thread: 2009-04-16 : GM fiat put to work for the good
On 2009-04-19, Joshua A.C. Newman wrote:
Ha ha! You're playing a semantic trick and Mark is right! You're talking about a structured distribution of creative authority. You say so yourself.
The GM doesn't have the right to do things that are contrary to the vision the players share about the fictional world. Therefore, the GM can't say, "It doesn't work", or "It sprouts flowers from your nostrils instead."
...one of the important things that makes this work is that it's a structured collaboration, ... The player does some real creative work, but leaves some real creative work for the GM, and it's perfectly clear which work is whose.
That's just like an Antagonist player putting your dad's life in danger in Shock: It's within the authority of the GM because it's the GM's job to make interesting choices with elegant connections to other phenomena in the fiction. It's not the GM's job to keep the players from winning, it's not the GM's job to disrupt the players' paradigm, nor is it the GM's job to establish all of the elements of the fiction.
As long as you avoid conflicts of interest, you're cool.
