buzzard said:
ack! That didn't come out the way i intended. I didn't mean to accuse you of confusing the messenger and the message.
I'm not sure it's *totally* subjective. But, yes, it's a much more player-centric universe, deliberately so. Back to D&D: i wasn't saying that the encounters have to be combat, just that their nature tends to be partially or largely decided before the PCs enter them. *If* a group of hostile orc raiders jumps the party without warning, the encounter is going to be at least partly a combat encounter--and it may take extraordinary efforts on the players' parts to change it to anything else in final outcome. Simply because the GM has decided ahead of time that the orcs are raiders and hostile. Now, presumably that'll be because the players more or less want that style of game, so i'm not accusing D&D GMs of railroading or only running one style of encounter. But it puts an extar layer between the players and the scenario (translation through the GM), so that if the normally-combat-happy group is in a different mood today and would rather not have a combat, it's trickier (within the bounds of the game) for them to get that change through the GM-filter (a good GM will realize during that combat that people aren't into it, and shorten/alter it or at least eliminate further combats that evening, but it's pretty hard to know before the fact about something like this). Or, on another tack: normally, the mode of play in D&D is that the GM provides opponents/enemies for the players, and plays them as real people. Therefore, it is decided before the PCs encounter the villain whether that villain is Evil, or merely misguided (frex). Now, again, a good GM may be able to alter this on the fly if the players seem to be more into reforming a misguided soul than kicking butt--but it also might've already been established too firmly in the game world to make that make sense, which would bother a lot of people. By shifting this control into the hands of the players, they get to create the sort of game/scenario they want directly (speaking of narrative games in general, not necessarily Trollbabe in particular (since i haven't finished reading it yet and don't want to misrepresent it)). They can choose whether the Big Bad that their characters won't even find out about for 3 sessions, nor encounter for 10, is an Evil demonic entity or a realistic villain. Now, obviously, some won't like this, because of "ruining the surprise"--they prefer to play with closer identity to their characters. I'm not sure, but i suspect that narrativist games in general don't work well for those who like to be deeply in character.
On the flip side, those who are severely disappointed by "poor endings" won't care for non-narrativist games, generally. Frex, i still count as my worst roll of all time in an RPG the time i rolled two 20s in a row, in AD&D2. In this case, that meant a hit followed by a critical (house rule)--and, in this game, a 20 on the critical-confirm roll meant decapitation, when appropriate (i was using a longsword against an unarmed, unarmored human). I don't think i ever went back to that game. Here's the situation: i'm playing in a very-well-run game, but it's got a definite horror slant to it, so i retire my character because i was too attached to her (she wasfrom a previous campaign, and the violation that fits the genre just hit too close to home for me to have fun). Instead, i bring in a revenant PC who was killed by the main badguy in the game. It seemed perfect--i could get into the horror and personal violation elements--i'd probably even get to play this horribly maimed (physically and psychologically) character after a while, 'cause my character can't die until the target does, but *boy* can he suffer. And i've got the perfect reason to join the party and stick around, so that eases introducing a new character believably. Plus, my character didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of killing the Big Bad, so it'd be a nice, long, frustrating conflict. So, 2nd or 3rd session with the new character, my Badguy-radar goes off (meaning he's within a couple miles, or something). I try to give the other PCs a chance to dissuade me from just taking off (while staying in character), and it ends up that a couple go with me, while a couple stick around to deal with the current problem [the party was large and spent a lot of time split in this game, so no big deal]. I catch him, and it's a bit of a running battle--sort of: i have no ranged weapons, so it's more him taking potshots at me while trynig to stay out of range. Finally catch up to him on a docked ship. He hides in a dark room and jumps me when i walk in. His attack breaks my character's neck, which really doesn't matter to a revenant, and i roll the two 20s, killing him. Turns out, he'd had some sort of run-in off camera (actually, i think it involved another party member, but i never did find out), and was mostly-unarmed--he was temporarily without almost all his magic, and out of spells--which included dimension-hopping/teleportation shoes and some wicked-serious armor, either of which would've normally stopped my character cold. So, in summary: i'd created a character specifically tailored to the style of game the GM was running, tied him in very carefully to the existing conflicts and villains, and built the character around a long, drawn-out conflict that neither side could easily win (to match the way the game had been going so far). And then, thefirst time my character gets anywhere near the nemesis in-game (as opposed to backstory), and literally the first blow i even attempt, the whole conflict is over. It's about as anticlimactic as you can get. For me, that ruined it completely. Even if i hadn't had to retire my character (revenant: finally rests once the murderer is dead), whom i thought was *very* cool, i probably would've left the game. That was just too much unfun. And, to make it perfectly clear, this is in general one of the best GMs i know. He pretty much is constantly running at least 2 weekly games, and practically has a waiting list for players, and everyone loves his games. But, at least then (i don't know about now), he believed in the fairness of sticking to the rules--he didn't like the result, either--which just doesn't work sometimes if what you want is what's dramaticaly appropriate, and the rules aren't even aware of what's dramatically appropriate.
You're absolutely right. But i was speaking of the games, not the gamers. If you want to talk about the spectrum of gamers' experiences, then weighting it in some manner (not necessarily linearly) for how many play each game makes perfect sense. If you want to talk about the spectrum of game systems, i don't see what popularity has to do with it.
