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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6987988" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think both these posts over-generalise a bit. (Assuming that by "simulationism" and "narrativism" we've got in mind, broadly, the Forge terminology.)There can be fairy-tale logic in what the Forge calls a "high concept" sim game. Some CoC games might evince this, for instance. But most of the time the fairy-tale logic will probably be managed and enforced by the GM rather than by the mechanics  - eg this sort of fairy-tale COC game is likely to be one where "We didn't roll the dice all evening!"And I think there can be naturalism in a narrativist game - Burning Wheel is an example, I think. That's not to say that BW is free of contrivance - it sets out to deliver dramatic/thematic play of the sort [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] describes, and so it has to have contrivance. But the contrivances are framed within a naturalistic context rather than a fairy-tale one, I think - or, at least, that's how I play it. It's therefore closer to a historical novel than to my traditional D&D experiences (eg it has miserable, suffering peasants rather than the invisible-but-for-welcoming-back-the-king good folk of Gondor). And a consequence of this is it is far grittier, with much more PC failure, than D&D tends to have. D&D generally has no GM advice on how to narrate failure, because success is the assumed default; whereas how to narrate failure is the most important element of BW GMing advice, because (in a naturalistic world) failure is a frequent consequence of trying to do hard/heroic/dramatic stuff.BW uses a number of player-side mechanics to try to combine the naturalism with non-GM control - stuff that, in typical ENworld terminology, would be called "player narrative control" - eg players can (within mechanical limits) determine who their PCs old friends are and when they bump into them ("circles" attribute); what the relevant backstory is that might influence some important pending scene ("wises" skills); etc.</blockquote>

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