D&D General A glimpse at WoTC's current view of Rule 0

[Micah Sweet]

If only there was a way to find out!



My own game Other Worlds is on DriveThruRPG (and I'm sure free elsewhere) - it's my attempt at designing a game that supports a narrativist agenda. It contains a lot of practical advice and explanations, but no jargon. Me and my group were used to very traditional play ourselves so a lot of the text is from exactly that kind of practical 'how do we do this?' perspective.

I appreciate the suggestion. That sounds much more like what I was looking for.. Unfortunately, there's just no way I'm paying money to find out how a playstyle works.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Then why do so many people here do so? Where's the benefit?

I certainly have been wondering the same thing. Perhaps it just is their style.

 

[Pedantic]

Don't have time to get into the challenge-based post that I was hoping to, but I saw this post by @Lanefan and then your reply to me and figured I'd get a quick post up on the subjects here. Really just two things and they're very interelated:

1) @Lanefan , Neither Stonetop nor Torchbearer are games that are interested in "dramatic story beats." This is often confused because of the overly broad "Storygames" that these kinds of games mistakenly get binned in. IMO, Storygames are absolutely interested in (and designed around) (i) "dramatic story beats" and play at both (ii) the arc layer as well as (iii) outcomes and finished product.

Story Now games, by contrast, are not interested in any of those (i) - (iii) above. This is an absolutely essential thing to understand to grok these games individually and their differences. Story Now games are interested in (iv) the immediacy of experiencing and resolving conflict-charged situation that addresses a premise/theme (wash/rinse/repeat). The fact that this play stacks on itself and ends up (hopefully) generating compelling story is just a byproduct. It isn't what play or design of system is preoccupied with.

2) The other thing I wanted to address is Torchbearer is absolutely designed around challenge-based priorities. It absolutely does emphasize "skilled-play" and a "play-to-win" orientation for the players. In fact, Torchbearer does this better and more fully than any game I've ever GMed. The only game that comes close is Moldvay Basic and 4e's combat engine, but Torchbearer's complexity + layers of challenge and duress-based calculus players must perform outmatches both of them so it is the TTRPG Top Dawg.

So why is Torchbearer such a good Story Now game despite it also being such an incredible "skilled play" game engine? It is because, at the core of plenty of challenge-based designs is a focus on the immediacy of experiencing and resolving conflict-charged situation that addresses challenge (the tactical layer). It should be obvious when contrasted with Story Now above, that there is pronounced overlap in agenda which allows for overlap in design. The thing that Torchbearer does along with this bolded bit above is (a) its conflict-charged situations address both premise/theme as well as challenge, (b) it is possessed of myriad design features that generate strategic, throughline decision-points that become the crux of play (demanding both sound tactical and strategic play and those demands are relentless), and (c) decisions around advancement (another component of challenge-based play) are also complex/impactful and steeped in "skilled play" calculus for a player.

Obviously I don't have enough context to really discuss this, but my intuition is that I would find the resource management puzzle I usually see described in Torchbearer more compelling outside of a TTRPG context, and frankly it's the sort of situation I'd rather not handle with dice-rolling; I don't care for tactics video-games that prominently feature miss chances, for example. The last thing a game about making consistent trade-offs needs is resolution level randomness; If you don't want it to be deterministic, better to shift that back to resource allocation or opposition in the first place*.

Jumping back to the earlier point about a degenerating board state; I have gotten a general sense, whenever discussion of Story Now games and the concept of "challenge" intersect, that's all but guaranteed to be the resulting nature of the game. The focus on "conflict-charged situations" you mention above means that the gameplay loop tends to center on managing increasing penalties and trade-offs between different resource pools. That's not unheard of in other kinds of games, but it's nearly always paired with a strict time system: do the thing within X turns, and it doesn't matter what state you drag yourself across the finish line in, because the game ends at the point of victory evaluation. A good example would be Ghost Stories (or the reimplementation as Last Bastion), a game that really should be understood as a solo game, but pretends to be cooperative by dividing the pawns between players.

I don't mind that so much in board game form, but I think there's only about an hour of enjoyment before that's just not a lot of fun; I suspect I lack the thematic engagement that's bridging that gap for other players. I'm much more interested in say, the gameplay loop in something like Slay the Spire; fixed challenges and semi-randomized resources that need to be strung together into a strategy both for right now, and for the different, increasingly difficulty challenges coming later. The roleplaying part of the game, ideally, serves as the mechanism to pick those challenges.

