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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 9254830" data-attributes="member: 2067">Nothing  you've said here contradicts my post, so I dunno what's poppycock. I agree that AP's need to take into account diverse characters, I guess?They definitely aren't opposites. Just maybe ends of a continuum. And individual mechanics can be more one and less another.The example I used as a more story-driven mechanic was the escalation die in 13th Age, and using that example to illustrate the distinction I'm talking about might be useful. The escalation die is something that helps to deliver a good story, because it mechanically increases the stakes in a fight in the same way that a good story increases the stakes toward a climax. It builds narrative tension with a mechanic. Nice. Good. And things still emerge out of that mechanic - namely, the story you tell is one where each fight produces bigger and bigger effects.The presence of that mechanic means also means that combats have an arc, starting off small and getting bigger. This puts a limit on how different combats might play out that means that there's less variety in them. This is part of the intent, after all - to deliver on a good narrative experience at the expense of sub-par fights that are over too quick or drag on too long.Someone who might prefer a more emergent style might not really want a mechanic like the escalation die in their games. It's OK if sometimes you stomp the enemy (or get stomped by them). It's fine if sometimes the fight drags on and you need to consider your resource spend or surrendering or something. That diversity in combat styles is appealing. Heck, it's kind of a shade of the "combat as war vs. combat as sport" conversation. The story that emerges from this gameplay might involve moments where the heroes get their butts handed to them, and that can be a fun part of an emergent story. But, just because 13th Age uses the escalation die mechanic doesn't mean that it is incapable of emergent story or that it isn't emergent in other ways or that it shouldn't be played in a more emergent style overall. It just means that combats are a little more controlled in their results than D&D combats are. Similarly, just because D&D defaults to a host of emergent-style mechanics doesn't mean that something more story-driven is somehow doing it wrong. It's a continuum, not a binary.</blockquote>

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