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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7325227" data-attributes="member: 42582">But am I correct in understanding that this is to be achieved by the GM presenting to the players certain products of his/her imagination?I offered the paraphrase to which you are responding in response to your explanation that it matters, in an important fashion, that it is the GM and not the players who do the worldbuidling. If we just centre on the play itself - both GM and players - why would it matter that it is the GM rather than the players who do it?I guess I'm trying to understand why having someone else do it facilitates the immersion.To pick a concrete example: the player can decide that his PC has a brother who was possessed by a balrog; or the GM can decide that. The player can decide that his PC's immediate goal is to obtain an item that might help free someone (namely, his brother) from balrog possession; or the GM can decide that (eg by having a patron approach the PCs in a tavern and ask them to find such an item).I'm not sure why this is all more immersive when it comes from the GM rather than the player - unless the idea is that one can't be immersed in the creations of one's own imagination, which is why I suggested a contrast between activity and passivity. (Not unlike the audience notion that some other posters have used upthread.)Well, I've never run a game like that, or played in one, so I couldn't comment.The closest I can get is the following: the PCs had trekked across the Bright Desert to a ruined tower. 14 years ago (ie well into backstory territory) that tower had been the home of one PC and his brother, before they had to flee in the face of an orc attack. It was in trying to stop that orc attack that the brother had tried to conjure up a storm of lightning, failed, and thus become possessed by a balrog.The PC now returned to his tower after 14 years away, and the first thing he did - after the group had some water to drink, and a bit of a rest - was to look to see if a silver-nickel mace that he had been working on 14 years ago was still there. (That particular bit of backstory was authored not long before this episode of play.) So we framed a check - in D&D this might be Perception or Search or Investigation or an INT or WIS check (depending on details of the edition); in BW it is a Scavenging check.An appropriate difficulty was set, extrapolated from the examples given under the Scavenging skill description. The dice were rolled. The check failed.So the mace wasn't there (and the player straight away intuied where it would be - "Of course that b*stard GM will have it in the hands of that dark elf whose been harassing us ever since we entered the Abor-Alz"). But they did find something - in the ruins of what had been the brother's private workroom, they found black arrows, cursed to make it harder to heal the wounds they inflict. One of the PCs was very familiar with these arrows, because he carried one around his neck - a token of the death of his captain, which had led him to become a "ronin", leaving the elven lands to travel among the humans and try to find some way to lift his shame and grief at having failed his captain. And so all hell broke lose among the party - the PC has been insisting that his brother became evil because possessed by a balrog, but now it seemed that his brother was a suitable vessel for the balrog because already evil - a creator of black arrows for the orcs to use in their wars against the elves.That was pretty immersive. I don't think it would have been more immersive if I had been the one to make up all the relevant PC backstory - about the brother, the tower, the orcs, the balrog possession, the mace, the ronin carrying an orcish arrow as a token of the death of his captain. I think it would have been less immersive.I'm not sure what you are saying is reminding you of this. I can't remember if I've posted about retries or not in this thread, but different games have different approaches to retries. As best I understand, for instance, 3E and 5e D&D are very liberal in respect of them. AD&D tends to be rather limited in retries (most thief abilities are limited- the only exception I can think of is climbing walls, though hit point damge from falling might be seen as imposing a de facto limit; listening at doors is limited - after 3 goes the character must wait a turn; and opening magically held doors and bending bars are both limited). Burning Wheel has a "no retries" rule (called "Let it Ride"). During the 4e era, Stephen Radley McFarland posted a blog on the WotC site advocating a similar rule for 4e - my table was already using it.Well, all critical analysis (be it of visual arts, film, literature, or even RPGing) requires the making of some generalisations. We group creators and performers into schools and movements, and talk about trajectories of influence and development, even though we know that each creator and performer is an individual, different in some ways from any other.You, for instance, pick up on [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s point (2) and dispute it - many ENworlders, you say, don't worldbuild as an art/creative outlet.Well, be that as it may (and there are certainly some in this thread who have embraced it, and no one had repudiated until [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] put it forward as a conjecture), does that really distort the overall thrust of Manbearcat's analsysis? Suppose that we substitute in 2' - the GM worldbuilds because someone has to do it? That leaves (3) through (8) largely undisturbed - the GM is still using his/her world to establish framking and to manage the adjudication of action resolution - and (9) changes only a little bit - instead of the players being expected to appreciate the GM's art, they're expected to appreciate - in a utilitarian sense - the GM's effort, and if they don't think it's very good then they can "put up or shut up".In other words, if (2) needs modification/correction we can still conjecture that there might be a broad consensus that reflects (3) through (8) plus an appropriately modified (9). Now, if you think that there is no such consensus, what are you pointing to (in this thread, or more generally)?What do you think is extreme about Manbearcat's conjecture? I'm not saying that you're right or wrong about that, as you haven't yet identified what you have in mind.I don't see how this in any way conradicts what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has said. It seems to be a straightforward reiteration of his point!Maybe you think enhancing the overall game experience (your phrase) is different from making for a better/more interesting story outcome (Manbearcat's phrase) - but you haven't explained what that difference is. And at this point I'm not seeing what it is.That also doesn't seem to contradict anything that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has said, unless you're suggesting that it contradicts his (9) ie his claim that (4), (7) and (8) will cause tensions with (ie "inevitably bump up against") ideas of player choice or player discretion.Let's treat "inevitably" as a rhetorical flourish - Manbearcat hasn't posited a time frame for this inevitability, after all - and look at the real claim: namely, that there is a tension between (4), (7) and (8) (ie the GM has various veto/manipulation powers as part of the process of action declaration, used to ensure fidelity to the setting and/or "metaplot" and/or "to enhance the overall experience) and the idea that the players get to choose what their PCs do.The existence of that tension doesn't mean that people don't enjoy their RPGing. It does mean that RPGing done in this style might exhibit a recurring pattern of issues - eg "problem players" who buck the GM's authority over the fiction; debates about whether or not fudging is permissible; claims that the GM can do whatever s/he wants in relation to action resolution, as long as the players don't know; etc.If everyone was running games in the way that Luke Crane describes in his BW books there might be recurring topics of discussion and debate, but the ones I've just mentioned would probably not be among them!I find these metaphors relatively unhelpful for analysis.My relationship to the real world is a product of various physical and biochemical processes. But no player's action declaration for his/her PC unfolds in virtue of such processes (except the ones going on in his/her head, and the head of the GM; plus the mechanical forces that govern the roll of the dice).I also have the capacity to alter reality - just now, for instance, I'm making it true that certain words are "typed" on a keyboard and hence appear on a monitor. But when it comes to RPGing, we're not talking about any sort of reality - we're talking about a shared fiction, and the process whereby a group of people agree on what it includes.This is why I ask if, on your picture of GM-worldbuilding, action declarations should be seen as suggestions to the GM to change or develop the fiction in a certain way? Because if that's not what they are - for instance, if the player has the power to change the shared fiction directly (eg by declaring an action, and then rolling some dice which result in a success) - then it ceases to be true that the GM is omnipotent in respect of the shared fiction.</blockquote>

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