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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8633228" data-attributes="member: 82106">I'd say most typical RPG play today, and thus probably what your average player is mostly after, is a kind of explorative tourism mixed with some externally generated tension. So you have GM as quest-giver and arranger of the vast majority of fiction. That fiction is arranged so as to present some level of challenge, resulting in some degree of tension revolving around getting past various obstacles so that more of the setting can be toured. It dovetails exactly with the common form of modules/adventures/APs, which posit some sort of driving impulse (G1, the classic model for all following modules has a couple paragraphs at the start which does this in an almost purely abstract fashion for example). Following the impulse leads the characters through a series of locations. Usually this is LARGELY linear, though sometimes there's an element of 'choose the order you do things in' or even a path A and B where you follow one or the other. VERY rarely you run into an adventure where the choice is other than location-based, like it could involve which NPC you ally with, etc. This is uncommon because splitting parties on this kind of choice would be super easy, and that doesn't serve the agenda all that well.Now the whole WotC '5 types of player' thing comes in. Within the above paradigm you can introduce some harder gamism, elaborate on the exploration, incorporate scenarios of mayhem and slaughter, incorporate puzzles, and emphasize specific types of challenges, like resource management, etc. 5e doesn't actually do all of these tasks super well, but with some GM motivation you can 'make it work'. What, in your choice of frameworks, does this sort of play analyze out to? I think it somewhat depends on the table. There's a fair amount of gamism, players playing to 'get ahead' and 'beat the dungeon', though I think few are really hard into it IME. Otherwise its mostly 'explore the setting' kind of stuff, possibly proactively enough that the PCs get to make their mark on it (which I would call a form of exploration, not really 'dramatism'). This could go in a High Concept direction, if the participants want to focus on some specific concepts, or just mild exploratory play where you tour around Waterdeep or whatever and 'fun stuff happens'. I leave it to others to put a label on that, but it probably moves back and forth between at least a couple agendas without really going far in any one direction.</blockquote>

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