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<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9252621" data-attributes="member: 7006">For me it all comes down to knowing how the players feel about narrative.&nbsp; Do they want to play the unfolding story &quot;realistically&quot; (from a drama standpoint) or do they want to play the board game most of the time and use the board game rules to determine what happens (even if it makes the narrative nonsensical)?Case in point as the easiest example:&nbsp; The party is in a town and the town guard come up and wish to arrest them because they think the party has done something illegal (perhaps because some NPCs have planted some evidence to frame the party.)&nbsp; Usually in this narrative situation you get one of two results-- - The party says &quot;Enemies are trying to grab us!&nbsp; Time to fight!&quot; and the players default to the board game and fight a combat because that is what the D&amp;D board game is designed for... even though it makes no narrative sense for the party to kill a bunch of random town guards (which will of course happen because the guards would invariably be like CR 1/2 while the party is 9th level).&nbsp; And the narrative is especially messed up if the players think they can just continue to walk around town afterwards as if nothing happened because that is just the way &quot;games&quot; work.- The players understand the story that is playing out and they say 'Yes, And' to themselves and each other, and choose to go along with the arrest.&nbsp; They play their characters without acknowledging the meta-knowledge that from a game perspective their 9th level characters could pretty much kill every single person in the town.&nbsp; Rather, they treat themselves and the town guards as equal participants in this narrative and react accordingly.&nbsp; Especially because they know that I as the DM am not going to make ridiculous or stupid events unfold if they do allow themselves to be arrested... the subsequent scenes will play out as they dramatically should.&nbsp; And if a fight is to break out in one of these subsequent scenes, it will be made narratively clear that yeah, the party is good to go to town.But in terms of the latter... it involves and requires trust.&nbsp; Both from the players and the DM to treat the drama as realistically as possible within the fantasy world they exist in.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 9252621, member: 7006"] For me it all comes down to knowing how the players feel about narrative. Do they want to play the unfolding story "realistically" (from a drama standpoint) or do they want to play the board game most of the time and use the board game rules to determine what happens (even if it makes the narrative nonsensical)? Case in point as the easiest example: The party is in a town and the town guard come up and wish to arrest them because they think the party has done something illegal (perhaps because some NPCs have planted some evidence to frame the party.) Usually in this narrative situation you get one of two results-- - The party says "Enemies are trying to grab us! Time to fight!" and the players default to the board game and fight a combat because that is what the D&D board game is designed for... even though it makes no narrative sense for the party to kill a bunch of random town guards (which will of course happen because the guards would invariably be like CR 1/2 while the party is 9th level). And the narrative is especially messed up if the players think they can just continue to walk around town afterwards as if nothing happened because that is just the way "games" work. - The players understand the story that is playing out and they say 'Yes, And' to themselves and each other, and choose to go along with the arrest. They play their characters without acknowledging the meta-knowledge that from a game perspective their 9th level characters could pretty much kill every single person in the town. Rather, they treat themselves and the town guards as equal participants in this narrative and react accordingly. Especially because they know that I as the DM am not going to make ridiculous or stupid events unfold if they do allow themselves to be arrested... the subsequent scenes will play out as they dramatically should. And if a fight is to break out in one of these subsequent scenes, it will be made narratively clear that yeah, the party is good to go to town. But in terms of the latter... it involves and requires trust. Both from the players and the DM to treat the drama as realistically as possible within the fantasy world they exist in. [/QUOTE]

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