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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8084219" data-attributes="member: 16814">You've almost achieved a nice little epistemological closure there. By asserting the premise that people think they do thing A but are actually confused and are instead doing thing B, you've established a way to refute, without any effort, anything that disagrees with your other assumptions.  In this case, you've assumed that all stories are generated ahead of time, at least in structure, and so inevitably flow out with those pre-thought structural pieces no matter what the author or authors intend.  To seal this, you assert that even if they think they do something else, the reality is that they're just confused and are pre-scripting unconsciously.  That's interesting, for sure, but it's not a useful tool for analyzing games.  It's a tool for assuming you already have the right answer and don't need to choose.I don't recall "fill in the blank" as being used to describe my approach, and would disagree that it's a useful description.  However, if you require video, look for Let's Plays from any PbtA game or Burning Wheel.  These games, unlike 5e, cannot be scripted and so showcase the playstyle well.  For 5e streams, it would be very difficult to find such a video as the predominant way to play is GM scripting, although I'm told Matt Mercer occasionally does it.  Couldn't say, I'm not a big consumer of videos of other people playing games.I think it's a category error to judge how other media is presented in terms of RPG play approaches.  Game of Thrones had many issues, show-runner fatigue being the largest reason the last few seasons failed. That and the writing team appeared to be good at adaptation of an existing story and bad at actually creating that story.  Or, my pet theory, Martin had no idea how it was going to end (he appears to write on the fly rather than scripting anything but a few set pieces -- like Hodor) and so gave the show writers something that was bad.  This fits with my personal theory that GRRM hates everyone, individually, and wishes ill upon you.  Regardless, looking at the end of the HBO series and trying to draw parallels to GM approaches is a bad fit.This seems like a goalpost slide.  We've moved from "thing are prescripted in A - B - C form by the GM" to "any fiction established prior to an interaction is also prescripting in the A - B - C way."  If there's an established NPC, or set genre assumptions in a game and those inform a GM's adjudication, that's not prescripting, that's not violating the established fiction of the game.  If I have an NPC already established in play to have a motivation, leaning on that motivation in future interactions isn't at all prescripting in the way you've presented.  If this is your argument, then you've badly presented it, and it begins to take on a trivially true nature -- established fiction should always form the baseline of ongoing fiction.Now, that said, there is a difference between established in the GM's mind and established in the play of the game.  The former does tend to lead to prescripting, because events playing out according to information only possessed by the GM takes on that forced outcome appearance.  However, that is not required to play.  If the GM is only using information established in play -- no secret notes, for instance -- then there's no prescripting; everyone at the table already has access to this information and can approach that NPC with that in mind.  Arguing that established fiction is the same as prescripting outcomes is making your statement so broad as to be trivially meaningless.Then look to games that feature this style of play instead of trying to find the video of a D&D game that doesn't usually feature this style of play.  One can ask for little else.  Again, I offer the tool that assisted me:  either assume everyone else is wrong or assume that you are wrong.  If the former, done, move on.  If the latter, take what they say at face value, assume it works, and then try to understand how that can be without pulling on your former assumptions.  It's like being told you can reach a certain ledge in a video game, but you cannot see how that can work and so assume people are pulling your leg.  You could, instead, assume that maybe they've a different perspective on the issue and it is possible -- how can that be?  You ask, and they describe rocket jumping,  You balk, this is clearly a stupid idea!  But, if you keep the mind open, and try (expecting and accepting that it will come with some failure and difficulty), you learn rocket jumping and new paths open.  You can play new levels without rocket jumping, and get good results (you did before, so clearly), but you could also play those levels with it and find interesting new things or new approaches.  Best might be to blend in a bit of rocket jumping here and there.</blockquote>

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