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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5958548" data-attributes="member: 42582">When I talk about 4e supporting narrativist play and "story now", I'm not talking about funky "narrative control" techniques like the SotC mechanic you and Neonchameleon have referenced. Those sorts of tecniques aren't essential to narrativist play (HeroWars/Quest doesn't have them, and nor does Burning Wheel) and they aren't a guarantee of it either - they could equally suit a certain sort of high-concept simulationism.I'm talking about player agency, so that the choices made by players actually shape the plot and the thematic content of the game - the "standard narrativistic model", to borrow a phrase from <a href="http://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/" target="_blank">Eero Tuovinen</a>. 4e has a number of features that support this sort of play. One of them is the express incorporation of the thematcially-laden mythical and historical content of the default setting into the PC build options - so, for example, when a player choose to play a dwarf, they're also choosing to play a PC whose people freed themselves from slavery at the hands of the giants, who were in turn agents of creation and recreation. And this is compelemented by the comparable incorporation of the same content into many (not all) monster and  NPC descritions.Another such feature is the way in which its action resolution mechanics push towards rather than away from this stuff, and support rather than hinder player agency, in part by supporting rather than hindering GM adjudication that builds on and develops from the players' choices, rather than locking them down and constraining them. Skill challengs are an obvious example of this, but my own experience with the combat mechanics has shown me that they have the same character.Not everyone sees 4e in this sort of way. And even for some who like this sort of play an can see how 4e might help deliver it, 4e's mechanics might seem pretty clunky (I can remember a comment to a RPG.net review of HeroQuest revised favourably comparing HQ's past/fail cycle to the far more convoluted sysmtem of DC setting and encounter pacing in 4e). And that's all fair enough.</blockquote>

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