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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7333908" data-attributes="member: 42582">Right, that's my point about agency. Triggering the GM to tell you more stuff isn't agency, except in the most mininal sense that it's an alternative to everyone just sitting there silently.And you're right that I don't think killing an orc is, of necessity, the same thing in the fiction as finding a map. It might be more significant. It might be less significant. Obviously they involve different imagined causal processes.The reason I say they're structurally equivalent is not just that they're legal moves, but that they're legal moves for the same reason: both add new information to the description in a way that is genre faithful, consistent with already established fiction, salient to the game participants, etc.People can have any number of reasons for saying that only the GM can make one of those moves. But those reasons can't include anything about what is "realistic", or any allged necessary consequence for resolution methods resulting from the metaphysics of actual maps and actual deaths.****************************************** [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION], I'm replying only to those bits of your post where I think I've got something interesting to say in reponse.Here I think I just want to say a bit more about how I see things.By GM control over "big picture" I don't mean so much the setting/genre conventions you raise - I see that as more about reaching group consensus on setting basics (eg my Cortex+ Fantasy game started with a vote for Japan vs vikings, because I'd written pre-gens in a way to deliberately leave either option open). I mean stuff like who the nemesis will be, what the basic trajectory of play will be (eg the final fight will be against Tiamat). Then the nitty-gritty stuff is things like (to go back to an upthread example) whether there are bribeable officials around. So whereever the players look to engage the fiction, they find stuff that's there because the GM put it there. (Your mercenary comany example is more-or-less the opposite of what I'm talking about here.)APs are obvious examples of what I've just described, but not the only one.Now, on club-bashing: that's not my issue (at least, if that's similar to "fairness" which [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] raised not too far upthread). The GM can be fair with secret backstory and I stil wouldn't like it. My issue is that it makes the game about what the GM wants it to be about. So it's a concern that's cumulative with the stuff about framing (both big picture framing and "nitty-gritty" framing.And on random tables - I agree that they are no panacea, and I'm using them in Traveller because without them it wouldn't be Traveller! But I think they're different from pre-authorship, because (i) they don't lock the GM into one track of fiction, so don't cause the same GM-focus issue that pre-authored framing tends to (the players can even help make sense of the random roll, as with the ambergris example), and (ii) because they happen in the course of play, often triggered by player action declarations (eg roll for a starship encouner when you leave the system), they don't generate declaration-blocking/defeating secret backstory, but rather feed into the resolution of the declared action.I've broken this out because I think it's probably the biggest deal, and has generated the most discussion in the thread.So first, the player trying to author a solution to a problem. If the problem is a charging orc, the player authors (or tries to author) a solution by rolling the combat dice. If the problem is lack of a map, the player authors (or tries to author) a solution by looking for the map in the study and rolling a perception (or whatever is appropriate) check.As I said to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION], and have just reiterated above to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], I think these have the same structure as moves in the game. If one is acceptable from the pont of view of abstract principle, so is the other.Now there can be reasons more particular than abstract principle that someone allows one but not the other. You have reasons for the GM specifying the locations of maps, but not the deaths of orcs. What I'm saying is that I don't see how that reason can be aversion to players authoring solutions to problems, given that (I'm assuming) you are happy with that in the orc case.As to whether this sort of pre-authorship used to adjudicate action declaration is "thwarting" or not - I discussed this in some long replies to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION].If the player's Perception/Search/whatever check is for the purpose of triggering the GM to describe what is in the room - to narrate more fiction - then saying "There's no map here" is not thwarting. It's givng the player what s/he wanted in making a good roll.If the player's Perception check is with the desire that the fiction be along the lines of my PC finds a map in this study then saying, without regard to the results of the check, "There's no map here", is thwarting. Because the fiction does not take the form the player wanted. (It would be like vetoing - overtly or via rolling secretly or whatver - the attack roll on the orc, and just narrating to the player, "It dodges your blow" without actually having regard to the result of the to hit roll.)If players never declare perception checks (or Streetwise checks to find bribeable officials, or  . . .) hoping that the fiction will be X rather than Y then this won't come up. But equally a game in which the players spend a significant amount of time declaring checks  whose function is to trigger GM narration rather than impose their own will on the fiction are, in my estimation of the situation, being rather passive. They're not really exercising agency.</blockquote>

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