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Message: <blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8286466" data-attributes="member: 7016699">I think you have done a good job of getting at the differences in how posters are using the language.I do believe that story--or at least narrative--emerges from play, yes, but I think it's (at least mostly) only visible looking backward.Story structure is a thing, but there are enough different types of story structures that I wouldn't say that every story will fit into the structure you describe. It seems easy and natural to me to describe a D&D campaign as a picaresque, for instance, which is a story that often eschews that sort of structure.That said, there is without question a difference between a narrative and a story.Sure. There's a difference between playing a game to go through a pre-planned story, and playing to generate a narrative. I think I'd use fiction to include setting and character stuff that might not directly effect or reflect in the narrative as well as the events; the narrative would be pretty much your "fictional sequence of events." In this context I think I'd think of story as being a narrative authored instead of generated through play. So most adventure paths would seem to have stories inherent in them, and any GM working from the OP's "Storytelling Imperative" plausibly has a story in mind.There's probably space between us, here, but I don't think it's unbridgeable.If one is using "curation" that way, I think a GM who chooses the types of instigating events to frame into the fiction is plausibly curating the fiction, or the narrative, in such a way as to achieve a particular presentation or effect--but maybe without concern as to the result. If I frame in a fallen wizard's tower (on a crashed flying island) presentation is self-evident, and so is aesthetic (I think); if I don't care what the PCs do, though, I don't think I'm curating a story--though I would say I'm definitely curating the fiction.Talking about foreshadowing in a TRPG seems kinda like trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. Playing a TRPG isn't the same experience as reading a novel, and foreshadowing is one of those things that works well in literature but not so much in a TRPG. Same goes with "ensuring what happens next will be a climax."I think that's at the heart of the conflict in the OP, which I don't see: It's taking as a given that one can or should reproduce literary effects in a TRPG. Since I think it's not possible--and in fact I think it's a bad idea to try--because the media are so different, the conflict in the OP pretty much literally does not exist for me as a GM.I'd say that if the rules for a given game ensure a literary structure will emerge from play without the people at the table doing anything to make it happen (other than play the game by the rules) then the rules are curating the fiction to generate a story.I think part of the reason those games don't have the market share (other than D&D being first-to-market, lo these many years ago, and all the advantages that entails) might be that 5E doesn't curate the fiction, and explicitly allows the people at the table to make fiction in any shape or structure they want/choose.</blockquote>

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