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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6458107" data-attributes="member: 4937">With this I agree.But with the notion that they are not performing for each others benefit, I must disagree.   I think I see where you are coming from, in that most of the things players do to ham things up and entertain each other aren't entertaining to an audience, but critically I think you miss that these aren't usually part of a performance in a theatrical sense.   But I have seen some very theatrical players in my day who very much are performing for the other players as an audience and enjoying the game - at the very least on the level of a mini-game within the game - as improvisational theater.   This is I admit often done badly by many players when they try, and discouraged they usually don't try again, but it is a skill and one I admire as a DM and try to encourage.   As a DM, sitting back and just watching your RPers play together is one of the best experiences you can have.   I introduced a brother and sister to gaming once, and they began to pickup where they had left off playing house and such 8 or 10 years prior as children and it was a thing of beauty how enjoyable to watch they made trivial points of play.   On another occasion on a MUSH I had the privilege to watch what can only be called a performance by certain very skilled narrators who just brought their characters to life on the screen with words alone.  In the PnP group I played as a player for the longest period (about 5 years), the first night what convinced me that this was a group I wanted to come back to, was watching three of the players RP out the 'integrate a new character into the party' scene with such grace and humor that it was just worth just sitting there and listening.I think it is impossible for any group to be continually performing without a script for the length of time it takes to play an RPG.  That's why I think judicious editing and possibly some voice over summaries or narration are a necessary part of adapting the medium of an RPG to the medium of what amounts to television.  Well, by its very nature its meant to be participatory.  Video games are often much easier to watch and more enjoyable than PnP games, because there is at least something to look at and you, staring over the players shoulder, have much closer to their perspective and full share of the knowledge that they have.  Which is why I think that a really good production of an RPG is not going to involve a static camera angle and just listening to the play.   You have to know that when Marcus the Neuromancer takes 23 damage, that he's down to eight hit points - even if he's avoiding (as he should if he's performing) saying, "Hey guys, I'm down to 8 hit points" - so you need that over the shoulder shot of the character sheet or close up of his concern or its equivalent in some form.   Since you aren't participating in the combat, you need it to play faster than you'd need it if you were thinking about the choices you would make if for no reason other than the fact that you aren't having to think about the choices you'd make and the resources you have at hand.  So you need certain scenes to be abbreviated as well if they aren't really interesting to the audience.</blockquote>

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