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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7345595" data-attributes="member: 42582">The suggestion that the player is trying to do something "in the fiction" makes no sense. It would be better to say that the player is trying to do something to the fiction: the player is hoping, or if you prefer is trying, to establish some new fiction (eg that Sir Bargle swings his sword). The player's hope may or may not be realised - your post considers some esamples of possible grounds for failure - but that is all about actual social processes in the actual world.Upthread, [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] introduced, as a topic of discussion, the dragons living in a teapot in his front yard. That doesn't mean said dragon, or teapot, or even yard, exist.When we're actually playing an RPG, we pretend that the imaginary stuff we're all talking about is real. But when we're talking about how to play, how to design, etc, the first step has to be a recognition that the gameworld is not real. It's impossible to talk sensibly about RPGing if we don't begin by acknowledging that it involves authorship of fictions. Otherwise we get unhelpful metaphor, like "exploring the gameworld" - as if having someone read me excerpts from the FRCG about a forest that Ed Greenwood made up was the same sort of thing as actually wandering through a forest and looking around!This pertains also to the analysis of agency. Walking through a forest, exploring it, discovering an echidna (as I did a few weeks ago) - that's exercising my agency. But having someone read to me about a forest and echidna that s/he made up - that's the author exercising agency, me not su much.That's not to say that it's not sometimes fun to have someone read me a story. It's just to be clear that they are the one who is exercising agency in those circumstances, not me. Well, I think I've made it pretty clear throughout tthis thread that I am talking about player agency in respect of the shared fiction - mostly because that is the phrase I have repeatedly used!I don't even know what this means. How does a PC "walk into" a module? Do you mean that you, the player, get to decide which module the group is playing?And what establishes the "possiility of success" of becoming mayor of some town? If you mean that the GM thinks that this is a good idea, or would make for a fun story, that would be the GM exercising agency. If you mean that the player has to learn what is an effective pathway to mayoralty - as established by the GM - that would be an instance of the player playing to lean what is in the GM's notes. That doesn't seem like very much player agency to me.If you mean that the player is able to make action declarations whose resolution is not just a matter of GM fiat, and those can result in the PC becomeing mayor, then the player would seem to be exercising agency at that point. But is the player dependent upon the GM to allow that there is a town and mayoral office at all? In that case, the player is back to relying on the GM to exercise agency.</blockquote>

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