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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7343744" data-attributes="member: 16814">Chess vs Checkers, again.You've chosen to focus your analysis on the endpoint declaration "I search for the map" and, in doing so, miss the larger aspects of the play that lead to that declaration.  In player-facing games, that declaration is, as you note, a big deal and will definitively resolve the action of the map or introduce new challenges.  But this is only because the scene framing allows this declaration -- ie, you're already in the right spot for that declaration to be effective.  Any previous scenes were either not appropriate for that declaration and need to be overcome prior to being properly positioned for that declaration.  This is glossed over in the narrow focus on the declaration.  However, the same issue, that in the DM-facing game the proper fictional positioning needs to be achieved for the action to be resolved successfully, is focused on because the knowing of that positioning isn't open.  However, it is open if looked at more broadly, the DM-facing game is open that you must overcome challenges to find the correct fictional positioning to locate the map.  That multiple such locations may exist is part of that presented challenge.  As such, the declaration "I search for the map" is not the same scene staking resolution that it is in more player-facing games -- it occupies a different position.  In player facing games, the play is focused on achieving the fictional positioning necessary to stake finding the map as the outcome of an action declaration.  The GM controls the scene framing so that achieving this fictional positioning is difficult.  However, once achieved, the player can stake the map and determine if the map is found or if additional challenge is presented prior to getting another chance.  Depending on the nature of the challenges, and the results, the map may become unable to be found.  This is pretty much the same as in the DM-facing game -- the objective of play is the same, to achieve the fictional positioning necessary to find the map.  The DM sets pacing by placing challenges before that positioning, and too many bad outcomes from those challenges may result in the map becoming unable to be found (if the party dies, for instance).  The net difference here is how those challenges are staged and addressed.  In the player-facing game, the challenges are largely random, based on the results of checks on action declarations.  Success moves you quickly to the necessary positioning, failure delays your ability to achieve that positioning.  But, then, the objective of play (finding the map) isn't fixed, it's also essentially random (with maybe some ability to affect the relative odds), with failure moving the objective further away again.  In the DM-facing game, the challenges are fixed, and so are determinable with smart play and effective mitigation of risk. The declaration of 'I search for the map' isn't the crux of the stakes here, it's just part of the larger play.  The agency assigned to that declaration doesn't mean that player-facing games have more agency, it means that the agency is more confined to that declaration -- ie, that the agency that players have is more tightly bound to such stake-risking declarations.  In DM-facing games, that declaration doesn't contain the same amount of agency, because the agency the players have is more diffused through how they approach the challenge of finding the map.  Player-facing games have big declarations that can dramatically affect the play and fewer to no moves that aren't impacting play in significant ways.  So the agency assigned to those big moves is conversely much larger and apparent within those moves.  So declarations like 'I search for the map' do have much more agency involved than a similar statement in DM-facing games.  This is because DM-facing games spread the agency around through many more, less individually important moves.  Which room you search, for instance, isn't a move in player-facing games, because the scene set of the GM determines the available moves -- it either allows for the finding of a map or must be navigated to get to the scene where finding the map is a valid move.  If the scene allows it, it's always a valid move, but you don't ever have the move where you pick which room to search.  So, in looking at relative agency, you need to sum the total of the decisions made in GM-facing games rather than compare the "search for the map" move as equivalent moves that should contain the same agency.  They aren't, but that doesn't mean one play-style has more agency than the other.  Chess and checkers.Can DM-facing games be easily abused to further restrict player agency?  Sure.  Calvinball as a concept (@manbearcat) is useful to describe this, but it's an abuse, not a mode of play.  (For those not following, Calvinball is a game where the rules are made up on the fly so as to confound the other players and advance yourself.  Also a reference to Calvin and Hobbes.)  Player-facing games can become degenerate, too, although the use of Calvinball tropes are not something that's possible without serious distortion of the play concepts.  The degeneracy in player-facing games are weak DMs that don't push consequences or frame useful challenges, player vs player sniping (intentional play to disrupt other players' goals), and player lock-in, where a player can dominate player to determine of other players.  These aren't unique to player-facing games, but I find it distasteful to harp on DM-facing games with degenerate play examples of the kind you can easily claim do not exist in player-facing games (like Calvinball).  That's cherry-picking flaws in play so that one looks worse than the other.As for finding a map and killing an orc being functionally similar moves, I pointed out earlier the flaws in this thinking - it's chess vs checkers again and assuming that since such things are similar in your chosen playstyle that this is a universal truth -- it's not.  Knight takes pawn is functionally similar to Knight moves without taking in chess, but both are different from jumping a piece in checkers vs moving a piece in checkers.  Please, don't return to the 'fiction doesn't exist' argument -- I left off of that because it passed by, but it's still an incoherent argument when you're using fiction to inform the act of authoring new fiction (like trope and positioning restrictions, both things that exist in the fiction and are used to constrain writing new fiction).  If you want to get metaphysical about the existence of fiction, we can, but it will be boring, and my entry question is "How can Mickey Mouse be a pop-culture icon if he doesn't exist?"  That should, at least, inform me as to which mode of thinking on the anti-realist side of the argument you follow and allow useful counterpoints.</blockquote>

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