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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5583802" data-attributes="member: 42582">One of the points I'm trying to make is that there is nothing narrower about narrativism than simulationism. And the notion the narrativism requires a special sort of explicity buy in is also false, in my experience.To get a dwarf PC with an interesting background, all I had to tell my player was (i) there needs to be something or someone to whom your PC is loyal, and (ii) your PC needs a reason to be ready to fight goblins. To get the player of that PC to engage in interesting narrativsit play, all I had to do was to provide the player with an opportunity for his PC to act on that background. It's not very esoteric, and I don't think my player has especially rarefied tastes or interests as an RPGer.I also think a lot of the recurring points of discussion among "mainstream" D&D players - player entitlement; alignment and paladin worries; GM control over setting elements; playrs who are too passive (but at the same time too assertive!); etc, etc - are in fact the result of mostly simulationist GMs bumping heads with players with competing priorities for play.Someone on these boards in the past few months - but I can't remember who - said that part of the problem of recruting players to RPGs is that prospective new players get told that it's a game of collective or collaborative storytelling - a bit like what we used to do as kids - except that, in pratice, it turns out this isn't true, and that in fact the focus of much D&D play is about the players exploring the GM's (or the module author's) world and story.Every time I see a post from a GM talk about "taking time out of the main storyline to address a PC's backstory" or something similar, I wonder about the point of a game where the "main storyline" is not something that the players are driving, based on the PCs they've brought to the game, but is something foisted on them by someone else. To me, it doesn't seem to get much more videogame-y than that!</blockquote>

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