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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dbm" data-source="post: 9500160" data-attributes="member: 8014">A couple of things come to mind on that thread, one general and one specific to the Narrative Dice System that FFG uses.In general, this kind of flow does not have to be mandated by the system. The GM can totally run other games with a similar flow to movies; it is my default style. Zoom in on the interesting stuff, zoom out or montage the less interesting stuff. Ride the red line across the map if the journey isn’t a key facet of the current adventure. These things can be applied to any game, however some games support them better than others. One of the reasons why Savage Worlds is my favourite system is that it has rules for applying more or less focus on activity, so for example you can resolve a fight in just one roll per character rather than breaking out the full combat system if this is just a ‘speed bump’ combat which the current world state requires but it isn’t really going to add to the game. But you can do it in any system and it’s probably something you could explain to your players since I presume they all have the experience of watching movies where the director chooses to spend time on some things and not others.Specific to NDS, you could let you players spend ‘boons’ (can’t remember the specific name of the dice result which generates positive but tangential outcomes) to represent cool stuff the characters did in the past, flash-back style. Maybe spending a couple of ‘boon’ means that not only did they break in to the crime lords palace but they managed to have an ally infiltrate the organisation and be waiting to support them at the key moment. If you talk this through with your players and explain that the aim of this is to free up game time from the in-character prep they might otherwise feel compelled to do them this might also help re-focus the game on the scenes you want the game to feature. Similarly, spending ‘banes’ might be narrated as traps or tricks set up by the enemy that the character succumbed to. I seem to recall one of the design aims of NDS was to compress more action into a single roll so the story could move faster than in system with a strong ‘one roll - one action’ link.I think explaining these meta concepts explicitly is important so the players fully understand ‘the rules of the game’ for the current campaign, especially as they may change from campaign to campaign depending on the feel and focus the group is going for.</blockquote>

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