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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7762429" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree fully that in a typical RPG the players aren't playing against the GM. But I think there are contexts within a RPG where play is oppositional. In 4e, for instance, combat resolution has that character; in classic dungeon-crawling game, if the reaction dice show that inhabitants are hostile then the GM should be playing them with suitable hostility; etc.I'm pushing towards two points in the above. (1) There is a meaningful distinction, on the GM side of a typical/mainstream RPG, between (a) setting up an ingame situation and (b) resolving the situation. As far as (a) is concerned, that is where having regard to "story", encounter balance, what level of the dungeon is being stocked, etc, is crucial. A GM who puts an umber hulk on level 1 of a classic dungeon; or who sets up boring situations for the players in a more contemporary-style game; is a bad GM.But when it comes to (b), I think the GM needs to have a high degree of regard to the internal logic of the fiction, which might include its oppositional dimensions, and be prepared to push hard. This is what helps avoid insipid or railroad-y play, in my view.(2) My second point builds on the preceding paragraph. If the GM plays the fiction - including the oppositional NPCs and other elements - in a way that holds back, or subordinates the sense of the fiction to demands of "story" - I think that can produce insipid play.I'll admit that this is a subtle and to some extent at least subjective point. I think that 4e combat is a fairly clear and well-known illustration - the GM, in framing, has to pay maximum attention to the story context, the mechanical balance, etc. But the pay-off of that is that, in play, the GM can go all out with his/her NPCs/creatures and rather than crushing the players this will produce an awesome RPGing experience!An example from a somewhat different game is the following comments that Vincent Baker makes in his GMing notes for Dogs in the Vineyard (p 89):What’s at stake: do you get murdered in your bed? — The stage: your room at night. A possessed sinner creeps into your room without waking you. . . . I should tell you, in an early playtest I startled one of my players bad with this very conflict. In most roleplaying games, saying "an enemy sneaks into your room in the middle of the night and hits you in the head with an axe" is cheating. I’ve hosed the character and the player with no warning and no way out. Not in Dogs, though: the resolution rules are built to handle it. I don’t have to pull my punches! (You’ve GMed a bunch of RPGs before, right? Think about what I just said for a minute. You know how you usually pull your punches?)As Baker points to, with some RPGs it's hard to get (a) right, or with some framings the (b) will lead to a GM auto-win, and these cases mean that (a) and (b) bleed into one another, and the GM finds him-/herself holding back. I'm personally conscious of this possibility when I GM Traveller (the most "old school" game I'm currently running), and am therefore extra careful about how I frame things.The role of this stuff is obviously rather contentious across the range of RPGing - how much of this is GM control over the story, vs GM framing, vs outcomes of action resolution. But I agree it's often not oppositional/challenge-oriented.I agree that boundaries can be porous - earlier this year my group played a session of <a href="http://www.orphicinstitute.com/" target="_blank">A Penny For My Thoughts</a> which is probably best classified as a structured story-telling game. At certain points I was narrating what I (as my character) did in a way that was very similar to a RPG; but the game has no action resolution system. Rather, it has a system for forcing the player to choose between alternate narrations at certain key points.I've played Talisman back in the day, and these days play a similar old Avalon Hill game called Mystic Wood with my kids (a much better game than Talisman in my view!). These have the "avatar" dimension of a RPG, and they have elements of action resolution, but you can't play the fiction. (Which is to say that the "moves" a player can make are pretty tightly defined.) I think that is the most fundamental way in which they differ from RPGs.</blockquote>

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