D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[pemerton]

Narrativism allows for/requires increased transparency that a. enables author and director stances more readily than trad (just to pre-empt: I think all stances are utilised across all playstyles and by different persons in different proportions)

But this isn't true. It's possible to play narrativist using actor stance almost exclusively.

I've done this, using AD&D and Rolemaster.

And as I've posted upthread, when I play Burning Wheel I am almost exclusively in actor and not author stance. And that game doesn't use unadulterated director stance - actions that establish setting elements (eg Wises and Circles tests) are declared and resolved from the perspective of the character ("I seem to remember that . . ." or "I look about for a person who . . .").

Narrativst play requires "a) rising conflict b) across a moral line c) between fit characters d) according to the authorship of the players". That's it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't know. There have been a lot of posts about how Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel work from "trad-leaning posters", but many of those posters do seem not to have read the rules or played the games.

I thought @hawkeyefan had posted fairly extensively about doing just this?

I know you don't count 4e D&D as a "relative" of D&D, but obviously I've posted extensively in this and other threads about action resolution in 4e D&D, which is "fail forward".

Is @hawkeyefan one of the posters irritating you with their wrong ideas about Narrativist play? If not, I'm not talking about them.

And no, personally I don't see 4e as all that close to other versions of D&D, particularly the way you have presented yourself as playing it.

 

[pemerton]

Did the GM decide that the result of the roll was or wasn't a dead orc? Did the player?

The player acted on their hope. The rules were applied to work out whether or not it is fulfilled

In the runes example, the player expressed a hope, and the GM decided to make that hope real.

Huh? That's not accurate at all. The player declared their action, and it was resolved by a dice roll.

They didn't have to. They could have provided some other beneficial result. They chose to make the player's hope manifest.

Again, this is a complete misdescription. It contradicts both what I have posted about the episode of play, and the general processes of play for MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic.

 

[pemerton]

Is @hawkeyefan one of the posters irritating you with their wrong ideas about Narrativist play? If not, I'm not talking about them.

All I'm saying is that, if you want to see how "fail forward" might be used in 5e D&D, @hawkeyefan has provided some examples.

 

[JConstantine]

Given that the setting is established, especially at crucial moments and in crucial respects, by the players answering questions - about what their PCs know, remember and experience - I don't see how you can possibly say that the GM embodies the setting.

If the GM were embodying the setting, how would it be up to a player to tell us what the psychic maelstrom is like, or what the slave traders use for barter?

In the same way an actor embodies a character even when they've been provided material by the writer or director. The actor (GM) incorporates their own ideas with what's been provided by the writer/director (player). (I know it's odd to see the comparison that way around when it's typically portrayed the opposite.)

And then it goes on. Do you think that asking the players questions and building on the answers, in the way the AW rules describe, is a traditional technique?

I'm just going by what you've quoted since I don't own the book. The specific questions quoted about living space and knowing each other don't seem particularly non-traditional, nor incorporating the answers. The main difference I see is when the questions are being asked. In trad, they'd probably be done before play begins with few follow up in play, whereas in AW, it seems they'd be a continual process.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I was talking about an episode of my play, not yours. And the other posters I referred to were commenting on that episode of my play.

And, as I posted, not one of them observed that the situations was one of rising action across a moral line. It doesn't even seem to have occurred to them that it might matter - just as that does not seem to have occurred to you (at least until I mentioned it)?

The same thing is present in the blog about the screaming cook, as I've already noted - the blog poster notes that the presence of the cook gives rise to the possibility that the burgling PC might kill the innocent cook - but again no one who is criticising that example, and "fail forward" more generally, seems interested in that.

If you look at all RPGing on the assumption that what play is about is (i) the GM establishing and presenting some fiction, so that (ii) the players can manipulate that fiction via their PCs in order to solve a problem that the setting or situation has posed to them, then a lot of what I or @Campbell or @AbdulAlhazred have posted in this thread won't make sense.

Well, that is what I see gaming as insofar as the style I prefer, so I suppose that makes sense. Your descriptions of play have never really sounded enjoyable to me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The player acted on their hope. The rules were applied to work out whether or not it is fulfilled

Huh? That's not accurate at all. The player declared their action, and it was resolved by a dice roll.

Again, this is a complete misdescription. It contradicts both what I have posted about the episode of play, and the general processes of play for MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic.

The GM decided to make the player's hope true in light of the player's successful roll. Sorry I missed that part in this post; I got it the last time I posted about this.

 

[Micah Sweet]

All I'm saying is that, if you want to see how "fail forward" might be used in 5e D&D, @hawkeyefan has provided some examples.

Still too narrative-leaming for me, but fair enough.

 

[JConstantine]

But this isn't true. It's possible to play narrativist using actor stance almost exclusively.

Enabling a given stance doesn't mean requiring that stance or precluding others.

 

[bloodtide]

A brief thought. What if one type of game is based on pretending it's not a game?

D&D!