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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7341272" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is a general feature of D&D-type spellcasting - it is player-side fiat/stipulation, but given an in-fiction rationalisation as magical power.One practical consequence is that (at least in my experience) most seasoned D&D players who want to exercise significant and reliable agency over the fiction play spellcasters. (This was a phenomenon that was being noted, although under a slightly different description, at least as far back as the late 70s.)Another consequence is that, in D&D culture, the gameplay aspect of this - ie the player exercising fiat/stipulation over the shared fiction - gets subordinated beneath a focus on its in-fiction character. Which then means that the attempt to establish comparable sorts of agency for non-caster PCs gets analysed not in gameplay terms but under labels like "martial mind control" or "Schroedinger's dungeon".To me, at least, the last sentence here is the most important.The whole point of RPGing in the "Standard Narrativistic Model" or any similar approach is for the players to be confronted by hard choices that put pressure on their PCs. (The hardness can be thematic/trope-derived hardness - 4e tends towards this - or more personal/intimate hardness - BW tends a bit more towards this lattter.)If the players decide to have their PCs assassinate the king, that is one source of hardness, but - everything else being equal - it's not as if, but for that, there would be no challenges in the game. Nor is there any gameplay reason why the challenges that result from it should be distinctively hard. It's just that the players have chosen this, rather than some other thing, to be the fiction that they are going to engage in.(There can be fictional positioning elements to this - that is, everything else may not be equal. And in some systems that fictional positioning is mechanically expressed. For instance, in default 4e, heroic tier PCs are simply not going to be in a position to attempt to assassinate the king, at least most of the time. The village elders or orc chieftain are closer to their league. But that is not a consequence of secret backstory. It's a game conceit that is known to all the participants.)EDIT: shidaku's post seemed relevant here:I think this clearly goes to different approaches to resolution and to (subsequent) framing.Whether the attempt is resolved in one roll, or multiple, I see as a function of system. 4e, for instance, would normally have this be a skill challenge. In BW it might be one roll, or multiple, depending on how big a deal the group wants to make it.What the consequences are I see as primarily a function of player intent. Which also feeds back into resolution - the resolution has to be consonant with the intent (eg if the players want the assassination not to provoke unrest, they have to factor the appropriate efforts into their approach to resolution - eg a Streetwise element to spread appropriately calming rumours). This might speak in favour of a more complex approach to resolution - eg a skill challenge, with the Streetwise attempt as one part of that.The fact that it's a big deal doesn't, to me, seem to create a reason in and of itself for the GM to exercise more control over the outcome.</blockquote>

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