NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5654361" data-attributes="member: 42582">These are not the only two approaches to running an RPG. There is also the approach that is particularly identified with indie games like Maelstrom Storytelling, HeroWars/Quest, Burning Wheel etc, but is not limited to them (and in my view and experience existed as a playstyle well before those games were published.)In this approach, the GM is responsible for framing situations which (i) tie into the interests/concerns of the players as expressed via their PCs, and (ii) which, when the PCs engage them, will produce consequences which (iii) are reflective of the players' interests/concerns, and which (iv) lead to new situations being framed. Rinse and repeat until the game is done.Unlike a sandbox, in this sort of the game it is the GM and not the players who has the greatest degree of authority over scene-framing. Unlike a "scripted" game, it is the players as much as the GM who have control over the way that scenes are resolved (excatly how this is achieved goes to the heart of action resolution in this sort of game).It is crucial to this sort of game that the GM not predetermine the outcome of scenes, because this would vitiate (iii) above, and thereby vitiate (i) above.I think this omits a third possibility, namely, that story is what the players and GM jointly create in the course of playing the game - the GM by framing scenes, the players by engaging them via their PCs. There are a lot of games written to achieve exactly this sort of play - I've mentioned some of them above - and a lot of other games can be played, with more or less difficulty depending on the details of their mechanics, in this fashion. (In my own experience, 4e is extremely easy to play this way. In fact, it is almost as if it were written for it. Playing AD&D or Rolemaster like this is in my experience harder, due to various mechanical features, but by no means absurdly so.)I'm not 100% sure what you have in mind as the third way, but I had a similar sort of response. My third way (which is really a very common third way) is described above in this post.</blockquote>

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