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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7336185" data-attributes="member: 42582">Thanks.A recurrent idea in this thread has been an equation of play that does not depend upon GM pre-authored backstory with play that gives players fiat narration rights. I know that there are RPGs that do the latter - OGL Conan is one that I've mentioned already upthread, and I was looking through my copy of the Fate Core rulebook today and saw that it also has this.But none of the games that I GM campaigns for has such a mechanic: in Cortex+ Heroic and BW everything requires a check (unless the GM "says 'yes'" - which is hardly player fiat), and in 4e there can be player fiat in combat (eg Come and Get It) but the closest that it comes in skill challenges is use of a Daily power or ritual, and that's still mediated through GM adjudication of the fictional positioning. (It almost goes without saying that Traveller has no overt player fiat narration, given it's 1977 - the closest it gets is the idea that the players work with the referee to help make sense of random world generation results.)The undue focus on player narration rights then makes it very easy to equate player agency as I've been characterising it with not playing my PC but doing something else. This is why I am keen to keep coming back to the example of the map: if the player action declaration is "I search the study for the map we need" then the player is not doing anything but playing his/her PC. And it is the result of that action declaration, not any "director stance" exercise of some fiat narration power, that determines success or failure. That is - to spell it out even more - the player doesn't need the power to say the map is in the study; s/he just needs the power to say (as his/her PC) I look for the map in the study - and then the rules need to allow that a success on that attempt really counts as a success.I know there are other posters in this thread who are more enthusiastic than I am about full-fledged player narration rights (eg   [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has them in his 4e hack, I believe; and   [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] thinks that I worry too much about the "Czege Principle" - ie that players framing their own challenges can lead to play that fizzles or is a bit insipid). And I'm sure that if I played Fate or some other game that includes them I'd be able to handle it fine.But what I'm keen to point out, in the post just upthread and again in this one, is that player narration rights is pretty orthogonal to player agency and GM pre-authorship of setting. Because action resolution - success and things are as the PC hoped for; fail and they're adverse to the PC - can do the job instead.</blockquote>

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