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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7355499" data-attributes="member: 42582">"Having something to offer" looks like an aesthetic judgement of the sort that I hope to avoid.GM pre-authorship of backstory used to adjudicate player action declarations (eg the attempt to bribe the guard will fail, because the GM has already establihsed in his/her notes that the guard can't be corrupted) will tend to have a certain effect on play: players will spend effort and time during the play of the game trying to learn that backstory so that they can have their PCs achieve the things that they want their PCs to achieve. The way the players learn that backstory is by making moves with their PCs that trigger the GM to tell it to them.Here you seem to be endorsing the distinction I drew upthread between preparation and pre-authorship. What you describe here doesn't seem to be worldbuilding, because it doesn't establish any element of the setting, of the shared fictionOK. Upthread I had thought you, as well as some other posters, had asserted that the use of GM pre-authored backstory and setting has no implications for player agency over the content of the shared fiction. If I have confused your position with that of some other posters, I apologise.Quite a way upthread (many hundred posts) I suggested that one thing that worldbuilding (in the sense of GM pre-authored backstory and setting) is for is to provide material for the GM to read/relate to the players. Many posters disagreed with this. But am I right in thinking that you agree? - for instance, this seems to be what you have in mind when you refer to the GM establishing a compelling story. Some of that story will come out because the players make moves that trigger the GM to relate to them pre-authored material that helps make up the story. And some of that story will come out because the GM relates elements of it in the course of framing the PCs into a situation which pertains to/expresses the GM's compelling story.</blockquote>

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