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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4036384" data-attributes="member: 42582">That claim entirely begs the question against the competing contention, that hit points can be interpreted as a type of plot protection (ie a metagame device introduced for narrative convenience).There is nothing in this paragraph that any narrativist player disputes. Asked within the gameworld, the answer to the question "Why did the NK die?" is "Something point was stuck in its guts." Asked at the playing table "Why did the NK die?" the answer is "Because it was something that the players and/or GM cared about."At the simulationist or gamist table, the same metagame answer is given to the second question: if the players and GM didn't care about the NK, the adventure would have involved some other antagonist.You are framing the discussion in terms which either do not capture its content, or beg the question against your interlocutors. The issue is not one about following the rules versus breaking them. Nor is it about whether or not narrativist players have believable gameworlds, or rather absurd gameworlds in which the GM is the most important personage (of course they don't, at least in the mainstream cases).The issue is this: ought the character build mechanics and/or action resolution mechanics be regarded as the total account of how people and their endeavours unfold in the gameworld? or ought they to be regarded as purely metagame conveniences for resolving a subset of the gameworld (namely, the PCs and their adventures) that is of particular interest to those at the gaming table?I am not saying that there are no rules. I am saying that the rules may be different when the PCs are not implicated. In particular, the rules may take the form of strictly metagame allocations of narrative control, rather than the randomised action resolution mechanics and strictly determined character build mechanics that govern the PCs and their doings.I readily believe you that this approach to play - that is, drawing a distinction at the gaming table between those ingame elements which matters and those which don't (or at least not in the same way), and having the rules treat them differently - hurts your sense of immersion, as you explain in this paragraph (although you refer to the distinction existing in your PC's mind, whereas I believe that you mean it exists in your mind - the mind of your PC is purely imaginary, and thus it needn't entertain the distinction if you specify that it does not): But in my view you do not help your explanation of your experience of RPG immersion by, in various ways, framing the discussion so as to fail to capture what is at stake, and also (inadvertently or not) so as to paint those with whom you are discussing in a pejorative light.But the dragon could also have killed you (both according to the rules, and within the ingame context). You didn't beat it because you were invulnerable (a 20th level Fighter in D&D, unlike Superman, is not invulnerable). You beat it because the Fates were on your side. Now, your preferred playstyle may reject the way my preceding paragraph interprets the relationship between rules and gameworld. But that interpretation does not generate the implications with which you mock it. In particular, the inference from "High level NPCs may die from riding accidents" to "The best way to kill a high level NPC is to gift him or her a horse" is so absurd that I can't really believe you intend it seriously.Generally, being called a "cheater" or a "rulebreaker" would be taken as criticism, in the context of a discussion of how a game should, or might legitimately, be played.I accept that you may not intend it as such, but those words have connotations which intention cannot really negate.See, comments like this imply that narrativist gaming is about producing stories, which will be shoddy and therefore not worth producing. That could also be interpreted as critical of narrativist play (or perhaps of the literary taste of narrativist players).Again, I don't suggest that you meant to criticise. But, with respect, I do think that you are missing the point of narrativist play. Allow me to illustrate by way of an example from a different artisitic domain: I like to play the guitar and sing songs, to myself, to my partner, to my daughter. None of us (except perhaps my daughter, who is too young to have sound judgement) believes that my playing and singing is on a par with those whose songs I like to play and sing (Dylan, Cohen, Marley, etc). For me, the pleasure consists in the fact that is is my own creative act. For my partner, the pleasure consists in it being me - someone to whom she is very close - experiencing her partner's creative act.Likewise in narrativist play. It is the fact that it is the creative act of me, and my friends, that produces pleasure. I wouldn't pay to watch us do it, just as I wouldn't pay to watch myself play and sing. But I don't play and sing just because it's cheaper than paying for a concert ticket. And I don't enjoy narrativist RPGing just because it's cheaper than paying for a theatre ticket.I must confess I can't interpret your position as gamist, because the question of how NPCs resolve their interactions when PC protagonism is not implicated is not something that I can relate to gamist play priorities. How would this affect your capacity to use your PC as a vehicle for "stepping on up" and overcoming challenges?Your motivation - namely, preservation of immersion in the gameworld - seems to be precisely the sort of motivation that epitomises simulationist play (in the Forge sense of that term).</blockquote>

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