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Well, I DO think there's a story/narrative to a Dungeon Crawl. It emerges out of the interface between the GM's predefined setting, the dungeon, and the player's attempts to 'beat' it, or at least achieve some scaled amount of the win cons. I also agree that there is meaningful roleplay possible...

That wasn't what I heard him say, or what @pemerton stated. The Big Model is a general model of RPG play in any given moment of play, describing the elements of that play. GNS describes aesthetic goals of play, they are not the same thing. GNS =/= Big Model. They are both talking about PLAY...

So, pure gamist dungeon crawl isn't a game at all, eh? I think there's something wrong here...

Yes and no... I started running 4e for @Gilladian and primarily a couple of other people. 2 of those three played a LOT of 3.5e (and actually STILL play that, though there was a foray into 5e for a while). Yes, at first our game was pretty trad/neo-trad-ish I guess. I mean there was a setting...

And here's where I think things can be discussed. The later, a situation in which there's one simple obvious morally correct answer, could generate CONFLICT, but it won't be interesting in Narrativist terms. That is, if gnolls are simply evil slathering demon-worshippers who have no redeeming...

Right. While my evolutionary biology education is probably only a tiny bit better than yours (I had to take college-level biology at least, and have a good working knowledge of basic biochemistry) I am fairly confident you are correct. Humans and Octopi must have shared a common ancestor...

Yeah, I don't want to completely dismiss the idea that games borrow from each other and that there are similarities in rules, genre, intended process of play, and potentially many other areas. What I'm saying is that, sure, draw a line around certain games and call that a 'family of RPGs' but I...

I don't think this is a good analogy. So, how about TV sets? Is there a continuum between my 1995 Sony CRT NTSC TV and my modern 4K Sony Bravia LED TV? I don't think so! Sure, at some level they are engineered to solve some of the same problems and perform analogous functions, but the technology...

5e seems thoroughly built on the notion that you will completely document an entire location beforehand with a whole map and key and everything needed to inform the players that this or that or another thing is so, or not so, etc. Now, you could, and I guess Mike envisaged this, play 4e in a...

Right, but also moving a lot of discretion about how to apply the rules into the system, both in terms of combat but also by using SC. Giving all characters similar power of choice instead of giving it all to casters. Putting keywords on everything so you easily make consistent assumptions, etc.

Honestly I agree with you on much too. My own practice of Narrativist style play emerged largely when I adopted 4e D&D. It's a bit of a weird transition game because we all thought we were going to play trad D&D and then we got a few sessions in and it was like, no this game really works best if...

Again, I think I claim to be less a 'modalist' in the sense of "there are specific enumerable modes of play and all play must fall into one" as I am a believer in the discreteness of game architectures. While Dungeon World clothes itself in some of the genre conceits of B/X, it is a completely...

I'm pushing against your 'landscape' concept, which is describing, mathematically, a continuum of possible game elements, which implies they can simply be juxtaposed and you could then assign a 'coordinate' in your landscape to each one like it has X amount of A, Y amount of B, etc. It is much...

We had uses for coin, but 'get gold' was never a DRIVING force behind anything Takeo did. He did stuff, for reasons, and if he could turn it into some gold, he did, because the stuff was handy to have. So, in a few instances of play, a decision WAS made based on more or less gold being in the...

Oh, sure, there has to be a coherent through narrative that arises, that's one of the constraints on play, probably the most important one. I just mean, I am not thinking like someone who's plotting out what happens next and saying "well, if the brick fell off the balcony, then the noise brought...

OK, but think about the sort of immersion and verisimilitude that are often deployed as arguments in defending trad play. Here we see D&D in its pure form. Believe me, this is a game that was utterly commonplace, and is still utterly commonplace at many tables. I don't think people need 'win...

IMHO this is ALL a problem of failure to allow the player to initially establish what they're putting at risk! That could be a failure of transparency in which the GM and player are failing to communicate, or a result of hidden backstory which clobbers the fictional position. Now, interestingly...

I dismiss your model and propose a different one, something more like software architecture and implementation. There ARE of course many ways to approach any given problem, but a particular construct, let us say rules/mechanics/setting/preparation/backstory/characterization/and then framing and...

I'm not super familiar with CR. I saw some of the earlier stuff. I've definitely read Daggerheart. What separates this style from, say @Manbearcat is Story Now play, from what I can see. Daggerheart, for instance, makes no real attempt to explain or espouse this technique. Not that it's hostile...

Haha, yeah, back in the '70s when we played D&D/Holmes/early pre-DMG 1e mix we had a whole set of codewords and SOPs that was named 'Sniff & Listen'. At one point one of us wrote up a book to hand to the GM. The caller would just trigger an SOP, like "we go to the door and Sniff & Listen" and...