NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6688190" data-attributes="member: 6775031">He's being cautious. He knows that his task is inherently dangerous, so he tries his best to mitigate the risk, in much the same way a PC would in old D&D. A major difference is that he knows there's a time constraint, so he's forced to take more chances than he's necessarily comfortably with.There's another difference, though. We're talking about John McClane as though he was an actual person, making decisions on his own behalf. The only reason why we can connect with him, and analyze his choices, is because we buy into that conceit.We can imagine being him, and we can imagine being in that situation. We can imagine having to make those choices, and experiencing the joy of victory against daunting odds.Nobody bothers imagining that they're the writer of that story. Sure, it's a great story, but a writer can do anything they want. There's no sense of investment in that outcome. There was a point brought up on the Happy Jacks RPG podcast - a criticism of the Dresden Files FATE game - that it does a great job of making you feel like Jim Butcher, rather than Harry Dresden. And as neat as that might be, people really want to feel like Harry Dresden.I see it as more of a Get Out Of Jail Free card. You can get away with any number of mortal sins against the establishment, as long as you don't claim to also represent that establishment. Say that you're your own thing - alongside FATE, and the many other story-telling games whose names escape me at the moment - and nobody will be able to judge you for what you're not.I think the dividing line is probably clearer than you realize. Certainly, we're all aware of how easily a traditionalist can spot any deviation from the established ideals. Or if there's a spectrum, then you can clump a lot of games over on one end where players have zero non-character agency, and the other end runs the gamut between Savage Worlds (mostly actor-stance, some author-stance) and Fiasco (almost entirely author-stance). Separating those out into just two categories can be a useful way of sorting information. If you're in the first camp, then you know you don't want anything to do with the second camp. But if you're in the second camp, and you've already accepted some amount of player-authorship, only then is the black-and-white breakdown less useful, because you have to dig further to find your own personal comfort zone.</blockquote>

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