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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5957012" data-attributes="member: 54877">There's the narrative in the literary sense, which can be driven or emerge, from any number of factors, including those outside what I listed. For example, you or the DM could just make it up and narrate it, as pure free-form storytelling. Or something rarely if ever used, you could have a process that wasn't particularly geared to any coherent simulation, but then whatever emerges is the story: On your turn, roll a d6. On a 1 you fight a randomly determined monsters. On a 2 you find a treasure. And so forth. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> Then there are mechanics that interact in particular ways. In my (admittedly idiosyncratic) terms, a narrative mechanic is one where the decision point resides in the fiction. Probably the closest thing to that in D&D is the decision to use a major, limited resource--based strictly on character decision. If your mage lets loose his one and only fireball on a hoard of orcs, because it seemed like the most effective time for it, then that's a gamist decision ... using a game element for a game purpose. OTOH, if your mage looses his one and only fireball against two kobolds that smart-mouthed him, when the rest of the party were about to charge them and turn them into mince-meat, that's a narrative decision.  So yeah, technically that isn't a narrative mechanic in Forge terms, because it isn't designed to work that way, and doesn't encourage you to do it. So it might be more reasonable to say that D&D has always had a few mechanics that you could readily treat as little "n" narrative if you were so inclined. It doesn't help any that "metagaming" crosses the boundaries I'm trying to explore. I'm probably better off dropping the Forge discussion altogether, but darn it, they've appropriated some of the most useful terms! However, since decision is the critical distinction, let's try it this way:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Process-driven - follow the steps (process rules), and whatever emerges, happens.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Result-driven - follow the rules, and you should get a result somewhere within the expected parameters.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Rules-decision - make a choice that is intended to have the rules favor your desired course of action, so that you "win".</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fiction-decision - make a choice that is intended to drive the results to something interesting.</li> </ul>Also, note that unlike other such breakdowns, I'm explicity making no claim of purity. Especially not in D&D, I think you switch from one to another in split seconds, sometimes in the same "action". You decide to pull out a weapon and attack the bandit because you learned that he robbed your friend. You pull out the magic dagger because he has a strange glowing aura, and you don't think you have time to get in a shot with your longbow. It comes time to attack, you follow the process of attacking to find out whether or not you hit. All the magic, feats, etc. that make you good with the dagger mean that the results are something you can predict, but you roll damage to find out if you scratched, hurt, or killed him.   Right. Would have been better if I had said more clearly that the Next modular approach is the only approach capable of solving this issue. Doesn't mean that the Next implementation will solve it.</blockquote>

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