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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 924667" data-attributes="member: 7240">Thanks, Deadguy. I really appreciate you elevating this discussion and reintroducing some civility. I really appreciate your intervention. The style of play that you describe is one with which I'm familiar; before I returned to D&D, I had spent 4 years running very rules-light games in which there were no rounds, time was fluid, etc. While I found this style gave the players the illusion of boundless free will, I found that it was almost impossible to deviate from the general storyline I'd set up even though they could change specifics thereof. I eventually got tired of that particular narrative balance and decided to return to a heavily codified gaming system for a while.I returned to heavily codified gaming, in part, because I wanted to work with different players who enjoyed tactics and were alienated from the hyper-intellectual story- and puzzle-focused games I had been running. And also because I wanted to create a different kind of narrative dynamic with the players which, while it appeared on the surface to entail narrower storylines and less power for the players, in fact, delivered a different kind of power to the group in the narrative dynamic. Last episode, for instance, I really didn't want the duke to die; in a more fluid system, like the one I ran until 2001, the duke would have somehow been able to escape the PCs' unexpected assassination attempt and continued with his plan. But in D&D, the PCs' employment of sound tactics allowed them to kill him an episode ahead of schedule, radically altering the course of events for the city. Now, I'm not saying one style is better than the other. I've run games both ways; but I find D&D, GURPS, Runequest and other heavily-codified systems very ill-suited to flowing time story-based games. Thus, when I play D&D, it's all about the rules; I choose D&D not because it's the only system out there but because it is one of the few systems with a large enough volume of rules to create the special narrative dynamic I'm after right now. I'm, frankly, surprised that people who are into the story-based, flowing time games would choose D&D over another system friendlier to this kind of play.Anyway, thanks for your comments; I think both your thoughtfulness and respectful tone are just what this thread needs.</blockquote>

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