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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bendris Noulg" data-source="post: 1433462" data-attributes="member: 6398">I see it slightly differently.  The Gamist is most likely going to want rules to specifically cover the situations possible within the game, which includes defeat, and those rules are provided in clear terms.  On the other hand, the designers knew that the Simulationist and the Narrativist would likely change or over-rule a defeat that would interfere with the story-line, and that how they would do so will vary from GM to GM, thus they added a few paragraphs in the beginning of the DMG regarding "DM's Fiat" and left it at that. Personally, I mix-and-match, although I'd say I favor Narrativist the least (heck, my current campaign has the only instance of "narration" I've ever used, now that I think of it).  Allow me to explain. In the campaign, I don't want the PCs to die over minor encounters, so these combats are often Simulationist (just don't tell my players, they think it's Gamist, as challenges are more a challenge by tactics than by high-level opponents, and thus victory is more about tactical decisions than die rolling and number crunching).  Through out the rest (skill checks, problem solving, clue hunting, etc.), it's almost exclusively Gamist, although I'll shift to Simulationist if the PCs come up with a GREAT idea and I, as the GM, would like to see them pull it off.  On the other hand, PCs eventually have "key  encounters", being NPCS or creatures that are intended to be focal points of the tale.  This could be the lieutenant of the adventure's BBEG, or the monster-guardian of an item required by the PCs, an enraged mob, the BBEG of the campaign itself, or other such role.  These combats are played Gamist, as PC death in such enounters would be viewed as a major event or even a tragedy rather than having died against something unimportant and trivial. On the flip-side, there is one character with a "mystery background", being that the character entered game play as a fully written character with no history or name, and is regaining fragments of her memory throughout the game.  These history sessions (the "piece-meal prequal" as we call it) are distinctly narrative, since it's clearly obvious that she must have survived by virtue of still being alive.  But this is about the extent of my liking of Narrativist GMing style; It serves the plot in those instances, but I don't think I could play the game (i.e., a full campaign) that way myself.  At the same time, others have expressed interest in actually playing during the same era, so full-development of the setting is underway, and these games will be in the Gamist/Simulationist hybrid style I describe above since they will be playing characters that are either killed or die of old age long before the start of the original campaign and thus the risks within the game will be "standard" for our group. Side Note: I think that's what I don't like about the Star Wars prequals...  We know what's going to happen, and thus the only anticipation there really is to the movies is the idea of how it happened, which (for me) feels like half a movie and makes it harder to overlook inconsistancies and cheese even though the original trilogy had just about the same amount.</blockquote>

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