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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9246998" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't think Baker says this at all, and I wonder if you can quote any rules text.The reason the GM is inveighed to actively disclose the setting in play is not because it doesn't matter, but because it does! It provides the premise to which the players will then respond, thereby creating theme. (I'm using "premise" and "theme" here as Edwards does in <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">this essay</a>: "Narrativist role-playing is defined by the people involved placing their direct creative attention toward Premise and toward birthing its child, theme. . . . Theme is defined as a value-judgment or point that may be inferred from the in-game events.")There cannot be theme - the expression by the players of a value judgement, a "little something", through their play of their PCs - unless the premise is presented to them. And given the general form of RPGing, this presentation will be done by the GM, in their framing of situations. In DitV, the situation is the GM's prepared town. Hence, for the game play to happen the GM must actively reveal the town in play!I think this is all pretty clear, and I think that you are misdescribing it, and attributing things to Baker that he does not say.Can you tell me where Ron Edwards say this?I mean, the phrase is from Vincent Baker, and it is used to describe a particular RPG (Apocalypse World). The AW rulebook notes that there are many ways to GM a RPG, but that it sets out one particular way, and "play to find out" is a component of that particular way.So I don't see Vincent Baker setting up the slogan as a general norm; and I don't even recall reading Edwards using the slogan at all.I don't recall Ron Edwards saying this either. He describes a certain sort of play - what he calls (interchangeably) "narrativism" and "story now" - in which the core goal of the RPGing is for the players, in playing their PCs, to express candidate resolutions to premises raised by the situations the PCs are framed into.He doesn't say that "this is what matters most", except in the tautological sense that the presence of this goal in play is what underpins the labelling of some episode of RPGs as "narrativist" play.Again, I don't recall Ron Edwards saying this. He describes aesthetic, and resulting structural, features of RPGing. He does not set out norms for play, at least in the material I'm familiar with.For instance, he notes that there is a type of RPGing - he calls it "high concept simulationism" - in which premise is resolved via game play, but is resolved by the GM in the course of prep and (perhaps) adjudication. He makes this point <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">here</a>:In Simulationist play, morality cannot be imposed by the player or, except as the representative of the imagined world, by the GM. Theme is already part of the cosmos; it's not produced by metagame decisions. Morality, when it's involved, is "how it is" in the game-world, and even its shifts occur along defined, engine-driven parameters. The GM and players buy into this framework in order to play at all. The point is that one can care about and enjoy complex issues, changing protagonists, and themes in both sorts of play, Narrativism and Simulationism. The difference lies in the point and contributions of literal instances of play; its operation and social feedback. ***** What happens when you want a story but don't want to play with Story Now? Then the story becomes a feature of Exploration with the process of play being devoted to how to make it happen as expected. The participation of more than one person in the process is usually a matter of providing improvisational additions to be filtered through the primary story-person's judgment, or of providing extensive Color to the story. Assuming I haven't badly misunderstood [USER=7030042]@Composer99[/USER]'s post not far upthread, that poster's experience of Tyranny of Dragons seems to be an example of exactly what Edwards is describing in these quoted passages. The question that is posed by the module already presumes theme - the evil dragon goddess Tiamat and her cult pose a thread to the world, and the protagonists will oppose this or die trying! And a significant (perhaps primary? [USER=7030042]@Composer99[/USER] will know the answer to that particular question) concern of the module is making sure that this happens by  (i) "leading" the players (and thereby their PCs) to the situation in which this question is answered, and (ii) ensuring that the players earn sufficient experience for their PCs to gain sufficient levels that the question can be posed to them.Now, as a matter of biography and personal taste, my (strong) impression is that Edwards himself prefers "story now" play to "high concept simulationist" play. But from the point of view of analysis, he identifies some key features of both, and he does not prescribe one over the other.Hence why I feel that you are misquoting or mischaracterising Ron Edwards's contributions to the analysis of RPGs and RPGing.Well, obviously you can assert this. I think a lot of RPG design, including rather popular RPG design, does not conform to it.I personally find it a rather prescriptive, even implausible, assertion. For instance, when my niece plays D&D - in what I would describe as a broadly OC or neo-trad style, using the language of the six cultures of play - I think that what matters most to her is the portrayal of her character. And this is not settled by game play. The idea of her character is something that she brings with her to the table, and game play provides her with an opportunity to express that idea, to portray her character. It doesn't settle her idea of her character.I find this very prescriptive, and personally I don't think it is a particularly good analysis of much trad play.I think that the analysis I provided upthread, which draws upon my own thoughts and experiences, plus those of Edwards and Tuovinen, is more accurate to much of that play. Namely, that what the players want is the experience of the story in the second person, prompted by their first person prompts to the GM to narration. Thus, <a href="https://www.arkenstonepublishing.net/isabout/2020/05/14/observations-on-gns-simulationism/" target="_blank">as Tuovinen notes</a>, "the player has the primary control over the pace (how quickly you go over your material) and focus (what parts of your material are particularly observed) of play, even as the GM by definition holds primary content authority."This is a completely different experience, for a group of people sitting around a table talking to one another, from one of them just regaling the others with a story. And it does not depend on any assumption that Lucy wants to work for the story - as opposed to prompt its second-person revelation to her by inserting herself into the fiction via a character and thereby providing first-person prompts - nor that she wants to be challenged by a "guessing game" punctuated by strategic challenges. In fact, in commentary I read from those who play in a "trad" style, it is often seen as a weakness for the GM to make the players guess what first person prompts they have to provide in order to trigger the revelation of more of the story. This is a fairly common way in which trad play grinds to an unsatisfying halt.I don't think that the blog on <a href="https://imbrattabit.wordpress.com/2019/12/09/what-does-it-take-to-be-a-neotrad-role-playing-game/" target="_blank">"What does it take to be a 'neotrad' RPG"</a> uses the label in this way, or that that blog expresses this prescription. As I already posted, in the post to which you replied, I think it implicitly responds to Tuovinen's critique of the AD&D game as a suitable vehicle for Hickman's aspirations, and offers more suitable vehicles for doing that sort of thing.Nor, as I have posted, do I see support for your strongly prescriptive claims about RPG game play in the work of Edwards and Baker.I think that your manifesto might be better expressed in your own name and on your own terms.</blockquote>

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