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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7356828" data-attributes="member: 29398">This 'Czege principle' people keep referring to is one obvious means of abuse.  Metagaming might be another, as would simply playing in bad faith.You may have players that play nice within your system, as do I for mine.  But not everybody is so lucky; there's players out there who will abuse the hell out of any loophole they can find, just because that's how they play, and any system that allows for direct or even indirect player authorship leaves itself wide open for such abuse.It's a fine distinction, but your players are - from what I can see - empowered to indirectly author elements of the fiction, as follows:DM: <describes the room and its contents, including a bleeding mage on a table>Player: "I search the room for a container to catch the blood!"<dice are rolled, search is successful, blood is caught>The container wasn't in the DM's initial description of the room, so the DM didn't author it.  Who authored it, then?  The player, of course, indirectly via the successful search action.And this is the sort of thing I mean when I suggest players can in fact author elements in a system like what you use.  The success of such authorship just isn't guaranteed until the dice confirm it.  See previous discussions elsewhere about secret doors for another example of this.It might not dictate options but it certainly can remove or deny some.Go back to the reliquary example in your game.  The PCs met with some angels who agreed to show them the way to the reliquary, and from there you jumped straight to framing the scene at the reliquary.  While this leaves open all the options for what the PCs do once they arrive it denies any and all options for what they might have wanted to do on the way (e.g. further conversation with the angels, making note of any interesting things seen in passing for later investigation or looting, etc.), and removes any options for pre-scouting, information gathering, or additional exploration before reaching the reliquary itself.Yes the immediate drama might be waiting at the reliquary but - and this only just now occurred to me - what's being denied is the ability for the PCs to become distracted by something else, or to distract themselves.  Isn't this just another form of railroad?Yes, but it's also an attempt to author something into the fiction - in this case a container that wasn't initially a part of the room description (or framed scene, whatever) provided by the DM.A better example might be this: let's say a party is in a castle and has via whatever means got itself into a combat it really can't quite handle.  They've retreated into an old study on the ground floor, which the DM describes (or frames) as being musty, dusty, with two tall narrow windows big enough to let light in but not big enough for a normal person to fit through.  The furniture is covered over with sheets, as if this place has somewhat been abandoned.The enemies beat on the door, and it gives way.  Foes pour in, and the party's front line prepares for a heroic last stand.The party thief/rogue/sneak declares as an action "I search the outside wall for a secret door!".  This is huge: success means some of the PCs can escape; failure means a likely TPK.In a DM-driven game the DM is going to already know whether there's one there to find or not*.  But in a player-driven game it would seem the roll for success on this action will determine whether a secret door is found...which means two things on a successful roll: 1) the thief's player just authored that secret door into the fiction, and 2) the thief's player has via this authorship just given the party an escape route they wouldn't otherwise have had, which skirts a bit too close to the Czege principle for my liking.* - though even in a DM-driven game, if the DM realizes the pending TPK is her fault rather than the players' she might suddenly decide to stick a secret door there anyway even if there wasn't one to begin with...Lanefan</blockquote>

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