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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8348649" data-attributes="member: 6790260">It started there, yes. Had the player wished to, it could become much more than that. Downtime activities are very important, and frequently lead to more "active" activities later.I did not ask for any rolls. I assumed the PC knew more about golem-crafting than I did, and thus that, if he was interested in creating a golem, he knew better than I did what library to go to. I guess you could say that I presumed a successful Spout Lore, since I volunteered useful information rather than asking for a roll. I'm sure I invented a name for the library, but beyond that I didn't really do too much. The librarian was simply a helpful old lady. Conflict-wise, it played into the character's ongoing personal feud with the Waziri establishment (who tend to be officious, pedantic, hypocritical, power-hungry, and incredibly unwilling to change), as well as his expanding interest in the fundamental laws of magic, in this case, giving magic itself "life" in some sense. It was a relatively focused vignette fitting into the character's larger story (which, as noted, I was trying not to go too deeply into here, because that would mean explaining months of play and significant amounts of what the player had written about the character.)The golem never properly activated, so we never got to see if it was an independent being, an extension of the PC's resources, a threat, or what. I would have been fine with any of those directions as the player desired.I guess I'm a little unclear as to what a "player-authored plot moment" would be? I felt like a mere facilitator for the described things, not the person "in control" doling out things to extremely passive players, which is part of why I've pushed back on this. The consistent implication is that my players sit there quietly doing nothing at all until I shove something before them, which...doesn't feel at all correct.I'm afraid I don't remember which specific situation that was, and I must beg your pardon, I use these terms extremely loosely. "A mission" could be anything from the following:"Huh. We haven't been northwest of here, what's out there?" "Dunno. What IS out there, Ranger? You've been travelling the deserts for ages.""Ranger, you said you hate your grandfather...but now he's begging a favor from you, what will you do?" (he chose to do the favor, but only to get leverage against granddad)"You know there's a nasty killer fungus infection (due to conflicts in prior sessions) that can turn people into mushroom zombies" (players chose to find an alchemist and search for a cure)"The Sultana herself has made a request for you to help with a mysterious problem in the catacombs beneath the palace."Examples chosen to show a gamut of possibilities, all of them actually from my game. Some are (what I see as) conflicts/situations pretty clearly driven by me (Sultana), some pretty clearly driven by the players (exploring NW), some that seem (to me) more driven by the players than by me but featuring both (finding an alchemist to create a cure), and some that likewise seem (to me) more driven by me than the players (granddad's favor).He wasn't really anyone, just a dude they happened to come across and feel pity for. Having asked one of the players, there were several reasons. First and foremost, it's a matter of a personal commitment (as both a player and a character) to saving people when you can save them. If there's something you can do, you should strive to do it, even if that's costly to yourself--there are of course limits, but this being an adventure game, to some extent a power fantasy, those limits are a lot looser than they are IRL, and this player is quite animated to save anyone that can be saved as a result. It was also something of a personal victory, taking something away from a rapacious consumptive evil, proving that that evil was not an unassailable thing. The group overall generally also felt pity for the dude (he really was just some merc, not anybody of prominence or power), and saw helping him as a useful step toward greater support from other allies.The need for the mirror arose from the party's previous failure (not on a single roll, but on a selection of them) to meaningfully hurt or impede the Song of Thorns itself. They already knew they were going to need more mojo, so they consulted allies and did research, "what do we need in order to fight this?" It wasn't specifically the result of  Spouting Lore per se, and I definitely admit that the mirror itself was something I inserted into the fiction in response to their inquiries and petitioning their allies for aid. Later, when they actually performed the healing, that was absolutely a process based on a number of rolls, but it also exploited prep work I'd done (which is something the DW rules explicitly tell me to do) and featured other important actions on their part. In the end, they managed to get the guy mostly healed (well, fully healed but still super weak), as noted--the final push was only a partial success, but a success nonetheless.Depends? Sometimes they do. In this past session, our Bard, who owns a Bestiary of Creatures Unusual, got back-to-back opportunities to consult his knowledge of beasts. That meant he got to ask one question each time, and I answered that question as comprehensively as I could. Does that mean I "authored" the content? If so, it really does seem like even DW rests pretty heavily on GM-authored content, if even things like Spout Lore and Bardic Lore (and thus, implicitly, Discern Realities, Parley, and most other moves) are automatically "GM-authored" simply because the rules tell the player to ask me a question that I must then answer. Edit: Other times, as mentioned below, I will ask a player to describe what they see when they arrive somewhere, or ask them to explain what they know about a place. Not because of a roll. Just because I think it's more interesting to (at least some of the time) have the player describe the scene to me, rather than the other way around. If something doesn't make sense for some reason, we talk about it--either to make sense of it, or to replace it with something we like better instead.That's fair. It had seemed like criticism, but I get that that seeming is a me thing, not a you thing.For me, "railroading" is...pretty much always a bad thing. It means dictating from on high that the players will do one and only one thing. If done openly, it's basically saying "my way or the highway" unless your players are always 100% on board, which is a pretty rude thing to do. And if done covertly, it's deceptive, making players believe they have choices and participation and such when that's all untrue, which feels really manipulative and controlling.I see that as being worlds apart from inviting the players to take the driver's seat (at least some of the time), heeding requests, both pre-emptively and extemporaneously providing content the players show interest in, and otherwise making sure that the players truly do make choices with real consequences, and involving them directly and indirectly in the process of filling and detailing the world. I don't really know how that translates into the formal terminology and specific hierarchies. But it's a big point of pride for me, that my players have repeatedly said that they feel included, that they can choose to do what they want, explore whatever interests them, add to the world, even narrate some scenes (far from all of them, but at least some of them). Sometimes, I have a description I want to give, but I try as much as possible to do something like (completely made up example), "You arrive in the cork forest. What's it like here, <Druid PC>? What do you feel on the wind?"</blockquote>

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