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Message: <blockquote data-quote="niklinna" data-source="post: 8938814" data-attributes="member: 71235">I think the difficulty of this depends very much on the game and the group. There are RPGs where you know your character is going to die at the end (that all of the PCs are going to die, as in 10 Candles), or where the whole point is whether you stick to your beliefs knowing that if you do, you will die (Montsegur 1244) and the whole point of the experience is to see how they handle that.  There are games that are specifically about the PCs pursuing their short-term interests with little regard for consequences (Fiasco). These are at an extreme end of a (more than one-dimensional) spectrum. Another end is games where the whole point is to power up to endgame and win, and whatever story happens along the way is, or might as well be, incidental to that process. As you note immediately following!What were the circumstances of it being unaddressed? Did the GM ask for driving back stories and then ignore them? Did you present this back story as something you wanted to address during the campaign, or assume it would be? Did you actively pursue this goal as a player? If so, did the GM shut down, stonewall, or ignore your efforts to do so? Was this character's goal something the other players (could have) also had some interest in pursuing or assisting with? I've been bitten by issues such as those more than once, and learned that these matters need to be made quite explicit, whether by the game system, the scenario (if prewritten), or between the GM and players. I'm still not very good at doing that; it varies with the game system, campaign, and the character I create.There's a natural tension in the typical party/team organization of play of long-term RPG games, where the PCs need to have some common goal or reason to stick together so that everybody can share time. You can't have your own character just do something completely unrelated to the others, else why play together? You can't have your character do something directly counter to the others, or you're being That Player who "does what my character would do" without regard for that dynamic. This often overshadows the rich possibility for people to be working together but for different purposes, or with different approaches toward the same goals, and other such things that need to be addressed at key moments. Working out those differences can feel like a distraction to "getting the adventure done", but it can also be a rich opportunity for exploring character. It depends on what the group as a whole prioritizes in gameplay.A related, more practical issue, is that of "screen time". Games where everybody gets a turn in short sequence—usually in combat—have been a standard for quite a long time. Games where a subset of the PCs get whole scenes to themselves can be perceived as leaving the others with nothing to do for long stretches, especially if players aren't invested in each others' characters. It's important again that the individual characters' motivations matter to each other, so that seeing what somebody else's character does, even if yours is not there, nonetheless is consequential (or at least of interest) to your character, so you are rewarded for paying attention. I've also had GMs who are good at intercutting scenes so that everybody does get that round-robin feel (and doesn't check out, because they know they'll be in the spotlight again in at most a few minutes) even though they aren't in the same scene together.There's much more, but those are just a few aspects that come to mind at the moment.I think you've initiated such a critique with your post! So let's explore.An aside: I think the article missed the mark in saying that video/computer games can't allow for narrative through player choice. Video games in the sense of classic coin-op consoles, sure—those sessions last for minutes in general. But I think of a game like Geneforge, where the allies & enemies you make, and your decisions about what do to in the end, dramatically change the outcome, so it's possible to do narrative of some kind in a computer game, even if it's limited by such a game having to script the branches. That constraint becomes narrower with sequels, which often have to assume one of the major outcomes of the preceding game.</blockquote>

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