Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fenris-77" data-source="post: 9844620" data-attributes="member: 6993955">I didn't actually suggest that it moves from shared imaginary space to story. I think, as others have suggested that it might be fashioned into a story after the fact, but in terms of what's happening I'll confine my example resolutely to something more like 'the exploration of the shared imaginary space'.I don't see map and key resolution as a special case here at all. The map and key is simply the form in which the rules suggest that setting conent be preloaded. Map and key also directly indexes the rules at almost every step via encounter rolls, reactions rolls, and trap rolls (on the fortune side) and an on the exploration procedure in the rules on the other (the non-fortune bits.I agree, but I'm not sure how this is relevant to my main point. Different games provided different motivations for how the GM and the players via their avatars decide to act, but what actually happens at the table remains functionally the same. I don't think it's obvious that a desire to, as you say, work through the DMs material accurately describes what D&D players want to do either. That isn't to deny that the material in question exists, or that it informs a lot of what happens at the table, but I don't think that's what motivates D&D players. Personally, I've never had a similar thought in my life when playing D&D. The setting, through description and action takes on an immediacy at the table that I think is far more important to play. D&D is an excellent example of a game that happens one situation at a time, with each situation being the immediate focus of play. The reality of the 10x10 room with its lone orc guarding a chest is what the players are engaging with, regardless of whether a description of that orc was sitting somewhere in the GMs prep. Moreover, I don't think players care a fig for the idea of working through the GMs prep. I think the GM probably does, but in many cases only to the extent that DMing situations that escape her notes is rather more work and carries more 'risk'.Quite a lot of more modern OSR design focuses on various ways to better link these dungeon situations together. Things like factions to engage with, room contents that connect various areas, all sorts of things. All in the service of providing better connective tissue to the situations detailed on the map and key (and some games eschew the map and key all together while retaining the setting trappings and basic game experience.)Well, I didn't say they were the same thing, only that both are examples of 'narrative' elements, a proto-narrative if you will - a suggestion of situation to come. All of these exists across a wide range of games (fronts aren't unique to AW, I use them in my Shadowdark play, for example).I think you're digging too deep for a rationale for 'always say what your prep demands'. Fronts and their ever-advancing elements (once begun) do indeed allow the GM to disclaim some elements of decision making, but I think the why is simpler than you seem to think. When you have prep, any amount of prep, that sets some setting elements in motion those become a part of the logic of the setting. The front in AW provides another stable handhold for the GM when it comes to adjudication. In this light the front does the same job as the map and key - it stabilizes setting elements. More generally, what I mean here is that when the GM knows that X, Y, and Z are going to happen (as described in the front) those become a tool rather than work in and of themselves. These stable setting elements free the GM to concentrate their creative and descriptive energies elsewhere.I think it's the elsewhere that really separates AW play from dungeon play. AW has a much stronger idea about what the GM should be doing, in addition to the simply descriptive and here's is where AW's focus on character connections and internal motivation really shine (IMO anyway).But this doesn't mean that AW isn't a game that progresses one situation at a time. Or that game play doesn't focus on the immediate problem or challenge faced by the current situation. AW quite obviously plays out precisely like that, regardless of how the nature or specifics of the problem were arrived at. However, the connective tissue provided by the rules, the fashion in which the game closely ties those situations to other existing setting elements is far tighter and more reactive. This post is already long, so I'll reserve my thought about plot and the more literary concerns like rising action and resolution for a future post.</blockquote>

Verification