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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8627329" data-attributes="member: 42582">How much "story now" RPGing have you participated in?"Story now" is a two-word phrase. The key word is "now". The goal of play is, here and now, for players to have to make decisions that express or address their PCs' dramatic needs. Doing that is the point of play.That doing so may also produce a story is secondary. My personal experience is that the stories that result from "story now" RPGing are not very good stories. They are meandering. They involve foreshadowing that is never resolved. Sometimes the choices of the characters, looked at over time, seem arbitrary or disjointed. Quite often there is a lot of gonzo rather than subtlety.It's easy to explain why this is so. There is no editing. Not every scene that the GM frames is unqualified success; and even if it succeeds, it's not always the case that the player sees in it what the GM had thought they had introduced into it. If the game uses fortune (dice-based) resolution, turns of events and pacing more generally can depart from what would make for a good story. Etc, etc.Hence: the goal of "story now" play is not to create a story, or have a story emerge. It is to here and now have the experience of genuine protagonism, and to see what results from that. And as Edwards said and as I quoted upthread, the most basic step in playing "story now" RPGing is to stop reinforcing simulationism, that is, to stop asking the question what does the internal logic of the setting dictate at this point. And as I posted upthread, doing that is harder than it may seem at first blush. It requires abandoning many techniques that are widely advocated in RPGing.This posts suggests a lack of familiarity with consequence-narration in "story now" play.There are different approaches possible - PbtA games use the soft-move/hard-move framework, for instance, whereas Burning Wheel uses failure-of-intent - but those different approaches share some commonalities. Probably the most important is that the narration of the consequences of failure should address the protagonist's dramatic need. A failed perilous journey check isn't an invitation to the GM to substitute their own view of what is to come next for the demands generated by the protagonists' dramatic needs.No. Incorporating background and taking suggestions is not the same thing as orienting the whole of play towards the dramatic needs of the protagonists as authored by the players of those PCs.If one wants to orient the whole of play towards the dramatic needs of the protagonists as authored by the players of their PCs, then among other things one will probably incorporate background and almost certainly take suggestions. But A => B does not entail that B => A. There are many ways to incorporate backgrounds and take suggestions that will not generate "story now" RPGing.The default approach to Burning Wheel and Dungeon World is for the group to draw the map together.I sometimes use maps and sometimes don't. When I do use maps, I assume the players will write things onto them - eg the location of wizards' towards, of Dwarven holds, etc.The player is the one generating the dramatic need. An example is given on p 258 of the 4e PHB: "perhaps your mother is the person whose remains lie in the Fortress of the Iron Ring." So upthread, multiple times, I mentioned that in much "story now" RPGing the GM retains authority over scene-framing, but the principles and expectations of play oblige them to exercise that authority in a particular fashion. In this remark, you seem to display a total lack of awareness between (i) establishing a dramatic need and hence a demand for what is going to be the focus of play, and (ii) framing a scene (including the mechanical components of doing that). Are you really unaware, or just trying to make a rhetorical point?If you're really unaware, that reinforces my impression that you have little or no experience participating in "story now" RPGing. It's trivial to separate (i) and (ii). In my 4e game, the player of the Raven Queen paladin - following an encounter with Orcus cultists in town - declare that he (as his PC) was scouring the surrounding area looking for more cult activity or locations. Checks were made - I can't remember the details. I was the one who framed the Orcus temple that he discovered, in response to those checks.That's an illustration of resolution being "open". Had the action not been declared, the discovery of that temple would not have been framed.</blockquote>

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