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<blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 9112557" data-attributes="member: 85870"><p>Hmmm, yeah, that's unfortunate. That's nearly exactly opposite of my group's experience. Our experience was tremendously fun and satisfying---satisfying enough that it got a player who in the past 20 years hadn't played anything but WoD and D&D 3.5 / PF1 to actually buy <em>Edge of the Empire</em>.</p><p></p><p>Maybe it was the fact that I'd had a significant learning opportunity running a narrative style game using <em>Ironsworn </em>that made the difference. FFG / <em>Genesys</em> system was right up my wheelhouse. It felt totally natural interpreting the dice, giving players more director-stance / background-level input on how scenes were playing out, interpreting die results using different techniques, etc.</p><p></p><p>If you're primarily encultured to use "trad" action resolution type results, the Narrative Dice system would feel much like you've described --- confining, awkward, difficult to resolve, and unsatisfying. "Trad" ethos runs fairly counter to the <em>Genesys </em>/ FFG system.</p><p></p><p>It's not really spelled out in the rules in a satisfying way, though. It's like FFG was afraid to go to that "bridge too far" by telling players directly, "Don't try to run this like your typical roleplaying campaign."</p><p></p><p>With my <em>Ironsworn </em>experience, it was so easy to pick up the threads of what to do. It was obvious that interpreting a narrative dice result was meant to have more "reach", or potential narrative impact than strict "in the moment" action resolution. A single throw of the dice could indicate gears of NPC intentions / events churning in the background, a mounting threat (or a mounting opportunity) coming ahead that the characters may or may not be aware of; it could mean some circumstance you thought was true in your GM "head canon" may have just become very much untrue, because fate / the dice have deemed it so.</p><p></p><p>If you're comfortable using PbtA / FitD style narrative techniques, the FFG / Narrative Dice system sings. Once you're used to concepts like <em>Ironsworn</em>'s bonds and momentum, FitD's position/effect tradeoff, PbtA's fronts, and <em>Blades in the Dark</em> style clocks / <em>Ironsworn </em>progress tracks, the Narrative Dice system feels like a very natural extension of those concepts, just with a little more character-facing build structure around it.</p><p></p><p>*Edit -- Looking at your comment, it also seems that if your player/players were sitting there expecting you to interpret the dice, but without offering their own input and merely negating your input with "That doesn't follow from the dice, try again," then there was a significant mismatch between system expectations, player expectations, and the intended group dynamics.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="innerdude, post: 9112557, member: 85870"] Hmmm, yeah, that's unfortunate. That's nearly exactly opposite of my group's experience. Our experience was tremendously fun and satisfying---satisfying enough that it got a player who in the past 20 years hadn't played anything but WoD and D&D 3.5 / PF1 to actually buy [I]Edge of the Empire[/I]. Maybe it was the fact that I'd had a significant learning opportunity running a narrative style game using [I]Ironsworn [/I]that made the difference. FFG / [I]Genesys[/I] system was right up my wheelhouse. It felt totally natural interpreting the dice, giving players more director-stance / background-level input on how scenes were playing out, interpreting die results using different techniques, etc. If you're primarily encultured to use "trad" action resolution type results, the Narrative Dice system would feel much like you've described --- confining, awkward, difficult to resolve, and unsatisfying. "Trad" ethos runs fairly counter to the [I]Genesys [/I]/ FFG system. It's not really spelled out in the rules in a satisfying way, though. It's like FFG was afraid to go to that "bridge too far" by telling players directly, "Don't try to run this like your typical roleplaying campaign." With my [I]Ironsworn [/I]experience, it was so easy to pick up the threads of what to do. It was obvious that interpreting a narrative dice result was meant to have more "reach", or potential narrative impact than strict "in the moment" action resolution. A single throw of the dice could indicate gears of NPC intentions / events churning in the background, a mounting threat (or a mounting opportunity) coming ahead that the characters may or may not be aware of; it could mean some circumstance you thought was true in your GM "head canon" may have just become very much untrue, because fate / the dice have deemed it so. If you're comfortable using PbtA / FitD style narrative techniques, the FFG / Narrative Dice system sings. Once you're used to concepts like [I]Ironsworn[/I]'s bonds and momentum, FitD's position/effect tradeoff, PbtA's fronts, and [I]Blades in the Dark[/I] style clocks / [I]Ironsworn [/I]progress tracks, the Narrative Dice system feels like a very natural extension of those concepts, just with a little more character-facing build structure around it. *Edit -- Looking at your comment, it also seems that if your player/players were sitting there expecting you to interpret the dice, but without offering their own input and merely negating your input with "That doesn't follow from the dice, try again," then there was a significant mismatch between system expectations, player expectations, and the intended group dynamics. [/QUOTE]
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