The thing that drives me bonkers is when everyone nods and says "oh you mean dungeoncrawling" which is just a wild lack of ambition. There's no reason, given sufficiently broad interaction rules, that most anything can be conceived of by a player as a challenge to overcome, and a strategy assembled to do so. To go even further back to the thread's premise, the problem is that you can't use unwritten rules to overcome challenges. You actually have to write them all down, and then not change them, or you aren't really doing game, you're doing design or maybe storytelling.

*Something of a minority position, to be fair. I'm the only person I know who is sufficiently turned off by the dice-chucking involved to not really want to play Undaunted, for example.

 

[pemerton]

in Torchbearer (or a similar-style game) does playing with integrity to character - often expressed as "do what the character would do" - take precedence even if-when doing so would lessen either or both of the conflict-charged situation or the tactical challenge?

You're in luck - there's an active actual play Torchbearer 2e thread on these very boards! Torchbearer 2e - actual play of this AWESOME system! (+)

Here is a brief extract of the actual play report of my most recent Torchbearer 2e session:

Telemere then decided there must be some other secret room or cache, and tested his Beginner's Luck Stonemason to find it. Golin - whose Creed is that Elves are lost in dreams, and need grounding in reality - declined to help him; but Fea-bella - whose Creed is that These are dark times, so all Elves need help! - decided to help, even though she thought it was hopeless.

The test failed, and so Telemere found nothing. Rather, Golin - watching from atop the shrine - saw a vessel sailing down the river towards them. He recognised it as a pirate river galley, especially when it ran up the Jolly Roger! He also thought he heard some words drifting through the still air, something like "Is that Golin the Beardless?"

The PCs decided to flee.

And here is a bit of analysis/explanation

The test being performed is a search of a Dwarf-built stone structure, by Telemere the Elf.

Golin the Dwarf declines to help (at the table, the player is confident Telemere will fail and doesn't want to pick up any more conditions on a failure; in the fiction Golin thinks that Elves need grounding in reality, in this case in the reality that there is nothing more to be found).

So the fictional situation is that Telemere and Fea-bella are poking around at the base of the structure, while - as I (as GM) confirmed with Golin's player - Golin is looking out from atop the structure. This then provides the set-up for the twist consequent on the failure: Golin sees the pirates sailing down the river towards them!

Why did I (as GM) choose river pirates? Because, for multiple reasons, the pirates are highly salient - Telemere had earlier been taken prisoner by them; the other PCs had bargained with them as part of bringing them into a relationship with Lareth and his cult; the PCs (and Lareth) subsequently had to flee the Moathouse when it was assaulted by the pirates; when the PCs had taken a recent town phase in Nulb, they had to sleep on the streets because (as per the town event roll) all the accommodations were full of pirates; and in that same town phase Telemere had picked up some gossip at the Nulb docks that the pirates were angry at some Dwarf called "Golin the Beardless", a rumour-mill's conflation of the names of (i) the PC Golin and (ii) a pirate-associated NPC Fori the Beardless.

Here's what happened next:

With the players' approval, I decided to give the Pirate a disposition of 2d6 (it being a bit arbitrary), and got 9. The players got a disposition for their PCs of 9 also. They won the conflict, but with their disposition reduced to 5, so I explained that they escaped the pirates, but were lost somewhere west of the river and would need to start a new journey. The players accepted this compromise.

Roles were allocated: Fea-bella as guide (because she had the map), Telemere as Scout, and Golin as Forager (on Instinct) and Cook. A roll for weather confirmed that it was still Clear and Cool; but Trouble on the Road indicated that the PCs would get Lost, adding 2 to the Toll and requiring another Pathfinder test.

The first Pathfinder test failed; I don't have any notes indicating a twist, so I think this made Fea-bella Exhausted, and the others Hungry and Thirsty. Golin successfully found some forage and cooked it, alleviating a point of Toll. The second Pathfinder test failed too; here I opted for a twist, and called on Telemere, as the Lookout, to make a Scout test. He failed, and so the PCs stumbled upon a group of 3 pirates (on the shore, away from the rest of their crewmates), who initiated a Capture conflict.

