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Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8645594" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>The exploratory/GM-as-glue play that you describe - with missions, quest-givers etc (I hope I've got the right general impression) seems mostly exploration of situation: <em>What is this week's mission, and how will it turn out?</em></p><p></p><p>The play in my Classic Traveller game that I described was mostly exploration of setting - the players declare actions (opening doors, poking at things) which prompt me as GM to provide them with more detail/information, and gradually a body of knowledge about the alien world, its backstory, the motivations of the aliens, etc is built up. Some information about the backstory and motivation of the NPCs the PCs are working with is also built up.</p><p></p><p>In the sessions I described I was making up a fair bit of the setting/backstory as we went along, within a general framework/template provided by module notes, a few ideas of my own I'd jotted down, and the previous fiction of the campaign. So in a sense I got to "find out what happens" in the sense of being provoked by the players to make up new stuff. And at least some of that was building on their ideas and speculations, in a very informal and low-impact variation on "ask questions and build on the answers".</p><p></p><p>What made it explorative and not "story now" was that the (notional) questions on whose answers I was building, and the action declarations prompting me to narrate, were not provocative. Nothing was really at stake. Nor was there any gamism: the map was hidden only in the sense that the only copy was the one in the book I was reading from, but I was showing it to the players when appropriate, freely providing information from it, etc. Getting the information about the setting wasn't any sort of challenge.</p><p></p><p>I enjoyed it, because building up the details of the alien world and history was fun, and responding to the players responding to me as we build up a shared picture of our Traveller universe was fun, <em>and</em> seeing them gradually develop concerns about what had happened, what might happen, how they would deal with the NPCs, etc was fun too. But I wouldn't want it to be the whole of play! That's why, as I posted upthread, after a couple of sessions I deliberately took steps - using my NPCs as the vehicle - to push play away from exploration of setting and into non-explorative response to situation, in virtue of the behaviour of the NPCs provoking a crisis. The exploration helped identify and establish the materials for this transition, but it required a deliberate decision - on my part - to actually make the transition happen.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8645594, member: 42582"] The exploratory/GM-as-glue play that you describe - with missions, quest-givers etc (I hope I've got the right general impression) seems mostly exploration of situation: [i]What is this week's mission, and how will it turn out?[/i] The play in my Classic Traveller game that I described was mostly exploration of setting - the players declare actions (opening doors, poking at things) which prompt me as GM to provide them with more detail/information, and gradually a body of knowledge about the alien world, its backstory, the motivations of the aliens, etc is built up. Some information about the backstory and motivation of the NPCs the PCs are working with is also built up. In the sessions I described I was making up a fair bit of the setting/backstory as we went along, within a general framework/template provided by module notes, a few ideas of my own I'd jotted down, and the previous fiction of the campaign. So in a sense I got to "find out what happens" in the sense of being provoked by the players to make up new stuff. And at least some of that was building on their ideas and speculations, in a very informal and low-impact variation on "ask questions and build on the answers". What made it explorative and not "story now" was that the (notional) questions on whose answers I was building, and the action declarations prompting me to narrate, were not provocative. Nothing was really at stake. Nor was there any gamism: the map was hidden only in the sense that the only copy was the one in the book I was reading from, but I was showing it to the players when appropriate, freely providing information from it, etc. Getting the information about the setting wasn't any sort of challenge. I enjoyed it, because building up the details of the alien world and history was fun, and responding to the players responding to me as we build up a shared picture of our Traveller universe was fun, [i]and[/i] seeing them gradually develop concerns about what had happened, what might happen, how they would deal with the NPCs, etc was fun too. But I wouldn't want it to be the whole of play! That's why, as I posted upthread, after a couple of sessions I deliberately took steps - using my NPCs as the vehicle - to push play away from exploration of setting and into non-explorative response to situation, in virtue of the behaviour of the NPCs provoking a crisis. The exploration helped identify and establish the materials for this transition, but it required a deliberate decision - on my part - to actually make the transition happen. [/QUOTE]
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