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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8632765" data-attributes="member: 42582">Look at my last three points, and think about how often you see them articulated in discussions about "problem players" and about how to GM. Eg the GM who "cracks down on" the player whose PC tries to pickpocket the king during an audience is manifesting all three: trying to maintain the setting status quo, trying to stop the player establishing the PC's dramatic need, and trying to ensure that action declarations conform to a pre-established pattern that will (i) make the GM's scenario work, (ii) reinforce the dramatic needs that have been dictated by the GM, and (iii) affirm the GM's conception of the setting, and what fits into it.The crack-down might happen via social contract means ("Are you sure your PC does that?" or even "Your PC is not allowed to do that!") or via system means ("The king's guards arrest your for lese majeste!"). Either way, it is the opposite of "story now" play.I've chosen a particularly clear example. But much of the rhetoric around "murder hobos" rests on a less stark version of the same basic conception: that it is the job of the GM, not the players, to dictate the direction of play, to maintain the overall setting status quo, to establish permissible parameters of action resolution on a mixture of pragmatic and evaluative lines.Now imagine play that departs from those three points and you are imagining "story now" play. The pickpocketing of the king won't last long, as most players (in my experience) aren't really interested in juvenile fiction of that sort. Think more about Conan soloing the Tower of the Elephant, or killing the magistrate in the (implied) opening of Queen of the Black Coast.I've got a billion actual play posts on these boards, and have given some examples in this thread. One example I posted upthread: Thurgon persuading Aramina to repair his armour.I find the spectrum notion unhelpful. Whenever I see it applied, I see it being used (not necessarily on purpose) to obscure what are for me fundamental differences in gameplay experiences.Yes, there are always bounds of good taste, and agreed-upon genres (no powered armour in Agon, for instance), but those are so commonplace that unless a RPG group is utterly socially dysfunctional we don't need to talk about them (unless we're discussing things like X-card techniques etc).So I start with the premise of resolution being open.But it's fundamental. Not that all simulationism involves it; but that when it's present we have simulationism. See my reply not far upthread to [USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER] (about "paying the piper"), as well as my remarks in this post about pickpocketing the king, and murder hobos.If you're playing story now, you're running the risk that someone will express a judgement that's different from yours. Eg in my Classic Traveller game, when one of the players had his PC escape a criminal trial by blowing everyone but herself up with a grenade, another player was shocked, and expressed as much. That can happen.</blockquote>

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