The Shadow
Hero
I want to reiterate this point too. In contrasting styles of game, it can sometimes come across that everything in story games is Sturm und Drang - at a fever pitch all day, every day.I don't want to exaggerate what counts as "significant", "dramatic", "meaningful" etc. There's plenty of scope for rising action as well as climax.
Of course it isn't. Who could take it? When I say I want every single scene to be meaningful, I don't mean that it has to be Hamlet's soliloquy or the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet. I just mean it should relate somehow to the larger issues.
To some extent, all gamers do this - at least all I'm aware of. I don't know of anyone who, when restocking adventuring supplies, plays out every single interaction with every single merchant. "Have you any genuinely 10' poles, my good man? That one looks to be nine and a half!" Nor, as the old joke goes, does anyone feel the need to have their character go looking for the bathroom!
Nor do story games have to breathlessly address the highest and most noble of themes at all times. Like, my group's archetypical game is a group of criminals reminiscent of Burn Notice - infiltrating and taking down criminals much nastier than ourselves for fun and profit. (And, in some cases, reluctantly saving the world along the way - it's where we keep our stuff!)
The basic idea is that I want the game to flow like fiction - everything supporting the narrative, not spending a moment on anything that doesn't support it in some way. That's all I mean by "meaningful" or "dramatic".
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