Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9049535" data-attributes="member: 82106">What it sounds like you are saying, but you cannot really be saying this, is that a game has to be pretty much trad like D&D or else it isn't really actually playable, and that only a few crazies really want to play a Story Now game...And if you ask me, personally, trad play VERY VERY easily slips into the mode of being low player reward! You may not even realize it, the players may not even realize how small the bang is for the buck, but it happens pretty often. I'm not commenting on any particular table or any particular RPG here. I think its something that can easily happen in a lot of games. The GM is busy expostulating about setting stuff and situations that mostly arise out of that, and the players are just sort of there. The easiest formula for excitement at that point is combat and loot and XP. And that's a fine model, Gary and Dave totally turned that into a very fine game.IME you want intense risk and reward cycles, you need to focus on character up front as the driver of the whole thing. In the end, people live in their heads, and that's where the real 'action' is. So, to get back to the OP, the obvious advice for the Story Now GM is "its never too much, focus on what the characters are, want, and do, and just keep doubling down on putting pressure on it!" When its time to narrate a scene, think of the next thing that can happen that puts some character in a pickle, and DO IT. And just basically read Apocalypse World, 3 times. Its the bible, it really is. There were earlier games, they have great ideas, there's other styles of mechanics that work fine, etc. but AW is Story Now narrativist gaming boiled down to its raw essence. Understand that, everything else will follow.And Lanefan, NOBODY rejects AW. No player will fail to be engaged by a competent narrativist GM running it clean and well. There's a very good reason the game has been going strong for almost 15 years now and has spawned 100's of children.</blockquote>

Verification