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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6061769" data-attributes="member: 42582">And for yet others of us, &quot;playing the game&quot; is (collectively) generating a story - using the basic technique of &quot;GM frames a thematically-laden situation and the players engage it via their thematically-invested PCs&quot;.The first version of D&amp;D I used to play in this fashion was Oriental Adventures (mid-80s version). Not ideal for it, but not hopeless either.I think your footnote is probably right.For me, the big challenge is finding a way to run an &quot;epic story&quot; game where the story is not predetermined by the GM (I'm not interested in railroading) but will be reliably generated by play. This is partly about player attitudes, but mechanics also matter. I think AD&amp;D's mechanics had some serious limitations in this respect, although (as I said above) weren't completely hopeless for it. The design of many post-Dragonlance modules, on the other hand, I won't try and defend!As far as editions are concerned, I find 4e far and away the best edition for GMing &quot;story now&quot; D&amp;D. (This is both on the mechanics side and the story side.)I personally don't think that an ever-increasing pile of corner-case rules is very helpful for GMing grand, sweeping epics. A grand, sweeping epic doesn't particularly need rules to distinguish between being stabbed by a spear and being stabbed by a sword, or between slipping on ice and slipping on mud. On the other hand, in my view at least, it does need rules that will support (i) the players being able to have an affect on the storyline other than via combat, and (ii) the players being able to take the story in directions different from what the GM may have anticipated. The history of RPG design shows that these things aren't as easy as they might seem at first blush!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6061769, member: 42582"] And for yet others of us, "playing the game" [I]is[/I] (collectively) generating a story - using the basic technique of "GM frames a thematically-laden situation and the players engage it via their thematically-invested PCs". The first version of D&D I used to play in this fashion was Oriental Adventures (mid-80s version). Not ideal for it, but not hopeless either. I think your footnote is probably right. For me, the big challenge is finding a way to run an "epic story" game where the story is not predetermined by the GM (I'm not interested in railroading) but will be reliably generated by play. This is partly about player attitudes, but mechanics also matter. I think AD&D's mechanics had some serious limitations in this respect, although (as I said above) weren't completely hopeless for it. The design of many post-Dragonlance modules, on the other hand, I won't try and defend! As far as editions are concerned, I find 4e far and away the best edition for GMing "story now" D&D. (This is both on the mechanics side and the story side.) I personally don't think that an ever-increasing pile of corner-case rules is very helpful for GMing grand, sweeping epics. A grand, sweeping epic doesn't particularly need rules to distinguish between being stabbed by a spear and being stabbed by a sword, or between slipping on ice and slipping on mud. On the other hand, in my view at least, it does need rules that will support (i) the players being able to have an affect on the storyline other than via combat, and (ii) the players being able to take the story in directions different from what the GM may have anticipated. The history of RPG design shows that these things aren't as easy as they might seem at first blush! [/QUOTE]

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