I’ve moved my answer to the AbreOJogo portal, has promissed: http://www.abreojogo.com/forum/teoria_e_sistemas/2006/10/respect_my_tsoy_authority.

Mmmmmsort of… I’ll address those in reverse order:

PtA: No. Both personal and plot scenes can embody all sorts of authority, depending on how the scene goes. If another character learns something significant about your character in a personal scene, then you have created a plot event. For some groups, there may be a higher likelihood of generating plot events in plot scenes, but that’s about as far as it goes. In fact, some other groups do away with the distinction altogether.

Mortal Coil: I am thoroughly unfamiliar with the game, so I can’t give you an answer at all, except to say that stakes negotiation can be a way to share any of the authorities. Also, I like the term Popcorn Council!

TSoY: Well, that’s not how we play it. Reading your post, I get the feeling that you may have misunderstood my (Ron’s) definitions of the four authorities, but rather than just state that out loud, I’m going to simply assume you play it differently than us!

So, how do we play it?

Content Authority is strictly the realm of the GM. He’s the one that creates game world locations, NPCs, their intents and motivations, and their relationships to each other and to the PCs. Sometimes, at specific moments, the GM yields Content Authority to a specific player, but yielding is not the same as sharing. In order to yield something, it has to be yours to begin with.

Plot Authority is equally shared by the whole table, and it ultimately rests on the resolution system (the dice), through the process of stakes negotiation. I tell the game master what I want to have happen, thus creating one potential plot event, and the Game Master tells me what may happen instead, thus creating another. We tweak until we’re satisfied, and then the dice make the choice between the two.

Scene Authority is totally, completely and unrelentingly the realm of the GM. He may frame scenes according to the actions of the PCs, or he may frame them according to some other thing he wants to have happen (such as Key Scenes or bangs or whatever), but it’s his, all his, and nothing but his.

Continuity Authority is shared around the table in the same model as for traditional games. Players have Continuity Authority regarding the actions and attitudes of their characters, and the GM has it regarding everything else, including a mild power of veto if the player happens to overstep his bounds, as described in the main text above. The general task of “narration”, as I used to understand it before all of this, is included in this authority, and it falls within the purview of the GM.

I should note that your example of the creature and the cryptic words sounds like a perfect example of what I’m saying about the GM yielding (as opposed to sharing) Content Authority.

Here’s hoping to have made some sense!

Regarding tools:

Scene framing is a way of exercising Scene Authority, and yes, shared scene framing is a way to share it.

Stakes negotiation can be an excellent tool to share any and all of the authorities, but I’ve seen it most used for Plot Authority.

Continuity Authority is generally exercised subconsciously by all the players, but at the techniques level, theorits point to stances to explain what’s happening. It can be shared by mechanics like those in PtA, where the higgh roll/card “wins narration”, which can include any of the authorites, but which, at the very least, includes Continuity Authority.

Regarding shared Content Authority, you have games that use Story Tokens and other such techniques.

These are all just off the top of my head. I’m sure there’s lots more to talk about, here. One thing is important, though. To date, and to my knowledge, no one game text has even recognized the existence of these authorities, let alone try and formalize their usage. So, all these techniques and tools work, but they work in an empyrical fashion. (“Hey, let’s see what play is like if we rotate the scene framing around the table. Yay, it works!”)

Cheers,
J.

In the same way that Scene Framing is an excelent tool for Scene Authority, can one identify other tools that could be related to any kind of the other authorities? (Stakes Negotiation seems to fit nicely with Content Authority, but I don’t know…)

Shuttin’ up… for now

Very nice, very compilcated, very important discussion and concepts.

I think you (RPG thinking people hehe) are on to something very important that allows for people (designers and players) understand in a better way how games are so very diferent amongst themselves, more than just “all indie games are played in a diferent way than other games (you call them traditional)” because that is saying absoletly nothing (and if you start analysing games in this way you may find that their not so diferently played after all).

I’m going to use those definitions and this entry to try to understand a bit better how two distinct games are supposed to be played (this will be long), The Shadow Of Yesterday (TSoY) and Mortal Coil (MC):

TSoY
Content Authority: By reading the book I guess that this falls under the GM jurisditcion, however, I really don’t have all that much of a plot/backstory going on (but I do have one that allows me to bang the characters), that mainly happens has a result of PCs actions or stakes resolution, so I guess it’s kind of up for grabs.
Example (this may be wrong):
GM using Content Authority: At a Ammenite dinner party Aveline (a PC) decided to be interested romanticaly with a guy named Louis, in order to provide for conflict I had her mother be against Aveline intents and wants her to marry Lord Perrier (a fat pedofile bastard), so she and the Lord and her sister (all NPCs) are all ploting against her desires.
Player using Content Authority: At the end of the same dinner party a … creature showed up said a cryptic sentence and the disappeared again, the point being: every PC could make a unopposed Discern Truth check to understand what he really meant, and the success and failure stakes would be what the character understood and it would be the truth. Phillip (a PC who is in love with Aveline) said that if he won the check then he would know that Phillip had some sort of shady past, he won and that became the truth and the character knew it;

Scene Authority: No aggressive scene framing or much of the like, so it’s GM territory, but I have no problems sharing it;

Continuity Authority: I belive it’s shared, either one can determine such things, within the stakes range previously agreed on;

Plot Authority: From the example above (for Content Authority) I guess it would be within players jurisdiction if they had the power to make the creature appear then they would have such authority, but that isn’t the case. I don’t really know however if it’s something the players could have when setting stakes.
Example: A PC tries to lie to an NPC and stakes are: If success then you lie to him, if fail then the creature appears and tells on me.
If it was PTA I could see this with no problem, but in TSoY I’m no so sure.
Either way I am more than happy to share on players request/sugestion.

This is how I see a TSoY game, and sounds pretty darn cool to me, but I could be reading it wrong.

Mortal Coil
Content Authority: I guess it goes like TSoY, it’s up to the stakes. Wich brings the question, is Stakes a way to share Content Authority? And does it depend on the amount of plot/backstory the GM has prepared?
There is also one addition Magic Tokens, witch allows you to add Magic Facts (the way magic works and what it can do) to the setting, subject only to the Popcorn Council, their for GM and Players;

Scene Authority: There is aggressive scene framing, but the book only talks about the GM using it, so I guess no, altought I think it works better shared;

Continuity Authority: It’s totally shared, since it’s subjected to the Popcorn Council approval only;

Plot Authority: Mainly GM territory, but the players do have a say in it through the use of Power witch allows them to take control of the scene and do what ever they want with it.

Any and all of this thoughts could be (and most probably are) wrong, especially in the distinction between Content and Plot Authorities is still a bit fuzzy in my mind.

How off base am I?

P.S.: If I’m not mistaken, in PTA aggressive scene framing you have two kinds of scenes you can call: personal (witch is for things that are important to the character) and plot (witch is for things that are important about the backstory and general story evolution), could these distinctions be used to separate Content and Plot Authority in PTA?