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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Indaarys" data-source="post: 9239362" data-attributes="member: 7040941">This is a pretty perfect distillation of why I've basically written off rpg discourse as worthless, insofar as providing insights for design is concerned. This is correct. The point of an emergent story is that the story is being made through play. The story itself cannot be told until after its happened. Its a pretty important distinction. But ultimately, game mechanics are inherently story machines. Even something as rudimentary and simplistic as rock/paper/scissors is generating a story that could be retold, and it even resembles simplistic, traditional narratives to boot. This is why, when it comes to game writing, the ideal is finding the sort of story that you couldn't make work in any other medium. The inherent nature of game mechanics actually gives game writers a leg up on that; the requirement of at least one player already provides for this. The key is leveraging the systems of the game to serve some sort of compelling experience, and the holy grail of sorts is finding a way to create a systemic game world that, simply through the act of play, allows traditional narrative structures to emerge on their own. The Nemesis system of the Shadow of Mordor/War games is an example of such a thing, tuned for the specific revenge and nemesis type narratives its named for. Now, video games are only barely getting started on this, as only recently did the technology to cleanly generate voiced dialogue on the fly become viable, and it'll take a while before we see a game that really takes advantage of it.But in tabletop land, we've long since had the technology given we can rely on people doing improv. Its just a matter of designing the system and getting it well oiled.</blockquote>

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