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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9322640" data-attributes="member: 42582">My post to which you replied was focused more on the issue of authority than of constraint.In my view the attempt to state general principles of constraint by reference to plausibility or credibility is quite widely overrated. After all, nearly anything may follow from nearly anything else - some golfers do get struck by lightning, after all, and some people do fall down stairs to their deaths.I think this is why Baker, in the AW rulebook, does not try and state the requirement of following from the established fiction in terms any more precise than that (he says that it needn't be the most likely thing, but must be a possible thing).In the Ron Edwards video that I linked to upthread, Edwards gives an example of bad content introduction: he imagines a resolution system where a player gets to say that their PC succeeds but only if they also introduce an ominous fact from a list, and the player chooses &quot;someone is watching in the shadows&quot;. Edwards makes two points: (i) if there is no prior fiction that establishes who might be watching from the fiction, and why then this is thematically/narratively meaningless; (ii) and&nbsp; if it is not clear who has authority to say more stuff about this shadowy figure, then game play has degenerated into mad-libs.I think these issues are much more important than plausibility/credibility per se: I mean, it's always plausible that someone is watching from the shadows (provided, I guess, that there are some shadows about) - but why, as a player, should I care? That is, what makes this a matter of stakes or consequence? How is it going to be brought home?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 9322640, member: 42582"] My post to which you replied was focused more on the issue of [I]authority[/I] than of [I]constraint[/I]. In my view the attempt to state general principles of constraint [I]by reference to plausibility or credibility[/I] is quite widely overrated. After all, nearly anything [I]may[/I] follow from nearly anything else - some golfers do get struck by lightning, after all, and some people do fall down stairs to their deaths. I think this is why Baker, in the AW rulebook, does not try and state the requirement of [I]following from the established fiction[/I] in terms any more precise than that (he says that it needn't be the most likely thing, but must be a possible thing). In the Ron Edwards video that I linked to upthread, Edwards gives an example of [I]bad[/I] content introduction: he imagines a resolution system where a player gets to say that their PC succeeds but only if they also introduce an ominous fact from a list, and the player chooses "someone is watching in the shadows". Edwards makes two points: (i) [I]if there is no prior fiction that establishes who might be watching from the fiction, and why[/I] then this is thematically/narratively meaningless; (ii) and if it is not clear who has [I]authority[/I] to say more stuff about this shadowy figure, then game play has degenerated into mad-libs. I think these issues are much more important than plausibility/credibility per se: I mean, it's always [I]plausible[/I] that someone is watching from the shadows (provided, I guess, that there are some shadows about) - but why, as a player, should I care? That is, what makes this a matter of stakes or consequence? How is it going to be brought home? [/QUOTE]

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