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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5577695" data-attributes="member: 42582">Not mine. I wasn't sure if you wanted a reply from me, but I'll have a go.My preferred analytic and classificatory scheme for RPGing is the Forge one. The second approach to RPGing that you set out seems to equate (roughly, more-or-less) to Forge-ist narrativism.Your first approach is underspecified, in my view. All RPGing depends upon there being a gameworld - a shared imaginative space - in which events occur and consequences reverberate. The question is, what constrains or determines those consequences? In simulationist play - which I think is what you are trying to capture in your first approach - it is the sort of stuff Elf Witch talks about above (the internal logic of the gameworld) to the exclusion of other concerns, like thematic concerns or the desire to pose challenges to the players.It is not as if, in my game, events don't have consequences. But I determine those consequences having regard first to what would keep the thematic elements of the game moving along, and treat the logic of the gameworld as setting outer constraints of permissibility. But in simulationist play the logic of the gameworld is the alpha and the omega - be it causal logic (purist-for-system simulationism) or genre logic (high concept simulationism).The other way I would want to add to your first approach is to build on the idea of the gameworld being "artificially real". The question is - who gets to determine this reality? Or, to put it another way, if there are different views or desires at the table, who gets to decide what the logic of the gameworld requires? This is where the issue of GM force comes in: if the mechanics run out, is the success of my PC's action resolution simply hostage to the GM? (Hussar is one poster on this thread who has talked about this issue in the past.) If a question arises as to what sort of behaviour is cosnsistent with divine laws ABC, or alignment XYZ, or the table's agreement to run a heroic/non-evil game, am I simply hostage to the GM? (I raised this issue upthread.)My view is that by talking about the fiction in an abstract or impersonal fashion, this issue tends to be occluded. One thing I like about the Forge is that it is upfront about the need for the fiction to be constructed via some procedure or other, and focuses attention on the role of the various game participants in that process of construction.When the players primarily want to explore a gameworld that they can take for granted as given, then GM primacy can be a reasonable procedure. But I think it is a procedure that is more vulnerable to breakdown than is sometimes acknowledged - as soon as a non-GM participant starts to value his/her own preference as to ingame logic over the smooth running of the game, conflict can break out. The heroic-enforcement railroading of scenarios like Dragonlance, Dead Gods etc is intended to preempt such conflict by rules fiat - but, of course, such rules fiat won't solve these conflicts anymore than an insistence on rule zero will - if a participant doesn't like what the GM is doing, no appeal to the rules text will settle what is essentially a social conflict.Notice also that the sort of conflict I'm talking about here can arise even among players all sincerely committed to exploratory play. In classic D&D, the conflict might arise over (for example) how hard it is to surf doors over tetanus pits in White Plume Mountain. In 2nd ed D&D, the conflict might arise over (for example) what a hero would really do in situation XYZ, or how a hero would respond to Ravenloft horrific event ABC.The potential for conflict is obviously much greater is you have players interested in gamist or narrativist play taking part in an ostensibly simulationist game - because they will be trying to shape the ingame situation (whether directly, or via pressure on the GM) to reflect their own metagame concerns. I have been guilty of this myself, to at least a modest degree, in a 2nd ed game, although the player group was large enough (7 players, I think) and the GM sufficiently focused on another player (the one with the prophecy-centric PC) that most of my thematic play was able to be had in RPing with the other players, treating the GM's situations as a backdrop to that rather than the real focus of play.Just to conclude - the only reason I have for emphasising the potential conflicts that can arise in simulationist play is that some posts on this thread (eg Hussar's) have tended to suggest that it is a sort of safe-haven default, whereas narrativism requires a special degree of group consensus. For the reasons I've given, I don't agree that this is so as an a priori matter.If, as a matter of practical fact, it is easier to get group consensus for simulationist play, this would tend to suggest either (i) that RPGers overlap heavily in their expecations about how ingame logic works - which might be plausible if they all read the same books and play the same computer games - or (ii) that RPGers are used to ceding authority to the GM even when the dictates of that authority are at odds with their own preferences - which I think is also plausible, at least for those schooled in RPGing in the same sort of way that I was (in the 80s and early 90s).A final thought - if a lot of actual RPGing is viable only because (i) and/or (ii) holds, then this suggests a further reason why the hobby is only slow-growing. Because both of these are likely to be pretty unusual traits in the population as a whole.</blockquote>

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