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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5814671" data-attributes="member: 42582">Johnny3D3D, while I've read quite a few of your posts on these boards, I don't know that I've got a very good sense of your gaming experience and tastes, which means that what I say in this post mightn't make much sense to you.Sim is about inhabiting the game's fiction as if it were real. "The right to dream".Narrativism is about generating a fiction that is worthwhile. "Story now".The main technique to get story-oriented sim (as opposed to the process/system oriented sim of a game like Traveller or Rolemaster) is for the GM to exercise a very firm hand in directing play. The role of the players is mostly to go along with it, contributing characerisation by playing their PCs. That might sound really railroady, but in a game like Call of Cthulhu it can be pretty fun - as the GM explains to you how your PC is degenarting into insanity, you get to play the details of it.The main technique in narrativism is for the players to build a lot of potential conflict into their PCs (stuff that is thematically singificnat but unresolved). The GM's job is to frame encounters so that they have story elements that engage those conficts (GM to player of paladin: "You see the vampire you've been hunting - it's your long-lost brother!" - and now the player has to choose how his/her PC responds).If you see the challenge in playing a paladin as being one of sticking to your code - and the GM's job is to help remind the player to keep in character - then (everything else being equal) you're playing sim.If you see the point of playing your paladin as being to "say" something (we won't know what, exactly, until the game is played - if we knew in advance then it wouldn't be "story now") about the challenges, the importance, the limits, of living by a code - then (everything ese being equal) you're playing narrativist.If, as a GM, the player who decides to have his/her PC join the other side, and stand by while the cultists sacrifice another PC to dark gods, is wrecking the story, that's sim. If, as a GM, this is the most dramatic moment of play so far, that's narrativist. (There is an interplayer issue here - is one of the players happy to have his/he PC sacrificed? - but that's a separate issue from the one of who has control over the plot, players or GM.)All the above is rough and ready, and is presented from one point of view (ie mine) but maybe might get some of the key ideas across.</blockquote>

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