Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Indaarys" data-source="post: 9236698" data-attributes="member: 7040941">Well, that just begs the question doesn't it? The premise here is that there's a problem that needs to be solved; that theres a disconnect between what different Players want out of these games that isn't being resolved through group dynamics or just playing something else. Your question doesn't really address that. Ah, but do you really though? Given this, it'd seem that your two statements are at odds. Traditional adventure paths are certainly not conducive to emergent narratives; nor, for that matter, are the games that use them without extensive intervention by a GM. This is why I've been pretty set on emphasizing the idea that RPGs are, partially, improv games at a fundamental level. Because you can, in fact, embed the arbiter functions into the rules, and should. Improv is already a game, so it can in fact be successfully hybridized with other kinds of games, but to do so requires recognizing the rule system as a Player within that Improv game, otherwise that system is going to inadvertently cause blocking. Which in turn, often leads to all these things we consider problems like railroading, fudging, ignoring the rules, and so on. Its either that, or we don't pitch these games as games where you can do anything. The actions you can take are only whats explicitly listed in the rules. Because if we do pitch the games like that, we are introducing the improv game into a rule set that, in pretty much all cases (given the ubiquity of not wanting to see these games as improv), wasn't designed with improv in mind.</blockquote>

Verification