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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5871853" data-attributes="member: 42582">I tend to see this as what "Story Now" design per se is about - about ensuring that play will deliver a worthwhile story without anyone having the responsibility to push story explicitly.It's the absence of that responsibility - and so the freedom to play your character - that makes it an RPG, I think.The GM is in a different category, though - the GM in BW, for example, in agreeing to and setting stakes, has to have regard to how different choices will push and pull the game in different thematic/dramatic directions.And on a somewhat related note - I see many people who say that the 4e DMG is one of the best GMing manuals they've read. And while it's not bad, I think that the BW Adventure Burner leaves it for dead - and the Adventure Burner isn't even written for the game that I'm GMing in light of it!I'm not going to quibble over gamist vs narrativist here. One way of analysing it might be to say that BW sets up hooks/mechanics that might be seen to play a gamist function in a traditional design, and ensures that they play a narrativist function as well/instead.One example is its solution to the problem of "the face guy does all the talking" - by requiring advancement to depend upon a range of difficulties of checks, including sometimes near-impossible ones, it gives players an incentive not to always bring all their available dice, or all their best abilities, to bear on a situation. And it offers the assurance that, if you fail, your PC may suffer but the game will keep going (no defaulting to death/TPK as in some approaches to D&D).These features of the mechanics and of resolution appeal to the players' gamist instincts - what risks do I have an incentive to take? - but produce Story Now as an output.</blockquote>

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