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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4514701" data-attributes="member: 42582">Whether or not GMs should be considered to be playing the game depends in part on the GM's role - in the sort of play the possibility of which I am defending the GM is certainly not best described as a referee or judge. But in any event, when I said that "narrating the gameworld in the course of play is playing the game" I had players (in the strict sense) in mind, not the GM. I was making the point that prep work is not playing the game, but narrating the gameworld in the course of play is playing the game, and therefore in that respect does not resemble prep work (though in other respects it may resemble prep work eg both play a role in determining the state of the gameworld).Agreed. People can perform two speech-acts at once - both roleplaying and narration, in this case.Not necessarily. Some players of RPGs use the fictional person (the PC) as a device in the course of doing other things (eg tell a certain sort of story). For such players the point of view of the PC is an effect, not a cause; an output, not an input.I don't disagree with this. What I'm asserting is that some RPGing is storytelling. And (but less emphatically) that all RPGing involves the creation of fictions in a fashion that is, in my opinion, qualitatively different from the sorts of fictions that are involved in a game of Monopoly, or even a game of Talisman or DDM.I'm mostly interested in the "more" - world warping (or, as I'd rather put it, "world-determining") players!.But I disupte the contention that no story can possible exist in an RPG. Leaving aside the question of whether or not an individual's living of his/her life can constitute a story (some philosophers of identity obviously think that it can, but I have no strong view one way or another), there is no doubt that RPGing can give rise to a story. I know this to be so because I've seen it happen. The first step do achieving this has to be to abandon the thought that roleplaying in an RPG has to invovle prentending to occupy a pre-specified role, and accept that it can be the creation of that role (ie the authorial creation of the PC) and (in some cases) can also involve the creation of other parts of the fictional world in which the PC resides.</blockquote>

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