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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7389637" data-attributes="member: 42582">One implication here, in the reference to "players who aren't as fully invested", is that the job of the GM is a type of parenting or troupe leader: to keep everyone together.But now think about all the situations in which people get together in groups of around half-a-dozen or so and do things together without needing a leader to coordinate them: going to lunch or dinner; going to the movies; meeting up for a picnic; etc.The same social techniques that work in those contexts can work in RPGing - whether "OK, this session we'll do your thing; next session it's my PC's turn", or finding some higher synthesis in which everyone can get what they want out of the same activity. In my group the more dominant personalities also tend to be enthusiastic for quite a wide range of possibilities, and so the compromises and agreements seem easy to reach.Because we're talking about RPGing, some of these issues will be occurring within the game - eg PC 1 wants to go to place A, while PC 2 wants to go to place B - and that means that sometimes the solution to player disagreement is a game mechanical one. In Burning Wheel, the two PCs might fight a duel of wits to see if one can persuade the other. In my Traveller game, a couple of times I've made the two sides in a protracted disagreement dice off, giving a bonus modifier to the side that has the PC with Leader skill, and a bonus to the side whose PC has the highest Social Standing. I once did a similar thing in my 4e game (using CHA as the relevant stat), when an argument about where to go next had been going on without resolution for more than a session, no resolution was in sight, and the game could not go on without a decision being made.Other sorts of differences or disagreements might be of the "I attack them!" "No, don't do that, I want to talk to them!" variety. I don't see that player-driven RPGing has to be any more prone to this than GM-driven, unless the GM's driving is so strong that it regulates and screens huge chunks of action declaration. (I know this does happen at some tables, but I would regard that sort of play as rather degenerate RPGing.)Sometimes this sort of conflict can be something that is resolved mechanically. For instance, in my Cortex+ game the swordthane knocked on the door of the giant steading, because - as per one of his milestones - the player wanted his PC to be able to ask the occupant for advice about the PC's quest. When a giant opened the door, the berserker PC immediately charged him in a screaming rage - because the player of that PC wanted to earn XP, as per one of his milestones, for having his first action in a scene be violent. The swordthane used his ability to take a blow in lieu of an intended target, and so - in the fiction - caught the haft of the axe of the berserker as it was halfway through it's swing; and then chided the berserker that these were friendly giants, not giants to be fought.But sometimes it is primarily a social thing, which can be resolved through social means.I'm not really sure what you mean by something is unclear in terms of success or failure. When a player declares an action for his/her PC, that establishes what success looks like. In most "story now" RPGs, narrating failure is the responsibility of the GM. The most boring version of failure is "nothing happens" or "nope, there's no secret door there"; but typically in these games the GM is expected to use "fail forward" techniques ie failure results in some affirmative thing occurring which itself demands some sort of response from the PCs (and thus the players). (Note that the "forward" in the phrase "fail forward" refers to the narrative trajectory, not the individual PC's trajectory. When interpreted in the latter sense "fail forward" becomes "succeed with a cost" which I think tends to be rather insipid except in pretty modest doses, and really is a hallmark of GM-driven railroads which can't accommodate genuine failures without derailing.)As far as story types are concerned, there are obviously some RPGs that lend themselves well to episodic games. Dogs in the Vineyard is one, as its basic structure has the PCs moving from town to town to enforce the religious law. Each town is an episode which allows the players to explore and evince their PCs' responses to the various sorts of troubles and sins that the people of the imagined land get up to.Cortex+ Heroic is another. Because player goal/theme in Cortex+ Heroic is expressed as Milestones, ie particular actions or events which earn a PC experience points, the external circumstances aren't that important. Eg if Captain America earns 10 XP either when he becomes leader of a new superhero team, or hands over leadership of his current team to a new leader, that can happen (and be built up to) in a variety of situations that follow on from one another.4e also handles episodic play fairly straightforwardly. The default arc in 4e is very long: levels 1 to 30, with a level gained every 3 to 4 sessions, means something like 100+ sessions of play in a campaign. There's a lot of scope in there for sub-arcs and the like. Unlike DitV, the rules for encounter design in 4e don't guarantee that each moment in those 100+ sessions will be thematically engaging, but it's not that hard to achieve that in 4e, because the relevant themes are pretty clear and strong, and the default cosmology, mythic history and Monster Manual of 4e provides plenty of elements that speak to those themes.Burning Wheel, on the other hand, is less well suited to episodic play, because PC relationship and affiliations and so on are a big part of the game, and players are expected to give their PCs Beliefs which connect to these various "external" elements of the gameworld. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but I don't think it is what BW is best for.Here is where you are wrong: declaring an action is not exercising backstory authority.A player who declares "I search for a secret door" is not exercising backstory authority. If that check succeeds, and thus - in the fiction - a secret door is found, that is not an exercise of backstory authority. It's an exercise of the authority to declare an action for one's PC. The backstory was established by the GM in framing the scene.The games that Eero Tuovinen actually mentions as exemplifying the "standard narrativistic model" are (from memory) Sorcerer, DitV, Primetime Adventures and HeroWars/Quest (the lattermost at least in some moods). I would add Burning Wheel, Fate and Cortex+ Heroic (the latter two, again, in some but not all moods). Have you ever played any of these games, or read the rulebooks for them?It's not a coincidence that the phrase used is "the claim of fatherhood." This is not the same as the truth of that claim.How the claim is established as true or false will depend upon the particular resolution mechanics of the system, and how the player engages them - if at all - in response to that claim. For instance, in Burning Wheel the PC could go on a quest to refute the claim - say, collecting evidence as to the location of the putative father relative to the character's mother in the period 9 months or so before the character was born - and if these actions succeeded then they would be binding on the GM as much as the player.The backstory and the "moment of choice" is just that - the framing of the scene. It's not all this other, unrevealed stuff that already answers the question and tells us whether the character's agenda and feelings are right or wrong. As Ron Edwards - whom Eero expressly references - says, in "story now" RGGing There cannot be any "the story".Is the villain the hero's father, or not? That is not to be authored in advance secretly by the GM. Assuming that it's something that anyone cares about (ie it would be a "challenging revelation"), then it's one of the things that we play to find out.</blockquote>

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