I'm no stranger to half-baked theory and conjecture! But on this occasion I can't get fully on board with yours, sorry. I can see where you're coming from, but I think you're looking in the wrong place - the play loop - and equating particular technical features of PbtA and allied games with "story now" in general. I've bolded the bit that I do agree with - but I don't think that it has much to do with the play loop.So here’s a thought, and it’s not fully formed so I expect there will be holes in it and/or criticisms of it, and that’s fine.
Story Now is the inversion of the classic play loop.
The classic play loop is:
There’s more going on than just the above…the GM typically makes a ruling or calls for a roll or otherwise engages the mechanics that will help him in narrating the outcome, but that’s a summary.
- GM presents the scene
- Players declare actions for their characters
- GM narrates outcome
Inverted, it would look like this:
So that’s definitely not an accurate description of Story Now. But bear with me. It’s actually close in some ways.
- Players present the scene
- GM declares actions
- Players narrate outcomes
I mean, in Story Now, a likely first step is that the GM will present the scene or frame a situation. However, this should be based on things that the players have offered through their characters. These games have the players choose aspects of their characters that are meant to be central to play.
So the GM needs to respond to that. He has to take (one or more of) those things and frame the opening situation with those in mind. So in that sense, the first step in the loop is a prompt from players to GM.
The GM then sets the scene, challenging the characters in some way. The players respond by declaring actions for their characters. The resolution of these actions then constrain the GM in some way when he declares the outcome. I think this is true of most RPGs, but is more about the fiction. So if my action in a traditional game is to attack the orc, the outcome is I either hit or miss the orc. With Story Now games, the GM is bound by both the fiction and the rules. In some cases (I’m thinking of some PbtA games here) the results give the player the ability to declare the outcome, and the GM must honor that.
So perhaps it’s best to expand the play loop a bit:
There’s more constraint on the GM in how they establish an opening scene and in how they narrate the results of player declared actions. There’s a lot more player——> GM prompting, rather than the GM constantly prompting the players and having them react.
- Players provide character traits/goals/beliefs that they want to be relevant to play
- GM then sets a scene with one or more of those traits in mind
- Players declare actions
- Action resolution mechanics help determine how outcomes are determined
- GM narrates results accordingly
This idea isn’t a fully cooked theory or anything, just a thought that occurred to me while reading the thread, and trying to grasp some of the resistance to the Story Now process, and recalling my own resistance of it. The comparison is imperfect to be sure, but I think it at least touches on elements that, in my opinion, tend to put gamers who have a more traditional approach off of games that work differently.
Burning Wheel, Prince Valiant, AW as written - they all have basically the same play loop as D&D. The GM frames a scene; the players declare actions for their PCs; outcomes ensue which feed into a new situation (or a development of the existing one) which demands more action declarations. (If the players really have no actions to declare for their PCs, then the game is done.)
As in D&D, there are principles that govern the framing of scenes. And as in D&D, there are principles that govern the narration of outcomes and the feeding of those into the new (or developing) situation. What creates the different play experience is different principles.
When running KotB, the principle that governs scene-framing is Hold true to your prep, together with Honour the wandering monster die When running BW, the principle that governs scene-framing is Make the players, via their PCs, fight for what they believe in. When running Prince Valiant, it's a bit less clear-cut, but by default the principle is Create opportunities for valour and errantry, which may also permit valour and errantry to fail.
It's these different principles that explain the different degrees of player => GM prompting, rather than the play loop as such. The same story could be told for consequence-narration: in BW it is based on "intent and task" plus putting Beliefs under pressure and leaning into Instinct and traits, so inevitably there is a high degree of player => GM prompting even when a check fails; in AW the whole notion of "offering opportunities, perhaps with a cost" and "announcing future or offscreen badness" implicates the players' purposes and aspirations for their PCs (because what is an opportunity, a cost, or badness is all relative to those), and so again there is inevitably a high degree of player => GM prompting even before we get to the outcomes of successful moves; in D&D consequence narration is generally guided by the principles "stick to your prep" and "extrapolate what makes sense" and so inevitably player => GM prompting is reduced.
But not always. In D&D, it is possible for player => GM prompting to happen too - see eg @Scott Christian's example above of the player asking if their PC can find a pie shop. But generally that's not a systematic principle. And indeed if you look at "GM problem" threads, you'll see a recurrent theme is how to deal with that sort of thing in a way that doesn't require the GM to depart from their prep! What's at work here is not the play loop, but the principle that scene-framing follows from prep - which obviously is prone to collide with player requests (be they implicit or express) for scenes that don't fit with that prep.
But - to maintain my back-and-forth with @Ovinomancer about drifting D&D towards "situation first" - you could change some of those principles for D&D, while keeping the basic resolution engine and play loop - and get something much more "story now". The principles are the key, in my view.