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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8638476" data-attributes="member: 82106">Right, it is just literally as stated, a matter of AGENDA. If the game is focused first and foremost on what is motivating and driving the PCs, their dramatic needs, the conflicts that arise out of addressing  them, and the consequences/fallout/rewards of the resulting action, then you are working a Narrativist agenda. Story Now kind of follows very naturally, because the above focus means that any conflicting faithful depiction of setting, or any preordained plot elements would take secondary place to that, and so would fail to be established, or would be contradicted, should that serve the Narrativist agenda. Likewise a potentially competing agenda, lets say HCS: focuses on exploration of the setting/genre and the associated conceits. So in that case if a player declares something about their PC which brings out a dramatic need, it may be passed over for whatever reasons. It could be distracting from exploration, it could be too difficult to integrate into some preordained element of setting or genre, etc. So when it comes to a choice of priorities, HCS will go for exploration of things that are generally outside of 'character' per se. Clearly actual games overlap in some degree. Even purist Story Now games have a genre and some basic setting concept, even if it is quite abstract and contains no concrete facts at the start (IE a DW game will start with nothing except the conceit of a fantastical D&D-esque world with dragons, dungeons, wizards, and the possibility of heroic adventure). The players may well 'explore' a world that comes into existence and is fleshed out in DW play, but it exists purely to form the backdrop for the character's conflicts and to generate some kind of internal logic for the action. At most the players might imagine their characters as wishing to take on the roles of great explorers, and thus 'map out' parts of the world. That won't turn it into HCS play, as its more likely that the GM will put the PCs dreams of finding 'lost cities of gold' or whatever under pressure! He's not facilitating them, he's giving the players a way to examine that impulse itself, and perhaps to fulfill it to a degree. In the HCS version, the GM will map out this world ahead of time and the play will be the actual revelation, the transference of those map symbols onto the player's map! If a problem arises which pits exploration against something else, its purpose is simply to enhance the 'reward' aspect of successful exploration (IE 'see you did it even though there were obstacles').</blockquote>

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