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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9318879" data-attributes="member: 71699">That doesn't follow from my thought, so I must have explained myself badly or you read into it something I didn't intend. For avoidance of doubt, I am thinking of TTRPG. One of the core concepts of narrativism per Edwards is the recognition of the player duality (which others had noticed around the same time.) Player as audience and author... and this would mean nothing if the authorship was not in the play itself. There is I think clearly an understanding that a narrative mode in play would be novel in contrast with a narrative mode in prewritten linear fiction. But what Edwards wants to do with this understanding is develop in play what is important in Western dramatic story: the resolution of premises by the author (in play, through the ludic duality, players).This is all extremely important thinking. From a ludological perspective however, it contains room for disappointment: why limit ourselves to what has been developed in prewritten linear narrative? This dissatisfaction is part of what drove a rift between ludologists and narratologists for a time (now reconciled so far as I can make out in post-classical narratology.)You'll have to say more about the relevance of this, as it's not clear to me. The desire is not to improve on freeform narrative, but to find new features of narrative. It's not particularly interesting, in a sense, to find that resolving premises is compelling: that was already known. Narrativism is a no-brainer in this regard, as it is defined by the metagame attention to creating a story of critical merit (i.e. "good").Given I am fascinated with ludic rather than traditional forms of story, I'm unconvinced that the "critical merit" being thought of has any standing with me. One hindrance is that robust concepts for criticism for games is a work in progress.Some examples of what I do find interesting are what is being done in games like Ironsworn, Microscope, The Ground Itself and Artefact. The seeding of player imagination allowing them to spin unexpected - surprising even - narratives out for themselves. Another example, seen in Blades in the Dark, is what I think of as a clockwork-TTRPG, where the imaginative play drives a formal mechanism (the crews game.) I call it "clockwork" because it yields tempo in the proper ludic sense. Torchbearer 2 provides another example, with the grind.</blockquote>

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