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Is Pathfinder 2 Paizo's 4E?
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7631919" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>Success, in any case, you play the game for a while, achieve an objective or fail to. </p><p></p><p>Is that way off base? Does "win" /also/ have an unintuitive narrow jargon meaning? </p><p></p><p> So you /are/ insisting on system. </p><p></p><p> "In the interest of the story" has no purchase, yet this is a "narrativist" game that's all about the story?</p><p></p><p></p><p> I think it does mean the former, in that I doubt there could be a 'pure' experience of only one agenda without elements of the others. As far as enjoyment, it's often unexamined - and can even be ruined by examination - and people can identify what aspects of something they believe the enjoy with a lot less accuracy than you might think.</p><p></p><p>(For an obvious example "I enjoy smoking for the taste.")</p><p></p><p> I am very down on Role v Roll, CaW v CaS, GNS and warring in general. I don't buy into the drawing of lines in the sand, false dichotomies, and divisiveness in general.</p><p></p><p>As to the role of the GM and what a skilled one can pull off, well, our hobby is not like chess, it hasn't been codified and polished over generations, a lot of us are among the first generation of hobbyists, and made a lot up as we went along.</p><p></p><p>(Back in the day, I did play in exactly one tournament - it was awful.)</p><p>But, yeah, not how /I/ see what I've seen. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> </p><p></p><p>What I've seen is a lot of gaming that doesn't fall neatly, or even haphazardly, into the artificial GNS divisions, and that, indeed, trying to pick one of those and pair the aspects of the other two off a gaming experience strikes me as profoundly limiting and likely to wreck said experience. For instance, the idea of 'gamist players' wrecking 'simulationist play' in the implied absence of narrativist play is nonsense. Because every TTRPG session /is a game/, there will be a "win condition" in there, somewhere - achieving victory in combat, or a goal in an encounter, or an overall objective - there /will/ be a setting the PCs inhabit, that the players at least occasionally glimpse from their PoV, there will be a narrative emerging from that which everyone at the table has contributed to in some sense. Nor will the experiences of those playing the game be limited to those three categories.</p><p></p><p>Though, again, we've lost sight of the claim that GNS is not supposed to be about creating divisions and positing exclusive monolithic modes of play. Yet we seem to be right back there, with you conjecturing that I haven't climbed onto the Narrativist monolith.</p><p></p><p>I have played some FATE and posted about it, but I'm not surprised you missed it. </p><p></p><p>I don't /get/ to play a lot of indie games, of course, because, as I've often said, the big issue with playing or running a better game isn't finding the ideal system, it's finding a few other people who have found the /same/ better game.</p><p></p><p> Doesn't seem relevant. But more of that in Storyteller and 4e than in harder-to run eds, Hero, and the like... also I've very often seen a phenomenon where one system gets consistently run by one GM who is very enthused about it for a while, no rotating there. Sounds like "Troup style play." Which is funny, because the definition of Narrativist seems intentionally narrowed to exclude Storyteller. </p><p></p><p>I half expect to see a capitalized "True" appended to it, at this rate.</p><p></p><p>So, FATE, as well as Storyteller is off the list of narrativist-enough games? Or just that particular mechanic, itself, isn't necessary nor sufficient?</p><p></p><p>You presented it in as un-offensive a way as possible.</p><p></p><p>But...</p><p></p><p>That's what I thought. So I don't see how that squares with the assertion that a system can completely block a style of play. </p><p></p><p>Most of the rest of your post seems to be devoted to insinuating that I can't have ever experienced Narrativist play, even though, we've just established, the very label is not supposed to be a monolithic exclusionary classification, and that, in all likelihood, play I've experienced has "shifted to narrativist" many times.</p><p></p><p>In fact, I don't even quite by the 'shifting' routine. A single play experience might shade more towards one than another at a given moment or over a session, but I can't see how any one can be entirely absent for an extended period, let alone how a game can be exclusively devoted to one.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7631919, member: 996"] Success, in any case, you play the game for a while, achieve an objective or fail to. Is that way off base? Does "win" /also/ have an unintuitive narrow jargon meaning? So you /are/ insisting on system. "In the interest of the story" has no purchase, yet this is a "narrativist" game that's all about the story? I think it does mean the former, in that I doubt there could be a 'pure' experience of only one agenda without elements of the others. As far as enjoyment, it's often unexamined - and can even be ruined by examination - and people can identify what aspects of something they believe the enjoy with a lot less accuracy than you might think. (For an obvious example "I enjoy smoking for the taste.") I am very down on Role v Roll, CaW v CaS, GNS and warring in general. I don't buy into the drawing of lines in the sand, false dichotomies, and divisiveness in general. As to the role of the GM and what a skilled one can pull off, well, our hobby is not like chess, it hasn't been codified and polished over generations, a lot of us are among the first generation of hobbyists, and made a lot up as we went along. (Back in the day, I did play in exactly one tournament - it was awful.) But, yeah, not how /I/ see what I've seen. ;) What I've seen is a lot of gaming that doesn't fall neatly, or even haphazardly, into the artificial GNS divisions, and that, indeed, trying to pick one of those and pair the aspects of the other two off a gaming experience strikes me as profoundly limiting and likely to wreck said experience. For instance, the idea of 'gamist players' wrecking 'simulationist play' in the implied absence of narrativist play is nonsense. Because every TTRPG session /is a game/, there will be a "win condition" in there, somewhere - achieving victory in combat, or a goal in an encounter, or an overall objective - there /will/ be a setting the PCs inhabit, that the players at least occasionally glimpse from their PoV, there will be a narrative emerging from that which everyone at the table has contributed to in some sense. Nor will the experiences of those playing the game be limited to those three categories. Though, again, we've lost sight of the claim that GNS is not supposed to be about creating divisions and positing exclusive monolithic modes of play. Yet we seem to be right back there, with you conjecturing that I haven't climbed onto the Narrativist monolith. I have played some FATE and posted about it, but I'm not surprised you missed it. I don't /get/ to play a lot of indie games, of course, because, as I've often said, the big issue with playing or running a better game isn't finding the ideal system, it's finding a few other people who have found the /same/ better game. Doesn't seem relevant. But more of that in Storyteller and 4e than in harder-to run eds, Hero, and the like... also I've very often seen a phenomenon where one system gets consistently run by one GM who is very enthused about it for a while, no rotating there. Sounds like "Troup style play." Which is funny, because the definition of Narrativist seems intentionally narrowed to exclude Storyteller. I half expect to see a capitalized "True" appended to it, at this rate. So, FATE, as well as Storyteller is off the list of narrativist-enough games? Or just that particular mechanic, itself, isn't necessary nor sufficient? You presented it in as un-offensive a way as possible. But... That's what I thought. So I don't see how that squares with the assertion that a system can completely block a style of play. Most of the rest of your post seems to be devoted to insinuating that I can't have ever experienced Narrativist play, even though, we've just established, the very label is not supposed to be a monolithic exclusionary classification, and that, in all likelihood, play I've experienced has "shifted to narrativist" many times. In fact, I don't even quite by the 'shifting' routine. A single play experience might shade more towards one than another at a given moment or over a session, but I can't see how any one can be entirely absent for an extended period, let alone how a game can be exclusively devoted to one. [/QUOTE]
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