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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thefutilist" data-source="post: 9264672" data-attributes="member: 7044566">For me, that flavor of trad play is Narrativism at it’s best. Although it’s a bit more complex than that because I think there are two fundamentally different modes of play that people call Narrativism. (and for the critics out there, yeah yeah Narrativism really should be applied solely to agenda but hopefully people get what I mean)In one you seek to collapse a situation and in the other you seek to challenge a characters values. What’s tough is that people use a lot of the same language to describe both modes and a lot of people play the same games but using different modes.The challenge values mode tends towards high improv in terms of off-screen activity, scene framing and what the GM is allowed to introduce. In many (although not all) cases the resolution system is used as an improv system.When I’ve played in challenge value style games, the GM will insert stuff on the fly that, well, challenges the characters values. For instance, if you’re playing a Paladin that is torn between compassion for the poor and loyalty to the law. They might, on the spur of the moment, decide to frame a scene where a poor thief has been caught for stealing food. What do you do? And so on.There also tends to be less of a direct link between the resolution system and the characters actions. One example is that a players character is at a ball, say persuading the Duke to try a peaceful approach. A miss is rolled and the GM uses that as permission to introduce a character, say they invent the Dukes niece on the spot, and further use that as an opportunity for drama, she starts agitating for war.On the other hand, the collapse mode looks and plays really similar to trad games. The resolution system tends to hew fairly close to trad games as well, in so much as you’re really looking at whether the character succeeds or fails (more or less, it’s a little more complicated).Anyway this is a bug bear of mine and I should probably just go and write an essay on it rather than constantly bringing it up in threads only tangentially related. In my defence, I think if it was widely recognised there were two modes it would be easier to separate out what techniques and principles best serve which mode.</blockquote>

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