A discussion of forms.

[mythusmage]

I think what mithusmage is going for here isn't that a story is established history but is simply the retelling of events that have already happened (whether fictional or not).

To put it another way... A story is about events that have already happened. An RPG session is about events that are happening.

 

[Liquidsabre]

Exactly.

 

[shilsen]

I think what mithusmage is going for here isn't that a story is established history but is simply the retelling of events that have already happened (whether fictional or not).

To put it another way... A story is about events that have already happened. An RPG session is about events that are happening.

I understood what mythusmage was saying.

What I was quibbling about is the use of the term events, since stories can be literally devoid of events. Nothing happens, has happened, or is about to happen. That's especially true of some post-modern texts, but is also present in older forms (e.g. the 18th c. novel Tristram Shandy, much of which has no events and no chronological movement). An RPG with no events would be very rare, if it even exists.

In one sense, RPGs in general are very dramatic in the Aristotelian sense of the term, with their focus on (as Liquidsabre said) "essentially the creation of plot".