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<blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 8939684" data-attributes="member: 86653">There's nothing wrong with &quot;just&quot; playing a game.Not everyone wants deep character immersion or deep storytelling. Some people just want to move a playing piece around the board or map and throw some dice. The trick is if you are okay with &quot;just&quot; playing a game you can still get character immersion and storytelling. But you have to let it emerge naturally rather than force it.The aesthetic experience doesn't &quot;suffer&quot; unless you have a rather narrow definition of story. Emergent story is a thing in RPGs and has been since the beginning. That style of play came before the Hickman revolution that gave us all this GM-imposed story.Imposed story and being allowed to play the game as a game are inherently at odd, yes. Because RPGs are not storytelling games in the sense of a single person telling a story. Whatever story emerges from an RPG is a combination of 1) the GM's prep, 2) the players' decisions, 3) the game's rules, and 4) the roll of the dice. All of these elements fight against each other and pull in different directions. That is to say, whatever story an RPG naturally produces is emergent. The &quot;story&quot; (such as it is), emerges from those four things struggling against each other.If the GM has a set plot in mind, they must decrease the relevance of the other three elements of the experience. To impose a story the GM must reduce the ability of the players to participate (they might make the &quot;wrong&quot; choice), must reduce the reliance on the rules of the game (they might produce unsatisfying results), and must reduce or ignore the dice (they produce random results). It stops being a game and turns into the GM's story time.It would take academic study of RPGs, which we essentially don't have. It would require people to stop treating RPGs like a &quot;messy&quot; form of storytelling that they have to &quot;clean up&quot; by negating 3/4 of the experience to force a story. It would require taking RPGs for what they actually are: a game with emergent storytelling.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="overgeeked, post: 8939684, member: 86653"] There's nothing wrong with "just" playing a game. Not everyone wants deep character immersion or deep storytelling. Some people just want to move a playing piece around the board or map and throw some dice. The trick is if you are okay with "just" playing a game you can still get character immersion and storytelling. But you have to let it emerge naturally rather than force it. The aesthetic experience doesn't "suffer" unless you have a rather narrow definition of story. Emergent story is a thing in RPGs and has been since the beginning. That style of play came before the Hickman revolution that gave us all this GM-imposed story. Imposed story and being allowed to play the game as a game are inherently at odd, yes. Because RPGs are not storytelling games in the sense of a single person telling a story. Whatever story emerges from an RPG is a combination of 1) the GM's prep, 2) the players' decisions, 3) the game's rules, and 4) the roll of the dice. All of these elements fight against each other and pull in different directions. That is to say, whatever story an RPG naturally produces is [I]emergent[/I]. The "story" (such as it is), emerges from those four things struggling against each other. If the GM has a set plot in mind, they must decrease the relevance of the other three elements of the experience. To impose a story the GM must reduce the ability of the players to participate (they might make the "wrong" choice), must reduce the reliance on the rules of the game (they might produce unsatisfying results), and must reduce or ignore the dice (they produce random results). It stops being a game and turns into the GM's story time. It would take academic study of RPGs, which we essentially don't have. It would require people to stop treating RPGs like a "messy" form of storytelling that they have to "clean up" by negating 3/4 of the experience to force a story. It would require taking RPGs for what they actually are: a game with emergent storytelling. [/QUOTE]

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