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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7371833" data-attributes="member: 42582">My point here is the same as in relation to risk-mitigation in a city encounter: if there is no finality of resolution, and if management and consequences of unrevealed elements of backstory is entirely in the GM's hands (as in your example upthread of the PC mage who charmed the NPC and thereby made and enemy of the duke), then how does the player reliably work towards his/her PC becoming king?The player can declare actions, but even if they succeed, whether they support this goal or not is extremely subject to GM decisions around the unrevealed backstory.My point is that that is not a story - it's just an event.Your second paragraph refutes your first! Story is not an ever-present element of play if your story unfolds only over hours and hours of actual play time.Which is a euphamistic (sp?) way of saying the workload of creating and maintaining the story is removed from the DM and dumped in the players' laps.</blockquote>It's not a euphemism - it's describing exactly what happens - to restate what I posted,If players do not provide characters with dramatic needs; or don't want to engage in action resolution; then "story now" play won't work.  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has posted more about this, and what some of the limit cases might look like, upthread.An account of someone walking down the street and counting the number of daffodils isn't a story in the traditional sense.And in the context of a RPG, it is also not a significant manifestation of player agency. "GM, how many daffodils do I see?" is not a significant expression of player agency.It's fairly modest agency - it doesn't actually establish any shared fiction, it just vetoes one of the GM's offerings.And it is not story. A group of protagonists learning of a corrupt baron but ignoring it is not a story. Which was my point - GM-driven RPGing does not reliably produce story unless (as per Dragonlance, 2nd ed AD&D, White Wolf, etc) the GM uses a heavy does of force and backstory manipulation.This still makes no sense.At every moment of play, the GM is establishing the situation the PCs find themselves in. The fact that they speak to dramatic need  ("You're in a bazaar. A peddler claims to have an angel feather for sale.") rather than not ("As you walk from the great hall to the reliquary, you pass through an intersection") doesn't reduce the scope for player choice.Also, <a href="https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?736425-Burning-Wheel-First-Burning-Wheel-session" target="_blank">as far as asking for help is concerned</a>,[/QUOTE]

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