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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6096817" data-attributes="member: 4937">[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] - That's just too much to respond to.  My initial thought about most of it is that it sounds nice in peices but is incoherent and self-contridictory as a whole.  And my thought about the rest is, that's interesting generally, but not really on topic.  A lot of the issues you raise would be interesting at a different time, if I didn't need to explain how they were based on misconceptions about me.  I can respond with concrete examples from recent play that illustrate your points, but it would take too much text because you've got so much to say.  That link you keep pointing me to; I've read it.  Twice now.  I think he's throughly on my side here by my reading of it.I've taken a few college classes.  I know there is always two or three or five people who will spend more effort engaging the professor than they will studying for the test.  They'll whine.  They'll question questions and they'll question grades.  They'll make all sorts of appeals for sympathy, trying to get you to see how they were misunderstood, or how you weren't being fair to them, and can you change their grade please?  They waste not only your time but the whole classes trying to get you to change the challenge they are presented with to one that suits them better.   And you can't help but get the feeling listening to them whine again and again by the end of the sesmester, that they think that the reason you gave them the test was because you personally hate them and are out to get them.  And after classes, they are telling everyone how you are such a terrible professor because you made them take a test that wasn't fair.  That's antagonism in the class room.  You don't really even have to be involved in it.  It doesn't matter how much you want the student to succeed or whether or not you think of yourself as their enemy.Keep that in mind.What happens if you take as a given that I'm not interested in it either, and that I'm responding to propositions like, "I want to ride across the desert on the back of a monstrous centipede." or "I want to recruit a posse", in ways that are putting up stakes, by cutting to scenes where things are at risk, by providing challenges, and generally trying to make the proposed course of action interesting.  There is too much Ron Edward's 'either or' going on in your analysis.  If I can't provide the fun, of course I'm going to skip them, but for crying out loud you never create anything amazing by providing exactly what the character expects.  Isn't that the central point of of the essay you keep linking to?  Where is the excitement in knowing what is going to happen and how it is going to work out?  How about you actually paying attention to the Czege principle.  It would be foolish of me to think I always knew ahead of time what was going to be interesting.  Cutting forward to the predictable demanded outcome isn't always the best way to create interesting situations, or in your example, teaching the students.  Passing the Conch over to the player isn't necessarily going to make even the player happier.  We don't know what is going to happen.  That's what makes you keep turning the pages in a story.  I don't even know what's going to happen, but I wouldn't be throwing complications up if I didn't think that they could lead to unexpected moments of wonder and awesome.  How does he know where the emotional resonance is to be found?  From his position as an actor within the world, he can't make that call.  He doesn't have enough information.  The only way he could have enough information is precisely the niave narrativism that Eero Tuovinen is railing against.So, ok, the character has failed his fortune, he's caught red handed with the knife in hand in the middle of the masquerade ball.  I narrate the dramatic moment.  Now what?  There is no stakes?  There is no consequences?  There is no theory of RPGs that doesn't involve the player having at least something to lose.  There has to be something at stake or their is no conflict, no drama, no story.  Something is going to happen.  Magic 8-Ball has said, "Outlook not so good." In other words, there will be mechanics in the system for determining the outcome, that in some way abstract out the resources that are in the hand of the character or player for determing where the story goes from here.  But as far as I can tell Hussar is advocating opting out of mechanics the same way his declining story.   It doesn't want 'simulation' as he broadly calls it. Hey, I'm all for that!  I can play that system.  That's buying into the scene.  That roleplay.There is very little I enjoy more as a DM than sitting back and watching the intraparty role-play show.  Why would I want to meddle?  The very critical first element of the environment that players need to become engaged with ICly, is each other.  Everything after that is easy.</blockquote>

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