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Which then sounds like it's the GM determining the path of my character's revenge story via the scenes she frames me into, rather than me-as-player trying to determine that path via the actions I have the character take in the fiction....which is fair enough, but let's call it what it is.

Thing is, oftentimes some or even all of those 'x' events are what lead up to the following 'H' event; which means eliding or handwaving the 'x' events risks having those 'H' events happen in isolation and without coherent in-fiction explanation - kinda like a movie where the editor was ordered...

That sounds about right. Agonizing over trivialites and spinning out simple tasks are commonplace round here. Reaching consensus is a different issue, and often doesn't come about because of the next paragraph. The best solution IMO and IME is to play a Chaotic character with a fairly low...

Whether or not I-as-player ever read any of it, I still want it to be there as a foundation that makes the setting tick and that informs the GM when designing the rest of the setting. It might also even have rules-system implications; either by narrowing the choices of which system to use or...

D&D was a victim of the Satanic panic but, as the OP notes, the main effects came in the later 1980s. There's some other factors at play as well that both helped the fad and killed it. The late 1960s and early 70s saw a pretty big Tolkein craze in some quarters; the timing of the emergence...

I actually think an all-highlights game could still be verisimilitudinous, as that's a feature of the underlying setting and approach more than the degree of in-fiction detail that setting and approach is used for in play. A higher-detail type of play just makes the verisimilitude easier to see.

Which sounds OK in itself, but doesn't seem to square with the idea of characters having medium-to-long-term goals or beliefs or ideals that they're working toward in the fiction (and thus which the player, if playing the character true, is working toward in play). If for example my...

Sometimes as DM, once you've got the ball rolling and the players have their PCs interacting with each other (sometimes over banalities, more often IME over planning) you just gotta sit back, put your feet up, crack open a beer, and say "If and when any action comes out of all this, please let...

Depends on one's threshold for boredom, I suppose. If the "lows" are still interesting enough then you can still have a range of lows and highs. Same as a hockey game - they're going to play three 20-minute periods no matter what; a true fan will watch the whole game including its lows, highs...

The characters in the fiction and the players at the table, in lockstep. Sure. Does every moment of play have to be exciting, though?

The poster to whom I was replying specifically said (paraphrased from memory) if there's no consequences for failure, just give them the success rather than roll for it. And yet sometimes the true consequence of failure is simply that you didn't succeed - it's the success that has consequences...

I'm fine with degrees of failure/success as long as underneath it all a fail ultimately remains a fail and a success ultimately remains a success. Often, though, it seems those who promote fail-forward are looking to mitigate the effects of a 'fail' roll such that the player still gets...

I don't mind a marginal success roll getting a complication tacked on, but the odds of failure are often already low enough there's no reason whatsoever to make outright failure even less common. The cynical side of me suggests another reason that fail-forward has become popular, but I seem to...

Why should I just give success when the fiction (or the rules) dictates success isn't guaranteed? That's why we roll: to see if they succeed. No retries in my game unless you do something differently. Even then, "nothing happens" is a common result of a failure. Yes it's frustrating. That's...

Agreed as to what you say in the literal sense, however in a lot of countries (including the one I'm in) "conservative" carries almost overwhelming political baggage and thus isn't often a term friends apply to friends.

To the two bolded bits: what's the difference? IME what players tend to best accept is that which makes reasonable sense. On a failure, in probably the majority of in-fiction situations, what makes the greatest amount of reasonable sense is that simply nothing happens or nothing changes...

Perhaps more to the point, and despite narrative games' insistence to the contrary, there is nothing wrong with "nothing happens" being the narrated result of an attempted action that fails. As in: Players: "We search the west wall for a secret door." DM: <rolls in secret knowing there's no...

The question is whether a) play is specifically intended to actively create and maintain a coherent narrative, whether pre-planned or spontaneous, or b) whether play just happens on a one-thing-leads-to-the-next basis and any coherence to the narrative really only becomes clear after the fact...

AW is the major leagues while 5e is high school ball? Yeah, like that's not going to put some noses out of joint...

You've also several times suggested that the DM could or even should adjust the threats in a given location to suit the party level, which IMO fights against the idea of a setting independent of the PCs. In an independent setting what's there is what's there, without regard to whether it's a...