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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7401566" data-attributes="member: 82106">Sorry, I started to answer this yesterday and the Internet gods disagreed...Its not bad commentary at all, but you have to be careful to look at a fair representation of Story Now and No Myth techniques. The problem with the analysis I see from the 'worldbuilder' side of the debate is they view game mechanics, narrative processes, etc. through the lens of the DM-driven and centered concept of play. The value system being used in this analysis may be fine for that technique, but it isn't valid when applied to a standard narrative model game. It just doesn't produce a sensible analysis because it misrepresents the FUNCTION of the different elements of play.In the GM-centered pre-prepared kind of "walk through the GM's story/world and tell what happens" there's certainly (at least the possibility of, I don't want to taint this with talk of degenerate examples) a back-and-forth in terms of the direction the story takes. HOWEVER, the function of the material that the GM generates beforehand is largely dramatic in nature. It is the basis upon which a tale is unfurled.For example: My sister, [MENTION=2093]Gilladian[/MENTION], who is perfectly fine GM and runs very nice fun games, and I talked about the elements of an adventure the other day. So we came up with a number of ideas based on her explanation of what was happening in the campaign and who the characters are. The upshot is she came up with an outline of an adventure. It has plot elements of various kinds, hooks, some possible alternative ways that the PCs could get the information they need to proceed from A, to B, to C. I'd say its not radically different from Phandelver, or any of the PF APs that Paizo puts out, at least in general concept (obviously its not fleshed out in that kind of level of detail). The point is, this is a reasonable standard approach concept of how you run a campaign. The GM makes up NPCs, situations, history (there's a bunch of history involved in her scenario), politics, monsters, locations, etc. What the adventure is ABOUT is based on her ideas of how the campaign world works, plus what would be interesting to the players and engage the PCs. How it can play out, what the parameters are, and how the story will evolve are all largely determined ahead of time by the GM.So, in this kind of play, clues, narrative positioning, the actions of NPCs, etc. are all fundamentally oriented around making the basic 'path' of the adventure be a natural consequence. Its a structure, designed to deliver a story. There's of course a wide range of possible outcomes, and the players COULD abandon the thing halfway, kill the princess and steal the McGuffin for themselves, etc. Still, these aren't likely or preferred outcomes, and my guess is that GM 'force' (or maybe more likely some social pressure) will be employed, along with the existing above-mentioned narrative structure, to 'keep it on the rails' more-or-less. If the players REALLY decide to take it in some other direction, Gilladian will go with it, I know she's not one of these rigid GMs that HAS to stick to the established path, and the path is ALREADY likely what the PCs will do, but still, the various elements of the adventure exist fundamentally to create this 'yellow brick road' to follow.One might even call this 'Wizard of Oz Gaming', the adventure is a yellow brick road that leads to 'Oz'. Along the way there are lions, tin men, scarecrows, witches, etc. While each of these elements could in theory lead away from the yellow brick road, in fact they each reinforce the story line and propel it forward to its designated ending.When you try to analyze No Myth Story Now games using the toolset of 'Wizard of Oz Gaming' you run into some problems. In Story Now the various situations aren't intended to LEAD anywhere at all. There's no direction. Its true that this might seem to inhibit things like foreshadowing (what would you foreshadow, particularly in No Myth!). However, we DO know a lot. Just as in my sister's campaign, we know about the characters. They're well-drawn and have fairly discernible agendas, interests, and personality. So we CAN make some sorts of predictions! We CAN foreshadow. Could not [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] do that in the Cortex+ Heroic game where the PC is trying to save his brother from the Balrog? I mean, there's plenty of things that are established here that can leverage that. And just as in a pre-arranged WoOG adventure path, you can drop as many of these things as you need, and you don't HAVE to use them all! Anyway, there's plenty of other things you ARE doing in Story Now. You could certainly construct the story The Wizard of Oz in a sort of Story Now fashion. I mean, the main character has a very definite goal, creating a straightforward pathway to that goal, putting some obstacles/complications along it, etc. This could evolve quite easily. In fact it represents rather the simplest and most basic form of narrative that could evolve, just as it is the simplest and most basic AP that you could create ahead of time. The difference is, from the start of playing it, there's no specific 'Emerald City', its not an adventure on 'rails' to a known endpoint. The Good Witch Glenda might put the character onto the yellow brick road at the start, but it would be quite natural for various challenges to the character's ideas and values to lead away from that path. The path isn't there to serve as a road to keep the adventure going on, it is there to serve as an element in stakes setting (IE "you can follow this easy path and maybe get home, OR you can save your little dog Toto!") (that would be a very simplistic one, but workable).</blockquote>

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