I rolled fairly well in this conflict, and so the PCs were captured, but with a half-compromise owed. I can't remember now exactly how we resolved this (EDIT: I think it was here that we established that the rescued prisoners escaped, so that only the PCs were caught), but the action rolled into a Convince Crowd conflict, as the PCs - led by Golin, the only Orator - tried to persuade the pirates that they were friends of Tolub and so should be taken to him free rather than as captives. The pirates had only 2 hp for this conflict, while the PCs had 3, and the PCs won with only 1 hp lost. What the pirates really wanted was Fea-bella's silver bucket, but the compromise was that instead they were given some draughts of magic water from that "sacred bucket".

So there's not really such a thing as "lessening the conflict-charged situation" - it's the GM's job to maintain the pressure. In this example, the PCs escape the pirates but are lost in the woods; then they find their way back to the river but stumble into the pirates, who capture them (but not the prisoners they rescued from the Moathouse - they escape); then they persuade the pirates that they are friend of Tolub, and even manage to keep their silver bucket (the principal loot for the session) but have to give up some of their magic water (which grants bonuses to recover from Angry and Afraid).

Even if the players succeed at a conflict with no compromise owed, or get through a test without generating a twist, they will move into a new situation which will require them to make decisions. Here are some illustrations, from the same session (before the pirate arrived):

The PCs noticed the bowl-like depression, with the burned bones inside, and Fea-bella lit her lantern and then read the Elvish inscription written about its edge (successful Scholar test - at least I think so, because I didn't apply the twist in my notes). Fea-bella then tried to identify the ritual purpose. I can't remember how this pool was built - I think there were an initial 4 dice (from Theologian 2 plus 2 helpers), and then a rerolling of 3 traitors by spending a Persona on Elven Lore-wise, and then open-ending a 6 by spending a Fate. But with 9 dice rolled it still failed against the Ob 3. As per the scenario notes, Fea-bella identified the ritual purpose, and became Angry that it was now abandoned.

Golin had conjectured that the bones and ashes were some sort of sacrifice, but Fea-bella was able to assure him that no Elvish ceremony would involve that sort of thing. He did something around this point - I think maybe poured water into the bowl? - that roused the vengeful spirit. The PCs decided to try and Capture it, so they could then perform an appropriate ritual - via a Spiritual Conflict - to deal with it.

I rolled 6 hp for the spirit, vs 8 for the PCs, and they succeeded admirably in the conflict, capturing the spirit with no loss of hp and hence no compromise owed. Fea-bella then tested Lore Master to identify how the spirit would fare in various sorts of spiritual conflicts: this established that it would be 3 hp to Banish, vs 5 hp to Abjure; but Fea-bella opted to lead an Abjure conflict nevertheless because it is based around Arcanist and Lore Master, compared to Theologian and Ritualist to Banish. Before the conflict started, Telemere successfully tested his Remembering Nature to recall the spirit's True Name (which he was then able to equip as a weapon).

The Abjuration conflict didn't go well for the PCs; the spirit won, albeit with only 1 hp left, and so it was not abjured but did owe a major compromise. After reviewing the various options/suggestions in the rulebook, I suggested that its Nature was reduced from 3 to 2, and that it lost its Harrowing descriptor. So it still haunted the shrine, with its Frightening and Stalking Nature, but the shrine was no longer defiled.

Golin took the chipped ruby from out of the bowl.

The successful capturing of the spirit is the prelude to another situation - the attempt to abjure it. Even had that succeeded with no hp lost by the PCs, it's not as if the game would have been over at that point with nothing more that might happen!

 

[pemerton]

Is the Forge the only source of this information? Since they are so biased towards narrative styles of play I tend to look askance at their way of describing things.

This is a bit bizarre. You obviously think that you are the right person to describe OSR play. But doubt that Vincent Baker, Paul Czege or Ron Edwards can describe narrativist play?

Honestly, what I'd love to see is a natural language definition of Story Now (and examples of games that use it), and how if differs from both classic/traditional RPGs and what @Manbearcat (and I suspect @pemerton ) see as Storygames. Something I can print out and hang on my wall .

Well, here is the OP from my thread last year, Advice for New "Story Now" GMs:

A conversation with a couple of friends about "tips for new GMs" blogs/Q+As led to someone suggesting a thread along these lines. So here it is.

