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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9639699" data-attributes="member: 82106">Except those principles are written in the book (at least in AW/GW/BitD) so they're pretty objective. Of course people are people and they don't always interpret them consistently, etc. So, of course there's variation in quality. Even good GMs now and then botch something or at least put something out there that doesn't quite end up doing what it was supposed to. I guess what I'm saying is that trad principles are much more internal to the GM than Narrativist ones are.I cannot remember the last time I really did something I'd call negotiating with the GM. I guess something a bit like that happens in specific BitD situations, like if you are wanting a Devil's Bargain you might angle for a certain thing, make some suggestions, something like that. But I don't need to bargain to get what I want, I have all sorts of character resources in most games (certainly in BitD). Anyway, say I am hoping for a trap on the safe, seems like a thing I can handle well. So, I recon in info gathering and ask the question "Is there a trap on X's safe?" The fiction can be I do a favor for the local locksmith, or whatever. I tool up with a special gear designed to deal with said trap that I've already ascertained is likely to be there. How likely do you think it is that no such trap is going to be there for my sly trap handling self to work on? I didn't negotiate, I just signaled what I wanted to see in play! Now, when the time comes and we're way short of time, so the position is desperate, and it looks like the ghost is going to manifest from the trap, maybe I have a choice "hey, you can dump your cousin's spirit out of that bottle you collected last week and trap this ghost..." How bad do I want in that safe? That's what BitD is about! And that's what the GM's techniques and principles are designed to bring about.In trad play it is much more fruitful for me to reason like "Mike Pockette is a rat bastard of a GM, how is he going to specifically screw my character? Aha, there's going to be an anti-magic zone around the safe!" vs trying to yank out of my already incomplete knowledge of the scenario all the possibilities that are deemed by the GM to be most versimilitudinous and likely. And honestly? The later type of GMing is, IME not the one that actually produces the best trad results to start with, though overusing it is also going to be bad. Mike Pockette is a genius level GM, he knows exactly how far to go, and exactly how to get things to fall out the way he planned it.You don't have to 'sell them', you simply depict doing the things that represent those skills. Of course the GM is not going to just sit around saying "yeah, great effect!" all the time. The skill is either making sure the GM knows what kind of situations you are looking for, or finding ways to avoid your weak spots, like by having another team member do that task, or using some resource, or taking some stress, or a devil's bargain, etc. Whatever it takes. I've never yet wheedled a GM in Narrativist play. I like to think I'm at least an average good player, game-wise.I wouldn't draw the analogy too far, but my point is that most Narrativist play is much more structured in some sense as a game than the weird nebulous nothing that is non-combat play in a lot of trad games.</blockquote>

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