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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7344958" data-attributes="member: 42582">Hence, as I have said, the player have only modest agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction; and hence, as I have also said, a significant goal of play is for the players to make moves that will trigger the GM to narrate bits of his/her notes.It baffles me that this is still regarded as contentious, given how many concrete examples (described at higher or lower levels of abstraction, and with more ore less metaphor involved) we have had in this thread:* the goal of worldbuiding is to support exploration (= the players learn stuff about the GM-authored fiction by having the GM tell it to them); * the solution to avoiding arrest is to learn whether any officials are able to be bribed, but that is not to be determined as the outcome of action declarations (and hence = the players declare moves that lead the GM to tell them stuff s/he has written up about the various NPCs); * the players can't just declare "I search the study for the map" and hope to have some chance of success; it depends on where the map really is (= the players can't succeed in their goal of the map being found by their PCs until they make the right move to trigger the GM to tell them that bit of his/her notes which records the location of the map); * etc, etc.This may be a fun way to play, or not, depending on taste. It's certainly very popular, as best I can tell. What is the objection to literal descriptions of it?Your second act of authorship doesn't exhibit the same structure as the ones I described. It is not the addition of further detail about an already established character in an already established situation (that the character is the killer of an orc s/he encountered; that the character is the finder of a map in a study that s/he searched). It's a complete non-sequitur. It also involves an action declaration that would be impermissible in every RPG I'm familiar with, though I'm sure there are some less mainstream games which would permit it: but every RPG I know would only permit "I search the study for a map". (The sorts of details that OGL Conan and Fate permit players to stipulate don't extend to discovering (what I am presuming to be) a crucial item like a sought-after map.)Of course, if the PC has powerful scrying and teleportation magic then it may not be: "I scry to locate a study with a map in it, and then teleport there and ransack the study for it." But I'm assuming that's not what you have in mind.This is a rather tortuous way of putting things, and again it puzzles me, as I and others have posted quite straightforwardly about this multiple times upthread.There are some RPGs in which the players enjoy a straightforward power to stipulate elements of the shared fiction in the course of play. Fate is such a game; so is OGL Conan. But BW is not, by default, such a game (BW does permit this in the course of PC building, but not during play - of course the player can make suggestiosn that the GM goes along with, but that's true also for nearly any RPG). Neither is 4e (unless you count CaGI-style martial forced movement). And Cortex+ Heroic is not as straightforward on this matter as Fate (there are a whole lot of different ways that Cortex+ Heroic players can try and establish elements of the shared fiction, depending on the nature of the element in both story and mechanical terms).Declaring "I search the study for the map" is not an exercise of narrative control in the manner that Fate and OGL Conan permit. It's utterly banal action declaration which goes back to D&D's origins. In a "player-facing" game, if it succeeds, then a map is found. But the player didn't exercise any direct "narrative control" - that's the whole point of having dice-based action resolution mechanics, as a tool for mediating between various expressed desires as to the content of the shared fiction, and the actual establishment of consensus as to what that content is.(As an aside - Gygax wrote a "player-facing" mechanic for resolving checks for secret doors into the random dungeon rules in Appendix A. It's not as if this is wildly modern tech.)Describing that consensus as a constraint on GM authorship is also odd - not because it's false, but because it seems to assume that it's constraint on the GM is more salient than its constraint on other participants. If the fiction is shared, then ipso facto everyone playing the game is constrained by whatever has been established.In BW, if a check succeeds then the PC succeeds at his/her task and the intention of the declaration is realised. Full stop. The GM has nothing to do with it, and the player enjoys the authority to veto GM embellishments if the player takes the view they are at odds with the intention.And in the "hidden backstory" style, the GM declares action declaration's unsuccessful all the time - either allowing the dice to be rolled and saying "No, you find no map"; or just telling the players "You search and there's no map", or perhaps rolling the dice secretly him-/herself. In this thread, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has consistently advocated for secret rolls that preclude the players from knowing how the action declaration was actually adjudicated.Have you ever browsed a book? I have - reference books are especially good for this purpose. I choose, or perhaps by flipping pages randomly determine, which bit I read next. That is not exercising any agency over the content of the book.If the agency of the players is confined to influencing which bits of the hidden backstory the GM tells to them; or which bits of the pre-authored storyline the GM reveals to them; that is about the same amount of agency as someone flipping through a reference book or working through a choose-your-own-adventure book. Ie relatively little.Can the PCs set the building on fire? What if the GM decides that it's made of non-flammable materials; or under a magical ward; or that the rain is falling so heavily that no fire catches? (In a "player-facing" game, those could be elements of narrative that might be established to explain a failed arson check.)And if the scene is the building, and the action declarations are, in effect "We enter this room and search; what do we find?", then where is the agency? This is just choose-your-own-adventure again, the players making moves that trigger the GM telling them stuff from his/her notes. It's true that we might spice things up a bit by having the players make decisions about how their PCs move from room to room (eg instead of going through the GM-authored doors, the cast Passwall) but I would describe that as, at best, rather modest agency.And to say that the players are free to have their PCs leave the map is really just to acknowledge their lack of agency: they (I'm assuming) want to play a game that is about finding the map, but their access to that shared fiction is subordinated to GM pre-authorship. To say that they have the agency to give up on the focus of play that they want is not, in my view, to point to a substantial mode of agency.This is odd for two reasons. First, you assert that choose-your-own-adventure style action declaration is a high degree of agency. Second, you