At the heart of "story now" RPGing is the players bring the protagonism. The players decide what it is that their PCs care about, what their motivations are, what their projects will be. I'll bundle all these up as the players' concerns for their PCs.

This gives the GM three important, and related, jobs during play: to facilitate; to respond; to oppose. A fourth job happens outside play: to prep.

Prep: there's a lot that can be said about the role of prep in "story now" play, but some simple ideas are enough to start. You need to learn what your players' concerns are for their PCs. The easiest way to learn this is to ask them. This can be part of PC gen. (Burning Wheel and Torchbearer are both good systems for this approach.) It can also be part of a first session where the players and GM bounce off one another to build up the initial situation for the game. (Apocalypse Word uses this approach.)

Once you've learned what your players' concerns are for their PCs, think up - and if it makes sense for your game system, stat out - a few situations and a few NPCs that speak to those concerns. Think up some links between them - use ideas the players have given you, and add your own. Soap operas and Marvel Comics can be your guide here - making everything interconnected (my family nemesis is also a cultist of the demon you're sworn to defeat) will make it easier to do your other jobs.

Facilitation: it's your job to "set the stage" so that the players can pursue their PCs' concerns. This means presenting situations that speak to those concerns, and thus prompt the players to declare actions for their PCs. This is where your prep can be helpful. But if you need to take a 5 minute break to think up something new and appropriate, don't be afraid to tell the players that. Let them talk among themselves for a little bit while you exercise your imagination!

It's helpful, here, to know how your game's action resolution system works, because if you prompt your players to declare actions that your system can't handle, that can be a problem. It pushes play away from the player protagonism you're aiming for, and into either rules debates, or rules-free storytime.

Also, different game systems express different attitudes towards "rigidity" of prep. As a general rule, though, I suggest it can be better to be flexible with your prep - adapt your situations and your NPCs that you've worked up, in order to do the job of facilitating - rather than sticking to it rigidly and risking things becoming boring or aimless. (There's a skill in sticking to your prep and keeping things interesting and focused on the players' concerns for their PCs. The Apocalypse World rulebook is excellent, maybe essential, reading for anyone who wants to develop this skill.)

Responding: when your players declare actions, you have to respond. Your game should (if it's got a good rulebook) tell you how to do this. Maybe your response is to call for some appropriate dice roll. Maybe it's to say something more that develops the situation. Maybe both: first dice are rolled, and then you say something that honours the outcome of the dice role and develops the situation appropriately.

The big pitfall here is prejudgement. If your responses impose your own prejudgement of how things "should" go, then you've lost that player protagonism you were aspiring to. It's fine to inject your own ideas - you're a creative individual, just like your players! - but your ideas should complement and build on what the players have contributed, in accordance with whatever the rules of your game say. They shouldn't contradict or override them.

A useful technique here is to follow the lead of your players' response to your responses. If the players pick up your responses and run with them, then great! Build on that positive feedback cycle. On the other hand, if the players push back on your response, don't ignore that. Sometimes it might make sense to overtly retcon in response to such pushback, but I think a better first step is to use your game's own rules and procedures to invite the players to reorient back to their concerns. Maybe you can ask them questions that invite them, as their characters, to think about how they want to respond to the situation that is dissatisfying to them as players: that might prompt some new action declarations which allow the players and you to steer things away from the dissatisfying towards the satisfying.

Opposition: protagonism needs antagonism. It's your job, as GM, to bring that. It's something to keep in mind both when you're facilitating, and when you're responding. Not every bit of facilitation needs to involve opposition - sometimes it's fun and interesting to offer a player (and their PC) an opportunity, rather than presenting them with a challenge or a conflict - but sometimes it needs to. By presenting situations that oppose the players' concerns for their PCs - whether that is NPCs acting against the PCs' interests, or impersonal obstacles - you not only prompt the players to declare actions, but you give the players a chance to really show that their PCs mean it! (Or, perhaps, that they don't. That's interesting too.)

