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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8339180" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I know you didn’t ask me, and I’m far from an expert, but I’ll try and summarize a bit. I come to this topic as someone who played D&D or very similar games almost exclusively for many years, and only in the last few years have I branched out into games that function differently.So to take your example of the secret door, there are a few ways this may be handled differently from how D&D does it. In D&D, the existence of a secret door is determined ahead of time, and is only revealed if the players have their characters perform some action (typically a search) and that action succeeds.Another more narrative style game may leave the presence of a secret door undetermined. Very often such games won’t have a map and key element like D&D. Perhaps a player has his character search the library of an old manor house. He rolls a success! The GM takes into consideration genre conventions and previously established fiction and player intent, and then the GM determines what is found through the successful search, which very well may be a secret door revealed by a sliding bookcase. What's down the secret passage? It's undetermined at this point....the players and the GM are learning together.There are other ways….different games will handle this kind of thing in different ways, some subtly different and others drastically so. But typically, the determination of what is there is not left solely to the GM. Player intent and the dice are big factors, along with genre, established fiction, and GM judgment.The games that typically get labeled as “narrative games” very often limit the amount of control or the scope of control that the GM has.  There are processes that must be followed to determine these things, much as D&D has a process for the players to follow (1- be in a room with a secret door present, 2- declare that your character will search the room, 3- roll well enough to discover the secret door).That’s just a quick take. I’m sure someone with more experience with these types of games can clarify further, or maybe offer a more specific example with a specific game in mind.</blockquote>

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