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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7646590" data-attributes="member: 4937">[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]: I'm just going to ignore a broad swath of this post and focus on what is useful. which is that you are finally offering a definition.  Ok, so by "curation of story" you seem to be referring to the creation of backstory and then referring to it during play.   Or in other words, this seems to be a term of art closely related to the concept of "No Myth".   Games that have a lot "myth" rely heavily on "curation of story" by the DM because someone had to create that story, where as a game that is explicitly against having a preexisting "myth" in its defined processes of play doesn't rely on "curation of story" (at least, by the DM specifically).  Ok, so I now can see the disconnect.   When you say "curation of story", my thought is toward what is sometimes called "forestory" in play - what actually happens in play as opposed to the backstory.   What you seem to actually mean most is "curation of backstory", the creation of setting, NPCs, and so forth before play begins and that D&D is poorly suited to "No Myth" style play.I can concur to you that D&D is poorly suited to "No Myth" style play.  While I have seen D&D played in this manner, I've never actually seen it work well, so to that extent I'm willing to agree with that D&D doesn't suit that style of play.  But the thing is, I'm not sure I'm convinced FATE or PbtA are good examples of "No Myth" or "Story Now" games, especially if you are defining "Story Now" as having no "curation of play" (or at least no centralized curation of play).  (And now might be a good time to get exactly what you mean by "Story Now".)    A lot of what FATE does to set up its initial state reminds me very much of a session 0 stuff I might do for D&D where we decide as a group what sort of game we are interested in, and then the GM works with them to create a backstory both as individuals and with hooks that suggest how the party comes together.  At this point in "session 0" there tends to be a lot of shared "curation of story" as players throw out ideas for what they want there character to be like, and there tends to be a ton of bleed into the setting as the players create families, foils, antagonists, and past history for themselves - some of which of importance, like a civil war I previously didn't have on my timeline.   And a lot of it wants play to be like reminds me very much of what direction I might take if I was running D&D for just 2-3 players, where I can take those backstory hooks and make them the central focus of play because since we only have 2-3 players, then we can focus spotlight pretty much entirely on a PC's character arc, internal development, and personal antagonists (or personal demons).  Where as if I'm running D&D for 6-8 players, you just can't do that because if you drill down to that level too many people are left out of play (or at least out of the center of play) for too long, so with those larger groups play tends to be about some group goal everyone can work on jointly (often one driven by story events I create as a GM to drive play forward, or what you call curation). Yes, but does that statement really apply to FATE or even most PbtA games?  I've seen some games that definitely applies to (often with some sort of revolving active phase where players take turns driving the story), but I don't get that impression of FATE which seems to have a GM, curation of story, a secret keeper, and all the rest.  So while there definitely are games that I would agree differ in category from D&D, FATE seems to differ mostly by degree.   It's a "sorta of Story Now" game with "lighter Curation of Story" and so forth.   And when I've watched people play it, that's how it seemed to play.(I should say that I'm reading through the FATE rulebook again, and oh golly do I hate it, but I'll try to avoid getting off track by ranting about everything I hate about it.)For now, can you show me how FATE meets what appears to be your definition of a Story Now game.  For example, if I read text like: "As the gamemaster, it’s your job to decide how everyone and everything else in the world responds to what the PCs do, as well as what the PCs’ environment is like. If a PC botches a roll, you’re the one who gets to decide the consequences. When an NPC attempts to assassinate a PC’s friend, you’re the one who gets to decide how they go about it. When the PCs stroll up to a food vendor in a market, you get to decide what kind of day the vendor is having, what kind of personality he or she has, what’s on sale that day. You determine the weather when the PCs pull up to that dark cave."  This sounds a whole lot like what I normally do in D&D, and while a lot of this may be improvised during a session so would a lot of this in a D&D game.  So if I'm doing this in a D&D game and it's "curation of story" why isn't it "curation of story" in a FATE game?And in particular, back to my point in the first place, if I'm deciding what sort of personality that the NPC has, and what kind of response and actions that the NPCs take, and I'm setting the difficulty of the obstacles to do something like persuade the NPC to cooperate, how is that really all that different from what I'm doing in D&D.  How am I not getting it here and getting it wrong?PS: "Finally, you’re responsible for making all of the stuff that the PCs encounter and react to in the game. That not only includes NPCs with skills and aspects, but it also includes the aspects on scenes, environments, and objects, as well as the dilemmas and challenges that make up a scenario of Fate. You provide the prompts that give your group a reason to play this game to begin with—what problems they face, what issues they have to resolve, whom they’re opposing, and what they’ll have to go through in order to win the day. " - what FATE says about GMing.  Isn't that curation of story?</blockquote>

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