Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8631475" data-attributes="member: 82106">Right, GNS is simply cast in terms of agenda, and it illustrates ways in which different agendas can clash. So, in that light, you'd identify the most primary agenda, which in this case is Narrative. Now, genre ALWAYS exists, so the next question is whether or not we care about it at all. How are the ways we could care:1. we could use genre logic to act as a constraint on the action space (input to fictional position). In AW this might be evinced by say the GM requiring that a PC go through a lot of work to get a tire for his car. In a genre set in the modern world getting a tire is fairly simple unless you're out in the middle of nowhere.2. Genre can be used to derive challenges, like in AW a freakish giant electrical storm might arise and threaten the character's brother. That probably won't happen in a realistic modern setting.3. Genre can be a strong constituent of mood, which can then feed into a player's thinking and ability to get in character, or color the way they approach play.But what would constitute really 'Genre Based Play'. That would focus on exploring the genre, right? It would evoke these genre things, FOR THEIR OWN SAKE. But look at how I've characterized them above, which is how I would see them applying in AW. These elements certainly exist, they provide color/mood/flavor, whatever you want to call it. They could easily be replaced with other things and the game would still work, it would have integrity. The electrical storm could be replaced with Shoggoths. It would be rather jarring in a genre sense, but AW would WORK. OTOH if the game was ABOUT the genre, you cannot have Shoggoths, they don't fit in that genre! If you put them in there people will be upset, right?So, my feeling is, Story Now doesn't really actually care about genre, except as it provides some logic that is an element of fictional position. I could totally swap out the genre, and AW would still work, just as long as whatever situations were available in the new genre included a similar sort of milieu where there was a lot of conflict and uncertainty. I mean, maybe some of the moves would need changes to their color. Perhaps some playbooks would need wholesale rewrites or not make a lot of sense, I'm not sure. Genre is definitely in there, but simulating it is not the primary agenda, and if for some reason push came to shove, I'd rule in favor of Story Now principles and not worry about the Apocalypse Flavor that much. Things will work out, but the reverse won't work out, I can't take away the Story Now Narrative premise element, even temporarily.</blockquote>

Verification