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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5581028" data-attributes="member: 42582">Nagol, I've got not doubt that the group has to be on the same page, more-or-less.In my own group there's one play who's more interested in 4e as a gamist excercise than a thematic exercise, but happily the 4e mechanics (or, at least, the way we use them) mean that that player's pursuit of tactical victory neither impedes nor is impeded by the other players treating the tactical game as a vehicle for expressing theme. So I think a bit of accommodation can sometimes be possible.There are two glosses that I would want to add to your post, though.First, the idea of "GM intervention" I think is a little misleading. Very few games have a "justice system resolution table", so the conequences of a murderer being "turned in" are always up to the GM to determine. There is nothing distinctive about narrativist play in this respect - what is distinctive is the considerations that inform the GM's determination.Second, I don't think that narrativist players are particularly prone to being disruptive or derailing games, or pose any extraordinary problem in terms of expectation management. Hardcore gamist players, for example, who focus on PC optimisation and who approach every ingame situation from a fiction-light pawn stance, are a well known issue for simulationist GURPS, HERO, 3E or even AD&D 2nd ed play.And a certain sort of simulationist player, who wants to roleplay out every shopping expedition , for example, and who plays the character to the exclusion of engaging the situations the GM is presenting to the group, is disruptive of mainstream D&D play focused on simulation as a chassis for gamism, because this sort of simulationist player refuses to "step on up".So I agree that some sort of mutuality in the group is important, but I don't think that simulationism provides any sort of privileged safe harbour. In fact, in my (admittedly limited) experience it is fairly easy for a narrativist player to drift a group in that direction - you keep following the GM's plot hooks, but treat the GM's storyline as simply a backdrop against which thematically driven PC-to-PC interaction takes place, which interactions in turn inform the way the group engages with the GM's storyline. This is perhaps not the most functional RPGing of all time (it depends a fair bit on how the GM responds). But at least in my experience, it is evidence against the notion of simulationism (or very exploration heavy gamism of the classic D&D variety) as a default approach to RPGing.</blockquote>

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