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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7333642" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here is the full quote:The last sentence is not something I intend to reply to. I'm not interested in analysing my own conjectured self-doubts in this thread. As I've said, a more prosaic explanation for my preferences is available - my pleasure in RPGing does not come from telling my friends stuff that I wrote in response to them making moves for their PCs that oblige me to engage in such tellings.As for the first bit, you are correct that I "seem to couch [my] arguments from a position where the DM is uses secret knowledge and fiat in ways that benefit the DM's ideas over the players". The reason it seems like that is because it is like that. (I didn't clarify that in my first reply because I assumed it was obvious.) And the reason I couch my arguments (I would prefer to say "analysis", but that's orthogonal) from that position is because that position is correct. Which is what I said was evident in the post from  [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION]: inherent in the use of secret backstory as a factor in adjudication is that the GM's ideas are given priority in establishing the content of the shared fiction.I'll respond to the following bit too, though, if you like, though I think it's repetition: a GM may be fair or unfair in saying (on the basis not of action resolution, but of secretly established fictional content) that the map is not in the study where the players have declared that the PCs are searching the study for it. If every other bit of information points to the map being in the study, it's probably unfair. If the PCs have a potion of map detecing with a range that will encompass the whole house (kitchen as well as study) but are not using it, then what the GM is doing is probably fair.I don't care whether it's fair or not. The reason I don't like it is because I find it uninteresting. When I RPG, I don't want to engage in an activity in which my friends are spending most of their time trying to establish - by way of game moves - the content of my notes. I want to spend the time finding out what adventures befall these characters. that my friends are playing, and part of that is finding out about what sorts of settings they find themselves in, and what things they find and do there.To give a concrete example: when the PCs decide to visit a market on the low-tech world of Enlil to see if any trinkets on sale there show signs of alien manufacture (the Enlilians have alien as well as human elements to their DNA), I don't want a style of play in which I look up my notes (or the publishers) notes on the world, its marketplaces, their contents, etc. We rolled for it.(For another market place example from Burning Wheel, which shows a mixture of "saying 'yes'" and dice rolls, see <a href="https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?736425-Burning-Wheel-First-Burning-Wheel-session" target="_blank">here</a>.)Many of the posts in this thread are quite long - mine included. I am trying to identify the core propositions at issue and address them. That's all. It didn't seem important to me to explain that I'm not talking about or interested in fairness. I was wrong - you did think it important. So I've explained that.</blockquote>

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