Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9228304" data-attributes="member: 42582">In what way is Glorantha-based HeroWars no myth? The game line included whole books of nothing but myth (both in the literal and the technical (= established fiction) senses of that word).As I posted, who has told you (1)?<a href="https://inky.org/rpg/no-myth.html" target="_blank">Here</a>'s a nice essay on "No myth" rpging. It opens thus:The premise, and the reason it's called No Myth, is this: nothing you haven't said to the group exists. "You", in this case, includes the GM as well as the other players. The other half of this premise is "the [non-GM] players are the protagonists of the story."Here are some examples of no myth, or very close to no myth play; each takes for granted the background context of late Victorian or Edwardian London, and proceeds from there just as per the quote above: <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/cthulhu-dark-another-session.658931/;" target="_blank">https://www.enworld.org/threads/cthulhu-dark-another-session.658931/;</a> <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/played-some-wuthering-heights-today.672161/" target="_blank">https://www.enworld.org/threads/played-some-wuthering-heights-today.672161/</a>Here's an example of play that feature conflict resolution, but was not no myth: not only were we looking at a map, that showed where various places are in relation to one another, but one of those places was the Moathouse, and I (the GM) had notes on what was in the Moathouse that I didn't just share with the players: <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/torchbearer-2e-actual-play-of-this-awesome-system.691233/post-9183845" target="_blank">https://www.enworld.org/threads/torchbearer-2e-actual-play-of-this-awesome-system.691233/post-9183845</a>Note that no one has asserted that Games with any as of yet unrevealed backstory are not conflict resolution, other than you. As best I recall, the only other poster in this thread, at least in recent pages, to mention unrevealed backstory has been me, and I made the following posts about it:These are not remarks about the presence or absence of backstory. These are remarks about the relationship between backstory and action resolution.Have you read or played DitV? Burning Wheel? HeroWars/Quest? Maelstrom Storytelling? Apocalypse World? Any other canonical conflict-resolution system? And considered, both by reference to the game's instructions and also the experience of play, the role that "myth"/backstory plays?It can contribute to framing. To establishing stakes (particularly consequences for failure). To the narration that bridges from scene-to-scene, or that is part of "saying 'yes'" (or, in AW, of making a soft move when no player-side move is triggered), in order to keep things moving in accordance with the principles of the game (which in all of these is some variation on "go where the action is").The use of GM pre-authored and hitherto-unrevealed backstory is not confined to (i) breaking the relationship between task-success and goal-achievement, and (ii) being something the players discover by having their PCs perform low-stakes actions to prompt the GM to reveal it.</blockquote>

Verification