Not every response needs to involve opposition or confrontation. Sometimes a success takes a PC to a nice place for a while. Sometimes a failure just brings pain. But opposition is a nice way of responding. And it can be both a reward for success - the PC gets to confront the antagonist, or the impersonal force, the player was hoping for - or a consequence for failure - the PC has to confront some new obstacle or antagonism that they weren't anticipating. But when using opposition as a consequence for failure, still keep in mind that the game is focused on the players' concerns for their PCs. You'll need to find your balance here - most players will probably accept that a failure entitles the GM to put their imprint on the situation, but don't use it as an excuse to reorient play towards something completely different. Good standbys are old enemies turning up again, or new opponents who really care (but in the wrong way) about a PC's ideology or beliefs, or a NPC or situation that will let a player deploy their PC's central skill or method or approach.

*****************

I hope that it's clear that facilitation, response and opposition are not mutually exclusive. They're not steps in a cycle of play. (The rulebook for your game should tell you what the cycle of play is, and what its steps are.)

Rather, facilitation, response and opposition are interrelated jobs. Good responses facilitate. One way to facilitate is to oppose, and one sort of response is opposition. But some facilitation should provide the PCs (and thereby the players) with opportunities other than just confronting challenges. Getting the hang of this - how to pace things, how hard to push - is a skill that takes time. But if in doubt, follow the signs your players are sending, as described above under Responding.

And remember: the reason for presenting the jobs in this way is to orient your thinking, as a "story now" GM, towards the players' concerns for their PCs. Or in other words, to orient your GMing towards player protagonism. That's the heart of "story now" RPGing.

******************************

Anyway, the above is a starting point. There's a lot more that could be said about "story now" GMing. One big topic is how setting factors into "story now" RPGing, and related ideas like "no myth"/"low myth" RPGing. And if you're already familiar with some other approaches to RPGing, there are also things to be said about how the "story now" approach is different. (Eg why is the idea of a "plot hook" unhelpful for "story now" GMs?)

But hopefully what I've written above is enough to get some discussion going!

The headline point is this: the players bring the protagonism. The players decide what it is that their PCs care about, what their motivations are, what their projects will be.

As the post goes on to explain, the GM has three important, and related, jobs during play: to facilitate; to respond; to oppose. A fourth job happens outside play: to prep. And as the post states towards its conclusion, "the reason for presenting the jobs in this way is to orient your thinking, as a "story now" GM, towards the players' concerns for their PCs. Or in other words, to orient your GMing towards player protagonism. That's the heart of "story now" RPGing."

There are later posts in the thread are also quite good (if I do say so myself!); I'll particularly call out this one: Advice for new "story now" GMs

****************************

If you want to read some RPG rules for "story now"-oriented RPGs, for free, here are some that are readily available:

You can download the core framing and resolution rules for Burning Wheel for free: Burning Wheel Gold Revised: Hub and Spokes PDF

You can download a version of the core engine for Maelstrom Storytelling - which is an early scene-framed, player-driven RPG - for free: DriveThruRPG

You can read the core of the Blades in the Dark system for free: The Basics | Blades in the Dark RPG

You can download the core of Agon 2e (the Paragon SRD) for free: AGON: Forge your legend in the trials of glory.

You can download Lasers & Feelings for pay-what-you want: Lasers & Feelings by John Harper

You can read the core of Dungeon World for free: Dungeon World SRD

You can download Ironsworn for free: Free Ironsworn Downloads​

If you look at these rules, you'll see a few different approaches. For instance, Burning Wheel, and even moreso Story Bones, lean heavily into the GM framing scenes that speak to concerns/interests/stakes that have been established by the players. Agon, and to a lesser extent BitD, rely on the game and its genre to provide the stakes - both are rather genre/situation-oriented in that respect, Agon especially so; but the players are expected to express their PCs and their PCs' concerns in choosing how to approach action resolution, and in BitD in particular the way things unfold will ramify back on the characters, which will in turn feed through into what comes next. Dungeon World, in its basic structure of play, is very close to Apocalypse World and as a result is very player-led.

In Apocalypse World and Dungeon World, the GM has two main jobs: say something when everyone else looks to you to see what happens next, and say what happens when the action resolution rules call on you to do so. They also tell the GM that they should generally say something that is a "soft move" - a setting up or presenting of a threat or consequence - and should make a "hard move" - that is, bringing home a consequence - only if (i) the players roll 6- on a player-side move, or (ii) the GM has made a soft move and the players have ignored it, allowing whatever consequence was threatened to come to fruition. Threats and consequences are in turn understood in player/PC-relative terms. This is how these games enable the players to bring the protagonism.

