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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7344670" data-attributes="member: 16814">Thanks, I was pretty sure I grasped the core conceit -- as I said, I've played in that style of game and have enjoyed it.  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] doesn't always do the best job at explaining his points, mostly because he uses weird vocabulary to do so.  If you're not already in the know, it's hard to parse where he's going sometimes.No, not at all.  If I came across as thinking this is a negative, please let me assure you that's incorrect.  I just think it's a different approach with a different conceptual model that makes it impossible to examine a single action declaration from a different context in a way that's meaningful.  You could not, for example, pull any single action declaration from a DM driven game and evaluate it with any accuracy from a player driven game viewpoint.  Hence my constant call out to chess and checkers.  The games have many similarities, but you cannot evaluate the jumping of a piece in checkers with the rules of chess.That's what I was driving at.  I'm not claiming to be better at expressing this than I say [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is.Actually... yes and no.  I was talking to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] in with the specifics he mentioned in his post that the map is known in the fiction already and is an objective of the play right now.  In that case, my statements make sense.  If we're going with the map being a spur introduction, not previously determined to be in an objective of play, then, yes, my example goes a tad off course.  It wasn't meant to be universal, as it's, again, hard to pin down the play in a way that's comparable without such artificial constraints on the play.  Yup, again, this is what I was using as my understanding, but I was trying to compare and contrast a similar setup of the fiction -- that the objective of the play was known -- that the objective was to find the map and everyone knows this.  I was trying to spiral out from there.  Totally, that's what I'm getting at -- that ability of the GM to introduce obstacles to the objective of play is similar in intent to the planned dungeons acting as an obstacle to the goal of play.  I'm trading on the edges here, I don't plan dungeons to any level of specificity and move things around and allow additions in play due to player declarations, but I do write down some notes so I have a framework of the general challenges I present. I'm more DM-driven when I run, but I have a number of things I do that allow the players to establish their own fictions through their actions free and clear.  I don't have a planned plot at all, and I'm not yet sure what the players are going to decide they ultimately want to do.  Right now, their focused on establishing a safe base of operations and exploring the nearby lands.  Suitable for 3rd level characters -- local issues, local goals.  If they look like they're lagging, well, ninjas attack -- or, really, an NPC provides a prompt by bringing not a quest with a goal but a problem looking for a solution -- provided by the players.I don't find your example remotely interesting at all and I don't play in those games at all either.  If a DM isn't honestly presenting challenges, that's a play problem that goes outside of the styles we're talking about and addresses the social agreement in the game.  I don't mind if such a thing happens and it's immediately apparent that it happened because of rash or unwise decisions by me -- ie, I knew such a trap was likely, had the means to detect it, and chose to risk it for some reason and got burned.  I also trust that my DM won't add such things in just to punish me, and I certainly won't do so as a DM.  I run a DM-driven game, but I foreshadow the hell out of everything.  I don't do gotcha traps, I show that traps exist and that you should be wary of them and then the players ignore that it's on them.  I don't have to work hard to get my players to make mistakes like that, I just have to work just enough that when they make the mistakes they're hitting their own heads with the heels of their hands.And I like that -- I like foreshadowing, and it's an element that I find is very hard to achieve in player-driven games.  You can foreshadow something, but it immediately becomes a play issue -- the players either run for it or they avoid it and you can't push it back in or string it out without violating the play concepts of the game.  It's hard to put a slow burn pacing into player facing games.  Not impossible, just harder.  And that's because of the playstyle.I'm sorry you've played with such terrible DMs.  Not sarcastic, but if you  believe this, it's likely through experience, and I'm sorry -- those DMs sucked.  Pacing is something that's a core function of DMing, and if your players are bored by some tedium in play, it's time to add ninjas and then have a long think after the game as to why and how you screwed up that badly.  I think this is a flawed question, which should be apparent by now.  I don't think you can compare the agency between games because the deliver mechanisms and expectations are so different.  There's a case to be made from the player driven side that player driven games include more agency, but there's also a case from DM-driven side that DM-driven games offer more agency (that one involves the fact that player-driven games cede some control over your character to the DM to use in both framing (you show up here and this is happening) and in failure resolutions (where the DM can dictate what the character does or thinks or beleives, depending on the stakes)).  Both have points that are very important to their individual adherents but have very little meaning in the other context.I'm not going to take offense to the implication in that question, but, yes, yes I am absolutely sure, because it's been openly discussed.  I have 2 players that dislike the additional responsibilities that player-driven games place upon them, and the rest are largely ambivalent.  Again, I apologize that you have had bad DMs that never seek player input into stakes, but that's not how I run at all.  Stakes are set by player declarations.  Even, sometimes, the introduction of new elements of fiction. I use a philosophy similar to some others on the board:  I set the scene, with heavy foreshadowing in favor of secret keeping.  The players declare actions in terms of what their characters do (and not "I make a perception check!"), and I either narrate the outcome without a roll or I ask for a roll with declared stakes.  I don't ask for rolls as a rule unless there's uncertainty in the outcome and there's a cost to failure.  I don't hide important play objectives, I place them behind challenges.  The running example of the map in the study instead being in the kitchen is ridiculous to me, because if the objective of play was a map, then the objective is obvious or known -- you'd never look in the study if it was in the kitchen because it would obviously be in the kitchen.  Getting to the kitchen would be the challenge, not searching for the map once you're there.  If I were to run this scenario, the party would be well aware that the map they've decided they need (and they'd decide that) would be on the wall of the study, plain as day, but you'd have to get past the guards and the owner in some manner to get there.  I'd have notes on the general layout of the house, some notes on the guards (combat stats, general attitudes), and some notes on the noble (same stuff, really), and that's about it.  The players would engage these challenges however they want, and, upon achieving the study, get the objective.  Hiding things behind 'guess the right combination  of actions and wording' is f*ing boring, and I'd never run a game like that.  Hell, I tried to run Storm King's Thunder and essentially jettisoned entire chapters and rewrote them because they were pixel bitches or had one prepared way through.  I reminded myself why I hate adventures.  I do love maps, though.And, again, I've enjoyed my forays into player-driven games, and would gladly play again.  I'd prefer not to run one, though, as I can handle improvising one character, but having to improvise against (or with, depends on the situation) multiple other players isn't something I enjoy.</blockquote>

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