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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7757723" data-attributes="member: 6873517">OK, if you want to be pedantic about it. The main thing is that in a story like Indiana Jones, the writer(s) get to make choices and often go back and edit/rescript, whereas in an RPG the GM certainly isn't the only writer. Very authorial GMs are often quite frustrating to deal with and that's where railroading often happens.  Absolutely. The GM is usually setting out the world and various events, but the players usually have important roles to play in terms of choosing where to go, what to do, etc. Nope, I don't either, but for some players it will be, especially GMs who have a sometimes adversarial relationship with one or more players (which can certainly happen). Nope, it wasn't. There are a number of moves they could have made that would have been different than the direction they chose. My main point was that the Doom mechanic is a clear tool for the GM to introduce narrative elements, such as deciding this is where the random encounter is. Given that the Doom pool is filled up by player choices, it's also something that the players indirectly control. If they see a rapidly building Doom pool, they know something's coming for them, be it a hard fight or some hazard. When... what... well, that's a good question. This is really quite different than D&D, where narrative elements are not really part of the game mechanics. Players can also exercise author type actions via Fortune Points, which let them do "dramatic editing." I'm not sure either, but the game system itself is quite wargame-y and generally lacks tools for making it more narratively driven; what ones there are are mostly grafted on. This has pluses and minuses, of course, and one can totally do without them. The vast majority of game play I've done over my years has been without those aspects. In general, the fact that it lacks these tools is due, I think, to the fact that it's an old system that much more clearly shows its wargame origins.</blockquote>

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