Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8028195" data-attributes="member: 7016699">Ah, if only it were that easy to get the characters to do what you want them to do, say centuries of novelists. Sure, if you're writing some sort of allegory, you can yank your characters around a fair amount, because they're symbols and not people; anything else, though ... they'll fight you if you try.I believe I've been called pedantic. Everyone who has known me ever is shocked. Shocked, I tell you! </sarcasm>I'm not trying to be pedantic, honest, and I'm absolutely not endeavoring to be annoying. I'm a failed writer (among other failings) and I've studied this a lot. I see the character as a thing that exists and is different from the player--and my thinking here parallels my experience. Not everyone plays the way I do, or thinks the way I do; but I think the way I do.Those are indeed relevant questions. I'll take a shot. I'll try to keep it as system-neutral as I can, and I will explicitly not be talking about published adventures--especially long ones.The GM establishes fiction by framing the scenario for play. This can stretch all the way up to worldbuilding, but it needn't do so. It usually will include at least one instigating event--which can be a parallel to the "Declare Badness" MC moves in AW. It usually will include at least some facts of the setting, such as an apocalypse, or Elder Gods, or things of that nature, but there are games that are effectively in the here-and-now. The limitations will vary somewhat, depending on the game being played--a Keeper in Call of Cthulhu has a lot more freedom to prep an adventure to go where they want it to, an MC in Adventure World will be expected to stick to their Fronts and only make moves that make sense in the established fiction. The GM is usually responsible for at least most of the NPCs that will appear, and is expected to prepare them (there are differences what "prepare them" means, system-to-system).The players establish fiction by creating (or generating) the main characters, and by determining those characters' actions. Some (or most) of those actions will only need to be declared; where more is needed--where the outcome is in doubt--there will be some system of resolving that doubt, such as rolling dice or drawing cards. Like the GM, the player is limited by the rules of the game. The player will at least be able to narrate their character's actions if the resolution is in their favor; in some systems they are able to declare outcomes or other facts in the fiction (such as the Crown of Revel being in the box). Often (maybe usually?) the players are limited by things their characters can do, or at least by things their characters interact with or know about, but that is not always the case. They are usually limited in their ability to narrate the results when action-resolutions go against them, but there are systems that at least occasionally allow the players to narrate the results of failed action resolutions.That seems like at least a start.</blockquote>

Verification