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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9321708" data-attributes="member: 42582">That's probably why the Big Model doesn't suggest what you say it suggests. Here is the relevant passage from <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">Edwards' essay</a>:Long ago, I concluded that "story" as a role-playing term was standing in for several different processes and goals, some of which were incompatible. Here's the terms-breakdown I'll be using from now on. All role-playing necessarily produces a sequence of imaginary events. Go ahead and role-play, and write down what happened to the characters, where they went, and what they did. I'll call that event-summary the "transcript." But some transcripts have, as Pooh might put it, a "little something," specifically a theme: a judgmental point, perceivable as a certain charge they generate for the listener or reader. If a transcript has one (or rather, if it does that), I'll call it a story. Let's say that the following transcript, which also happens to be a story, arose from one or more sessions of role-playing. Lord Gyrax rules over a realm in which a big dragon has begun to ravage the countryside. The lord prepares himself to deal with it, perhaps trying to settle some internal strife among his followers or allies. He also meets this beautiful, mysterious woman named Javenne who aids him at times, and they develop a romance. Then he learns that she and the dragon are one and the same, as she's been cursed to become a dragon periodically in a kind of Ladyhawke situation, and he must decide whether to kill her. Meanwhile, she struggles to control the curse, using her dragon-powers to quell an uprising in the realm led by a traitorous ally. Eventually he goes to the Underworld instead and confronts the god who cursed her, and trades his youth to the god to lift the curse. He returns, and the curse is detached from her, but still rampaging around as a dragon. So they slay the dragon together, and return as a couple, still united although he's now all old, to his home. The real question: after reading the transcript and recognizing it as a story, what can be said about the Creative Agenda that was involved during the role-playing? The answer is, absolutely nothing. We don't know whether people played it Gamist, Simulationist, or Narrativist, or any combination of the three. A story can be produced through any Creative Agenda. The mere presence of story as the product of role-playing is not a GNS-based issue."Story now" has nothing to do with whether or not the play of the game results in a story. It's about what is expressed and experienced in the play of the game itself."Story now" is an account of one creative goal/agenda a group might have in playing a RPG. The best "story now"-oriented RPGs (Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel, in my view) have been written by great game designers - Vincent Baker and Luke Crane."Gamist play", at least as used by Edwards, means oriented towards competition. I don't think either system is especially well-designed for that, but as Edwards says in the video that [USER=85361]@lesser[/USER] Than linked to, people can bend any RPG towards any goal that they like. I'm sure there are some groups somewhere who play gamist Burning Wheel (probably using Beliefs more as quest goals than statements of personal conviction; and not using Mouldbreaker as a source of artha).Here is Vincent Baker, on p 288 of the AW rulebook:The entire game design follows from “Narrativism: Story Now” by Ron Edwards.Apocalypse World is a vehicle designed for "story now"/"narrativist" play, and is clearly a very suitable vehicle for it."Story now", as a goal of RPGing, means that the the participants address, during and by the play of the game, some sort of thematic premise.Now one way to address a thematic premise is to write a book about it. Another is to give a lecture on it. But "story now" means doing so by playing a RPG.The core of playing a RPG is the sharing of an unfolding fiction. At least some of the participants (all but the GM, in a traditional structure) contribute to the unfolding of the fiction by "controlling" one or more characters within the fiction, declaring actions for them. And one or more of the participants (the GM, in a traditional structure) has the job of establishing/presenting situations in which those characters find themselves. There is also a system of some sort for working out what happens when those characters are declared to do things.In "story now" play, the way the characters are detailed, the way the situations are detailed, and the way "what happens next" is worked out, are all oriented towards the addressing of a thematic premise by the game participants. In a standard players/GM set-up, the GM uses their role in establishing the situation to provoke/incite some sort of thematically relevant action declaration; the players say what their characters do, having regard to their character details, which will be such as to draw them into thematically charged situations and actions; and the system will deliver a "what next" that reveals something that bears upon the thematic premise.In AW, the premise at issue is human relationships (especially conflict, but also community and trust) in circumstances of scarcity. The design of the playbooks, of the player-side moves, and of the principles that govern the GM-side moves, all conspire to bring this premise to the fore in both situations presented by the GM, and what happens next when the players have their PCs do things.In BW, there is no particular premise built into the game - the players build the thematic premises as part of building their PCs - but given that it is a FRPG it is oriented towards premises that fantasy fiction (whether Tolkienesque, or S&S) is good for addressing. It is not a PbtA game, and uses a different sort of resolution framework ("intent + task", "say 'yes' or roll the dice", and "let it ride") together with a different set of principles that govern the GM in presenting scenes, to make sure that the player-established premises are to the fore in play.You can see that there is no particular connection between "story now" play and the production of a story. What story now play involves is the use of RPG play - a distinct way of imagining and creating fiction - for the authorial purpose of addressing a premise via that imagined fiction. The audience who get to enjoy the addressing of the premise are the game participants themselves.</blockquote>

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