NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9708882" data-attributes="member: 42582">It seems to me that there are (at least) 3 ways of thinking about an episode of RPGing, or an approach to RPGing, as simulationist:(1) The participants rely (and are able to rely) upon the mechanical system, without needing to inject their own concerns or judgemental opinions, to learn what happens in the fiction. Rolemaster, RuneQuest and GURPS are like this, or at least aspire to be. (2) The fiction, during play, is generated via a process that doesn't have regard for what anyone hopes it might be. This might require the application of heuristics to support extrapolation from what is already known or mechanically established, but they should be "neutral" ones. This approach won't use techniques like "fail forward" or the approach to deciphering strange runes that I described upthread in the context of MHRP play. (3) The players, during play, aim to receive the fiction from "outside" of themselves, rather than "inputting" into it (except by having the in-fiction causal consequences of their PCs' actions worked out). This approach does not similarly constrain the GM, who might - for instance - make decisions non-neutrally, eg, "for the good of the story". Many "event-based" modules will only work if this approach is adopted.I think that each approach is a special case of the approach(es) with a higher number than its own. That is, (2) is a special case of (3) - because it maintains the approach of (3) as far as players are concerned, but puts additional constrains on the GM. And then (1) is a special case of (2), as it aspires to drop all the non-mechanical heuristics and keep only the mechanics.</blockquote>

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