pemerton said:
It does puzzle me why so many non-narrativist posters on this forum use "narrativism" as a label for GM-driven raildroading, which obviously has nothing to do with narrativism in the Forge sense (the only well-defined notion of "narrativism" that I'm familiar with).
Narrativism is mostly concerned with producing a "meaningful" story -- with exploring a theme though the game. I think that flips to "railroading!" for many simulationists -- a simulationist thinks that things in the game-world follow certain "laws of physics", as it were, and breaking those laws means the DM is trying to force you into something.
From a narrative standpoint, the rules of the world don't matter so much and can always be bent or even broken for the purpose of making the story better.
A concrete example from the Force article "Story now!" may make this clearer. He states that one example of Narrative overriding Simulation is a character applying some sort of "hero die" or "action point" where that die doesn't represent willpower, endurance, or any in-world mechanic, but simply means, "this is important to the plot and I really want it to work".
Another might be a player being told, "You can't do that" for announcing an action that kills the story -- such as refusing to interact when the story requires that he bring up some important information.
So yes, a simulationist would likely see a narrative as "rails". To a simulationist, it's anathema to say that geographical features move around to suit the story. It's stupid, to him, to say that no matter which way the players decide to go, they run across the same set of ancient ruins. To a simulationist, if the players don't go east and search the ancient city of Bael-Turoth, they'll never advance that plotline -- but that's okay, they'll eventually find something else interesting to do.
By contrast, a narrativist wouldn't accept the story stalling simply because the players went the wrong way at the crossroads. He either makes that crossroads decision a "but thou must!" event* that gives you the same result no matter what you choose, or else he decides to add events somewhere else that will drive the PCs back to the ruins they were supposed to go to.
However, you're right in that being "Story oriented" doesn't necessarily make you narrativist; narrativism is primarily a focus on exploring a particular theme or concept. Vampire example: You must kill others to live. How do you deal with that? Do you try to resist the temptation and do everything in your power to find a different solution (or failing that, kill as little as possible)? Do you off yourself, knowing that you're a monster? Do you revel in being a monster, slaying without remorse because you're clearly a higher form of life and humans are just cattle?
A simulationist would probably see most narrativist play as rails -- but not all railroading is narrativism. It's the reason behind the railroading that determines that.
None of the three playstyles are inherently better than the others. A narrativist wants to explore some conceptual space, and isn't going to let realism or fairness get in the way of that. (He's likely to let one character die and later have another live in nearly the same situation, because it was good for thematic reasons, for example.)
* "But thou must!" comes from the original Dragon Quest game (AKA Dragon Warrior), where the princess asks if she can come with you on your journey (which will lead to important plot events later). You have the choice of saying "YES" or "NO", but picking NO simply causes her to say, "But thou must!" and you get that same choice box again. You can't continue with the game until you agree.
Point was, monsters acting "out of character" ought to be Big Honkin' Clues, not 'The DM rolled on the Random Monster Chart'.
