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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7351621" data-attributes="member: 42582">This doesn't make any sense. You write as if there are two things that are causally related - first, the player says that s/he is a rogue pulling a wand out a backpack; second, in the fiction a rogue pulls a wand out of a backpack.But all there is is that the player makes the action declaration. That in and of itself establishes the fiction. We don't all sit around with our crystal balls waiting to find out if the player's action declaration will or won't successfully bring a fantasy world into being!There are two possibilities: the player plays the game; or an imaginary person makes the player play the game. I know which I think is the case!Playing the game doesn't invovle using a wand. The wand isn't real; it's pretend. Playing the game does involve pretending that someone has a wand. That act of pretense is something that a real person does in the real world. The game rules are triggered by making various moves in the course of that pretense.No one thinks that a school kid's stick is really a gun; or that the explanation for why another kid drops to the ground when the first kid says "Bang! I shot you," is that a bullet was fired. It's playing a game - a social process.The social processes in a RPG are different - eg the rules for declaring "I take the wand from my backpack" are not structured around physical location and possessions as in a schoolyard game of cops and robbers - but the basic idea is the same.As I've said, this is at best extremely modest agency over the content of the shared fiction.For instance, a game in which every outcome of action declaration is decided by the GM based on what s/he thinks makes sense or would be fun would fit your description of player agency.It also relates to what I posted upthread, which I took   [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] to be in broady sympathy with in a recent post: what you describes opens up the scope for a very big gap between playing the character I want to play, and what actually happens in the game.But they can't do any of these things. They can't find the map in the study if the GM doesn't allow it. They can't bribe a guard if the GM doesn't allow it. They can't meet a long-lost friend in the village if the GM doesn't allow it."The power of their PCs" is a red herring here. Because the power of a person depends primarily on the opportunities by which they are surrounded, and what you describe is an approach to play where that is all controlled by the GM.But a choose-your-own adventure does. Nevertheless, the player doesn't have very much agency over the content of the shared fiction.And if you think this is not a fair comparison, then tell me why not? If the players of a RPG cannot establish or influence what is actually written on the pages - if the opportunities that are open to them all depend on what the GM has written - then how is it different?That's because FICTION CAN'T AFFECT REALITY. Obi-Wan Kenobi didn't have any effect on Alec Guiness. Pretending to be Obi-Wan Kenobi did have some effect on Alec Guiness - eg it led him to say "Only a master of evil, Darth" - but pretending to be Obi-Wan Kenobi is something that happened in the real world, and did not involve any imaginary person.All this means is that pretending to talk to a mayor is different from pretending to fight some orcs. That's obvious. It doesn't prove that imaginary things make real things happen!But all "orc present in the fiction" means here is that everyone at the table agreed to imagine an episode involving an orc.There is nothing here but social processes. Agreements to imagine this and not that. Agreements that, under certain conditions, dice will be rolled, charts looked up, and new imaginings take place.Consider the example of school ground play: it is not a soldier being present in the fiction that explains why the kid dropped. It's that the kid's friend was pretending to be a soldier and pretending to shoot. Playing the game is a social process.</blockquote>

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