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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4045245" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't know why you say this. The best explanation I can think of is that by "narrativist" you mean something like "railroading".Some explicitly narrativist games have reasonably low-key mechanics. Others (like TRoS, or HeroQuest, or The Dying Earth) do not. D&D (3E or 4e), played as a narrativist game, is going to be more like these - that is, rules heavy.What distinguishes narrativist (ie metagame-heavy, thematically-oriented) play from "rules as physics" play is not that it is light on mechanics, but rather than those mechanics are not interpreted as the physics of the gameworld. Rather, they are a metagame device for distributing narrative control, and (in some cases) determining the resolution of conflicts.Names not having been named, I don't know if I'm among the annoying or not. Given that I've been both logical and consistent, and have defended the importance of logic and consistency in the gameworld, I'll give myself the benefit of the doubt.Particularly as I do disagree with you.Celebrim, it's a litttle unclear whether your hypothetical system has one rule or more than one. If it really has only one rule, then I agree it is unplayable as, for example, it doesn't tell me (i) how to introduce adversity into the game, nor (ii) what counts as a conflict, nor (iii) what the parameters of player and GM narration are (eg am I allowed to explain my success in jumping to Mars by explaining "It turns out my PC had rocket fuel in his backpack"?), nor etc etc.But once I supplement d2 with the sorts of rules you suggested would be there in your original post, then I have a game that looks a little like Prince Valiant, don't I? I'm not sure why it would be unplayable. I also don't know why anyone would assume that the d2 rolls modelled anything in the gameworld. They would obviously be a device for saying either "Yes" or "No" to a player's attempt at specifying a certain gameworld situation. The explanation for that situation (assuming the player wins the d2 roll), and thus the ingame physics, would be narrated by the play (as per the rocket fuel explanation above). And such physics may well have mass, space, time etc, (or no not, if we play in a more Toon-ish approach - this is why supplemental rules about the source and context of adversity matter).Of more mainstream games, Conan OGL has a similar feature in its rule that permits a player to spend a Fate Point in order to specify or change the gameworld to a limited extent. Does anyone really suppose that such Fate Point expenditure correlates to any physics of the gameworld? (Can Conan change the world by wishing?) It is a purely metagame device, for giving the player a limited degree of narrative control.You have not actually addressed this issue, despite the fact that I have raised it in numerous posts: some mechanics in some RPGs are expressly not about the physics of the gameworld. They are about the distribution of narrative control at the gaming table. The physics of the gameworld are the product of the decisions made by those exercising that control.The first assumption, in a narrativist game, presumably would be "I have narrative control (or plot protection in the form of hp and other aspects of the action resolution mechanics) in respect of my PC, that I do not have in respect of the NPCs in this world." Such a thought is consistent with the thought that the ingame universe works the same way in respect of both - its just that, as far as those workings are concerned, the player has some control over them when they implicate his or her PC (just as the GM has some control over them when they implicate an NPC).And I don't think that the assumption I have described will necessarily create any problems. Many published RPGs expressly state it, and are played in accordance with it.And what is this rule? It is obviously not part of the physics of the gameworld - there is nothing about PCs, qua ingame beings, that makes it impossible that they should enter the service of a lord. It is an obvious metagame rule.I'll say it again: if you refuse to distinguish gameworld and metagame - and so refuse to distinguish between the physics of an imaginary universe, and the rules for handling the interactions of players in the actual universe - then of course narrativist play will look strange and problematic. That is why narrativist play begins by drawing the gameworld/metagame distinction very clearly.As would I. The point of plot protection rules is to undergird players' protagonism via their PCs. A GM undermining that by ignoring or breaking the rules is not good.This response depends upon assuming what the narrativist does not, namely, that the action resolution mechanics are the physics of the gameworld, rather than a device for undergirding player protagonism by way of PC plot protection. As such, it is not the response that would be universally had. (To draw another parallel to Conan OGL: if the players found a dead NPC at the end of a battle, would they ask themselves "Why did she not spend a Fate Point?" I assume not - the players know that Fate Points are a purely metagame device, to give the players limited control over their PCs' fates.)This is one possible way of handling the action resolution mechanics in the game. There are others. For example, in a fortune in the middle system, how do we know whether Black Bob's foot got stuck in the stirrup? Well, if the PC wins the conflict againt Black Bob, then the player has licence to state that Black Bob's foot got stuck in the stirrup, and Black Bob was dragged across the landscape. In this latter sort of game (eg HeroQuest), no one would suppose that the action resolution rules are the physics of the gameworld. They don't tell us what is taking place in the gameworld. They distribute the right to determine that across the players and GM within certain parameters - and those parameters are driven by metagame considerations, not ingame logic.</blockquote>

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