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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6009413" data-attributes="member: 42582">That would be a problem, then, I fully concede. To easily get narrativist play out of 4e I think you have to work with what's there, which means it has to speak to you. (This is partly what I had in mind when I talked about being limited to typical fantasy tropes.)I don't think it's strongly embedded in the action resolution mechanics (with some exceptions, like divine radiant damage and its effect on undead). I think it is strongly embedded in many story elements - and not only monsters, but elements of PC build, like race, paragon path, epic destiny, and some powers (probably warlock powers the most, and ranger powers the least).And I think it can emerge out of the way those story elements unfold through the action resolution mechanics. Both PCs and monsters, in the way they play - because of their traits, powers, etc - tend to push the story one way or another in a thematically suggestive, sometimes even thematically rich, way.I <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/325283-rule-three-06-19-2012-a.html" target="_blank">gave some examples</a> of what I have in mind on a thread we both posted in a few months ago.On that occasion, in reply to my expressed preference for mechanics that will generate a thematically engaging story, you expressed a preference for the story emerging from the decisions of the players and the GM. I think that difference of preferences is manifesting itself again, to some extent at least, in this current conversation!For me, it is things like the Deathlock Wight, the Chained Cambion, and the paladin's Valiant Strike - all examples from that earlier thread - that are different. It's not the components, but the way they are assembled and put to work by the game. This is what Worlds & Monsters promised. And what was delivered, at least as I've experienced the game.That may well be true (about it being a source of dislike). Although some of what is interesting to me - like the Chained Cambion or the Deathlock Wight - is independent of the cosmology.I don't think there's any special evidence that narrativist games have to be light. The Riddle of Steel is not light. Burning Wheel is not light. The Dying Earth is a bit lighter than those two, but not especially light.I do have a preference for fairly intricate mechanics - and those mechanics can potentially support gamism as well as narrativism. (I think Ron Edwards is right in saying that some mechanical systems can be tweaked in either direction - he gives as examples Tunnels & Trolls and Marvel Super Heroes TSR-style).But I think some sort of robust action resolution mechanics are fairly central to narrativsit play, for the reason Eero Tuovinen gives: because without them, the player has to participate in deciding the consequences of his/her choice for his/her PC, which tends to rob it of the character of being a hard or forced choice.And I also think it can be enough for the mechanics to get out of the way - which is to say that I think <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/" target="_blank">vanilla narrativism</a> <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">is possible</a>:Sh*t! I'm playing Narrativist In Simulationist play, morality cannot be imposed by the player or, except as the representative of the imagined world, by the GM. . .  Morality, when it's involved, is "how it is" in the game-world, and even its shifts occur along defined, engine-driven parameters. The GM and players buy into this framework in order to play at all. . . Many people mistake low time-scale techniques like Director stance, shared narration, etc, for Narrativism, although they are not defining elements for any GNS mode. Misunderstanding this key issue has led to many people falsely identifying themselves as playing Simulationist with a strong Character emphasis, when they were instead playing quite straightforward Narrativist without funky techniques. . . Jesse: I'm just still a little confused between Narrativism and Simulationism where the Situation has a lot of ethical/moral problems embedded in it and the GM uses no Force techniques to produce a specific outcome. I don't understand how Premise-expressing elements can be included and players not be considered addressing a Premise when they can't resolve the Situation without doing so. Me [ie Ron]: There is no such Simulationism. You're confused between Narrativism and Narrativism, looking for a difference when there isn't any. . . . You cannot get emergent Narrativist play specifically through putting more and more effort into perfecting the Simulationism (which requires that the Narrativism cease), no matter how "genre-faithful" or "character-faithful" it may be. I consider most efforts in this direction to become reasonably successful High-Concept Simulationism with a strong slant toward Situation, mainly useful for enjoyable pastiche but not particularly for Narrativist play at all. The key issue is System. Narrativist play is best understood as a powerful integration and feedback between character creation and the reward system, however they may work, in that the former is merely the first step of the latter in terms of addressing Premise. Whereas the usual effect in High-Concept Simulationist play is to "fix" player-characters appropriately into the Situation for purposes of affirming the story-as-conceived . . .Once the mechanics "get out of the way of addressing premise" - and the sense I had in mind is that they don't drag the focus of play onto other stuff like tracking time, and worrying about who has which iron spike in which pocket of which backpack, etc - then the GM can frame situations that speak to the players, and the players engage them via their PCs. That's vanilla narrativism.In 4e, the reward system does not have a lot of bite, in my view. It operates at a high level, rather than being tightly integrated into action resolution and moment-by-moment play: by playing the game (which is basically all you need to do to earn XP and get items), your PC progresses through the tiers, and therefore the ingame stakes - which express the metagame thematic concerns - get higher and higher, culminating in the cosmology-shaking showdown with Lolth, Vecna, Orcus, or whomever else is at the centre of play.This also reinforces my view that 4e is limited in the range of narrativist play it can support. I think this is a natural consequence of it being a mainstream fantasy RPG.I don't agree that they have to be explicit. Flag-flying - even informal flag flying - can do the job (otherwise vanilla narrativism would not be possible). And I don't think they have to be mechanically potent either. Relationships are mechanically potent in HeroWars/Quest, for example, but not in Burning Wheel. I think it is sufficient that, via the action resolution mechanics, the players can express and pursue their PCs' drives and motivations.I don't agree. In 3E, for example, there are two ways of running Diplomacy. One is to ignore the published rules, and adjudicate "how much friendlier" the NPC gets based on some general sense of whether the player's roll was high or low. How much is enough? What is the DC? Are retries permitted, and if so how many, and what has to be offered to trigger a retry? The rules are silent on all this - hence, no conflict resolution.Alternatively, you can run via the published DC chart, giving rise to the notorious Diplomancer. No conflict resolution here, either, because the player doesn't have to frame a conflict, nor specify a task that will satisfy his/her intent, to deploy the mechanic. I actually think that Diplomacy used in this way is a player scene-framing mechanic - the GM says "You meet a surly NPC" and the player of the Diplomancer makes a roll and gets to say "No I don't - the NPC is friendly!".The key feature of a skill challenge is that it turns task resolution into conflict resolution via finality on retries, coupled with an obligation on the GM to narrate outcomes with reference to metagame concerns (did or did not the PC get what the player was after) rather than mere extrapolation from ingame causaion. (I can't remember if you've participated in any of the "gorge" threads, but that's the sort of thing I have in mind.)(I'm going to finish this post by calling on [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION], because I quite like my take on 4e's reward system from the vanilla narrativist point of view, and am curious what he thinks of it!)</blockquote>

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