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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9042993" data-attributes="member: 82106">Right, but what I'm saying is that Takeo's personality, motives, and personal situation, were CENTRAL to the course of the action, and in fact in the case of the Oni Expellation Score was the ENTIRE POINT of the score itself (the political schemer Tal Rajan got some good mileage out of the situation, and the Whisper, Skewth played a significant part in helping Takeo with the spirit combat part too). In fact every score in BitD is like that, they're initiated primarily by the players and reflect their character's needs and such to a large degree. In fact, what the GM supplies is, to a certain degree, more in the realm of 'color'. I don't think I'd categorize it nearly so trivially as just that, but in a certain sense we already KNOW that trouble is coming for the PCs, that their very nature, and the nature of the crucible of Doskvol is going to mean they come up against risk and adversity, and need to 'make rent' on an ongoing basis. So, effectively the GM's job is more to just present the instantiation of that in terms of what we have already selected as our specific interests (IE as a crew of assassins, or whatever).This is the fundamental difference with trad or classic D&D. The situation and setting are at the forefront in these games. ANY set of characters could 'run through' a given D&D adventure. Sometimes trad play DOES rise to the level of directly engaging with a character's needs and their specific personality. Its not a given though, by any means! Nor is it a given that this will remain significant beyond the scope of a given scene. So what we commonly see in trad play is a fairly generic party moving through some form of a sequence of encounters. It may be a branching sequence, their quirks and such may even determine which fork they take. They may even, sandbox style, simply choose at some points to strike out one way or another. But the essence of play is on situation and setting, not character. Narrativist play could probably be more aptly described as 'characterist' play, the character itself, for itself, is foremost.A lot of real-world play isn't quite easily pigeonholed of course, so I am not diagnosing anyone's game by any of this, not to any great degree. Its more "these are bones of it, and we can draw some conclusions about how games can be designed and play approached based on that."</blockquote>

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