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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7353077" data-attributes="member: 42582">I was a bit surprised that someone would think that I am dismissing all GM contributions to the fiction, when I've posted multiple examples of such contributions over and over in the thread, plus set out a general principle for governing GM contributions: GM establishes framing and narrates consequences of failed actions (ie the &quot;standard narrativistic model&quot;).But I was also surprised upthread when the contrast between pre-authorship of the setting and preparation seemed to generate a lot of contention.For me, in the context of this thread, it also comes back to how actions are resolved: if unrevealed GM-authored backstory is used to settle the outcome of action declarations, as a type of secret fictional positioning, that betokens - at that moment of play - a low degree of player agency over the content of the shared fiction. Likewise if play is focused on making moves that trigger narration of established setting by the GM. And likewise (and often related to that) if play involves making moves that will trigger pre-established responses in the GM's pre-authored backstory (eg finding the NPC whom the GM has noted will respond to a bribe).fPart of the reason for posting about my recent A Penny For My Thoughts session is to try and illustrate how content can emerge in a back-and-forth where it's hard to say exactly who is the author (one player wrote the &quot;memory trigger&quot; about lightning, another that the warmth of the deep ones' laboratory was due to failing heat shields within the volcano, another that the lightning and a volcano in Naples could serve as sources of power for some weird science device). But it's crystal clear that pre-authorship isn't part of it.I'm sure this is fairly common in a lot of people's RPGing. One aim of this thread is to try and think about this method, and others, more self-consciously.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7353077, member: 42582"] I was a bit surprised that someone would think that I am dismissing all GM contributions to the fiction, when I've posted multiple examples of such contributions over and over in the thread, plus set out a general principle for governing GM contributions: GM establishes framing and narrates consequences of failed actions (ie the "standard narrativistic model"). But I was also surprised upthread when the contrast between [I]pre-authorship of the setting[/I] and [I]preparation[/I] seemed to generate a lot of contention. For me, in the context of this thread, it also comes back to how actions are resolved: if unrevealed GM-authored backstory is used to settle the outcome of action declarations, as a type of secret fictional positioning, that betokens - at that moment of play - a low degree of player agency over the content of the shared fiction. Likewise if play is focused on making moves that trigger narration of established setting by the GM. And likewise (and often related to that) if play involves making moves that will trigger pre-established responses in the GM's pre-authored backstory (eg finding the NPC whom the GM has noted will respond to a bribe). fPart of the reason for posting about my recent A Penny For My Thoughts session is to try and illustrate how content can emerge in a back-and-forth where it's hard to say exactly who is the author (one player wrote the "memory trigger" about lightning, another that the warmth of the deep ones' laboratory was due to failing heat shields within the volcano, another that the lightning and a volcano in Naples could serve as sources of power for some weird science device). But it's crystal clear that pre-authorship isn't part of it. I'm sure this is fairly common in a lot of people's RPGing. One aim of this thread is to try and think about this method, and others, more self-consciously. [/QUOTE]

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