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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9081730" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Ok.  Here is something to chew on [USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER] .  Game of Stonetop with a player who has absorbed a Sim-Immersionist meta and brings these priors and disposition into every game they play...including this Stonetop game.* Very little play is breezy Free Play.  Its Expedition/Adventure phase where they go into the wild, possibly journeying to an steading, to confront a systemitized Danger or pursue systemitized Opportunity for Stonetop (or a specific PC) followed by a Homefront phase which features a Threat specific to a PC or generally to Stonetop and perhaps the stray room to breathe to pursue completion/progression toward a Make a Plan (an Opportunity) box.I'm not neutral in framing at virtually any point.  I'm threatening things/people they care about or I'm presenting obstacles to opportunities they're pursuing.  I'm pitting one PC's Instinct against another PC's Instinct when I can.The setting is not the protagonist that gets revealed through player exploring, probing, touring.  The players don't get to reveal the setting's dramatic needs as the main course at their leisure and then take on these setting dramatic needs as their own by way of "getting in on the action of hooks/bread-crumbs/a constellation of (intersecting or discrete) side quests" or adopting allegiances that give the PCs a reason to rally to a setting goal.No.  From jump-street the players (through their PCs and their connection to Stonetop) are the protagonists with goals that direct play and every moment of play is fighting for these things.  We don't go outside of that to explore setting dramatic needs and onboard and operationalize them and certainly not at a leisurely pace.Is the Sim-Immersionist meta ok with this?  Or do they feel like all of these threats are adversarial GMing?  Do they feel immersed or besieged by causality violating contrivance and jump-cuts that abridge a particular brand of serial exploration?  Do they feel excited by all the pressing threats to things they care about (through PC build, through systematized premise, through overt conversation) and the demands to act (right now) upon opportunity or do they feel the walls closing in?  Do they feel that system procedures/archetecture is something to be overcome and avoided ("rolling dice and opting-in to conflict is bad risk profile analysis and a losing meta...opt out of conflict and roll dice as little as possible is the winning meta") in order to achieve their goals or do they feel like the game engine is transparently there to provide the actual game layer;  honest, direct opposition to their goals so they can then overcome it, advance/evolve their character (and the setting), using that same system?* What about when a move or a move result triggers loss of emotional or ideological volition?  What about when an incentive structure asks them to actively create hardship/a foil for their character in order to get a reward?Do they find either of these immersive, non-contrived, causality-respecting (from the version of internal locus of control that is typically put forward by players who are deploying this particular play meta).[HR][/HR]These are things you'll have to confront if you want to run (actual) Stonetop for a player who is deploying this Sim-Immersionist meta.  I've done it with Blades and Stonetop for multiple players over the years.  One of these particular players holds my late 2e/3.x Setting Tourism, sandbox-exploration-heavy FR game that spanned 7 years as the absolute model for play (their meta which they port to every game ever worked for that particular game).  They bring this exact same orientation to play in Stonetop and Blades and the entire game burns down within 3 sessions.That pervasive reality is a kill-shot confounder to the "can't we all just get along play metas (?)" utopia you're conceiving.EDIT - Now imagine the exact inverse of the above.  Same problem, different direction of flow.  Players bringing in a Stonetop player meta for play into a late 2e/3.x Setting Tourism, sandbox-exploration-heavy FR game (without the supporting systemization/premise) is going to be aspersed with "Main Character Syndrome" for expecting play to feature ethos/relations-charged characters and an endless array of obstacles to those goals and "git gud" (at using PC build and extrapolation/inference of setting causality to build a game-coherent strategy of system avoidance, conflict opt-out, resource-recharge, while overwhelming system with niche specialization in order to ration, risk model, and resource deploy toward assurance of encounter & side quest wins).</blockquote>

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