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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7326051" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, I've been playing D&D and related games since 1982.What's not particularly for me is a game like the following: I do all this because I find it enjoyable.  I enjoy world building.  Otherwise I wouldn't do it.  The game is not just about the players - the DM gets to have fun too.   In this case - it's MY CAMPAIGN.  I created the world and the players get to explore it.  They may give me ideas for new areas to flesh out, but ultimately it is my creation and I have the final say on anything that affects the world.  They control their characters, I control the world.  They influence the world through the actions of their characters and through the parts of their backstories that I choose to incorporate into the game.  Together we tell a story. My enjoyment comes from creating the world and having them experience it.  Their enjoyment comes from exploring it, watching their characters grow and become part of that worldI've never GMed a game in that style, and when I first played in such a game - in 1990 - after a couple of weeks I and the other players "sacked" the GM and started a game in which players made contributions that went beyond "exploring" the GM's fiction (which, non-metaphorically, = the GM telling them stuff that s/he wrote).The only agency I can see in the game that you and [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] describe is that the players - in the play of their PCs - get to make suggestions to the GM as to what s/he should say next: eg they can say "I look for the map in the study", and the GM may tell them that they find it, or may not, depending on some mix of what is written in the GM's notes, what the GM thinks makes for a good game/good story, and what is rolled in some dice.Depending on the details of the set-up, the players may also be able to make choices which determine which bit of the notes the GM reads first (eg if they decide their PCs go to the woods, the GM reads out that bit; if they decied their PCs go to the hills, the GM reads out that other bit).That's not zero agency, but in the context of a game in which a significant goal is the collective generation of a shared fiction, it is rather passive.It contrasts fairly markedly, for instance, with a game where the GM is not allowed to change what's written in his/her notes, and hence, therefore, in which the players have some chance of unravelling the mystery of those notes (what @howandhwy99 calls "solving the puzzle and the game rules behind the screen"). In that sort of RPGing, action declaration isn't just a suggestion/requet to the GM to narrate some more fiction. It's actually a move in a game.I've played a lot of D&D. There can be more to D&D than the players taking an imaginary trip through the GM's world and story.But that is one answer to the question "What is world building for?" To provide the material for the GM to read to the players, which will constitute that imagined trip.</blockquote>

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