And, just as a nitpick, the implied-experience thing isn’t especially narrativist. In fact I can see it working for sim priorities rather well. It’s just a means to an end, whatever the end might be; the paving stones of the road, wherever the road leads.

Carl, you have no idea how hard I tried to make that article sound neutral and not imply disdain. I don’t disdain “direct experience” play at all; far from it. But I was so excited with what I was seeing in Atlantis that I had trouble not jumping up and down talking about it. By contrast, the mode I was contrasting with might look a little underappreciated. However, setting up everything and playing through it rather than creating it on the fly can produce some awesome games, as well, especially when the content-creator (usually the GM) has a deft hand at creating such things.

I’m generally with you on seeing story-style games primarily as a source of ideas to steal, rather than games to play in preference to more traditional RPGs.

His description of the way “direct experience” works and what it is capable and incapable of is a straw-man. The one-ring example is clearly flawed… a traditional direct-experience game can do the exact same thing, introducing a minor magic item as nothing but a magic item, and then giving it greater meaning, history and power later in the game. This is not some special power only available to story-gamers.

And I have come down to the conclusion you have… these new “story games” in many cases simply are not the same kind of game I play, or _want_ to play. I don’t want to tell a story, I want to experience the story. I want there to be a coherent story, and a good story, but the direct experience is, to me, the core of roleplaying.

Thank you, Tim, for helping me remember why I quit reading all these story-games theory blogs. They just can’t seem to say anything without somehow putting down the way I play.