assert that having the GM engage you with stuff that speaks to the character you built, and invites you to confront the issues you signalled you wanted to engage with in play, is a negation of agency!That's not my actual argument.My claim is fairly simple: if all the salient fiction is authored by the GM, the players didn't exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction.There are various ways that players can exercise agency. One is by succeeding on action declarations, which establishes, as part of the shared fiction, the contnt that, prior to the resolution of the declaration, the player desired to be part of the shared fiction. Another is by establishing material - perhaps elements of the shared fiction (eg relationships with significant NPCs, which are fairly formal part of Fate and Burning Wheel and can be an informal part of most other systems), or perhaps thematic orientation (eg by choosing to play a Raven Queen devotee, the player makes Orcus and undead salient as key antagonists in the game); and there are probably other ways of establishing material that I'm not thinking of at the moment. This second mode of player agency is quiet important, because it is another way in which players can influence the content of the shared fiction without having to engage in collaborative storytelling.None of this is rocket science. Eero Tuovinen describes it all in <a href="https://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/" target="_blank">a blog that I've linked to several times now</a>.Leaving aside the fact that the scene might have more at stake then just the map, what you say is still not correct. Where does the GM get the framing material from? Where does the GM get material for narrating consequences from?If the check to find the map fails, it's quite legitimate for the GM to declare that (say) the document hidden in the drawer is, rather, a letter from a loved one that reveals some "unwelcome truth" (to use the Dungeon World terminology). Assuming that it's the player who has established the existence of the loved one, and the orientation towards the loved one that would make the truth unwelcome, then the GM's narration of the consequence expresses not only the GM's but also the player's agency over the content of the shared fiction. This is how, as Tuovinen puts it, "choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices".The failures you refer to in the "GM-facing" game - lack of time, alerting enemies, searching the wrong spot or setting the wrong spot alight, etc - are all results of GM stipulation. The only one that is not a result of Gm stipulation is the PCs being killed - at least at most tables, combat is resolved by resort to the mechanics rather than GM stipulation. And so, to repost what you replied to, "If a player stakes discovery of the map, and fails, that is losing at a move in a game. That is actually quiet different, I think, from the GM stipulating failure. I don't see them as 'pretty much the same' at all."I have linked to the actual play report several times in this thread, but maybe you haven't looked at it. <a href="https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?736425-Burning-Wheel-First-Burning-Wheel-session" target="_blank">Here it is again</a>:So, to repeat what I posted earlier, "the very first scene in my BW game presented the PC whose goal was to find magical items to help him free his brother from balrog possession with a chance to acquire an angel feather. The "challenge" in the scene was to determine the nature of the feather, whether it was worth trying to buy, whether instead to try and steal it, etc." In other words, there was no challenge that had to be overcome to establish fictional positioning to pursue the player's goal.(The choice of instinct also affected the content of the fiction: one reason for, later on in the session, establishing the NPC mage's residence as a tower was because it spoke to an instinct about falling.)In "story now"/ "standard narrativistic model" RPGing there's no need to fiddle about and delay the onset of the real action. The first encounter in my 4e game, following the initial scene where the PCs met one another and their patron, involved a clash with Bane-ite slavers, whom most of the PCs had an established reason to oppose beyond just them being a challenge the GM threw out there.Although [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] is mistaken when he says that your description of my argument is "a pretty accurate assessment" - because that description didn't address at all the source of material - innerdue is 100% correct to say that " If [the GM] wants to frame a "pass the guards" challenge or a "successfully sneak through the hallways undetected" challenge, great! As long as the scene frame represents appropriate dramatic need." Whether having guards outside the study will satisfy that criterion is an entirely contextual matter, depending on such things as (i) established fiction about the study, (ii) established fiction about the guards, (iii) elements of the framing of both, etc.If a PC is a worshipper of Ioun, and the guards are there to stop the unworthy gaining access to valuable knowledge, then it sounds like it could be quite interesting (and also ripe for the PCs to persuade the guards to let them through, if they want, by persuading them that keeping secrets is what Vecna wants, not Ioun).If the guards are just a roadblock, they sound a bit boring to me.That said, system also matters here. 4e combat is very intricate, and combats that have little connection to broader dramatic concerns may still allow a group who is into that sort of thing to enjoy playing and expressing their characters. I wouldn't say that the same is true of combat in Classic Traveller. Or consider Cortex+: the dramatic needs of characters are established via their milestones, but these are often rather independent of the particular minutiae of a given scene (eg Captain America earns XP for engaging with superhero teambuilding): so the actual challenges that the PCs confront may often be secondary to the PC-to-PC interaction and character development that is taking place (much as can be the case in superhero comics). So in Cortex+ Heroic, the thing to think about in framing the guards outside the study is not so much whether the guards per se speak to dramatic need, but whether the framing establishes an opportunity for the players to pursue their PC milestones. For instance: one of Wolverine's milestones involves meeting with and interacting with old friends and old enemies. Wolverine's player is free to establish that an NPC is such a person, but this requires the GM to frame Wolverine into an encounter with a named character whom it makes sense to call out; so if Wolverine was one of the PCs, then as well as the nameless guards the GM would want there to be someone interesting leading them for Wolverine's player to hook onto in exploring that milestone.This is another illustration of how player choices (here, choosing/building a particular character with a particular milestone) can influence material that becomes part of the shared fiction, although the player is not exercising any sort of direct narrative control.</blockquote>

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