Xamnam
Loves Your Favorite Game
I think that the language of "to tell stories" misunderstands what's going on in PbtA, though I may be misunderstanding what you mean by narrative structures. Very much like OSR games, PbtA games emphasize emergent story, playing to find out what happens, and explicitly resist GM story-telling:
This is why I'm resistant against the language of "to tell a story" when describing PbtA games. The story happens as a process of play. It's not something that is being dictated in a more traditional gaming fashion.
This might not be their perspective, but for me, it's not that the GM has a story that they are telling, but that there must always be forward momentum of a sort, thus "story" is always happening. There should be no stalling, no meandering, no pointless action. The GM is told:
You make a move:
• When everyone looks to you to find out what happens
• When the players give you a golden opportunity
• When they roll a 6-
DW P.166
, which, as folks have said in this thread, should always leave the GM with a response to make! The above only becomes more potent under the consideration that doing nothing is a "golden opportunity" from the party, and that a GM is not allowed to respond with nothing happens, and is failing if they do. In addition, the GM is pointedly constrained to a specific set of moves they can make, all of which are primed to move things forward! Those are the reasons why, for me, calling PbtA stuff narrative/story games feels very accurate. Either the party is making a choice that is moving things along, or the GM is changing the
I say that not as a flaw, it's what the games are designed to do, well done on them for doing it. However, it's also why I am caught in this teeter-totter feeling with games like these, pushed away from these systems as much as I'm actively interested in them. I read people extolling the virtues of the play structure, and how it forces good play, but what I see in this praise reads, to my brain, as both non-intuitive and constantly stressful. And that's the core loop of the game! This doesn't even touch all the other things I enjoy as both as a GM and player that these systems actively eschew.
Last edited: