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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9317357" data-attributes="member: 42582">I wish people would stop accuse one of Champion's greatest advocates, and one of RunQuest's greatest advocates, of "disparaging other styles". It seems that Edwards may not particularly care for D&D. That's not a crime.As far as <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">"protagonism"</a> is concerned, and to reiterate some of what [USER=87792]@Neonchameleon[/USER] posted not too far upthread: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> 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.  . . . 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). . . . In all role-playing, the player-character is the lens of the Creative Agenda at work. That's right, I said all role-playing. <ul style="margin-left: 20px"> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Simulationist = the character "fits" - its setting, capabilities, outcomes, behavior patterns, and so on, all reinforce the Dream for everyone.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gamist = the character is a direct opportunity for player-strategy. Its construction doesn't hamstring the player (except with agreed-upon handicaps) and permits him or her to Step On Up.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Narrativist = the character's predicament is how Premise is seen/felt in full, and what he does, and what happens is how a theme is realized.</li> </ul> By definition, a character faces "relevant stress" for the Creative Agenda. The term used most often for that is "adversity," and it is required in all three modes of play. Without it, there is no Situation. Without Situation, there's no role-playing, just sitting around and diddling. You can tell when this happens: everyone stops paying attention to one another, and quite likely the one person talking is only paying attention to himself or herself. Adversity, which may come from any participant during play, is the key. Now we run into a conceptual tangle. In literary terms, if there's a story, there's one or more protagonists. Since story can arise from any sort of role-playing, then protagonism of the relevant character comes with that, part and parcel. However, "protagonism" at the Forge as discussed most frequently by Paul Czege, tends to focus on very specific processes of play: those which prompt Premise-addressing interest in a given character among all of the real-person participants; in other words, a specifically Narrativist process. That's a real terminological conundrum. I shudder at the thought of co-opting the term "protagonist" into anything besides the fictional context of a story, regardless of how it was produced. However, I also want to preserve Paul's point that people may establish emotional, relatively high-stakes connections to other people's player-characters. But neither are restricted to Narrativist play. Fortunately, for discussing Narrativist play by itself, the two things are one and the same. Which means I shall happily relegate debate about the term in a larger (all of role-playing) sense to the forums and neatly dodge it for purposes of the essay.Edwards is not unaware of the terminological problem. But there is a real phenomenon he is describing. One doesn't make it go away by removing the language to describe it.Consider an adventure path - say, the 3E module Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, or the 2e module Dead Gods. The module consists of a series of events. It gives advice to the GM on how to "hook" the players, via their PCs, into that series. It gives advice to the GM on how to ensure the transition from event to event. A lot of the logic and content of the imagined events follows - in the fiction - from the offscreen doings of characters whom the players may be only dimly aware of.Those who play these modules can compare stories about What happened when my group encountered the <such and such>. All the groups go through the same events, and very similar things happen to them.This is not "story now". What is at stake is established by the GM (who takes it from the module). What happens next is established by the GM (who takes it from the module). The theme - the response to premise - is already given, by the module author.Think about everything that constitutes an adventure path, and strip it away. Imagine that the players hook the GM - eg one of the players, in building their PC, says "Here's what I'm about: I'm going to use my sister's connections in town to bring down and take the place of the Master Assassin of this town." (This is an example from the BW Revised Character Burner.)And now that is what play is about.And not in the sense that the GM sets up enough dungeons, which the PC's sister points the PC to, such that the PC can reach 10th level and hence be entitled to challenge the Master Assassin to a duel. This is what play is about, in the actual "now" of play.The difference between GM-driven RPGing, and player-driven RPGing, is real. It doesn't disappear because of an ambiguity or (delibeate) equivocation in the use of the word "protagonist".To relate this to Daggerheart: is Daggerheart a game about player-driven RPGing? That will depend on the GM-side rules for framing and resolution. Not on the things the OP of this thread mentions.</blockquote>

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