True and that is the point I have been arguing with Jamie on the hq-rules list - that HQ1 ended up incoherent because it tried to satisfy both simulationist and narrativist agendas. Still HQ1 had many authors and contributors (I am on that list) so I think its unfair to lay blame at an individual instead of suggesting a collective mis-understanding.
> Check out Gregs contribution Gathering Thunder, the Sky Ship,
for example. The story charges on, with the players getting plenty of opportunity to check things out, do the wrong thing and get killed, <
Sure I and I wrote many HW and HQ adventures that suffered from the railroad/linear problem. No one develops new instincts overnight. Role playing history is littered with scenarios that contained a story in which the players participated rather than authored.
I don't think this actually relates directly to the narrativism/simulationist distinction though. All role-playing games have stories its just how they emerge. Sometimes stories emerge from what happens, its recounting what happened, other times we have a theme or premise in mind which we deliberately address. Narrativism is usually an attempt to address that theme.
If you play day-to-day Orlanthi life and some sort of saga emerges that is emergent story. If you choose to play a story that examines the choices people make in an occupied country: collaboration, rebellion, appeasment etc. then you address a premise. Narrativism often focuses on the latter.
> My point is that the style of play that already provides "the
> story" is not narrativist.
But this is not a problem with Glorantha or HQ, but with the way many of the scenarios were written.
It is a problem we are trying to address as we write new material.
The tension between the game scenario authors desire to tell a story and the players desire to tell their own story is an old one. It's complicated by the many people who now read rpg supplements and want to read the story of what happens more than they want to play it out.
But we are learning that the best option is to provide conflict and characters along with events to spur player involvement and then let story develop.
>The big story provided by Gloranthan history becomes not backdrop, but the plot of the scenario that the players are dragged along by. The myths become plot restrictions for provided heroqests, rather than suggestions for ways in which to approach the premise.<
But this is use of the medium not an inevitable consequence of the medium. The richness of background also gives many possibilities for people to address premise.
> The game supports both nicely, and the support material trends heavily towards the former.<
But I don't think we disagree that HQ1 failed, just that Glorantha is intrinsically set up for failure. And HQ2 authors are aware of and directly addressing the very issues you are speaking about. Hence the struggle with some on the lists.
> Are you trying to make some sort of bizarre David Boatwright
> joke? Because we certainly encourage making Boatie jokes.
No I'm being insulting because I believed that to be the preferred tone of this list. It appears that I am mistaken and this is a place of serious debate.
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