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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9007374" data-attributes="member: 42582">In <a href="http://lumpley.com/hardcore.html" target="_blank">the first of the Vincent Baker blogs</a> I linked to, he says this (in my OP its elided by the ". . ."):What has to happen before the group agrees that [the fiction changes in a particular way]? 1. Sometimes, not much at all. The right participant said it, at an appropriate moment, and everybody else just incorporates it smoothly into their imaginary picture of the situation. . . . This is how it usually is for participants with high ownership of whatever they're talking about: GMs describing the weather or the noncombat actions of NPCs, players saying what their characters are wearing or thinking.I think the idea of "ownership" of bits of the fiction is useful, but limited in is application. What is striking about the weather, the noncombat actions of NPCs, what a PC is wearing or thinking, is that - typically - these are not moments of conflict.But once we get into conflict - the rain is so strong it washes you character away and over the cliff or my thoughts are so potent that my friends pick up on them and know to come and rescue me or whatever it might be - then I'm not sure that allocation of authority is enough.Authority - at least in its most basic - is "content neutral", in the sense that others are supposed to accept it regardless of what the authority says. So if the GM says that a NPC is hopping around on one leg, it might be silly or even bizarre but the players generally will accept that the fiction does indeed include that. We see the same thing happening when players have their PCs wear garish or outrageous clothing - it might lower the tone, but generally the player's say-so is sufficient.For participants to accept the unwelcome, though, my feeling is that content-neutral authority may often not be enough. There need to be features of the mechanics that "warm the participants up" to accept the unwelcome.RPGs that lean heavily on authority - and I think typical approaches to D&D are examples of this - seem to me to be particularly prone to clashes between participants about the unwelcome, because their procedures of play make it easy for not enough warming up to have taken place. ("Rocks fall, everyone dies" is obviously a caricature, but it's pointing to a real risk of leaning heavily on authority as the main method of easing negotiation about the content of the fiction.)</blockquote>

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