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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7391432" data-attributes="member: 42582">The phrase "go where the action is" is one that I borrow from Eero Tuovinen. It is a metaphor or a slogan - it means frame scenss that are thematically compelling, and force meaningful choices. Because we're talking about player (not just PC) choices that are meaningful, the compulsion has to result from something that is inherent to the pc as conceived and played by the player. (Hence the significance, in Tuovinen's account of the "standard narrativistic model", of player "advocacy" of and for the character.)"Travel", in this context, is an illusion. Upthread, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] explained the swift narration of 15 to 20 miles of travel through Moria on the basis that there were no intersections, cracks in the path, etc. But this is to get the order of explanation backwards. Moria is not a real place; JRRT is making it up. Because he wants to go where the action is - ie set up the confrontation with the orcs and the balrog, which is foreshadowed by the discovery of the fate of Balin's colony - he narrates a swift journey through a largely featureless area.Likewise the joureny from Rivendell to the Misty Mountains: one doesn't explain the brief narration in terms of the lack of interesting stuff that happened. That would be to suppose that an imaginary world exercised causal power upon JRRT's brain. The explanation is the opposite: because, narratively, JRRT sees nothing of interest in Eregion, he narrates a largely uneventful journey to the mountaints.Exactly the same principles hold true in RPGing. If everyone agrees that the next interesting thing is going to involve the fire giants, then the trip there can be narrated as swift and largely uneventful. This is not "cheating", or "cheapening" anything. The gameworld isn't an independent reality that demands respect and attention. It's a fictional construction, and just as JRRT constructs his fiction to suit his narrative purposes, so a group of RPGers can do the same.This is oxymoronic. To say that "it takes longer" is simply to say that you are not going where the action is; that you are framing the PCs (and thereby the players) into situations that are not thematically compelling, and do not provoke meaningful choices.Furthermore, this was already clear from your earlier posts, in what you said about the scene with the bazaar and the feather. You said that you would not just frome the PC (and thereby the player) into a situation is thematically compelling and provokes a meaningful choice (ie  "Do I try and acquire this feather?") You said that you would start the scene at (say) the city gate, and the player would have to "work" for the opportunity to make that choice.That is not "going where the action is". Choosing whether to look for a market, or a wizard's guild, or a curio shop, isn't - in the context of a PC whose player has written the Belief "I won't leave Hardby without a useful item for confronting my balrog-possessed brother", that is not a thematically compelling choice. (Contrast: if the Belief was "I will find someone who knows of the location of a useful item for confronting my Balrog-psossed brother", then it might be.)Notice that I didn't say that there has to be an agenda established formally. I said that the player has to signal some sort of agenda formally (as is the case in BW) or informally (as might happen in 4e). Informally in this context is a contrary of, not a synonym for, "formally".As far as the claim that game play is enough without any signalling of agenca, whether formal or informal, let's look at what you say:Denetheor didn't ask Pippin to swear fealty - this is Pippin's intiative.In terms of play, what if the options the GM presents don't include the chance to meet Boromir's father? Pippin didn't seek this out, after all - from the point of view of the fiction, it is a chance thing. But if Pippin's player has signalled an agenda (formally or informally), then the GM knows to include Boromir's father as an element of a scene.What if there is no pre-authored attack? No pre-authored presence of Farimir as the charismatic leader of the defence?Your own account of this reveals why, in the absence of some sort of agenda signfalling which the GM then responds to in choosing what elements to incorproate into the framing of situations, there is no guarnatee that dramatic arcs will emerge in the course of play.The GM decisions also matter - eg to have Denethor as a NPC present in the situations s/he has prepared; to have an attack upon Minas Tirith, etc.Furthermore, the issue isn't about whether or not it plays out as in the book. The question is, if the player amkes other choices do we get a dramatic arc? Thematically compelling vhoices? What happens if Pippin offers fealty to Denethor and Denethor refuses to accept it? (In 4e, this could be the result of a failed Diplomacy check in a skill challenge. In BW, it could be the outcome of a duel of wits.) Now "the action" has changed - perhaps Pippin seeks out Farimir instead. But if you've already scripted that Farimir is in Osgiliath or Ithilien, and if you require that bit of travel to be pl1ayed out because otherwise the gameworld is not being "neutral", well now you don't have "story now" at all - you've got a standard wilderness crawl with a McGuffin at the end of it.This is what Ron Edwards calls "the monkeys-might-fly-out-my-butt principle"!Right. And the "picking from the GM's menu" is what I have referred to, upthread, as a railroad.And as you say, a GM who starts adopting player-responsive techniques can of course generate "story now"-type play! Who would be surprised by that - that if you adopt "story now" methods you'll get "story now" resuts?</blockquote>

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