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<blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 6031839" data-attributes="member: 85870">Hmm, I think I'm approaching the concept of narrativism much differently. I wholeheartedly agree with your GM approach; when i realized that &quot;story&quot; had nothing to do with GM-driven metaplot, I made a quantum leap forward as a GM. Setting the situation, then letting the natural player interactions drive the fiction produced far more interesting and compelling &quot;stories&quot; than trying to force something I thought was &quot;cool&quot; down their throats. However, it's never been my impression that that was the same thing Ron Edwards was referring to as &quot;narrativism.&quot; Narrativism as I understand it is about exploring &quot;theme,&quot; and in my mind, theme isn't about letting players explore a character concept, it's about setting up specific narrative spaces that invoke broader questions of morality and the nature of humanity. Character background by itself may or may not have any bearing on the types of &quot;themes&quot; explored in the fiction. Being a blacksmith and being politically allied with Baron Von Higgins across the river has no bearing on whether your RPG group, hypothetically speaking, is exploring the nature of religion as a political force. What you're describing to me sounds much more like purest-of-pure high concept sim, wherein the point is to allow the player to &quot;truly experience&quot; the &quot;thematic appropriateness&quot; of what it means to &quot;be a paladin,&quot; for example. The disconnect for me there is that since D&amp;D is, as so duly noted, heavily focused on combat, the idea of exploring what it means to &quot;be a paladin&quot; gets lost in the mechanical artifacts heavily present in all versions of the system. A truly narrativist system might have lots of mechanics for resolution, but those mechanics would revolve around setting up characters within an intellectual and emotional framework. Combat would likely be fourth or fifth down the list of options for task resolution--and D&amp;D has never been that (and by all indications that's not changing in 5e).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="innerdude, post: 6031839, member: 85870"] Hmm, I think I'm approaching the concept of narrativism much differently. I wholeheartedly agree with your GM approach; when i realized that "story" had nothing to do with GM-driven metaplot, I made a quantum leap forward as a GM. Setting the situation, then letting the natural player interactions drive the fiction produced far more interesting and compelling "stories" than trying to force something I thought was "cool" down their throats. However, it's never been my impression that that was the same thing Ron Edwards was referring to as "narrativism." Narrativism as I understand it is about exploring "theme," and in my mind, theme isn't about letting players explore a character concept, it's about setting up specific narrative spaces that invoke broader questions of morality and the nature of humanity. Character background by itself may or may not have any bearing on the types of "themes" explored in the fiction. Being a blacksmith and being politically allied with Baron Von Higgins across the river has no bearing on whether your RPG group, hypothetically speaking, is exploring the nature of religion as a political force. What you're describing to me sounds much more like purest-of-pure high concept sim, wherein the point is to allow the player to "truly experience" the "thematic appropriateness" of what it means to "be a paladin," for example. The disconnect for me there is that since D&D is, as so duly noted, heavily focused on combat, the idea of exploring what it means to "be a paladin" gets lost in the mechanical artifacts heavily present in all versions of the system. A truly narrativist system might have lots of mechanics for resolution, but those mechanics would revolve around setting up characters within an intellectual and emotional framework. Combat would likely be fourth or fifth down the list of options for task resolution--and D&D has never been that (and by all indications that's not changing in 5e). [/QUOTE]

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