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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8159404" data-attributes="member: 16814">[USER=6795602]@FrogReaver[/USER] ,To expand on the above, framing is absolutely key.  Framing in the games like AW, DW, BitD, and BW are such that they immediately put pressure on the characters or something the characters care about.  Your river example puts no immediate pressure on the characters, nothing is put into risk or at stake by the river, and that makes it just a simple bit of flavor in the context of the way these games play.  So, it would be perfectly fine if the players generate some fiction to bypass it because it wasn't doing anything else and it's just flavor.A river blocking the way when you're being closely pursued by dangerous enemies, though, that's interesting!  And, indeed, the result could be just as you say -- a move by the player, on a success, might indeed bypass the river as an obstacle, but it won't bypass the players being pursued, so it hasn't actually resolved the issue, just one obstacle along the way.  And, there's also a lot at stake here -- a failure or complication could have serious outcomes!  This is the kind of play that occurs -- the important bit isn't the river, but being chased.  And, if you take an action that could lose the pursuit, then you'd see that this kind of action looks very much like the kinds of successful actions to a similar situation in D&D -- a hide or stealth or false trail or....  So, the argument that you can just author a solution to an obstacle ignores that this kind of thing also happens in "mainstream" games.  The real difference is if it's the GM establishing all of the fiction of the outcomes or if the players get a say.Another difference in framing is how these games build each next scene.  Obstacles in D&D tend to be independent -- the existence of orcs in the next room is largely independent of the locked door to that room.  Each is established by the GM as an obstacle, and the players are using their skill and character abilities to navigate the obstacles.  Sure, the available resources the characters have is continuously dwindling, but the obstacles are largely independent of each other outside of this.  In Story Now, though, there's no such thing as an independent obstacle -- each one in the chain is entirely dependent on the way the previous ones resolved.  So, to get to the river example, it really need that larger context to be understood inside the Story Now games' frameworks.  The river as an independent obstacle doesn't make any sense and can't be successfully analyzed because it would never happen.</blockquote>

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