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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7996801" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's over 20 years since I played (as opposed to GMed) D&D, but in that game I (as my PC) proposed to someone - another PC - and we were married. In my Rolemaster game various PCs pursued various romances, some of which ended in marriage.In my Prince Valiant game, three of the four PCs - the three knights - are married. One was railroaded into it by his bride; one successfully wooed the lovely Violette (and was successful in competition with the railroaded one); one made the arrangement for political reasons (and the player spent a Storyteller Certificate to make sure it worked - meaning the same certificate wasn't available for other uses such as guaranteeing victory in combat).I keep coming back to Prince Valiant because it is an ur-narrativist game yet does not have a mechanic anything like a Fate compel or even BW Wises or Circles. Nor does it have anything like MHRP Milestones; the "XP" system is fame, which is awarded by the "Storyteller" (GM) for deeds accomplished. In my experience - derived from play - when you tell players they are playing Arthurian knights, and you tell them that a knight is refusing to let anyone cross the bridge without jousing him, then they will take up that challenge. And from that the game will unfold - in our game they have wooed maidens, cultivated alliances, established a military order, and now are riding through what was once Dacia on their way to Constantinople, intending to fight a crusade. When they were attacked by Huns they defeated the leaders and chased down the rest, sparing them subject to a promise to convert to Christianity - and now their order includes a unit of auxiliary mounted archers.This is not great literature, but it's fun FRPGing and is driven by the players within the confines of the genre (rather light-hearted mediaevalism). And the only mechanics needed are straightforward action resolution in both physical and social/mental endeavours (mechanically the system is based around Brawn and Presence). I don't think it's a coincidence, either, that our game has worked, and worked out, as it has. It's because Greg Stafford was a brilliant designer, and came up with a PC build framework and resolution system that - within the context of the genre - will permit and encourage players to play their PCs as romantic heroes.Your contrast of dice/accounting game interspersed with min-sessions of "let's pretend?" seems to ignore (or deny?) that there can be straightforward action resolution mechanics that are non-combat ones and that allow the players to impose their vision upon the fiction. My own experience in a range of systems - Prince Valiant, obviously, but also Rolemaster, BW, Cortex+ Heroic, In a Wicked Age, and even 4e D&D - makes me think differently. I don't accept the contrast. It's possible to have a RPG that lacks Fate-style mechanics of direct player authorship unmediated through action declaration for the PC, but that allows players to pursue a narrative agenda.I think you are running together players pursuing an agenda for their PCs and players having mechanics that allow them to establish fictional elements that are causally independent of their PCs' actions. Prince Valiant has plenty of room for the former though very little of the latter (a couple of uses of a Storyteller Certificate come close to this). Apocalypse World has plent of room for the former though very little of the latter.I can't comment on 3E D&D, which I've played little of, nor 5e, which I've played none of. But 4e can easily accommodate players pushing a narrative agenda - it even has a discussion of this in its PHB and DMG, under the label of "player-designed quests" - although it too has few (and at a given table can easily have no) mechanics that allow players to establish ficitonal elements that are causally independent of their PCs' actions.What makes AD&D weaker in this respect, in my view, is not its lack of those sorts of mechanics but rather the weakness of its basic action-resolution system, which barely extends beyond combat. I can't remember how I handled this over 30 years ago GMing Oriental Adventures, but I suspect I pushed the AD&D reaction rules as hard as I knew how to at the time (OA uses modifiers to reaction rolls as a recurring mechanical device for reflecting hierarchies, loyalties and affiliations).I recognise that plenty of D&D referees ignore PC backstories. Maybe some of those GMs suddenly become adept at shared narrative when they start playing Fate - which would go back to my comment upthread that a different mechanical framework might make some possibilities obvious that hitherto were not noticed. But a D&D GM who wants to start running a player-driven game can try if s/he wants. 4e will allow for it. 5e might, if some sort of finality is introduced into non-combat resolution.Or s/he can change systems. But in making that change I wouldn't be looking for compels or some analogue of a fate-point economy. I'd be looking for binding action resolution across the board. My personal recommendation would be Prince Valiant, but that's because I'm a sucker for mediavalistic romance. Or for more crunch and more grit, Burning Wheel.As I've said, I don't have Fate experience. But MHRP - as I read it and as I've experienced in play - is designed so that the players can pursue their Milestones largely independently of the details of the situation the GM puts in front of them. Eg, and as you said, the Black Panther's player can seek his queen among any of the characters present in the action.I think this is deliberate. It reflects the dramatic structure of Marvel comics (at least the ones I'm familiar with, which is roughly from the beginning through to the mid/late-90s), in which the heroes play out their passions, quests etc against a background of threat-of-the-month. In our Cortex+ Heroic games the same thing has happened - eg the trickster did his tricksy stuff when he abandoned the other PCs in the caverns of the dark elves while he stole and ran off with said elves' gold; but he could have done the same sort of thing in many other contexts.I'm approaching our current MERP/LotR Cortex+ Heroic game in a similar way - eg Gandalf can offer advice, and provide aid resulting from his travels, pretty much regardless of the current situation. It's quite different in this respect from, say, Burning Wheel or even Prince Valiant.</blockquote>

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