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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9242143" data-attributes="member: 82106">OK... Seems like an odd choice of terms to use, but that's OK.I'm not hostile to the idea, though I think the 'experience of winning' is the core aspect. I mean, why are so many people willing to cheat? The sin qua non of the experience is standing at the apex of victory, and how you got there may well be interesting, but how that experience LEAD TO VICTORY is its salient feature. I consider this qualitatively different from what is meant by Narrativists. I won't continue to argue semantics with you, but these are different things, qualitatively. Drawing conclusions from their identity would thus be a category error.Oh, I am not going to die on the hill of trying to force everyone to use it in only one way, but I think it is doing some disservice to the utility of the term in describing N-type play to constantly reinterpret it. Granting RE acknowledged your point, he STILL used it to refer to 'agenda N' and CERTAINLY VB et al have consistently done so in their work. I personally will continue to use it in that narrow sense. Again, I think drawing conclusions based on identities drawn from using that phrase in significantly different contexts is likely to lead to categorical mistakes. I would suggest that the ESSENCE of the big 3 agenda types is:G: Play to Win (discovery involves finding out if that is possible/happens).S: Play to Experience (discovery involves the exploration of the material, with the exact type of material determining what is being explored).N: Play to Find Out (discovery involves exploration of character and situation in order to illuminate the premise of play).I think those are pretty succinct and give the best breakdown.So, to take that one step further: Trad play can fall within either of 'G' or 'S' (and S is itself quite broad and admits of a lot of specific techniques, so 'Trad' is actually pretty expansive). In this form of play there is a 'limited script', formed by the existing 'myth', the setting typically, but also other related stuff like genre and such. In 'G' we have system designed to test player competency and an emphasis on victory conditions, often fairly developed currencies, etc. 'S' may also have some of this, depending on the sort of 'S' it is, but may focus much more on 'experiential' stuff, with exploration being generally a big driver, though it may not be environmental exploration.When we start to talk about 'neo-trad', we are going to find the players (more) in control of the direction of play. However they could still be engaging in the Trad sorts of exploration, its just that where they end up is under player control (and there's a continuum with trad here on several axes). As noted, the use of some 'indie' type mechanics that are typically employed in 'N' type play might be employed to operationalize player control in a generally otherwise fairly trad structure. The means are wide-ranging though and often only focus on certain specific areas of play. The point is, this is essentially going to be 'S' type play as 'G' is fairly excluded due to the problems with players adjudicating their own challenges in a meaningful way (though there might be some ways to hybridize things). For a similar reason Neo-Trad won't be 'N' type play, because the players can't effectively manage obstacles and consequences which are employed in 'N' type play. Again, hybridization could be possible with the GM or another player getting involved, but there's still the issue of N-type Play to find out, which is hardly going to happen if the story arcs and such are player curated!And then we have really Narrativist Story Now play in which nothing about the trajectory of play or of the characters is known ahead of time. At most the GM deploys some circumstances which are calculated to elicit interesting play WRT the premise. There CAN be a wide variety of premise here however. it needn't be focused on character exploration as much as it could be focused on the core premise of the milieu or something like that (IE a supers game which posits the question of whether or not super human individuals can live in human society ala The Watchmen).</blockquote>

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