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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7913269" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think what Retreater points to is part of this - most great artworks are conceived of and produced with more preparation and curation than a typical RPG session.There's also the fact that probably most RPGers aren't as skilled in their artistry as prominent novelists. For my part, I tend to think of good superhero comics (eg Death of Phoenix; Life Death; Born Again) as something to which a really good RPG session might come close.But as far as your comments about system are concerned, maybe you need to try some different systems and even moreso some different techniques! Especially different GMing techniques. Not every character in every campaign I've ever played has had a dramatic character arc, but it's something I've seen multiple times in multiple systems. What will tend to produce it, in my experience, is (i) a player who is willing to find out where his/her PC goes (ie without too much preconception) and (ii) a GM who is willing to push on the player's willingness and follow it where it leads.In my experience, it can be done without dropping the conceit of a "party". I don't think it can be done without dropping the conceit of the "adventure". The bells-and-whistles of the hooks/inputs you refer to can help, both by (i) helping the GM know where to push, and (ii) helping support the player in following the fiction without being worried about being hosed too badly. But again, in my experience at least, they're not essential.One example where they did work to produce a very clear one-session character arc was in a session of Marvel Heroic RP. The player of Nightcrawler noticed his "Romantic" milestone, which culminates in 10 XP "when you either break off a romantic relationship, or seek to enter into a more permanent partnership and ask your love to marry you." Over the course of the session he met a woman in a bar (a supervillain, natch), teleported her to the top of the Capitol Dome to have some intimate time together, and then abandoned her to join the fight against her friends in the Smithsonian Institute. The XP earned were used to (among other things) pay for a change of one Distinction from Devout Catholic to (I think, going from memory) The Devil Within.It's not great literature, but it was character development that did produce emotional responses at the table - at least from me as GM (I wasn't expecting it, and was taken aback by this far-from-cute-and-cuddly Nightcrawler).</blockquote>

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