I am not inclined to view the latter as a literary endeavor.
This again delves into a conversation piece that I have repeatedly brought up in this thread between NARRATIVE and LITERATURE. Not all narratives are literature and not all literature are narratives. If we look at what you wrote starting with this second paragraph, we are talking about narrative (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative) as opposed to literature. Narratology is the study of narratives/stories. Regardless of medium, stories will often feature things like characters with motives, internal consistency, themes, and dialogue. I definitely think that TTRPGs are most definitely a narrative/storytelling endeavor. We get together to participate in story creation through roleplaying. But where I take opposition is the idea that TTRPGs are literary endeavors. Several definitions have been proposed for "literary" in this thread; I have challenged whether TTRPGs would qualify as "literary" with each of these user-proposed definitions. And I did not find much of a compelling case that TTRPGs qualify as literature.
TTRPGs definitely have associated literature, but that does not make TTRPGs a form of literature. That constitutes a composition fallacy. What is true for a part is not necessarily true for the whole. The composition fallacy is one reason why I raised the analogy of cooking, cookbooks, and recipes. We can cook using recipes as a form of reference material. The recipe will often include ingredients and instructions. Though nowadays when you are looking FOR ONE DAMN RECIPE FOR MAKING AN APPLE PIE, YOU HAVE TO SCROLL THROUGH AN ENTIRE OF THE AUTHOR'S DULL LIFE STORY ABOUT HOW HER GREAT GRANDFATHER'S SINGULAR THOUGHT THROUGH THE BATTLE OF VERDUN WAS HIS MOTHER'S APPLE PIE RECIPE AND HOW THIS RECIPE WAS PASSED DOWN FROM ONE ENTITLED LOSER CHILD TO THE NEXT BEFORE THIS MIDDLE-AGED WHITE WOMAN GETS TO THE PART THAT ACTUALLY TEACHES YOU HOW TO MAKE IT. NO ONE CARES, KAREN! Sorry. Where was I?
But despite the presence of associated written texts, we don't conventionally think of cooking as literature. We think of it as the act and process of food preparation. There is literature involved. But remembering the composition fallacy, what's true for a part is not necessarily true for the whole.
Likewise, we have reference books for TTRPGs that often include flavor text and such, but the
modus operandi of TTRPGs is not the books, but the fiction that emerges through play. We can use these reference books to inspire our fiction-making, much like how cookbooks and recipes can inspire our cooking. These books can provide a common frame of reference and a guide for play. But it's the process of roleplaying characters in the context of a game that the game's fiction is framed, negotiated, and developed. The fiction of the setting or reference book can be used to inspire gameplay but it does not necessarily predetermine the fiction.
I could take that unique monster from Scarred Lands and re-imagine it in a non-Scarred Lands game. I could also take that unique monster from Scarred Lands and re-imagine it in a Scarred Lands game that lacks the particular context referenced in the source materials.
What ultimately matters is the fiction that transpires through the gameplay at the table. The nature of this gameplay requires that participants understand what's happening in the fiction at the table (not necessarily the fiction in any book) in a given moment so they can declare actions that engage with that fiction. What develops through this gameplay is not literature, but story/narrative.
From this thread I gather that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s sense of literary/wordcraft involves an intersection of art/performance and an authorial attention to purposeful form, style, diction, and quality. In some regards, pemerton's sense of "literary" could almost be reduced to "an elevated performative speech that intentionally deviates from colloquial speech patterns." Keeping in mind that he is primarily applying this meaning as it's expressed in TTRPGs, which is the discussion at hand.
Though I do not doubt that some in this thread will not put forth the question "what isn't elevated performative speech?", I don't think that we need to engage this continuum fallacy (i.e., "where do we draw the line?") to understand pemerton's basic sense, at least if we bother to put in the effort to approach his argument with good faith that seeks to understand and not simply knee-jerk reactions.
In other words, you can't present gridded play as superior to TofM. It's just different.
