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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chris_Nightwing" data-source="post: 6017896" data-attributes="member: 882">I've read it, and I've disagreed with it there.Don't patronise me; I've run both varieties of game too. As far as I can tell, 'fiction-first' in your mind means throwing in events based on some internal Bayesian analysis of events seen in the genre. You like drama. You like that a failed horse-riding check might result in something unrelated to your horse-riding skill occuring. In fact, your horse-riding skill is 'drama avoidance (horse-riding)'. This is fine, for games in which drama will be inherent to the genre, to the players' actions and to the narrative.But most of the time, if one of my players is horse-riding, and fails a check, then something horse-riding related will happen. This might include the horse stumbling on bad ground (part of the skill is navigating the terrain), this might include the saddle loosening (again, part of the skill is setting up your equipment properly), but it will not include a sudden change in the weather, or someone's arrow hitting your horse, these are both outside of your control and unrelated to your horse-riding skill (debatably for the latter).If you remove the strictures of any mapping then your fictional possibilities become endless! Why, an extraordinary success on a diplomacy check might reveal that you are, in fact, the king's son! An amazing arcana roll might accidentally cast the perfect spell and destroy the universe! Obviously I am being facetious, but without some monotone connection between cause and effect, the game becomes like a soap opera to me, rather than a well-plotted serial. In fact, I might go so far as to say that if you need to remove formulaic progression between events and substitute disconnected, but well sampled events, then you lack the creativity to work within tighter bounds. I typically use the non-simulation style when playing one-offs, or when ad-libbing in games with light rules, but I cannot understand using it in a game like D&D, with its tight mathematical rules.As ever, your mileage may vary.</blockquote>

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