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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4514709" data-attributes="member: 42582">I like your simple example.What about a more complex example (a version of which actually came up in my campaign)? A Paladin has to find a way to bind an Elder Evil, and the player has to choose what his/her PC should do. There are at least 2 options:a) Research a spell that will do the job.b) Start working out the resources of her monasitc order (which have never really come into play before) and explain to the GM how she is able to found a branch of her order on the earthly side of the gate, which will then oversee the gate and make sure that it is not breached.In AD&D or 3E the rules permit virtually any magical effect to exist, and thus option (a) is fully simulationist, or (in HowandWhy's terminology) a purely roleplaying option. Option (b), however, appears to have authorial dimensions to it, as the player is specifying aspects of the gameworld that previously were indeterminate, and explaining how they are adequate to the task.My player adopted option (b). In telling me how his PC goes about setting up the order, I think that the player is both roleplaying (ie adopting the role of his paladin PC) and participating in the telling of a story (ie about the existence of a monastic order of paladins, and the foundation by his PC of a branch of it to guard the gate behind which is locked an Elder Evil). The challenge to the player was not simply like working out how to use a hammer and chipped dagger to escape the room. But nor was it just a matter of specifying that one of the PC's previously unspecified tools is a key. It was far more intricate than that. It is in the intracacy of the narration, and it's integration with what has gone before in the game and in the gameworld that both the challenge and the satisfictioin of play reside.</blockquote>

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