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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8396755" data-attributes="member: 42582">The answer to that, surely, is some people.We divide them into one GM and the remainder as players.  The GM does all the framing. The players declare actions for their PCs. The GM tells them what happens. (This is what Tweet and Edwards call drama resolution.)Lewis Pulsipher described this sort of RPGing in the late 70s, and as actual not just theoretical. He wasn't a big fan, but he recognised it as a form of RPGing.I think a fair bit of contemporary D&D play looks quite a bit like this, except that there is a vague sense that the PC sheet has descriptors on it that the GM has to honour in some respect when deciding what happens.That's an interesting example.A lot of CoC play is very close to what I described just above: the PC sheet is just a set of descriptors to help channel the GM's decision-making, and the dice rolls are basically theatre. The written scenario is basically a set of instructions to the GM to tell them what to say next - replacing it with the GM just making stuff up might lead to a reduction in intricacy and perhaps in consistency of detail, but won't necessarily be a profound change in method!The group you refer to could also use <a href="http://catchyourhare.com/files/Cthulhu%20Dark.pdf" target="_blank">Cthulhu Dark</a>, replacing its D6 with D4 which won't change the gameplay significantly except to accelerate the race to insanity. The difference between Cthulhu Dark and GM decides is that the result of a die roll can constrain the narration of what happens next, shifting authority from the GM to another participant.I'm not sure what work collaboratively is doing there. As in, suppose we delete that word from your description, what changes?Related to this is the notion of the GM making fair rulings. I don't see what the collaborative element is in a GM making rulings. And suppose we delete the word fair. What changes? What would an unfair ruling look like, in this sort of set-up?A system in which the players declare actions for their PCs and the GM tells them what happens next seems like a RPG to me, and describing it as collaborative or suggesting that the GM's rulings need to be fair strikes me as distracting verbiage.I've never played nor read BitD, though of course have heard a fair bit about it.I'm not sure which other "story-oriented" games you've got in mind (if any). Apocalypse World is a fairly well known one. Prince Valiant is a classic one, that I play a fair bit and like very much. The mechanics for these systems don't codify the role of the player and GM any differently from D&D - Prince Valiant is mechanically simpler than any version of D&D (including original D&D) and I would say that AW is mechanically simpler than any version of D&D since AD&D.The change those RPGs make to the role of player and GM, when compared to (say) AD&D or its predecessors, are not in mechanics but in the principles that govern how situations are framed, and how what happens next is decided. You can adopt those principles using a system as simple as Cthulhu Dark, where a PC consists of a one-word/phase descriptor chosen by the player (I've seen longshoreman, legal secretary, investigative reporter and very English butler) together with an insanity rating (starts at 1, caps at 6 assuming D6s are being used) and the resolution rules can be (and are) stated in a single page of text.Maybe. As I said, I've not played or read BitD.What you describe is not a feature of the games I play and enjoy, which tend to emphasise the player's identification with the PC and leave "the story" as something to emerge organically out of the framing + action resolution process. Those RPGs do tend to expect that the story that emerges will be, in some sense, worthwhile; but they rely on the combination of principles and techniques around framing and resolution to achieve that outcome, rather than giving anyone the job of making sure the story is a good one.Well to me the differences can be found in both principles and techniques.In AD&D and other forms of "classic" D&D, backstory/setting is primarily map + key; framing is achieved by reading off the map + key depending on where the players have taken their PCs to (which also means movement rates and passage-of-time rules matter - these regulate the relationship between wandering monster checks and the players getting their PCs to where they want to be); the referee should be non-neutral when preparing the map + key (at a minimum it should be interesting), but should be as neutral as possible at the point of framing and resolution.In post-DL "storyteller" style RPGing, the GM controls not only backstory/setting (via map + key + timelines of events that both have already happened and are yet to happen) but also framing: where the players take their PCs on the map might influence framing decisions a bit but the GM is not constrained by prep in the same way as a classic D&D GM is. The notion of neutrality in framing thus has no real work to do. Because in this sort of play the framed situations and stakes are likely to sit outside the formal mechanics, and are likely to be too complex for genuine free kriegsspiel-type resolution, GM decides becomes a very important mode of resolution (perhaps using dice rolls as some sort of non-constraining input). You can see this style of play everywhere you look on ENworld, from Iron DM entries to the How Was Your Last Session Thread to most 6-8 encounter per day lamentation threads to a good chunk of the posters on any thread that I or [USER=99817]@chaochou[/USER] has started!In scene-framed play (Prince Valiant and Burning Wheel are the two examples I'm most familiar with), backstory and setting are secondary concerns, and may come from the players as much as the GM. They are not determined via prep, except to the extent that this might be the by-product of prepping a situation for play. (Eg if as a Prince Valiant GM I write up an evil knight to use in an encounter, that implicates some backstory such as that the knight has a castle somewhere, probably some retainers etc.) Framing of situations is fundamental, and is to be done having regard to the known interests/aspirations of the players for their PCs. (In BW these are recorded on the PC sheet via a formal system of Beliefs, Instincts, Relationships etc; in Prince Valiant these are conveyed purely informally, with genre also doing some heavy lifting.) Resolution is via stakes ("say 'yes' or roll the dice"), intent and task. The interaction of the framing principles and the resolution method means that some of the time situations drive the players' self-authored agendas forward, and sometimes they thwart them (depending on how the dice fall). This modulation of the rising action via success and failure is what makes the story "worthwhile".In "fiction-first" play (Apocalypse World is the example I'm most familiar with, though my play is confined to some DW experience; I also referee Classic Traveller in a way that is fairly close to this) backstory and prep are a bit more important than in scene-framed play, but the GM is expected not only to follow player leads but also to leave "blanks" that can be filled in, during play, by asking players questions and building on those answers. The basic motto for resolution in this sort of play is if you do it, you do it - there is no "saying 'yes'" if a player declares an action that invokes a mechanically-defined move. Thus, designing moves that will speak to the key concerns of your game is pretty important to this sort of RPG design! The outcomes of moves should generate a fairly clear trajectory of what the GM should say next ("faithfully following the fiction" is very important in these games), with the idea of "snowballing" being important. The main difference between this sort of RPGing, and the "storyteller" RPGing I described above, is that the motto to which "storyteller" RPGing aspires is We didn't roll the dice all night! - ie either consensual or GM-decides resolution is highly valued - whereas in AW-ish fiction first play the expectation is that play will naturally lead to moves being invoked, which require rolls to be made, which then constrain in various ways what happens next. Consensus and GM-decides don't have much work to do once the rubber hits the road! (Again, this drives home how important it is in these games to get your moves designed well. Classic Traveller is OK, but Vincent Baker is a genius in this respect.)Sorry for the long reply: I'll close it with a self-quote where I say a bit about the difference between scene-framed and fiction-first RPGing, and where my preferences land:</blockquote>

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