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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5496492" data-attributes="member: 54877">I mainly agree with the answers others have already provided, but wanted to expand on these two points:  The group is telling the story.  I'm not going to let a good idea go to waste just because it isn't in the head of the player acting at the moment. But note this is not always about empowering the player to get away with something.  I've aluded in other dicussions to our groups' frequent habit of making high Int/Wis or low Int/Wis be reflected via metagame, in that someone with a high stat/high roll is allowed to benefit from the best idea that can be generated at the table, while the low stat/low roll is penalized by having to take the worst idea presented.  And we can be pretty mean. It isn't about getting away with something.  It is about making the shared, imagined space as interesting as we can.  I don't know where you got the implication in my text that requiring a narrative justification was because I was trying to control the storyline.  It is quite the opposite--I am trying to get the players to take control of the story line to some extent, and their narration as a reflection of their mechanical choices is how they go about it. All of the above is why I think the "Narrativism" in GNS is so poorly named.  (And yes, I'm aware of Creative Agendas, and have read the later stuff several times.)  Little "n" narrativism is a word I refuse to surrender in gaming theory, because "to narrate" is the central component to anything I would call roleplaying.   I am both a hard case about this and a big old softie.  I insist that there be narration, if the thing accomplished is to be of interest to the evolving story.  I'm not at all particular about the narration being accomplished by the person with the dice in their hands.  I'll ask for details, color, emotion, and so forth on five seconds of action, and then gladly skip a whole section of an adventure, if it proves boring.  I never fudge rules or dice, but rarely have a character die, because I will simply preempt the situation or roll before fudging arises.   I'm pretty much convinced that good pacing and good narration is what a roleplaying game is always trying to achieve.  It simply takes an understanding of those two skills, the system being used, and a good mix of system with the particular players around the table--for the story they are trying to tell.   And I find myself in these gaming forum theory conversations wondering about the gap that seems so wide to me, but apparently seems so narrow to others.  It is as if every improvement or variety in a set of rules is greeted with both excessive disdain for restricting the actions available and also excessive reverence for replacing judgment.   I once built a set of pantry shelves with no tools but a handsaw, a hammer, some nails, a square, and some sandpaper.  I now own several power sanders.  I am working on some built in shelves, and the facers are rounded.  I used a piece of sand paper to finish the rounded edge, even though I used the power sanders to do a lot of work.  I think if I took the frequent forum advice, I'd either not build the shelf with the rounded edge because then I could not sand it 100% with power, or I'd not use the power sanders for the flat parts because they were not a good choice on the rounding.  Why not use the more sophisticated tools for what they do well, and still use the old stand bys where they make sense? <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/ponder.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hmm:" title="Hmmm    :hmm:" data-shortname=":hmm:" /></blockquote>

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