Here are some extracts from BW Hub and Spokes (pp 9-11, 30-32), that set out the basic process of play for that game; you'll see that there is a certain similarity between the jobs of the Burning Wheel GM and the AW/DW GM, but they are not identical:

In the game, players take on the roles of characters inspired by history and works of fantasy fiction. These characters are a list of abilities rated with numbers and a list of player-determined priorities. The synergy of inspiration, imagination, numbers and priorities is the most fundamental element of Burning Wheel. Expressing these numbers and priorities within situations presented by the game master (GM) is what the game is all about. . . .

The players interact with one another to come to decisions and have the characters undertake actions.

One of you takes on the role of the game master. The GM is responsible for challenging the players. He also plays the roles of all of those characters not taken on by other players; he guides the pacing of the events of the story; and he arbitrates rules calls and interpretations so that play progresses smoothly.

Everyone else plays a protagonist in the story. Even if the players decide to take on the roles of destitute wastrels, no matter how unsavory their exploits, they are the focus of the story. The GM presents the players with problems based on the players’ priorities. The players use their characters’ abilities to overcome these obstacles. To do this, dice are rolled and the results are interpreted using the rules presented in this book. . . .

[W]hat happens after the dice have come to rest and the successes are counted? If the successes equal or exceed the obstacle, the character has succeeded in his goal - he achieved his intent and completed the task.

This is important enough to say again: Characters who are successful complete actions in the manner described by the player. A successful roll is sacrosanct in Burning Wheel and neither GM nor other players can change the fact that the act was successful. The GM may only embellish or reinforce a successful ability test. . .

When the dice are rolled and don’t produce enough successes to meet the obstacle, the character fails. What does this mean? It means the stated intent does not come to pass. . . .

When a test is failed, the GM introduces a complication.​

So, as you can read for yourself, the players, as part of the build and play of their PCs, introduce certain priorities. The PC-building rules and the setting-building rules for the game provide a lot of support and structure for the players to establish priorities for their PCs; my own PCs for this system tend to have priorities based around their family relationships, other friendships or rivalries, their social aspirations for themselves or others, and the like. The GM then frames scenes that speak to those player-determined priorities. The players, playing their PCs, are thereby provoked to declare actions for their PCs. These actions are resolved via dice rolls. If the player's roll is a success, the PC succeeds at the declared task, and achieves their intent. If the roll fails, the GM re-frames the scene in a way that (i) means that the intent did not come to pass, and (ii) that provokes the player to a new action declaration, still based on their priorities for their PCs.

This back-and-forth between player and GM is what makes the game collaborative. The rise-and-fall of success and failure, all focused around the player's priorities for their PC, is what gives the unfolding events of the game a story-like rhythm (of rising action, crisis, resolution and denouement).

What I see as the difference between this and what @Manbearcat is describing as a "storygame" is that the latter focuses both framing and resolution on "story beats" and the satisfactory unfolding of the story; whereas in the games I'm describing, the focus of play is on the immediate situation to which the player, via declaring actions for their PCs, is obliged to respond. The emergence of a story-like rhythm is not something that anyone has to plan for or try to bring about: rather, it results from the game designer having done their job, and established rules for difficulties, for success and failure, etc that will reliably produce that sort of rhythm as emergent from play.

I think the preceding paragraph is consistent with @Manbearcat's post 2311 (although I'm not familiar with American football).

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It's not a coincidence that this post is primarily focused on the GM's role. The big difference between "story now" play and "trad" play is not anything that the players do. The big difference lies in what the GM does, and how they do it. The standard methods of trad play - secret backstory used to determine unrevealed stakes and unanticipated consequences; plot hooks and fetch quests; GM decisions about what is salient in play (both moment to moment, and in an overarching sense) - are more-or-less the opposite of "story now" play, as this post elaborates upon: Advice for new "story now" GMs

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is a bit bizarre. You obviously think that you are the right person to describe OSR play. But doubt that Vincent Baker, Paul Czege or Ron Edwards can describe narrativist play?

Well, here is the OP from my thread last year, Advice for New "Story Now" GMs:

The headline point is this: the players bring the protagonism. The players decide what it is that their PCs care about, what their motivations are, what their projects will be.

