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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7104220" data-attributes="member: 42582">I made a long post about the absence of pretence in "story now" play, and that the main pitfall is that the GM's framing and narration misfire - ie the GM fails to identify engaging challenges/choices for the players.I don't really understand how the post above, that you made in response to my long post, is relevant to anything that I said!For a start, you seem to be assuming that the game is not a story now one! Because in a "story now" game, the GM doesn't just "provide two choices". You come to a fork in the road - which way do you go? is not (to borrow <a href="https://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/" target="_blank">Eero Tuovinen's phrasing</a>) an example of a GM "fram[ing] scenes according to dramatic needs" or "framing . . . an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character . . . that provokes choices on the part of the character."Rather, it is exactly an example of the sort of "exploration of situation" gaming that you quoted Ron Edwards upthread contrasting with "story now" RPGing.So if I sit down to play (say) BW, and the GM says "You come to a fork in the road - which way to you go?" and there is nothing else at stake, no indication of how this choice might relate to something that matters to my PC (and therefore me as a player) then issues of illusionism are not even on the table. Rather, there is the more basic problem that I flagged in the post to which you replied that this GM doesn't seem to know how to frame engaging scenes.Again, none of this really makes any sense from the point of view of "story now" RPGing!If the GM thinks an encounter would be interesting and engaging, then why is s/he not just framing my PC into it? Why is s/he "hiding" it behind "which fork do you take"? It's not illusionism, it's just bad GMing in the "story now" context.What approach to RPGing are you envisaging?If it's a Gygaxian or Cook/Marsh-style hexcrawl, then either you've written up the map in advance, or are generating it randomly as the PCs move across it. So there is not just "placing a city".If you are playing a "story now" game, then why do we care whether the PCs are travelling east or west. If nothing is at stake, why are we wasting time on that? If the interesting thing is going to occur when the PCs arrive at the city, then just narrate - "As you travel along the road, you see a city on the horizon".If you are using the second technique but pretending to the players you are using the first technique, well that looks like it might be illusionism - but is any here doing that?Obviously it's your prerogative to disagree with whomever you want to - but which bits are you disagreeeing with?Do you think I'm wrong in saying that the main threat to good "story now" RPGing is not illusionism - for which there's no scope, because you can't hide whether or not something engages the PCs' dramatic needs - but rather a failure to frame engaging scenes?</blockquote>

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