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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8438367" data-attributes="member: 42582">On the issue of "stalled play".In a RPG which is "backstory first", and situations/scenes are framed by extrapolation from the backstory when the players declare the appropriate actions to "activate" what is latent, then the game can stall in virtue of player action declarations: because the players fail to declare actions that activate new scenes (eg they search the wrong place, they speak to the wrong NPC, whatever it might be).In a RPG which is "situation first", then player action declarations can't stall play. Rather, the main risk to play is what Ron Edward said <a href="http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=20791.0" target="_blank">here</a>, in reply to a poster having trouble with scene-framing and resolution:If, for example, we are playing a game in which I, alone, have full situational authority, and if everyone is confident that I will use that authority to get to stuff they want (for example, taking suggestions), then all is well. Or if we are playing a game in which we do "next person to the left frames each scene," and if that confidence is just as shared, around the table, that each of us will get to the stuff that others want (again, suggestions are accepted), then all is well. It's not the distributed or not-distributed aspect of situational authority you're concerned with, it's your trust at the table, as a group, that your situations in the SIS [= shared fiction] are worth anyone's time. Bluntly, you guys ought to work on that.What will stall a situation-first game is if the situations aren't interesting. That's why games like Marvel Heroic RP, HeroWars, Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World etc place such a high priority on establishing player priorities for their PCs, and making those clear. An alternative approach, found in The Dying Earth and Prince Valiant, is to rely on genre to do that work.This also relates to the discussion about how to convey a situation to the players. The basic idea is that you - the GM - want them to have a sense of what is at stake, so they can understand why they should engage the scene, and how they might do so.(In "backstory" first play, this sense of what is at stake isn't needed in the same way, because the players are expecting to acquire relevant information, including about what is at stake, from their action declarations - like searching, talking to NPCs, etc.)</blockquote>

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