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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 8994708" data-attributes="member: 7023840">Going to make two points on this-I think that one issue that tends to get elided in these conversations is that classically, D&D doesn't determine narratively important fights a priori.To put it in more concrete terms-There is a possible combat. Maybe it's it's the "big bad" that has been taunting the PCs. Maybe it's a kobold hanging out in an empty 30'x30' room. Maybe it's a wandering monster. Maybe it's an NPC that could give information, but the PCs are in a fightin' mood.Generally, the PCs make a choice- fight? Parlay? Run away? Do something else? Their choices, their decisions, make for the emergent story. That is what makes the combat "narratively" important- not the DM or someone else making that determination!It's just a fundamental misunderstanding of roles to ask that the DM determine if combat is, or isn't, narratively important. If it is important to the players, they will engage. If it isn't important, they should seek to avoid it. The narrative importance of the event is best know after the event, which is how it should be given that this is an emergent story.The DM presents the world. The players, as autonomous agents, determine what they feel is important and act on it.Which leads to the second point. There was, arguably, an early split in D&D philosophies between the more preparation-heavy Gygax and the much more improvisational Arneson. This is something that continues to this day, and, arguably, continues to be a schism in how different people approach the game (sometimes within the same session). As you correctly point out- you don't need prep at all. There are people that strip away almost all of the prep of D&D until you end up with something resembling an FKR game; just as I have mentioned that the reviewer of Everway could see how that game reflected the actuality of how he played AD&D, so too can people see that D&D can both have a strong prep component, or a no-prep component, depending on the table.In the end, this very slipperiness is what drives some of this debate, because if you are someone used to a prescriptivist approach to games (sometimes referred to as "system matters") then the idea that the rules do not encode the game (instead encoding an approach, a history, and a shared sensibility) is often seen an anathema and abhorrent, as opposed to attractive.Different strokes for different folks.</blockquote>

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