Thus narrative causality turns out to be the reverse of the narrative mechanics in RPGs. You use narrative mechanics to coerce the story; the story uses narrative causality to coerce you.
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This dynamic IMHO, is multi actor, many of the actors being different personas who may be present in the players’ heads simultaneously. The analogy of the writers room was good, and Mike’s suggestion that one can be asked to be actor, writer, director all at the same time in many modern rpgs was excellent.
The point that a lot of this has “bled back” into other games was well made, even to tables playing trad games. We played 4e D&D recently and at the end all commented how it felt like Blades in the Dark.
Now… and let me go out on a limb… I suggest this multiple approaches to role-playing has always been there since the beginning even in the objectivist, positivist, simulationist of rulesets. Very narrativist games broght this to the fore, but it has always been there.
What does this mean?
I suggest it means we al, have a different theatre company or writers room in our heads. Find the mix you are comfortable with, and that will change with fellow players and GMs, and focus on your enjoyment whilst lifting up those around you who may be playing a slightly different game in their head.
Understanding that really might help.
Oh, I think FATE isn’t that narrativist, it’s quite gamist… chase the Aspects dudes!
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We didn’t really have time for my rant about that - the way a lot of games present themselves as narrativist, but then hand you a bunch of game entities to manipulate. But the game entities themselves are much more abstract than in a traditional RPG - rather than skills and hit points you get drama tokens and FATE points.
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Indeed it was. I clearly remember “author stance”, “actor stance”, “character stance”, and “audience stance” being discussed on r.g.f.a as stances that one took from time to time during a game, long before there was a Forge.
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I am a story bitch, I will follow the emergent narrative. Over time that defines my character far more than anything. However I am quite happy for that story to be either procedurally generated or negotiated in play between us as players.
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I want a handle on what sort of character I’m playing from the get-go, even if just as You are an X who does Y for Z reason. It might not be much more than a They Fight Crime blurb at game start.
Example: He’s a lonely white trash dog-catcher with acid for blood. She’s an enchanted impetuous lawyer operating on the wrong side of the law. They fight crime!
However, I do want those few handles to hang my roleplaying off. If the GM has lied to us and the game isn’t a pulp game about Fighting Crime (or fighting crime adjacent tropes) at all, it’s actually a soap opera about opening a beauty parlour, I would be narked.
My character then develops as the story develops… but there is stuff I as player have zero interest in (running a beauty parlour) or oodles of distaste for (Dogs in the Vineyard ‘play to discover your moral squick point’). So there is a kind of Venn Diagram of personalities/behaviour I’ll operate within.
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I can’t remember whether we’ve done a bit on this specifically, but I think this is a decent argument for group character generation - not just having all the bases covered and Pete doesn’t have to play the engineer again, but a good way for a GM who might not otherwise be articulating it well to talk about the sort of characters that are going to be needed and the sort of things they’ll be doing.
(Deliberate deception is another matter, of course. I like the idea of “we are working for the agency rounding up bad people” gradually turning into “we seem to be the hit squad that gets sent against anything inconvenient”, but I’d be very careful about the players I did that with.)
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I’m wondering if group character generation has gone in full circle?
In Ye Olden Days of being a penniless student: character gen was always a group affair, because most likely only one person owned the rulebook, so you had to pass it around the table.
Then came a time when everyone could afford the book, or download the pdf, or find a character generator online, so folk could rock up with already rolled characters.
Now group character is baked into some systems. Because the designers were fed up of the days when they wanted to run The Maltese Falcon, but the players turned up with The Terminator, Mr Spock and Krusty the Clown. 
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Coriolis is very good at group character gen with various group decisions that influence the party but also the campaign.
The Mongoose Traveller editions also have a really nice series of steps to interweave the character around the table together and also reward this with gap filling bonuses.
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Another factor pushing things round that circle: complex systems make character generation quite an antisocial business, so for GURPS for example everyone would be head-down with scratchpad or laptop. And like building starships or anything else this kind of minigame is an ideal activity for those times when the group isn’t available but one wants to do role-playing-adjacent stuff. These days the system is simpler, and game prep time seems to be even more scarce than actual game time.
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And then the designers don’t support those decisions! 
When I bought Coriolis and we were looking through it, the Tuesday group got very excited about the Pilgrims group option in the core rules, which mention playing itinerant missionaries or a travelling circus (especially the travelling circus). But all of the scenarios I’ve looked at assume you are the usual band of mercenaries/private investigators/thieving scum for hire.
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This is not unknown though, is it? Many publisher’s start ideas running but leave it to you as the GM to develop them. Vis the whole Chinese Arm in 2300.
But yes, better scenario design accounting for different parties is good feedback for many publishers.
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Classic 3e GURPS book problem too - here are six small campaign frames you can inflate into playable games, but for four of them the material in the rest of the book is largely irrelevant.
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I think this is part of why narrative systems are seen as “simpler” than simulationist games - you can’t reality-check what a drama token does the way you can what a 5.56mm round does to three layers of kevlar. So there’s no room for discussion that it “ought” to be a different effect; it’s just a game element. But it can be just as fiddly in terms of what you need to do on a mechanical level.
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Yeah I think that kind of stuff is what me and some of my players took a while to get our heads around.
Situation: you have fought off the Cylon warriors, but been badly wounded.
Trad game: go see the doctor. He’ll make a Medicine roll and you get some Hit Points back and are now fighting fit again.
Narrative game: go see your girlfriend. You’ll have a screaming argument because you got drunk and slept with your co-pilot. So you get some Stress Points back and are now fighting fit again. 
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I’m still fond of the Ken Hite quote on the subject.
“Darling! I love you! WIll you marry me?”
“Darling! Yes, I will!”
“Great, now we both get +2!”
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Oh, I have played MAGE! I ran a long campaign in the 90s. It was the only one of the OWoD games that had any hope in it at all.
But even then I tended to avoid direct contact with the Technocracy. Not only were they too powerful to face down but I sort of saw their point and wondered why they couldn’t make common cause with the Traditions to keep the Nephandi at bay.
Most of the adventures involved dealing with puzzles/menaces on the fringes of ‘reality’ (TM The Technocracy) while developing their own abilities.
I’ve used WARP, the system in the original OVER THE EDGE for DISCWORLD. I think the adventure I wrote for it is still on SJG website.
I’d say any deliberately uncomplex, narrativist system would work. QUESTWORLDS (Formerly HEROQUEST: Formerly HERO WARS) if you want to be complex or RISUS if you want to go for really broad strokes.
Yes. I think GURPS can do it, but I have some… doubts about the structure and focus of the book. However why fall out amongst friends?
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