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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4026372" data-attributes="member: 42582">In the two examples, "world" and "narrative" are co-denoting (and acting as synonyms for all intents and purposes, as far as I can see): they both refer to the gameworld elements that constitute the medium of exploration in the game.Either could be an example of sim play (if the world/narrative is predetermined by the rules, or a module, or the GMs decision, and the players go along for the ride) or an example of narrativist play (if the game elements are able to be used by the players to make thematically pertinent statements).The presence or absence of rules for sharing narrative control really only goes to the question of whether or not we have pure vanilla narrativism or mechanically facilitated narrativism.There is some truth in this, but it also highlights a potential obstacle that some mechanics pose to narrativist play.Agreed. If, before play, we have already agree what counts as bad, then it is hard to see how we can meaningfully explore that in the game - at least, our initial consensus would have to be regarded as preliminary, and up for grabs as play unfolds.So in the example of the Dark Side Point, either the Dark Side Point has to be optional (as Lost Soul suggested) or else it would have to be up for grabs that drawing on the Dark Side was not necessarily wicked (ie we are no longer playing canonical Star Wars).If the wickedness of the Dark Side is not up for grabs, that in seems to me that narrowly moral themes (like the proper relationship between ends and means) are to a significant extent excluded. (This goes back to my exchange with Psion wrt alignment in D&D - if the mechanics already answer the moral question, it is hard to explore the moral questions in play.) What might be explored instead would be something like the inevitability of corruption in human affairs, and in performing an action that earns a Dark Side Point the player would be adopting author stance with respect to his or her PC (and so not herself accepting that the PC's action is right), and making the statement that corruption is inevitable (or something along those lines), which is a thematic statement but not a moral one in the narrow sense of trying to address a question of right or wrong.Assuming here that "standards" means "moral standards" then what you say is true, provided that the narrativist play is not intending to explore questions of right or wrong, but some other sort of theme (such as the inevitably of human corruption that I used as an example above).</blockquote>

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