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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5745096" data-attributes="member: 42582">My viewpoint is shaped by the vibe I get of more traditional approaches - that adventures and campaign worlds can be designed independently of the choices the players make in building their PCs, that PC backgrounds are meant to remain primarily that (ie in the background), that the players having their PCs pursue goals related to those backgrounds are a secondary or "sidequest" issue in relation to the main campaign goal, which is determined primarily by the GM as part of campaign and scenario design.Not everyone was playing the traditional approach back in the day. I started GMing in what I'm calling the modern/"indie" approach (though not with the same self-consciousness as I do now, and probably not as well either, in part because I didn't know what I was doing and in part because I didn't have a game with the tools I needed) when I started an Oriental Adventures game in 1986.But my impression - formed back then by articles in Dragon (especially The Forum) and these days by posts on web forums like this one - is that the modern/"indie" approach  remains a minority approach to D&D play.It's hard to know what label to use. Many people on these forums react badly to explicit deployment of Forge categories, and most people on these forums use "narrativist" or "story-oriented" to describe RPGing in which the story is not the immediate consequence of play but rather is predetermined by the GM thinking hard about what it should be, and then adjusting action resolution outcomes in the course of play "in the interests of the story" - whereas the point of "indie"/modern/narrativist design is precisely that applying the action resolution mechanics will produce a story without it being anyone's job to make sure that this happens. The Forge calls the former sort of GM-driven play simulationist, because it uses "simulationist" to label exploration-focused play, and the focus of GM-driven story games (from the point of view of the players) is exploring a pre-given story. In D&D terms, Planescape modules (I'm thinking especially Dead Gods and Expedition to the Demonweb Pits) are examplars of this sort of simulationism.The games that I tend to have in mind when I use the "indie" label - but only because they're the ones I happen to know a bit about - are Maelstrom Storytelling, HeroWars/Quest, Burning Wheel, The Riddle of Steel, <a href="http://www.halfmeme.com/nicotinegirls.html" target="_blank">Nicotine Girls</a>, <a href="http://www.halfmeme.com/WFDrules.html" target="_blank">The World, The Flesh and The Devil</a>, and The Dying Earth. The last of these is not an indie game in the publishing sense, but demonstrates comparable design sensibilities.</blockquote>

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