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<blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 2741927" data-attributes="member: 30001">Nail...in the coffin...of gaming. (kidding&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )Seriously though, I am not a fan of the novelist school of gaming, and when I'm grouchy I sometimes believe that the &quot;novelists&quot; out there would not have a game to play without the facade of a game, made plausible by those of us that play RPGs as a game.&nbsp; It strikes me as this weird bait and switch sort of thing, where players sit down with a set of expectations and the DM secretly (or not so) has another.&nbsp; As if a new football league were to come along that realized that people would really love it if every game was won in the last second on the last play, and so the games were rigged to produce this &quot;fun&quot; result.&nbsp; It would only be possible as long as:a.&nbsp; there were people out there still playing the game &quot;fairly&quot;, so that the rigged games would seem plausibleb.&nbsp; people didn't eventually catch on that all the important events and actions were fixed I don't think it's a coincidence that RPGs were invented by the wargamer side of the wargamer/novelist spectrum.&nbsp; It's not that I don't believe in creating the best possible backstories, interpretations of game events, and that all of my NPCs act according to motivations.&nbsp; It's that it seems strange to me to say things like &quot;A great DM, will have a character die&quot;.&nbsp; It implies a level of control (&quot;having&quot; a character die, rather than death being a result of choices plus dice) by the DM that I think contradicts the implicit &quot;contract&quot; in RPGs between DM and Player.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="gizmo33, post: 2741927, member: 30001"] Nail...in the coffin...of gaming. (kidding :) ) Seriously though, I am not a fan of the novelist school of gaming, and when I'm grouchy I sometimes believe that the "novelists" out there would not have a game to play without the facade of a game, made plausible by those of us that play RPGs as a game. It strikes me as this weird bait and switch sort of thing, where players sit down with a set of expectations and the DM secretly (or not so) has another. As if a new football league were to come along that realized that people would really love it if every game was won in the last second on the last play, and so the games were rigged to produce this "fun" result. It would only be possible as long as: a. there were people out there still playing the game "fairly", so that the rigged games would seem plausible b. people didn't eventually catch on that all the important events and actions were fixed I don't think it's a coincidence that RPGs were invented by the wargamer side of the wargamer/novelist spectrum. It's not that I don't believe in creating the best possible backstories, interpretations of game events, and that all of my NPCs act according to motivations. It's that it seems strange to me to say things like "A great DM, will have a character die". It implies a level of control ("having" a character die, rather than death being a result of choices plus dice) by the DM that I think contradicts the implicit "contract" in RPGs between DM and Player. [/QUOTE]

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