Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5957443" data-attributes="member: 42582">My own view - grounded in both theoretical analysis (especially on The Forge) and play experience - is that mechanics can make a huge difference to how hard or easy it is for story to emerge from play.By "mechanics" here I mean at least (i) PC build and advancement rules, (ii) action resolution rules, and (iii) encounter-building guidelines. Both mechanics, and the mechanical design and presentation of story elements, can make is significantly easier or harder to make encounters more interesting. For example, in Oriental Adventures (the mid-80s original), PC building includes giving your PC a family (with a history) and honour. This history and honour mirrors a default cosmology and mythos, which in turn is embodied in many of the monsters in the game. It is much easier to pick up OA and design an encounter that will engage your players (via their PCs) than it is to do so with the core AD&D books.Action resolution mechanics can also matter here. For example, the more the action resolution mechanics draw attention and effort at the table away from stakes and theme, and onto accounting and measuring and bickering over the details of exploration, the harder they make it for the GM to adjudicate encounters in a way that encourages the emergence of a story.4e isn't HeroWars/Quest or Burning Wheel, but it's not B/X D&d either. It's like the original OA, but richer.But players, by choosing race, class, paragon path, epic destiny, powers and feats get to put elements of the backstory into play, and shape it in various ways, that is noticeable and (in my experience) significant. And these player choices all shape and interact with GM choices, because the story elements are mostly integrated into the same mythos, history and associated themes and stakes.For me, the more important contribution it makes to narrative than player control over colour, is player control over resolution. The whole game is premised - mechanically premised - on the players going full-bore with the action resolution mechanics (both combat and non-combat) to see what happens - and with a set up that helps to ensure that whatever it is that does happen will be interesting and worthwhile.In that respect it borrows very heavily, in my view, from what I've elsewhere seen called <a href="http://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/" target="_blank">the standard narrativistic model</a>.</blockquote>

Verification