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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4017753" data-attributes="member: 42582">Our posts crossed in the aether - but I think yours captures the gist, of it being about facilitating group story-telling (and not just by the GM).With respect, your examples do not capture what Ron Edwards and other Forge-ites mean by "narrativism", and don't capture what I, and (if I may speak for them) Apoptosis and Third Wizard are trying to get at with that term.Your first example is one of GM authorship - absent more information it looks like low-detail simulationism. What narrativist play cares about is that (if the passage of time matters) the players can affect it, or conversely if the passage of time is not under the players' control then it doesn't matter to the game. 4e does a bit of both: per-encounter powers mean that the GM's control over the passage of in-game time doesn't affect the PC's utility as vehicles for play; PoL as safehavens means that the players can allow time to pass in the gameworld without the GM interrupting this by suddenly triggering an encounter.Your second is underdeveloped, but I don't see the difference between "scene" and "encounter". In 4e, at least, it seems that the encounter is the scene. I agree that simulationism would tend not to like this approach to the duration of powers.Your third example seems backwards: in narrativist play I don't buy powers because they reflect what I've done. I buy them because of what they promise for future play. Thus, I would buy a Dark Side power because I want, in the immediate future, to roleplay out some thematic issue to which that choice will give rise in the course of the game. (Thus, narrativist play is inevitably and inherently metagaming.)Choosing powers to reflect what has happened to my character in fact looks like a type of simulationist play that has to accomodate itself to a non-simulationist ruleset. This is very commonly seen in a certain type of D&D play (eg one frequently sees posts deriding the idea that a player whose PC is a Fighter could suddenly pick up Wizard as a class). In pure simulationist games like RQ or classic Traveller it doesn't come up, because players do not get to make these sorts of power choices (and thus can't be tempted to metagame).Your fourth example is also a little odd. Most narrativist games will use different rules for PC build as NPC build, I think, simply because NPCs don't need rules associated with them that open the door to narrative control - the GM has other devices for exercising that control independent of the NPCs under his or her control. Access to APs (and also, in D&D, hit points, which are the default currency of protagonism) does support narrativist play, however - Chris Sims discusses this in the recent Healing thread.Your last example also I would quibble with. Narrativist mechanics aren't designed to create memorable stories, they're designed to empower players to play a creative role in the game.Afterall, if you wanted good stories the best mechanic would be something like: all of your group go to the bookshop and buy a copy of The Power and The Glory, then start reading at page 1. But that wouldn't be a game, narrativist or otherwise.</blockquote>

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