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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8265784" data-attributes="member: 42582">There seem to be a few things going on here.First, as [USER=5142]@Aldarc[/USER] says there is no particular correlation between no myth (at least in any strict sense) and story now. Robin Laws HeroWars/Quest is intended for story now Gloranthan RPGing, and is obviously not no myth! Ron Edwards has a good essay on the relationship between setting and story now RPGing <a href="http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/setting_dissection.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>. [USER=5142]@Aldarc[/USER] notes that I have used "myth" in MHRP and Cortex+ Heroic LotR/MERP RPGing. In the strict sense my Prince Valiant play isn't no myth either: it is set in Europe c the 8th century; and we use maps (of Britain from the Pendragon rulebook, and of Europe and West Asia from a Penguin historical atlas) to work out where the PCs are and where they might be going.One-offs I've run of Cthulhu Dark and Wuthering Heights have been set in the real world, and that's also not "no myth" in the sense that eg Soho, the Thames, Boston Harbour, British colonialism in East Africa, etc have all been treated as existing and ready to hand in our games.Second, most story now RPGs favour an approach to resolution that leaves some of the details "loose" so that they can be finalised/fixed/resolved as part of the narration of consequences. A striking (and notorious from other threads) example is whether or not a secret door exists, or what some secret writing says, being resolved as part of the outcome of a check to search or decipher or whatever. But other examples are probably less contentious but easily available: eg in Burning Wheel and Prince Valiant overland travel, if it is "resolved" at all (as opposed to just narrated via free RP) will typically not be resolved via map-and-key adjudication. Rather an appropriate check (eg Orienteering in BW, or Riding in Prince Valiant) will be made against a GM-established obstacle, and if the check fails then the GM will narrate something adverse about the travel (eg what it cost, or how the PCs got lost, or how they were intercepted by an enemy, or etc). Apocalypse World and Dungeon World rely on this sort of "looseness" to resolve moves like Read a Situation or Discern Realities (and AW even gives it a label to remind the GM: "misdirect", which means present the tightening of details as flowing from in-fiction causes although in fact it is being narrated in response to at-the-table prompts emerging from the resolution process).This "looseness" could be seen to be a type of "no myth", especially if one's notion of "myth" is tightly connected to classic map-and-key preparation. My MHRP and LotR games have not involved any map-or-key in the classic sense - travel from Washington, DC to Tokyo (in MHRP) or from Rivendell into the troubled places of the land (in LotR/MERP) was narrated freely in the first case, and resolved by the use of Scene Distinctions in the latter.The heaviest use I've made of map-and-key techniques in story now RPGing is in 4e D&D. 4e combat doesn't leave many details loose, and the resolution and consequences work in different ways (at an appropriate level of abstraction it can be compared to Fight! in Burning Wheel: it's quite detail-heavy, mechanically intricate resolution and other devices are being used to maintain the connection to theme and what are you willing to fight for?). But 4e non-combat I tended to resolve similarly to how I would BW or Prince Valiant, with one or two exceptions where the PCs pointed to maps and said where they were going, in which case it was free narration with the trappings (but not the actual machinery) of classic dungeon-crawling; and in the case of their travel through the UnderDark something closer to strict "no myth" as far as geography was concerned.Our 4e game was very non-No Myth in one respect: it used the default cosmology and mythic history presented in the rulebooks, and generally available to the players via reading those books or by successful knowledge checks. This myth played a big role in framing conflicts and establishing the significance and consequences of events. It was much more gonzo and less "human-oriented" than what Edwards envisages in his essay, but had some similarities.Third, the relationship between curated setting and the play experience will depend a lot on who who gets to decide stuff and who has to learn stuff, and how they do that. In my LotR/MERP game I rely on the players having ready familiarity with the basic places and ideas (eg Moria is the lost home of the dwarves). In games set in the real world, I am similarly relying on that familiarity - in our MHRP game, when action took place in the Smithsonian I chose that place because everyone knows it is has science/tech-type exhibits.This contrast with an approach to setting where the GM is expected to be the conduit of setting to the players - so for them, being told stuff by the GM is (at least as a general rule) learning the setting for the first time. At least some of that stuff is conveyed in the course of resolving actions - eg the GM will narrate the outcome of the attempt to find a secret door at least in part by reference to a prior conception as to whether or not a secret door is present (and as per [USER=6801252]@The-Magic-Sword[/USER]'s post and edit, this can be done even if the actual details are being invented on the spot). This is quite different from what Edwards talks about. It is quite close to what Gygax describes in his PHB and DMG, though his focus is primarily (not exclusively) on dungeons which are a very particular type of setting. In other threads I have called this a type of play where the players learn what is in the GM's notes or in the GM's conception of the fiction.I think two paradigms of this sort of RPGing are classic D&D and CoC. In both these cases there is a strong puzzle-solving element, and I think that's not a coincidence: solving a puzzle tends to require someone who is not the solver of it to put it forward and (perhaps) reveal bits of new information as the puzzle-solver goes about his/her task.</blockquote>

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