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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 4884906" data-attributes="member: 80487">On one hand, we have a focus on changing mechanical approaches over the course of a single character's career, one most effectively realized when that character's survival and progress through 30 (or whatever) levels is well assured. A suggestive shorthand might be "epic saga" mode. On the other hand, we have an emphasis on the differences between one character-role and another, and one scenario and another. One might distinguish that as "episodic" mode.The former has very copious amounts of RPG material devoted to it, the latter not so much. This might at first glance seem curious to a naive observer, inasmuch as so much of the inspirational source material for adventure games has been adventure fiction serialized in more episodic form; some of the rest has come from singleton short stories, novellas or movies.The hobby's divorce from its war-game forebears may in the long run have contributed to an atrophy of its horizons, a creeping conservatism. The rise of "narrative" games (in my view yet another new species, demanding an approach on its own terms as much as does the RPG) is interesting as a new thing -- but perhaps some neglected old things are worth revisiting as well.Were one to undertake a campaign, in the military-historical sense, of the ancient or medieval period, the units would remain much the same throughout (relative to the D&D or video-game expectation that, e.g., one's cavalry should along the way turn into "super" cavalry). The "story" arising from play would derive from the ebb and flow of the tide of battle.</blockquote>

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