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<blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5663109" data-attributes="member: 27160">Yes, that's quite a good way of putting it.&nbsp; The &quot;concepts&quot; are there, but because of the &quot;belief becomes reality&quot; idea their nature is subject to moulding via a consensus of conceptions.&nbsp; This may involve conflicts.Bear in mind that, as I said above, we never really got to play PS with a Narrativist focus.&nbsp; It's simply that, as we played it with our Sim focus, the potential for Narrativist branches &quot;popped out&quot; at me.&nbsp; Sadly, the game had to break up (why does life keep interfering with roleplaying?) before any exploration in that direction could happen.Also, the &quot;moral&quot; angle is just one option; there is also the 'Faction' angle, and the way that alignment and faction interact.&nbsp; The Harmonium, for example, as mentioned by [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION], believes in &quot;harmony through superior firepower&quot; - or, in slightly more nuanced terms, &quot;harmony is the most important value, and those who are unharmonius can only be included in that harmony by compulsion&quot;.&nbsp; This is almost set up for there to be a clash of some kind between a Harmonium Paladin's faction and alignment; but &quot;you can lead a player to drama, but you can't make him think&quot;...The potential is certainly there for coercion and predetermined answer play, because the &quot;source system&quot; (2E AD&amp;D) was, on the face of it, prescriptive about alignment.&nbsp; The Factions, simply by &quot;virtue&quot; of their nature (similar to political parties) will act to protect their own &quot;orthodoxy&quot;.&nbsp; But I don't recall (it's been a while) that the setting material reinforced this, at all.&nbsp; Quite the opposite, just through the maxim of &quot;reality is what you (collectively) believe it to be&quot;.Nothing stops a DM deciding that &quot;everybody else disagrees with you and won't change their minds&quot;, and so determining the answers without reference to the players.&nbsp; That's just the nature of DM-ed play, I think, and there are no systemic mechanisms for changing reality on the level of alignments and &quot;crowd psychology&quot; - because it's D&amp;D we're talking about.Nevertheless, if a group wants to play with these concepts, the basic nature of the setting as described caters to that.In the setting as written, reality in it's totality is a &quot;question to be settled&quot;.&nbsp; Whether a particular DM or player group can &quot;grok&quot; this, given the mechanical support in AD&amp;D, is another matter entirely.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Balesir, post: 5663109, member: 27160"] Yes, that's quite a good way of putting it. The "concepts" are there, but because of the "belief becomes reality" idea their nature is subject to moulding via a consensus of conceptions. This may involve conflicts. Bear in mind that, as I said above, we never really got to play PS with a Narrativist focus. It's simply that, as we played it with our Sim focus, the potential for Narrativist branches "popped out" at me. Sadly, the game had to break up (why does life keep interfering with roleplaying?) before any exploration in that direction could happen. Also, the "moral" angle is just one option; there is also the 'Faction' angle, and the way that alignment and faction interact. The Harmonium, for example, as mentioned by [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION], believes in "harmony through superior firepower" - or, in slightly more nuanced terms, "harmony is the most important value, and those who are unharmonius can only be included in that harmony by compulsion". This is almost set up for there to be a clash of some kind between a Harmonium Paladin's faction and alignment; but "you can lead a player to drama, but you can't make him think"... The potential is certainly there for coercion and predetermined answer play, because the "source system" (2E AD&D) was, on the face of it, prescriptive about alignment. The Factions, simply by "virtue" of their nature (similar to political parties) will act to protect their own "orthodoxy". But I don't recall (it's been a while) that the setting material reinforced this, at all. Quite the opposite, just through the maxim of "reality is what you (collectively) believe it to be". Nothing stops a DM deciding that "everybody else disagrees with you and won't change their minds", and so determining the answers without reference to the players. That's just the nature of DM-ed play, I think, and there are no systemic mechanisms for changing reality on the level of alignments and "crowd psychology" - because it's D&D we're talking about. Nevertheless, if a group wants to play with these concepts, the basic nature of the setting as described caters to that. In the setting as written, reality in it's totality is a "question to be settled". Whether a particular DM or player group can "grok" this, given the mechanical support in AD&D, is another matter entirely. [/QUOTE]

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