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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kinematics" data-source="post: 7807998" data-attributes="member: 6932123">OK, I'm going to go into something that may or may not relate to how this discussion is progressing, but it was sparked by [USER=6779196]@Charlaquin[/USER]'s post a couple pages ago, as it reminded me of a YouTube video I watched a few days ago (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGiajG2g-Nc" target="_blank">the video in question</a>, in case you're interested). Anyway, I'm going to ramble a bit, because I'm not entirely sure this is relevant, or how things connect together. It's just been bubbling around in my head, and I wanted to post it for evaluation.The video was an examination of the differences between eastern and western storytelling.  It covers lots of ground, and is a fascinating watch, but one of the primary conclusions was in the difference between the western focus on external conflict, and the eastern focus on internal struggle.And that made me think that, while this discussion is partly about the approach to mechanical resolution of action in an RPG, it is, in a sense, also an expression of storytelling methodology.  That is, "What mechanisms do I have to make the story work the way I want it to work?" The goal-and-approach model is almost intrinsically a "resolve active conflict" mechanism.  There must be an action, and there must be a "failure state" that you are attempting to guard against.  That is, it's expressly about direct conflict, which means it's very much related to western storytelling methodologies.While some have criticized some of how I've described dealing with events, implying that I'm "wrong" in how I play because I'm less interested in the direct conflict than in the story and the characters' interactions with the world, looking back at how I myself describe things, I feel like I'm approaching the storytelling side of things from more of an eastern perspective than a western one.  The "Revelatory" style I described is more like answering the question, "What does it mean to fail?", rather than the question of, "What are the consequences of failure?"  Consequences are intrinsically an external conflict mechanism, whereas "What does it mean to fail?" is much more open-ended.  There may or may not be consequences, but the lack of consequences doesn't change the fact that there's meaning in the act itself.The goal-and-approach method fails with things like knowledge or perception checks because it implicitly assumes that there must be an external goal that must be resolved, and if there is no such resolution necessary, the roll must be irrelevant.  It is fundamentally bound to the external conflict of western storytelling, and attempts to force the story to remain within that domain.The revelatory side of things (which isn't the alternate to goal-and-approach, but I don't have another term to use here) does not assume that there must be a conflict to be resolved.  Rather, it allows there to be questions asked and answered that may not connect to a direct conflict. There may not be a consequence for failure; it isn't a required component of the story. It's more suited to exploring the internal struggles or personality quirks of the characters by creating an opening that allows them to become part of the story in an organic way.The GAA approach would handle the situation of needing to jump a chasm by asking, "Are there any consequences for failing the jump?  Is there a risk in failure?"  The revelatory approach would ask, "Is there any meaning to be found in failing the jump? Is there any story in failure?"  In both cases, if the answer is no, you wouldn't bother rolling.  But the types of questions you ask frame the type of story you create.  In the case of knowledge checks, while there is often no risk in failing to remember, there could be meaning in failing to remember.That's not to say either approach is "the one true way".  There are plenty of reasons to shift between the different approaches. However the push for goal-and-approach seems to be an attempt to use the resolution rules to enforce a very strict approach to storytelling that matches the more dominant conflict methods seen in western stories, and dismiss the validity of other ways of framing stories.~~~Caveat: Musings are not peer-reviewed. I may be making invalid assumptions.  Some may think that the thread arguments are purely an issue of resolution mechanics, and nothing to do with storytelling. However my impression of the arguments in this thread seems to closely match these divergent methods of storytelling, and I feel there may be an underlying conflict in play.</blockquote>

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