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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8141731" data-attributes="member: 82106">LONG ago (several years, maybe A FEW years) didn't we have a thread, where the example was something about meeting some dwarves, and then deciding to go on a mission for the dwarves, something something. The upshot was someone, [USER=29398]@Lanefan[/USER] or maybe it was someone else, being convinced that you were railroading the players if you didn't describe every single detail of pretty much everything such that there was a choice to open this or that uninteresting door, etc. even if it had nothing to do with the story and lead noplace anyone had expressed any real interest in.So, there is your answer. If the agenda is not "resolving the dramatic tension inherent in the PC's conflicts" or something along those lines, then it must basically be "inhabiting someone else's life" and every detail needs to be there. Of course this logic falls apart a bit on closer inspection, because nobody is gaming the choice of which of the row of three privies to frequent, or when to drink some water, or etc. So, clearly, the argument here is over "Level of Detail", with the more narrative agenda being happy to skip over, or at most summarize, any activity which isn't directly germane to that agenda (IE any doors which lead to uninteresting places are either narrated as "you find nothing interesting here", or simply never mentioned/don't exist). Other people, who also interestingly cluster in the "GM is the only narrative authority" camp, want to game out more details, although I don't know exactly what it is that the criteria is for what can be elided. Maybe this focus on detail is just a way of recovering some form of agency for the players?  I mean, if you spend much of your time deciding if the dwarf rides the pony or not, or what type of soup you ask for at the inn, etc. then clearly the GM is unlikely to impose something. I think, at least in some cases, this is the reason. GMs, at least IME, at this juncture are likely to 'blow things up', that is forcefully refocus at some point onto some less fine-grained agenda (IE while you're eating your soup an army of orcs shows up at the front gates, or something like that). I well recall a GM of bygone days for whom this was a trademark type of move. Honestly it wasn't a bad technique, but it smacks a lot more of scene framing than anything else!In any case, if you look at things at different scales of granularity, there may be less difference between one style and another, in play, but a LOT of difference in terms of the ultimate trajectory of the game.</blockquote>

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