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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8634993" data-attributes="member: 42582">Player establishes the character's dramatic need. Player establishes the context for the stakes. Player chooses the response, which expresses some sort of judgement/valuation in relation to the fictional situation. The system and social context do not dictate a "right answer". You mean this?By "premise" do you mean "genre"? "Subject matter"?It's a game of Arthurian romantic fantasy. There are no spaceships or beam weapons or radios or railways. If the players feel like engaging with those things, we play other games.Within the scope of the genre, the system does not tell the players whether to take the side of the nobles or the peasants. Whether to oppose bandits, or by sympathetic to them, or join with them. Whether to be Christian or pagan. Whether to kill or convert their enemies. Whether to be faithful to their spouses, or to follow their hearts. These are the sorts of situations that a game of Arthurian romantic fantasy generates. The players express their own judgements, via the play of their characters.I've described some of the hallmarks of "story now" play:* The player establishes the dramatic needs that drive the decision-making, from which the stakes are derived, and which will inform the consequences that follow; * The player decides what their response is, with no "right" response dictated by system or social context; * The player's decisions and declared actions are consequential within the scope of play.The scope of play may include the fate of the cosmos (this is typical in some D&D play) or may include the relationship between two characters, played out over the possibility of repairing a breastplate (I posted an example of this from my own BW play).Note that the above is not synonymous with, and does not even entail, a player making a decision based on the emotional state of their character. It's not synonymous with it, because a player can do that in contexts where the decision is not consequential within the scope of play, or in contexts where the system or the social context makes a particular such decision the "right" one, or in contexts where the dramatic needs and the stakes are all being driven by the GM and the system (I find CoC play to mostly fit this last description - there is emoting by me of my PC's descent into madness, but I'm not exercising any protagonism).Nor does story now play entail making decisions based on the emotional state of the characer: a player might make a decision based not on the emotional state of their character, but based on their response to some other element of the fiction. They might even then feed that response back into their narration of their PC's emotional state!Here are, by way of contrast, hallmarks of play that is not story now:* The GM establishes the stakes by reference to some GM-authored conception of the setting or the situation - "hooks" and "quest givers" are typical here; * The GM, or the system, or both, establish "right answers" - the starkest example of this is action declarations that lead to PCs ceasing to be playable (eg no evil PCs, no leaving the party, etc), but other examples involve GM-authored responses from temporal or spiritual or cosmological authorities; * A more subtle version of the preceding, where choices and consequences are muted or downplayed so that there is little or no impact on the character or the setting ([USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] gave an example of this not far upthread); * Any GM technique whereby turnabout or failure or reversal is established in advance by planning and prescription, rather than being seen as a consequence of failed action declarations - quest givers who turn out to be villains are a perennial favourite in this respect; * Any reference to "side quests" and/or to the "plot" of the adventure; * Players making decisions on the basis of expedience, or "winning", without regard to what they might otherwise mean were the fiction to b taken seriously (in a non-RPG context, I think a fair bit of computer game play is like this; in a RPG context, the famous example in Moldvay Basic of the thief PC dying and the other PC's pausing only to take his useful gear would be another example).A lot of 5e D&D play gets described on these boards. I don't see accounts of "story now" play. Maybe they are there and I've missed them.When I started a thread asking <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-is-worldbuilding-for.611305/" target="_blank">What is *worldbuilding* for?</a>, I got a lot of replies from 5e players which demonstrated that they do not play "story now" 5e. I don't recall any replies from 5e "story now" players.The only actual play accounts of 5e I recall in this thread came from [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] and [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER], both explaining how their 5e play is not "story now". [USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER] has agreed that 5e is, at least by default, a vehicle for GM-curated RPGing.The Iron DM competitions produce, and celebrate, scenarios in which the scenario author sets all the stakes, the dramatic needs, and the possible resolutions. (And this is not a necessary consequence of the format, as was demonstrated by this thread: <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/not-the-iron-dm-tournament.682199/" target="_blank">Not the Iron DM Tournament</a>.)There are frequent posts on these boards explaining how good 5e GMing involves the GM managing the "adventuring day" so as to ensure the prospect and (sometimes) the reality of 6 to 8 encounters per day.I am forming my beliefs on the basis of the evidence that I have. The preceding five paragraphs summarise some of it.I don't know how you resolve these action declarations - looking for spell components, looking for wealthy people, gathering information, and burglarising someone.I don't know what is at stake in these action declarations, how they speak to any dramatic needs, and what sort of "point" is being made in declaring them.On the basis of your description, and having to fill in those gaps, it seems to me that you are describing play that is predominantly what I (following Edwards) would call high concept simulationism, but probably with some gamist moments (when the players have to take a chance and in that moment of play - which sometimes might be a relatively extended moment - find out if they win or lose). My reason for making this conjecture is that your description focuses on the setting and situation but says nothing about the characters or the stakes in value-laden terms; and I'm treating your descriptions as an indicator of what you find salient, and then basing my conjecture on that.Because it's a conjecture it of course might be wrong.</blockquote>

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