As the post goes on to explain, the GM has three important, and related, jobs during play: to facilitate; to respond; to oppose. A fourth job happens outside play: to prep. And as the post states towards its conclusion, "the reason for presenting the jobs in this way is to orient your thinking, as a "story now" GM, towards the players' concerns for their PCs. Or in other words, to orient your GMing towards player protagonism. That's the heart of "story now" RPGing."

There are later posts in the thread are also quite good (if I do say so myself!); I'll particularly call out this one: Advice for new "story now" GMs

****************************

If you want to read some RPG rules for "story now"-oriented RPGs, for free, here are some that are readily available:

You can download the core framing and resolution rules for Burning Wheel for free: Burning Wheel Gold Revised: Hub and Spokes PDF​

​

You can download a version of the core engine for Maelstrom Storytelling - which is an early scene-framed, player-driven RPG - for free: DriveThruRPG​

​

You can read the core of the Blades in the Dark system for free: The Basics | Blades in the Dark RPG​

​

You can download the core of Agon 2e (the Paragon SRD) for free: AGON: Forge your legend in the trials of glory.​

​

You can download Lasers & Feelings for pay-what-you want: Lasers & Feelings by John Harper​

​

You can read the core of Dungeon World for free: Dungeon World SRD​

​

You can download Ironsworn for free: Free Ironsworn Downloads​

If you look at these rules, you'll see a few different approaches. For instance, Burning Wheel, and even moreso Story Bones, lean heavily into the GM framing scenes that speak to concerns/interests/stakes that have been established by the players. Agon, and to a lesser extent BitD, rely on the game and its genre to provide the stakes - both are rather genre/situation-oriented in that respect, Agon especially so; but the players are expected to express their PCs and their PCs' concerns in choosing how to approach action resolution, and in BitD in particular the way things unfold will ramify back on the characters, which will in turn feed through into what comes next. Dungeon World, in its basic structure of play, is very close to Apocalypse World and as a result is very player-led.

In Apocalypse World and Dungeon World, the GM has two main jobs: say something when everyone else looks to you to see what happens next, and say what happens when the action resolution rules call on you to do so. They also tell the GM that they should generally say something that is a "soft move" - a setting up or presenting of a threat or consequence - and should make a "hard move" - that is, bringing home a consequence - only if (i) the players roll 6- on a player-side move, or (ii) the GM has made a soft move and the players have ignored it, allowing whatever consequence was threatened to come to fruition. Threats and consequences are in turn understood in player/PC-relative terms. This is how these games enable the players to bring the protagonism.

Here are some extracts from BW Hub and Spokes (pp 9-11, 30-32), that set out the basic process of play for that game; you'll see that there is a certain similarity between the jobs of the Burning Wheel GM and the AW/DW GM, but they are not identical:

In the game, players take on the roles of characters inspired by history and works of fantasy fiction. These characters are a list of abilities rated with numbers and a list of player-determined priorities. The synergy of inspiration, imagination, numbers and priorities is the most fundamental element of Burning Wheel. Expressing these numbers and priorities within situations presented by the game master (GM) is what the game is all about. . . .​

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The players interact with one another to come to decisions and have the characters undertake actions.​

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One of you takes on the role of the game master. The GM is responsible for challenging the players. He also plays the roles of all of those characters not taken on by other players; he guides the pacing of the events of the story; and he arbitrates rules calls and interpretations so that play progresses smoothly.​

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Everyone else plays a protagonist in the story. Even if the players decide to take on the roles of destitute wastrels, no matter how unsavory their exploits, they are the focus of the story. The GM presents the players with problems based on the players’ priorities. The players use their characters’ abilities to overcome these obstacles. To do this, dice are rolled and the results are interpreted using the rules presented in this book. . . .​

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[W]hat happens after the dice have come to rest and the successes are counted? If the successes equal or exceed the obstacle, the character has succeeded in his goal - he achieved his intent and completed the task.​

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This is important enough to say again: Characters who are successful complete actions in the manner described by the player. A successful roll is sacrosanct in Burning Wheel and neither GM nor other players can change the fact that the act was successful. The GM may only embellish or reinforce a successful ability test. . .​

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When the dice are rolled and don’t produce enough successes to meet the obstacle, the character fails. What does this mean? It means the stated intent does not come to pass. . . .​

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When a test is failed, the GM introduces a complication.​

