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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8235620" data-attributes="member: 42582">In these posts, "he" refers to [USER=85870]@innerdude[/USER]. Maxperson also posts the following, as a paraphrase/reiteration of the above:Here is what innerdude actually posted:So notice that [USER=85870]@innerdude[/USER] doesn't say either of the things that [USER=23751]@Maxperson[/USER] attributes to him.There is no reference to voting for known options. Nor is there any reference to sitting around discussing what sorts of things to "discover." What innerdude describes is completely standard PbtA-type stuff: there are action resolution mechanics that establish obligations to narrate new fiction under certain sorts of constraints (eg 2 pieces of useful information).What innerdude refers to absolutely permits discovery. "Fifteen or twenty times over 3 sessions I've watched players invoke a move, see the results, and said, "Wow, cool. So what just happened?" And I end up genuinely surprised by what takes place." That's discovery! By GM and players. It is the result of applying standard PbtA techniques: all the participants bouncing off the existing fiction to establish new fiction having regard to the constraints that the mechanics establish.You can do similar things in other systems - eg Classic Traveller or Prince Valiant, just to nominate two I'm familiar with at the moment - although they don't have quite as robust a framework for this as PbtA games.EDIT: We can also talk about what features of a system permit this sort of thing. There has to be an absence of resolution frameworks that dictate outcomes that get in the way of the PbtA-ish back-and-forth: Rolemaster, with its many interacting components that make tracking ingame time crucial and that require rolls to be made for a large number of somewhat mundane actions undertaken by characters, would be an example of a system that does have frameworks that get in the way.The game also has to be robust in play without all the fiction being pinned down, precisely so that the back-and-forth can be used to achieve that pinning down. Classic Traveller and Prince Valiant both work very well in this respect (with one exception for Traveller: onworld exploration); contrast Moldvay Basic, which in most of its action resolution rules (movement, exploration, etc) relies upon very detailed fiction already being established (secretly, by the referee) so that it can feed into those action resolution processes.</blockquote>

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