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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7351316" data-attributes="member: 29398">Sure she is, but repeatedly bringing novels into this to use as examples doesn't help at all; as novels don't have players directing where the story goes and can - unlike just about any RPG campaign I've ever heard of - be written from the end forward if that's what the author wants to do (e.g. Ms. Christie could in theory start her thought process with the end scene in the plot and work backwards from there - this isn't really possible in an RPG unless it's a very hard railroad).Movies or plays are a better example, though still not perfect; as there we have actors between the author and the finished product.  However, except in improv theater the actors don't have much if any say in where the story goes, unlike an RPG where the players do. [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] summed this up very nicely a few posts above, where he points out how the fiction and reality kinda bounce back and forth in affecting each other.  You're only looking at how reality affects the fiction.But it's still authored, and it's still causal.Were there no orc present in the fiction at that moment neither the action declaration nor subsequent roll would happen...Social processes are required to get the ball rolling, to set up the initial foundation for the fiction (the players roll up characters, the DM builds a world and sets some sort of initial scene for the PCs to start in); but once the PCs start moving through the game world and doing things in the fiction then those actions and that fiction starts creating and-or modifying social processes at the table.  If the fiction during that first session* leads, say, to a meeting with the local mayor then the words and actions of the players at the table are extremely likely to be quite different than had the fiction led to, say, a battle against a band of orcs.* - here it doesn't matter how the fiction is generated, or by who; only that it is generated at all.I suspect [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] might beg to differ, based on his post #925 above. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Sigh.You're defining player agency quite differently than I am, I think; and looking for it in places where it should not be found while ignoring its existence (or, where you do occasionally choose to acknowledge it, doing so in a demeaning and dismissive manner) in the various places where it in fact exists.  Exhibit A: your constant reference to players being able to decide what to do within the game world as being no better than a choose-your-own-adventure book.Yikes.First off, who says 'modern games' don't have maps or other physical representations of the game world or parts thereof?  How, without a map, is a DM (or the players, for that matter) supposed to remember where everything geographically is in the game world; how long it takes to get from place to place; where the mountains and rivers and seas and cities (and adventure sites!) are; which halls and doors in the mansion are trapped and which aren't, and so on?Second off, who says 'repeat play' doesn't exist in modern games?  Do PCs in modern games never fail on a mission and try again, learning more about it each time until they succeed?Lanefan</blockquote>

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