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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LFK" data-source="post: 4909786" data-attributes="member: 61050">Imagination is narrative. If we were to talk about "things that inspire the imagination" we would end up covering RPGs, books, paintings, movies, television, video games, theatre: basically the entire breadth of storytelling media. CGs are no less capable of inspiring the imagination than RPGs; as was already said take a look at fanfiction.net or DeviantArt for hundreds of examples of how CGs have inspired imagination. What you're leveling is the judgement that "that kind of imagination" is less worthy than whatever kind of imagination you feel is worthy, like the further adventures of the three Musketeers that <you> dreamt of as a kid after reading the books is somehow more valid an expression of imagination than the further adventures of Cloud and Tifa.The reality of imagination is that it actually takes a lot of work to improve your imagination, so much so that most people are born with as much as they'll ever have the capacity for. To this point it boils down to a binary: does it access imagination - yes/no.The only reason why it feels right to rag on CGs for not inspiring the imagination is because the narrative of most CGs is bad, they do a poor job at accessing imagination. The stories are terrible, the characterization is flimsy to non-existent, and the structure of the experience does little to promote ownership. The same, however, can be said for most books, movies, television shows, and, yes, RPG games with the sole exception of the ownership aspect. Objectively most RPG stories are bad: a poorly paced, ill conceived pastiche that has a singular redeeming quality in the sense of ownership it fosters in the participants. That's why <you> love your own campaigns but get bored to tears when the dude behind you in line at the convention starts talking about his favoritest elf cleric: you can see just how banal the story is if you weren't there.This isn't to say that CGs (or books or movies or television) can't foster ownership, they can and do (see: Twilight), but since there's millions of people around the world working daily to produce additional materials for the screen, page, and console, but there's only you and any other GMs you play with producing RPG material you will directly experience, the exposure equations are heavily skewed. That's, at most, maybe 5 people in your life at any given time, assuming you're an extremely heavy RPG player, so of course the vast majority of RPG you experience is going to feel that much better than everything else: that ownership is a powerful thing, even if it didn't actually access or grow your imagination any more than a good episode of CSI.Though now that I've said it out loud (metaphorically) I'm wondering if that aspect wouldn't be a better selling point than "imagination."edit: afterthought - the reason why "classic books" seem to do a better job at accessing imagination is because of the filter of time. Good stuff generally survives while tripe is discarded, thus a collection of classics is a collection of a couple hundred years worth of "good stuff" without wading through the filler that was produced in between. To wit today: there are 24 episodes of House per year, roughly 1 every 2 weeks, but there are 5 episodes of Maury per week, so for every episode of House there are 10 episodes of "he's not your baby's daddy's momma".</blockquote>

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