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Message: <blockquote data-quote="darkbard" data-source="post: 7353498" data-attributes="member: 1282">I wasn't characterizing your posts as such. But I don't think this is an unfair characterization of some of the strong pushback. I don't think anyone is making claims about such extreme cases as vetoing every action declaration that deviates from a preauthored secret backstory. But even if several such deviations are allowed by a GM in GM-centered play, as soon as one pushes too far to threaten all the hard work the GM devoted in crafting such secret backstory, is there not the temptation to draw the limit somewhere as to what deviations are permissible?The two approaches can provide different play experiences--and they do, for sure--while still providing the depths of experience. But I disagree that there is any consensus with regard to your checkers-and-chess analogy. I would say it's more like Chinese checkers vs. a variant Chinese checkers wherein one can jump gaps as well as marbles, i.e, variants on the same game, not different games at all.And yet the brief example I provided was definitively not one of adversarial play but rather the GM believing that vetoing player action declaration due to secret backstory would make for a better play experience for the whole table.When the issue of trust has arisen, it has been dismissed when it is interpersonal, i.e. between players and GM at the table. What I'm suggesting here--and perhaps I differ from [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], and others--is that any real human being would be tempted to steer play in a certain direction (including, potentially, negating PC action declarations), even unconsciously, if hours of hard work had gone into crafting a secret backstory. Removing secret backstory keeps the GM agenda free of entanglements that may come at odds with player goals in this way. It's not really a trust issue at all.</blockquote>

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