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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9063477" data-attributes="member: 71699">I have in mind games like chess, bridge, Magic the Gathering, Warhammer 40K or AoS, and Street Fighter. Each iterates a short sequence of actions from constant or limited start positions. So in chess, I don't rethink or change the start position each game: I play and will in future replay the same situation; discovering with each play a new set of choices and responses.It's common for games to iterate such sequences with no narrative linkage or progression. More complex games incorporate the results of previous iterations into future - yielding features such as snowballing in competitive strategy games and advancement arcs in RPGs. These arcs are optional: the heart of a game is very often its iteration on a situation with the same essential characteristics.One way to picture it is that games have a) parameters, b) a start state for those parameters, c) rules for change, and d) the current state of parameters. A game like D&D inputs monster stat blocks and character sheets to form b), invokes the combat rules in fulfilment of c), and in turn-increments updates d). The outcome state of combat is captured on character sheets to form future b)s. Thus, TTRPGs frequently iterate a core sequence like combat, narratively linking and incorporating the results of previous iterations into future iterations.Story now games have evolved from this sort of classical model into looser cascades of actions, dissolving the core sequence. However, they still must start from a situation and in (what I am labelling) classical game terms that situation amounts to a set of parameters b) and rules for change c). Here I will count principles and intentions loosely among rules.I take the OP to be principally banishing the onward narrative linkage or progression. The start state is recorded. Results of the iteration - whether in system or fiction - are discarded at the close of each iteration. In this way, the exploration is more like that of addressing chess: every nook and cranny of the thematic space may be explored.Hence I suggest it comes closer to game as game... and to clarify my thought I mean in a certain classical sense of what a game is (per session iteration of a core play loop from a common starting situation).Based on the above, it should serve to draw an analogy between chess and your envisioned drama exercise.Do you mean branching linearity? Or genuine non-linearity? In any case, I mean here to challenge what is meant by story: to imply that linear storytelling led to assumptions that are soon to be outmoded. In background, where a narratologist sees a game as a form of narrative, I as a ludologist take the view that narratives as known up to now have been a primitive and, perforce, limited sort of game.Ron Edwards in his classic piece on narrativism emphasies that a crucial goal of story now is to ensure that player is in the same act audience and author. He bases his thinking on a specific idea about authorship of dramatic story that itself is about what the author should be doing at the moment of authorship. In a sense relegating audience-ship to some secondary or less interesting role. (Criticism of trad that proceeds from a desire to be more than audience, and that characterises play nearer the latter mode in negative terms, continues this.)The virtue he urges be grasped - that of being simultaneously author and audience - is one that is especially available in play. It cannot be given up by removing the ongoing story arc! It might well be seen that [USER=7027139]@loverdrive[/USER]'s proposal enforces an even closer adherence to the crucial idea of story now... just so long as we take that idea to be an essentially ludic one.</blockquote>

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