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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8520066" data-attributes="member: 42582">The following passage is from the Torchbearer Scholar's Guide, p 213:The game master is the arbiter of when the rules are invoked in Torchbearer. Play proceeds as the game master describes the scene and the action occurring in it, to which the players respond by describing their characters’ actions as they interact with the scene. The game master then replies with how the environment and the supporting cast react to the characters’ actions. Play goes back and forth like this until the game master decides a player’s description requires a test of a skill or ability. When a player asks you, “Can I test this?” as the game master, your response should be, “What is your character doing? Tell me where you put your feet or how far you go or where you look.”I feel that by the logic of your argument, I should conclude that 5e D&D (or 5e*), Dungeon World and Torchbearer are all fundamentally the same game. (The GM replies with how the environment and supporting cast react to the character's actions is just a wordier form of the GM narrates the results.)I just pulled my GW-imprint version of RQ3 off the shelf. The following is from page 5:As a RuneQuest player, you take on the mental guise (role) of one or more adventurers who live in the game world . . . The gamemaster operates the game world. You (in the guise of your adventurer) encounter what he or she creates. The gamemaster also roleplays the incidental characters, creatures, and evildoers which your adventurers confront. . . . Suppose that you say that your adventurer wishes to open a door and enter a room, and that the gamemaster replies that the door is locked. But you want your adventurer to open it anyway. . .  The rules [I think it is clear that the text is referring here to the action resolution rules] tell everyone how to resolve such game situations. . . In summary, RuneQuest is a series of interactions between players (who pilot characters through adventures) and a gamemaster (who runes the world in which the adventures occur). Most play is verbal exchange: the players tell the gamemaster what their adventurers intend to do, and the gamemaster then tells them if they can or may do it - or, if not, what happens instead.Does this mean that RQ is fundamentally the same game too?There is nothing magical about the word narrate as opposed to describe, tell, reply so as to convey some information, etc. What we see in all these similar passages is a description of the basic process of mainstream RPGing: the GM frames a scene/presents a situation; the players declare actions for their PCs; the GM says what happens next.All the difference between these RPGs - and the gap between (say) RQ and Torchbearer is probably about as big as it gets - is in the detail of what constrains the GM's framing and what constrains the GM's description of what happens next. RQ, DW and Torchbearer all address these things differently. All are pretty clear. I tend to find D&D 5e rather unclear in its rules text, but what is there seems to me ultimately to be more like RQ than DW or Torchbearer.</blockquote>

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