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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6096252" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't think  [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is advocating antagonism between participants at all. He seems to be advocating a form of gamism. It's local form, here, is "The grell won first time. Now we want revenge." It's general form, of which this local occurence is an instance, is "The GM frames challenges. The players overcome them. The action resolution rules are the medium of the struggle, constrained by (i) encounter building rules on the GM side, and (ii) PC building rules on the player side."This is such a typical way of playing RPGs that I'm a bit surprised you find it surprising.What is emotionally at stake for Hussar, the player, as I read it is that having been bested by the challenge the first time, he wants another crack at it. This is compounded with his playing of his PC  - "That aberrant monster killed our boon companion, and we - with the aid of our newl-recruited valiant spearman - will have our revenge upon it!"So it seems to me that Hussar is emotionally invested both in defeating the grell, and in overcoming the GM's challenge. His PC is emotionally invested in defeating the grell.From what's been said, we can't tell how much of this is actor stance and how much author stance. It may be that Hussar has been taking a method-acting approach to playing his PC, and has so internalised his PC's emotional response to the grell's slaying of a boon companion that he can't see the ingame situation any other way. Or it may be that Hussar cares about having lost the fight through bad mechanical play, wants a rematch and is consequently playing his PC as wanting vengeance upon the grell for killing a boon companion.In my personal experience, both as a player and a GM, these two different approaches can be hard to distinguish both in oneself and  in others, and may well bleed together, particularly when we keep in mind that many people in the real world cultivate certain emotional responses - "author themeselves" - in order to make themselves closer to the idea that they would like to be.So I don't always expect a player to distinguish his/her emotions from those of his/her PC - and some of the most visceral, immersive play comes about when they run together.Which in my view is not remotely objectionable. I change the ingame world to suit the desires of my players all the time. That is the point of scene-framing play.You contention that it makes challenges impossible is not correct, however. You seem not to be distinguishing between the rules that govern encounter building and the rules that govern action resolution - which, as I noted above, are the "medium of the struggle".Even within action reolution there are interesting subtlties, where action resolution blends into the framing of the next scene. For instance, in a "fail forward" system like (say) Buring Wheel, even failed checks will be narrated by the GM with an eye to what the player desires. In BW, for instance, a player declares "intent and task" before the dice are rolled. On success, the PC achieves the declared task with the declared intent. On failure, the GM narrates the consequences but is encouraged to focus on intent rather than task. An example given (from memory) in the Adventure Burner involves a roll to determine whether or not the PC successfully knifes a personage at a masquerade ball without being spotted as the killer. On a failed roll, the GM is expected to narrate the situation in such a way as to maximise the interest, for those at the table, of the ensuign debacle - with options including things like "As you draw your knife, a nearby noblewoman notices the glint of steel and shrieks in horror" to "As you withdraw your knife the body crumples at your feet, and before you can step away the Baron's gaze falls upon you with your bloody knife in your hand" to "Your knife strikes true, and you step away before anyone see that it was you who wielded the blade - but your companion Ivan catches the falling body, and blood stains his clothes, and now the crowd is drawing his knife from his belt and noting the bloodstains on it, ignoring his protestations that they re from an earlier altercation outside the ballroom."A related example is this - should the assassin, or perhaps his friend Ivan, end up in prison, then of course it should be their sowrm enemy who comes to gloat over them, and offer to secure their freedom if only they will . . . <insert key demand on which the PC has, up until this point, refused to yield to  his/her sworn enemy>.All of this is about changing and evolving the ingame situation to fit and respond to the players' desires, but it doesn't mean that the players (and their PCs) are never challenged: sitations (like the ballroom where the assassination is to be attempted) are framed, player plans concocted, difficulties assigned, dice pools constructed drawing on relevant skills, talents, preparations, help, external advantages, etc, and then the dice are rolled and success or failure determined.Hussar stated upthread that he's not a simulationist GM (nor, by implication of that comment plus his later posts, is he a simulationist player). So why would you want or expect his game to satsify constraints that only make sense for simulationinst play? My guess is that Hussar is looking for a game run in something like the way that the Burning Wheel books talk about.</blockquote>

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