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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8146142" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, I don't disagree that randomization of outcomes can be fun. I've played diceless games where I had fun too, so I won't claim it is a requirement, but certainly it adds a fun element to RPGs. I just think that element is more interestingly applied to narrative process vs some kind of 'world model' type of fiction. Fundamentally my thesis is that EVERYONE who plays RPGs in any sort of 'good faith' at all, is playing some sort of narrative construction game, regardless of whether they explicitly and consciously acknowledge that. There are so many possible choices that can be made that in a game with GM authority over all fiction any attempt to decide that certain things "must obviously happen" or are "likely to happen" or any such construct is really simply a decision based fundamentally on where said decider wants the narrative to go. Given the sheer paucity of detail that exists in even the most elaborate setting by comparison to the real world, this is inevitable. Real world happenings are the summation of 1000's or millions of factors, stretching outward from the nexus of the 'proximate event' in both time and space, ramifying endlessly until you could say that the entire state of the universe is involved. Yes, we can practically localize things in our everyday lives, but only in a very limited and routine way. We do not really know much about how things got to be how they are, or where they are going from here. We just use some basic heuristics and induction to play the odds. You cannot even do that in most situations faced in RPGs because they are so novel, and they involve such an incompletely devised world. The theoretical ideal is that 'dice take care of that', but this is really only true in a trivial sense. Dice can cover up for the fact that we don't know exactly how slippery or crumbly the rock face is when the rogue climbs it. They cannot produce realistic odds of a plot development happening, because we cannot say that such a development is or is not even possible, except by simply decreeing it so.Thus, my thesis is, ALL PLAY is fundamentally narrative construction play. I can make this argument from the player side as well. So, really all we can do is make better rules for narrative construction. Anything else is basically addressing what is truly happening at the table as if it was something else. Pretending or misapprehending don't produce the best results. People get sick even if they don't believe in the contagious virus, denial never works. That being said, I don't think people should stop doing what is fun, just that they would find ways to improve their fun if they approached it with wide open eyes during game design.</blockquote>

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