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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7358951" data-attributes="member: 16814">No, I didn't posit that because having a DM as a burden on player agency is blatantly obvious.  I assumed we all took that as a given.What I was doing was pointing out that increasing agency in one area typically comes at a cost in another area.  Having increased agency over the shared fiction for the purposes of overcoming obstacles in play comes at the loss of agency in determining the pacing of the game -- the rate at which obstacles must be addressed.  In player-facing games, the players can't choose to hold off on a framed crisis in play -- they are expected to engage that crisis and accept the consequences of the engagement.  In DM-facing games, players often can opt out or delay a challenge and recover or improve resources to reduce the challenge presented.  This isn't an option in player-facing games.Again, no, not even close.  As I posted above, the spherical cow is the game concept and that means the entire game is the twisty maze -- there is no yuan-ti jungle to engage.  This is the point of the simplified model -- there's nothing to play with except the maze.  So, the player introducing both the yuan-ti jungle as a place in the game that isn't a twisty maze AND that this is the goal/objective of the player (how can this be if it's not part of the game except by fiat) AND a solution to achieve this goal (the secret door leading directly there) is very close to a full, explicit Czege Principle violation.  This is why I said, explicitly, that the declaration wasn't coherent with the model - it has the player authoring both backstory (yuan-ti jungle), a challenge (get to the backstory), and a solution (secret door), none of which are within the the simplified spherical cow model.  It's a bad example on many levels.And, that said, at no point was I using the Czege Principle to try to falsely prohibit action declarations.  Again, recall that I have played and am familiar with the conceits of player-facing play and that I enjoy playing in those kinds of games, given the right group dynamic.  I'm not at all interested in finding ways to discredit the playstyle, as I enjoy that playstyle.  I don't run that playstyle, for a number of reasons, but I'm going to try a few games of Blades in the Dark because that goal of play and setting strongly appeals to me whereas many of the other examples of that style (Burning Wheel, Dungeon World, etc) don't really appeal to me.  I cannot run a heist game well in a DM-facing style without a huge amount of work, something I'm not interested in, and hours of in-game planning and contingency planning, something I'm also not interested in.  Blades provides a nice framework for a style I am interested in, and I'm not adverse to the concepts of player-facing games at all, so it's something I actually want to run (as opposed to the others, which don't appeal to me because I prefer my D&D as D&D for reasons).I think you'll get a lot more out of these discussions when you stop trying to shove everyone into boxes they don't fit in.  Your comment to [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] above about who repped his posts is very telling of a mindset that's keeping track of the 'sides' in a discussion and assumes that rep is an indication of which side a post is on.  I don't think that's very useful as a metric at all.  Also, you should maybe listen a bit better to many people saying your formulation is dismissive and find a better one that still sticks to your points.  This insistence on 'the DM telling you things in his notes' bit is a great example.  When shown something that isn't in notes, you've changed your statement to 'what I mean by notes is things pre-authored or made up on the spot but kinda seem like their pre-authored' and stuck with your formulation.  This undermines your argument about pre-authoring being bad because you've now added DM provided narrative that isn't pre-authored but is instead responsive to player input as in the same category so that you don't have to back away from other things you've said.  You've now conflated two different arguments -- pre-authoring outcomes reduces player agency to add to the shared fiction by creating unknowable roadblocks to action declarations AND that action declarations that prompt the DM to narrate more backstory also reduce that agency.  The latter isn't obvious, and you haven't actually made that case, but yet you keep appending it to the former case and assuming it's also true.  I can see cases where it is true, but also cases where it isn't.  You should separate your arguments so this can be unpacked and discussed.  Not doing so continues the confusion as people argue against the latter part and you respond as if their contesting the former.  Like this post, for example, where you respond to an argument I didn't make to then accuse me of doing something I'm not doing.</blockquote>

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