in anything resembling a RPG in the typical sense rather than a shared story-telling game like A Penny For My Thoughts.

I started this thread in the General RPG forum, and throughout have assumed that we are talking about RPGs. In a typical RPG someone else - the GM (or another player occupying the GM role for that episode of play) - establishes the situation in which the player finds his/her PC. That framing can either take as its core the GM's stuff or the player's stuff. Consistently with what AbdulAlhazred posted, I am asserting in this thread that when the GM uses the player's stuff (or players' stuff) to inform the framing that affirms the players' agency over the content of the shared fiction.