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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 9318964" data-attributes="member: 6690965">This post stood out to me, because I don't really disagree with any of it, but it's just feels completely sideways to me. The analysis isn't wrong, but it doesn't feel relevant. I wanted to break it down and run through why it feels so off.This isn't, in my understanding, a function of the GM. It actually can't be, unless you conflate several different GM roles that I would view as being professionally firewalled. Setting up all of the pieces and then moving the ones you're supposed to control are separate jobs that simply reside in the same person. Situation is the result of chains of actions from the PCs and those NPCs. Setting up an interesting board for all of those actions to happen on is fairly difficult, and the sort of thing GMing advice is theoretically supposed to teach you how to do, plus ideally you want a series of tools to let you try and evaluate likely outcomes (things like CR in a combat focused game, or even things like a faction-specific list of goals). The actual progress of what does happen is down to system though, it's a result of player choices being fed through mechanics to see the results, which, assuming sufficient GM honesty, sufficiently detailed rules and sufficiently engaged players, should allow players to push an agenda into the situation.Conflict resolution is disempowering to the player; they can't influence what is "framed," and they get so little say in the resolution, because it's always down to one test. You don't have a lot of agency to affect the outcome, and the situation is so transient before the next concern occurs. My sense in those games is that the player isn't supposed to care; you aren't supposed to want any given outcome or drive to any result, the "drive like a stolen car" concept. Instead, you're there to engage with the premise, the real act of agency was agreeing to play a game about X in the first place.I personally don't know how to do gameplay under those conditions. The act of playing a game necessitates a goal, and a goal necessitates tools to try and achieve it. I'm lacking both; I can't really control what happens, but that should be alright because I shouldn't really care what happens. It's an actively hard perspective for me to try and adopt, even when I think the tool is useful. Subjectively, I've always felt like things happen too "fast" in that kind of environment, and flounder around for mechanics to go interact with things. This point feels like an inversion. Task resolution allows you to go and hunt down a premise you care about. Players can want things, and use the means of resolution to go get them. You're describing an outcome of the mechanic as if it's the intent, when the design goal is orthogonal.This relentless focus on "what is it about?" is the thing that always feels so weird in these conversations. That just isn't a first order priority; it's about whatever happens, we can talk about what it turned out to be about when we're done doing the thing, the important thing is making sure that the player's decisions have an impact on that.</blockquote>

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