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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9095053" data-attributes="member: 42582">A friend pointed me to this blog post by Christopher Chinn: <a href="https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2011/08/06/narrativism-101/" target="_blank">Narrativism 101</a>Here are some excerpts - a pithy description of narrativist/"story now" RPGing:Narrativism is a style of roleplaying where the whole point of playing is to have player characters freely make choices* and actions based on human issues. *Obviously, I mean the players make choices through using their characters, but as far as the fiction is concerned, it’s the PCs “making choices” within the fiction.And a nice description of some parameters that follow:You can’t have the players freely make choices if the choices are already made. This means techniques like Railroading/Illusionism will not work here. It also means “preparing an adventure with multiple paths” also doesn’t work, because freely means just that- freely. . . There’s a second important thing that comes of it- if the responses and choices of the players are freely available, there’s no way to really predict where things can or will go – which means play (and the role of a GM) has to be based in improvisation and flexibility. This stands in sharp contrast to many games which assume the only way to play is to have a pre-defined story or outcomes. . . . While any sandbox type game might allow characters to freely make choices, the focus on the human issues is a second, and critical aspect.There's also a companion blog, <a href="https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2011/08/06/what-narrativism-isnt/" target="_blank">What Narrativism Isn’t</a>. It includes the following, which makes point that I and others have been posting repeatedly in this thread:The biggest confusion I see is confusing rules or mechanics that allow the players to narrate the world or change setting aspects for actual Narrativism. This almost always also ties into the strawman argument that you’d have players declaring their characters are gods, shoot down the sun, and magically have money come falling out their asses. . . . Some games have rules that give players more power to narrate or control the story, but a) that’s not Narrativist anymore than rolling a D6 would be, and b) many of those games also don’t have people doing ridiculous things to break the fiction. A secondary issue is that while Narrativism puts dealing with human issues as the point of play - that doesn’t mean the “realism” or genre of the game is thrown out – the human issues are addressed while holding TO the fictional expectations for your game. (That is, if it’s completely realistic, then no one will go flying in the air because they’re in love).</blockquote>

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