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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4024730" data-attributes="member: 42582">Ardoughter, I'll defer to skeptic's reply for an affirmative account (espcially of theme) - but in short, yes, story and theme isn't just an account of the heroes and their doings.Apoptosis, I don't want to (and don't know that I could) shoot holes in your examples - at least not in a close-reading, line-by-line refutation sort of way.But I would note that Champions, which you flag as Sim, is one of the games that Ron Edwards talks about drifting into narrativism. (He also discusses drift of T&amp;T from gamism to narrativism.) And I can see how that happens (for Champions, not T&amp;T) - it has many of the same features as RM (in terms of complex character build, choices in action resolution etc) which allow the mechanics to be used as vehicles for players to make thematic statements.I'm not just focusing on player choice (because D&amp;D always allowed choice of hair colour for a human PC, for example, but whether that narrative control is there or not is almost always peripheral to narrativist concerns). I think that 4e really does open up a few places where those choices can matter: the approach to confict, the control over the outcomes of conflict that more sophisticated mechanics give, the PoL stuff about adversity, etc.In the end, if you don't buy my theory that's fair enough: it's pretty speculative and perhaps generalises dangerously from my own play experience. But it really was what struck me when I read the 4e pre-release info and started to discuss it on these boards (starting with the hideous nightmare of the &quot;Why is it important?&quot; thread) - that finally D&amp;D might have crated room for people to try to do something with an RPG that (as Ron Edwards says) I think they reallly might enjoy, without the mechanics (and the GM who is applying and adjudicating them) getting in the way all the time.At the moment the main thing pressuring me to abandon my theory is Skeptic's point about XP.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 4024730, member: 42582"] Ardoughter, I'll defer to skeptic's reply for an affirmative account (espcially of theme) - but in short, yes, story and theme isn't just an account of the heroes and their doings. Apoptosis, I don't want to (and don't know that I could) shoot holes in your examples - at least not in a close-reading, line-by-line refutation sort of way. But I would note that Champions, which you flag as Sim, is one of the games that Ron Edwards talks about drifting into narrativism. (He also discusses drift of T&T from gamism to narrativism.) And I can see how that happens (for Champions, not T&T) - it has many of the same features as RM (in terms of complex character build, choices in action resolution etc) which allow the mechanics to be used as vehicles for players to make thematic statements. I'm not just focusing on player choice (because D&D always allowed choice of hair colour for a human PC, for example, but whether that narrative control is there or not is almost always peripheral to narrativist concerns). I think that 4e really does open up a few places where those choices can matter: the approach to confict, the control over the outcomes of conflict that more sophisticated mechanics give, the PoL stuff about adversity, etc. In the end, if you don't buy my theory that's fair enough: it's pretty speculative and perhaps generalises dangerously from my own play experience. But it really was what struck me when I read the 4e pre-release info and started to discuss it on these boards (starting with the hideous nightmare of the "Why is it important?" thread) - that finally D&D might have crated room for people to try to do something with an RPG that (as Ron Edwards says) I think they reallly might enjoy, without the mechanics (and the GM who is applying and adjudicating them) getting in the way all the time. At the moment the main thing pressuring me to abandon my theory is Skeptic's point about XP. [/QUOTE]

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