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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7105551" data-attributes="member: 42582">That may well be true! I'm not going to gainsay someone else's estimation of his/her abilities. I'm just wary of generalisation from one's own case across the whole of RPG-dom.I think this may relate to  [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s comments about "GM steering".In what way do you see (d) and (e) as instructing the GM to drive the story?As I see it, (d) instructs the GM to "go where the action is" - it's another statement of the framing role of the GM, whereby the GM has to frame scenes that speak to theme/premise and thereby provoke choices by the players for their PCs.If we think about  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s example of the PC's brother's hat in the brothel, that is the GM "keep[ing] play driven towards conflict". It's the player, not the GM, who chose to make the brother a significant element in play; and it is the player who will make the choices that determine the outcomes.(e) is another instruction about framing, and the use of consequences from previous situations to inform new situations. Those consequences will be the result of player action declarations, which in turn were made in response to framings that spoke to the thematic concerns established by the players. So I'm not seeing how it is "GM driven". Are you able to articulate what you mean by "GM driven"?The Perception check did determine if the PC noticed that something is there. Of course, a necessary condition of noticing that something is there is that it be there.So from the fact that the PC notices it - which is established by the Perception check - we can infer that it is there.This is certainly not opposed to the design of Perception and other knowledge checks in this system.By "playing to find out" I mean something quite different from  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]. The slogan comes - I believe - from Apocalypse World/PtbA games. I contrast it with RPGing where "secret backstory" matters to resolution - because in the latter case the GM is not playing to find out: s/he already knows.And I don't undertand why you disagree with my reference to the players finding out what is in the GM's notes. If (to quote you) the only one who can provide those answers is the DM, then that precisely seems to be the players finding out what is in the GM's notes.The vessel example is a (small) instance of "playing to find out" and the contrast with the players learning what is in the GM's notes: I did not have pre-written notes, nor create some notes on the spot by rolling on a "random stuff in a wizard's chamber" table. It was the resolution of the player's action declaration ("I look for a vessel to catch the spilling blood!") that determined that particular aspect of the fiction. That is an example of what I mean by "playing to find out". And that method can be generalised beyond vessels in wizardly chambers to other things (eg Why did a balrog possess my brother? Is the Dusk War upon us? Why is my brother's hat hanging in the foyer of this brothel? What is the attitude of this elven captain to the human nobility? etc).That's the difference between what Ron Edwards calls "exploring setting and situation" and what he calls "narrativism"/"story now" and Eero Tuovinen calls "the standard narrativistic model".Two things.(1) Non-4e D&D actually will give you some push-back if you try to run it "story now". One example I pointed to a few posts upthread is the fact that spells, including information-gathering spells, tend to grant players automatic successes. Hence they aren't able to be adjudicated by way of "say 'yes' or roll the dice". Which means they don't support the sort of setting-of-stakes and adjudication-of-outcomes that is important to "story now" play.(2) I feel that some your remarks - in this and earlier posts - are projecting some conception of "story now" that doesn't fit with the reality of these games.Eg they are not generally "mission based". There is no reason why campaigns can't be lengthy - BW is designed for play over tens of sessions, although MHRP is designed for shorter sequences of play. And the "action" can be anything from gunfights to cooking. My BW PC has Cooking skill, and I'm expecting that to matter. And as I posted upthread, I'm expecting the next session to begin with me trying to persuade my wizard companion to mend the dent in my armour.D&D doesn't really have the mechanics to make these rather prosaic matters a significant part of the game, but BW does.</blockquote>

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