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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4017714" data-attributes="member: 42582">With respect, that's a poor definition of narrativism, if you are trying to capture the Forge sense of the term.The point of narrativist play is not to enjoy a good yarn, but to produce a yarn. This yarn typically won't be especialy good, given that most RPG players - and I certainly include myself here - are not especially good writers of literature. But it will be the play group's own, and because of this authenticity it has a certain interest for that group.With this in mind, we can see that play in which the players sit back and let the GM's world and story wash over them is not narrativist play, but rather a particular style of simulationism (in which what the players are exploring is the GM's creative vision). This is why alignment in D&D is best characterised as a simulationist mechanic - what it does is tell a story about morality (whether or not it is a good story is one on which opinions differ!), which the players then get to experience during play. Getting rid of mechanical alignment is (IMO) one of the more signficant departures from simulationism that 4e is making.Returning to the Dwarves: if being a Dwarf makes a difference in play, then it is important (for narrativist play) that a player gets to choose whether or not they play a Dwarf - so that they can choose whether or not to make that sort of difference in play. It is conceivable that the relevant difference might be the perceived gruffness of Dwarves.  A player choosing to play a Dwarf is thereby signalling that they want their PC to undergo a certain sort of adversity (namely, being perceived as gruff) in order to develop whatever theme is of interest to them in the game. A CHA penalty might be one mechancial way to implement this choice.Most narrativist play would also want the PC's personality to be dynamic (to an extent, at least) and under the control of the player, so you would also want mechanics which allow the player (in circumstances that s/he judges appropriate) to be able to buy off the penalty. It is a little hard to see how this would work in traditional D&D, but you could envisage APs being used here - if the player sets as her Dwarf's goal "succeed despite gruffness" then a bunle of APs might be available to be spent in social challenges to turn what otherwise would be failures into successes.Problems for narrativism will arise if the gameworld already tries to dictate the implications of that gruffness for the player, as opposed to allowing the player to work them out in the course of play. This could be both (i) the issue never coming up, or (ii) the issue coming up only by the GM telling the player how his/her PC's gruffness is being perceived by NPCs, with the player having no meaningful control over that, and those reactions having no meaningful impact on the game.In my view, a non-simulationist game that is not interested in exploring these issues of racial identity is either better off just having all PCs default to human, or else better be ready for racial choice to be simply a (gamist) min-maxing exercise. In 4e, I envisage the latter to be the main determinant of racial choice, with simulationist concerns about flavour (what sort of fantasy being do I want to explore while playing this game?) being a secondary factor.</blockquote>

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