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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9107629" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, "story now" is a <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">defined term</a>:Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence be addressed in the process of role-playing. "Address" means: <ul style="margin-left: 20px"> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Establishing the issue's Explorative expressions in the game-world, "fixing" them into imaginary place.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Developing the issue as a source of continued conflict, perhaps changing any number of things about it, such as which side is being taken by a given character, or providing more depth to why the antagonistic side of the issue exists at all.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Resolving the issue through the decisions of the players of the protagonists, as well as various features and constraints of the circumstances.</li> </ul> Can it really be that easy? Yes, Narrativism is that easy. The Now refers to the people, during actual play, focusing their imagination to create those emotional moments of decision-making and action, and paying attention to one another as they do it. To do that, they relate to "the story" very much as authors do for novels, as playwrights do for plays, and screenwriters do for film at the creative moment or moments. Think of the Now as meaning, "in the moment," or "engaged in doing it," in terms of input and emotional feedback among one another. The Now also means "get to it," in which "it" refers to any Explorative element or combination of elements that increases the enjoyment of that issue I'm talking about. There cannot be any "the story" during Narrativist play, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s). Story Now has a great deal in common with Step On Up, particularly in the social expectation to contribute, but in this case the real people's attention is directed toward one another's insights toward the issue, rather than toward strategy and guts.I think the notion of "engaging issue" or "problematic feature of human existence" is pretty capacious. [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] has talked about challenges to who the character is. Burning Wheel also emphasises this (Revised edition, p 12; Gold edition, p 90):There are consequences to your choices in this game. . . . "If my character undertakes this task, he'll be changed, and I don't know exactly how."But the essay that defines "Story Now" gives other examples too. Some are a bit more impersonal:I don't think I've ever seen a more challenging Premise in a role-playing text than "religious requirements are not human ideals." That is HeroQuest in a nutshell, and there is no avoiding it during play. A character may begin as just another goat-herder, but he isn't going to stay that way.HeroQuest is the updated version of Robin Laws's Glorantha RPG HeroWars.And this one is different again:The Dying Earth facilitates Narrativist play, because its Situations are loaded with the requirement for satirical, judgmental input on the part of the players.Unsurprisingly, perhaps, The Dying Earth is another Robin Laws RPG.What the personal, the impersonal and the satirical all have in common is that the player, through the play of their PC in the game, has to express some sort of emotional, moral, aesthetic or similarly evaluative judgement. And this is why there is no the story - because the player has to be free to express their judgement or else the whole point of play is defeated. The judgement need not be self-conscious - that's part of the beauty of RPGing compared to writing a story - but it is still expressed. The GM, in framing scenes, is inciting it.The scenarios that you ([USER=6795602]@FrogReaver[/USER]) present do not, on their face, seem to oblige the player to express these sorts of judgements. They seem like external challenges. If we are going to play to find out whether or not the PC can succeed at them, then - in the lexicon that gave us "story now" - we are talking about "Step on Up" (=, in that lexicon, "gamist") play.</blockquote>

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