So, as you can read for yourself, the players, as part of the build and play of their PCs, introduce certain priorities. The PC-building rules and the setting-building rules for the game provide a lot of support and structure for the players to establish priorities for their PCs; my own PCs for this system tend to have priorities based around their family relationships, other friendships or rivalries, their social aspirations for themselves or others, and the like. The GM then frames scenes that speak to those player-determined priorities. The players, playing their PCs, are thereby provoked to declare actions for their PCs. These actions are resolved via dice rolls. If the player's roll is a success, the PC succeeds at the declared task, and achieves their intent. If the roll fails, the GM re-frames the scene in a way that (i) means that the intent did not come to pass, and (ii) that provokes the player to a new action declaration, still based on their priorities for their PCs.

This back-and-forth between player and GM is what makes the game collaborative. The rise-and-fall of success and failure, all focused around the player's priorities for their PC, is what gives the unfolding events of the game a story-like rhythm (of rising action, crisis, resolution and denouement).

What I see as the difference between this and what @Manbearcat is describing as a "storygame" is that the latter focuses both framing and resolution on "story beats" and the satisfactory unfolding of the story; whereas in the games I'm describing, the focus of play is on the immediate situation to which the player, via declaring actions for their PCs, is obliged to respond. The emergence of a story-like rhythm is not something that anyone has to plan for or try to bring about: rather, it results from the game designer having done their job, and established rules for difficulties, for success and failure, etc that will reliably produce that sort of rhythm as emergent from play.

I think the preceding paragraph is consistent with @Manbearcat's post 2311 (although I'm not familiar with American football).

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It's not a coincidence that this post is primarily focused on the GM's role. The big difference between "story now" play and "trad" play is not anything that the players do. The big difference lies in what the GM does, and how they do it. The standard methods of trad play - secret backstory used to determine unrevealed stakes and unanticipated consequences; plot hooks and fetch quests; GM decisions about what is salient in play (both moment to moment, and in an overarching sense) - are more-or-less the opposite of "story now" play, as this post elaborates upon: Advice for new "story now" GMs

Thank you. I think I understand it now. No wonder we clash so much! That game sounds like the GM gets very little from it if they are interested in any aspect of play that doesn't rely on facilitating the enjoyment of other people. Story Now GMs are there to perform a service for their players, with everything they do designed solely to make things more interesting and fun for them. It also sounds like a lot of work and responsibility for the players, so you really need the right group of folks for this to work as intended. More power to you as it seems you have that group, and what Story Now games allow the GM to do is also what you want to do.

From my perspective, this is a fundamentally different kind of game than anything I've played in more than one or two sessions. I now know why I couldn't wrap my head around it. Thanks again.

 

[pemerton]

That game sounds like the GM gets very little from it if they are interested in any aspect of play that doesn't rely on facilitating the enjoyment of other people.

I can only speak for myself - the pleasure I get from RPGing is sharing my cool ideas with my friends, and responding to their cool ideas.

Story Now GMs are there to perform a service for their players, with everything they do designed solely to make things more interesting and fun for them.

If I didn't think my friends, who are playing in the game I'm GMing, would find my ideas interesting and fun, then I wouldn't want to share them!

It also sounds like a lot of work and responsibility for the players

In the sense that they have to bring protagonism to the table, yes. You're not the only person I've seen suggest that this is a lot of work for players, but that's not actually my experience.

The last session of RPGing that I GMed for players who were new to me, and relatively new to RPGing - a couple of teenagers - was In A Wicked Age. It wasn't very hard to explain to the players what they had to do, and they seemed to enjoy coming up with "best interests" for their PCs (that's what that game calls the player-authored priorities for a PC) and then pursuing those in play.

Here's an actual play report for that session: In A Wicked Age actual play. I think if you read it, you'll also get a clearer sense of the GM's role as "coordinator" of the fiction (by way of facilitating, responding and opposing).

 

[Aldarc]

I certainly have been wondering the same thing. Perhaps it just is their style.

Perhaps they are in the discussion, and you can ask them rather than talking about them as if they weren't here. But maybe that's just your style? Who knows?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Perhaps they are in the discussion, and you can ask them rather than talking about them as if they weren't here. But maybe that's just your style? Who knows?

I have done so in the past.

 

[Aldarc]

I have done so in the past.

And you can continue to do that now rather than choose to talk about them as if they were aberrations.