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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9333255" data-attributes="member: 42582">I've got no view over what &quot;narrative play&quot; should mean - it's not a phrase I use.But your (1) and (2) are one way to engage in narrativist RPGing. But it's not straightforward to divorce your (1) and (2) from mechanics. Suppose, for instance, that a common outcome of the resolution mechanics is that a new situation is created that is largely thematically irrelevant - eg a need for healing, or replenishment of gear. Or suppose that a common feature of the resolution mechanics is that time has to be closely tracked (eg for spell durations), then the GM can't frame scenes in thematically responsive ways if that would require departing from those time-tracking requirements. Or suppose that the principle vehicle of scene-framing is map-and-key - that is, the movement of the PCs across a map is tracked, using distance-per-rate-of-time rules to do that, and the GM uses their key to tell the players what the PCs encounter; it is not easy to reconcile this sort of framing technique with thematically relevant scene-framing. (Torchbearer 2e is the only system I personally know that tackles this issue, via its rules for twists.)As I've already mentioned in this thread, the points made in the previous paragraph are not theory-craft. I GMed many hundreds of hours of Rolemaster between 1990 and 2008 (inclusive) - my rough estimate would be 2,500 hours. And before that I GMed hundreds of hours of AD&amp;D - my rough estimate would be 1,000 hours. So I am very familiar with the issues that I'm describing.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 9333255, member: 42582"] I've got no view over what "narrative play" should mean - it's not a phrase I use. But your (1) and (2) are one way to engage in narrativist RPGing. But it's not straightforward to divorce your (1) and (2) from mechanics. Suppose, for instance, that a common outcome of the resolution mechanics is that a new situation is created that is largely thematically irrelevant - eg a need for healing, or replenishment of gear. Or suppose that a common feature of the resolution mechanics is that time has to be closely tracked (eg for spell durations), then the GM can't frame scenes in thematically responsive ways if that would require departing from those time-tracking requirements. Or suppose that the principle vehicle of scene-framing is map-and-key - that is, the movement of the PCs across a map is tracked, using distance-per-rate-of-time rules to do that, and the GM uses their key to tell the players what the PCs encounter; it is not easy to reconcile this sort of framing technique with thematically relevant scene-framing. (Torchbearer 2e is the only system I personally know that tackles this issue, via its rules for twists.) As I've already mentioned in this thread, the points made in the previous paragraph are not theory-craft. I GMed many hundreds of hours of Rolemaster between 1990 and 2008 (inclusive) - my rough estimate would be 2,500 hours. And before that I GMed hundreds of hours of AD&D - my rough estimate would be 1,000 hours. So I am very familiar with the issues that I'm describing. [/QUOTE]

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