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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 7108320" data-attributes="member: 6785785">To some extent, yes. You've created the circumstances that allow that elf to be a suspect. The example is hard to comment on because I don't know all the details and you do....but it seems along the lines of what I am talking about. But let's use a different example. Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. The player in your game has come up with a character....a farmboy who may have an important destiny, and who does not know the details of his parentage. You as the GM create an NPC villain that serves as a foil to the PCs. You also entertain the idea that perhaps this NPC is somehow involved with PC Luke's parentage. Maybe he killed Luke's father? Or....maybe he even IS Luke's father. As the GM, you are certainly able to steer the game in ways to try and get this to happen. You have the idea, even if you are willing to change the idea, and it is there, influencing how you introduce content. Even if that influence is as simple as not introducing content that would make it impossible for Darth Vader to be Luke's father. Now, I am not saying this is in any way a bad thing. And indeed, the play may be what ultimately decides if it is true....but I think to disavow GM authorship and guidance in this story is going too far. Darth Vader only exists because of the GM, and he is only in a position to possibly be the father of Luke because of the GM. If the GM did not want that to be a possibility, he could steer things that way. His input on the situation seems pretty significant. So if a 5E game revolves around the Dusk War....the players must have no causal impact on whether the Dusk War is dawning? The outcome is up to the players and what they do with their characters and the decisions they make. I do not see the distinction here because you are assuming that the Secret Backstory game must have a set ending. Which seems more like a Secret Future....but either way, your claim is incorrect. Let's say that I take the concept of the Dusk War and I boil it down to a very railroad type of game. There are 8 prophesied events that constitute the Dusk War, with the first being the Tarrasque, and the eighth being the end of the world. Each of these events must happen. I take the barebones PCs created by my players, and we go through the 8 scenarios that I have preauthored. If the players are able to have their characters stop any of the 8 events, they have determined the Dusk War is not actually happening. Is this not the players having causal power on the secret backstory? Does the game described sound like Story Now/Narrativistic gaming? Okay. So then how does Story Now/Narrativistic GMing adjudicate action declaration separate from mechanics? And how is that adjudication not possible in other systems, especially if mechanics can only help or hinder, and are not intrinsically tied to it?</blockquote>

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