Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8162032" data-attributes="member: 7016699">I think (and I think I've said) that comparing TRPG play to authored fiction--which I mean to include media like TV and film, as well as novels and short stories--is ... unhelpful. The players around the table are simultaneously creating the fiction and experiencing it. Writing fiction, at least for me, is not an experience particularly like reading it. Playing a TRPG is ... kinda both and neither, IME, with a strong whiff of gestalt from all the minds around the table, almost like playing in a band.Regarding the Shire, I suspect it has a history because Tolkien wrote a story about a Hobbit from it, looking at it from outside that story. So, the causality in the real world might be kinda backward to whatever fictional causality might exist. As in, in the fiction, the hobbits are thus because the Shire is like so; in the real world, the Shire is written to be like so because it would make the hobbits thus. I'm worried I'm being unclear here.Sure. It's like almost no one narrates restroom trips in fiction. There are things that are presumed to happen or exist that aren't considered to be worth talking about (or might be considered unmentionable).Yes. Beginnings, like endings, are in many ways arbitrary. You can never go back so far that you can't go back further. This is part of why techniques like flashbacks and in medias res exist in fiction, though they're not really congruent to how we experience the real world.Yeah. I might be unusual in how important it is to me, but I agree I'm probably not unique or an outlier.I think many of us with strong preferences about TRPG play--and especially GMing--have had our preferences shaped by some sort of bad experience/s.I agree that game mechanics aren't going to help if the participants don't care about the integrity of the shared fiction, and/or the mutual enjoyment of everyone around the table. I think there's perhaps a reciprocal that if all the participants care about integrity of the shared fiction and mutual enjoyment, then they might be able to make any old set of mechanics work.</blockquote>

Verification