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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8355838" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, the players only choices here are those presented by the GM. GM says &quot;there is a homestead&quot;, sure the players can say &quot;nope, not going there&quot; but then the ball is back in the GM's court! At some point there are a finite number of meaningfully distinct actions the PCs could take in terms of &quot;we are going on to a new scene now.&quot; Each of those is a 'menu choice' presented by the GM, unless the players decide to attempt to take control of the narrative. Classic RPGs don't give that option, so the story still comes entirely from the GM in that type of system.In terms of going into the homestead, sure, but again there's a finite menu of options that are genre appropriate, etc. It isn't action declarations that make it possible for the players to get control, it is the way BW allows action resolution to be told by the player, not the GM.Right, so I think the difference between trad and Story Now, at least in how I've seen it, WRT the plot is that trad games are menus of choices, the GM writes the menus, the players only pick from those. At best they 'pick' a choice the GM didn't write down, and he pretends he did, and serves up his rendition of that.Story now games universally, IME (albeit perhaps limited) provide that when a player attempts an action, they get to describe the desired outcome of success, and the only bounds on that are genre and maybe willingness of the rest of the table to accept whatever the player offers. Now, in some game systems this stuff can be limited to specific sorts of actions, or require the spending of meta-currency, or whatever. Pretty universally though, the GM is disallowed from saying 'no'. Its not HIS STORY to present, there is no preordained path at all. A LOT of traditional RPG players insist there's no difference, oddly, which always bemuses me, lol.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8355838, member: 82106"] Well, the players only choices here are those presented by the GM. GM says "there is a homestead", sure the players can say "nope, not going there" but then the ball is back in the GM's court! At some point there are a finite number of meaningfully distinct actions the PCs could take in terms of "we are going on to a new scene now." Each of those is a 'menu choice' presented by the GM, unless the players decide to attempt to take control of the narrative. Classic RPGs don't give that option, so the story still comes entirely from the GM in that type of system. In terms of going into the homestead, sure, but again there's a finite menu of options that are genre appropriate, etc. It isn't action declarations that make it possible for the players to get control, it is the way BW allows action resolution to be told by the player, not the GM. Right, so I think the difference between trad and Story Now, at least in how I've seen it, WRT the plot is that trad games are menus of choices, the GM writes the menus, the players only pick from those. At best they 'pick' a choice the GM didn't write down, and he pretends he did, and serves up his rendition of that. Story now games universally, IME (albeit perhaps limited) provide that when a player attempts an action, they get to describe the desired outcome of success, and the only bounds on that are genre and maybe willingness of the rest of the table to accept whatever the player offers. Now, in some game systems this stuff can be limited to specific sorts of actions, or require the spending of meta-currency, or whatever. Pretty universally though, the GM is disallowed from saying 'no'. Its not HIS STORY to present, there is no preordained path at all. A LOT of traditional RPG players insist there's no difference, oddly, which always bemuses me, lol. [/QUOTE]

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