If you can cut through the chest-beating and infighting, the Forge forums contain a lot of interesting ideas on the workings of tabletop RPGs. For example, here’s Ron Edwards (a controversial but highly influential figure in the indie RPG scene) talking about the various kinds of control players and game masters can have over a game’s storyworld:
- Content authority — over what we’re calling back-story, e.g. whether Sam is a KGB mole, or which NPC is boinking whom
- Plot authority — over crux-points in the knowledge base at the table — now is the time for a revelation! — typically, revealing content, although notice it can apply to player-characters’ material as well as GM material — and look out, because within this authority lies the remarkable pitfall of wanting (for instances) revelations and reactions to apply precisely to players as they do to characters
- Situational authority — over who’s there, what’s going on — scene framing would be the most relevant and obvious technique-example, or phrases like “That’s when I show up!” from a player
- Narrational authority — how it happens, what happens — I’m suggesting here that this is best understood as a feature of resolution (including the entirety of IIEE), and not to mistake it for describing what the castle looks like, for instance; I also suggest it’s far more shared in application than most role-players realize
