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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7645525" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm not criticizing Narrativist games.  I think it's a perfectly valid design goal to prioritize the creation of story.I'm criticizing attempting to create story through mechanics that prioritize the mechanics that create the fiction over the fiction itself.   And in particular, when you say something like, "The fiction should be a meaningful input to the mechanisms of the game..." - something I agree with - consider how that statement stands in contrast to the one that I quoted that I disagreed with, "I would suggest that the best way that to find out that some NPC is not amenable to being persuaded of something is in virtue of the check failing. That is, it is an output of resolution, not an input into it."  That is to say, the poster I quoted argued that the fiction ought not to be a meaningful input, but rather was primarily the output of mechanics.  But if we don't take difficulty or plausibility into account, then we end up with a bad story.  The poster's example of the movie Hero, should invite us to answer the question, was the particular conclusion of the story earned?   Did the story lead up to this moment so that, surprising though the outcome might be, we accept that the story was perhaps moving in this direction all along and so plausibly should end up like this.  Critically, it was not the persuasiveness of the Emperor that lead to the decision by the protagonist.  Rather the protagonist reflecting on the meaning of the story thus far, lead to the conclusion.   It was a choice, not a dice roll.  Yeah, tell me about it.  Keep saying all this stuff I agree with, and who knows, you may find yourself agreeing with me.</blockquote>

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