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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7371018" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, that's a player who isn't going to be exercising much agency over the content of the shared fiction! In effect, she's outsourcing that to the GM. Your post says as much.Without finality of resolution, what does it mean to work towards the goal of becoming king (just to pick up one of your examples)? And if there are backstory elements that are known to the GM, but unrevealed, but also apt to be used in the context of action resolution as "hidden" elements of fictional positioning, then where is the player agency located?The notion of "player choice of goal" doesn't do any work, as far as agency is concerned, until you tell me something about how this choice actually matters to the content of the shared fiction. It is very easy for a non-dungeon sandboxing game to become the making of moves to trigger the GM to say stuff. Changing the way backstory is established and managed makes a big difference in this respect.Perhaps I've misunderstood.The player tells you (speaking as his/her character) "I want to find an item that will help free my brother from possession by a balrog!" And you respond by . . . ? I thought you respond by asking "OK, how do you go about that?" and then the player says (eg) "I look for a sage" or "I look for a marketplace" or whatever it might be.What difference that is important to you are you saying that I'm disregarding?This is a set-up that is begging for player-driven play!As you describe it, that's not a story. There's no rising action. There's no climax. There's no resolution.Story now means story - in the sense of conflict > rising action > climax > resolution - as an ever-present element of play. But without pre-authorship of said story.Roughly speaking, the players provide the characters with dramatic needs; the GM provides the framing which yields conflict; the playing through of the action resolution process yields rising action and climax, at various "levels"; and the outcome of action resolution yields resolution, again at various "levels".To go back to the feather example: the PC wants a magic item, and is at a bazaar where an angel feather is for sale. But the PC is broke, and maybe the feather is a dud or a fake. That's the conflict. The PC tests the aura of the the feather -there's rising action. It's cursed! There's the climax. There's also a bit in there where the PC buys the feather - I can't remember how the purchase and the aura-reading interacted, but the upshot - the resolution - is that the PC now has a cursed feather, that might bring trouble upon him.But the whole dealing with the feather is also itself a moment of rising action in the larger story arc of the balrog-possessed brother, which doesn't reach it's climax in that initial scene.Here is how <a href="https://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/" target="_blank">Eero Tuovinen describes it</a>:The fun in these games from the player’s viewpoint comes from the fact that he can create an amazing story with nothing but choices made in playing his character; this is the holy grail of rpg design, this is exactly the thing that was promised to me in 1992 in the MERP rulebook.Instead of curtailing player agency to create story (which is what Dragolance, White Wolf, 2nd ed AD&D, fudging advice in other rulebooks, and indeed more RPGing text than I can count, recommend), this method of play relies on player agency to create story.In your example, of the player waiting to be told by the GM where the action is - eg the local Baron is corrupt - story is not going to be reliably produced. What if the players aren't interested in the Baron? Or even suppose that they are - what is the conflict that drives the story, or even kicks it off?The 3E module The Speaker in Dreams illustrates the issue: big chunks of the module are devoted essentially to plot download by the GM (often but not always accompanying combat encounters that, from the point of view of the players-as-PCs, are largely unmotivated ), and then the whole thing depends on the players adopting the outlook that will make the story work (eg opposing the mind flayer rather than seeking to work with it).No. There's no trade-off. The player is free to choose what to do at any moment of play.There is no difference in this respect between my style and yours. (And I see that  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has made this same point.)</blockquote>

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