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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7396022" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, but what I'm saying is that the caveat "or created during the game in a heuristic manner" was meant not to cover action resolution (I find a secret door) but to cover 'winging it' (IE the GM making a roll to see if maybe a secret door existed here because he just created the scene and doing so with regard only to the independent likelihood of it existing and not based on dramatic considerations or character actions). Thus 'created during play' doesn't EXTEND the backstory authority of the participants in the game beyond what they had BEFORE play started! Players have backstory authority over (at most) their characters, usually. The GM has backstory authority over everything else, although in No Myth there is a rule that it can ONLY be exercised at the table to frame scenes in accordance with Eero's definition of the 'standard narrative technique'. Now, this means that a player CAN exercise backstory authority on the fly. He can say "oh, yeah, my character traveled to this town before and he knows this guy..." and that's acceptable (at least its potentially an acceptable mode that could work in Story Now). Again though, when the player says "my character searches for a secret door" this is not a heuristic technique (because it is done in respect of the needs of the fiction, not neutrally and not using a purely mechanical heuristic technique that disregards fiction, like rolling on a table). It is not backstory generation in any other sense either, because its OUTSIDE the player's backstory authority (and Eero makes clear that standard narrative technique doesn't include general backstory authority for players). Some games may provide mechanical support for backstory resolved by players outside that of their PCs, maybe by expending some resource, etc. This mechanism of regulation must then take on the work of preventing the defusing of dramatic tension which Eero warns about which would take place when players are in charge of both resolving and constructing challenges (which is the matter of the Czege Principle). He specifically criticizes 'conch passing' techniques as not doing this. So, again, why is 'classic' DM-centered technique NOT 'standard narrative technique'? It really isn't so much because of backstory questions, it is because the GM simply isn't 'going to the story'. Its not dramatic because it could take 10 hours of play to negotiate the lightless and unbranching underground dwarf highway in Moria (or particularly one that has various uninteresting branches, cracks, etc.). In principle a game could even eschew ANY ability of players to resolve checks in favor of new fiction or even to have the GM 'say yes' to them, but that would put an enormous burden on the GM to always perfectly anticipate the needs of play and what the players WANT, and to always give them the chance to make the wagers that will provide their dramatic trajectory choices. Its too much to put on the GM! This is AT BEST all you can get from 'classic' play, and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] called it the "when pig's fly" technique (to paraphrase).</blockquote>

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