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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6611100" data-attributes="member: 5143">D&D has always been story based to me.  We are playing the story of whatever the DM comes up with.  The first game I every played was on a BBS where I was handed one of the Heroes of the Lance from Dragonlance and played through the Dragonlance Chronicles.  The first group I joined in real life, the DM spent his days at University writing up 50 page dungeons filled with traps and puzzles for us to solve.  My brother learned to play and he'd spend weeks writing up every city and country on his planet filled with details of who we'd meet.  One of the first people I ever met outside of my first D&D group would write in a 200+ page book about what magic items his players would find when they reached level 18...even though his game hadn't started yet and they were starting at level 1.  When I started DMing, I ran the Rod of Seven Parts adventure along with adventures I took out of Dragon Magazine.The thing is, when we play we do what our characters would logically do in that situation as well.  No one is sitting around and saying "Oh, some dramatic device is preventing us from continuing.  We do whatever the story wants us to."  Instead people are saying "Well, we didn't find any information.  We came up blank.  What's our next plan?"In the same way that in real life there isn't always answers available, in the story the same thing applies.  The reasons WHY the information isn't available is probably different.  In one case, it's because there were no witnesses to the crime and no evidence left behind.  In the other case it was because the author thought it would be more fun for the answers to reveal themselves later.  But to our characters, the metagame reason WHY we can't find the information are inconsequential.  We didn't find information.  What do we do about it?I've said this in other threads, but there are always restrictions on your actions.  You can't fly if your character doesn't have that power.  You are restricted to the kind of things an Elf Fighter in a D&D world can do.  Restricting this further to "things an Elf Fighter who is presented with this situation and has these social ties and complication can do" doesn't seem to be a huge stretch.But this logic, ALL games have dramatic restrictions on your actions.  You are playing a D&D game with friends.  That means you aren't going to take any actions that make your friends angry at you.  You aren't going to constantly attempt to take actions that aren't genre appropriate(like pulling out a laser rifle or attempting to mix up a batch of C4).  You are restricted to actions that make sense within the "story" of the game world you are playing in.  No one is going to go looking for Elminster when we are playing a Dragonlance campaign.There's no such thing as a game without restrictions.  I've just never understood the arbitrary line that people appear to draw between "I'm completely free to do whatever I want just as long as I restrict my actions to those I can take as a human fighter who is currently bolted down to a table and unable to move because I made the thieves guild mad, this is awesome!" and "You said I wasn't allowed to split the party, leave the adventure, and become a pirate because no one else wants to play that type of campaign....that's railroading!"There's a HUGE divide between "I can't do anything, since it won't be allowed if it isn't dramatically appropriate" and "I'm not allowed to everything, but as long as my character continues to follow the basic plot of this adventure, I can do whatever I want."I don't want to write stories as a player.  I show up to be entertained not to do the entertaining.  If I wanted to write stories, I'd pull out a pen and paper and stay in my room writing a story.  I don't have fun writing stories.  I enjoy reading and experiencing other people's stories though.  That's why I watch TV, that's why I watch movies, that's why I play video games, and that's why I play D&D.  I like to experience stories.  Video games let you experience a story but with a lot of restrictions.  You can decide when the protagonist fires his weapons, which NPC he talks to first, and sometimes you get to make some basic decisions as to the direction of the plot.  D&D is like that but with less restrictions.  You get to decide the EXACT questions you ask the NPCs.  You can develop some elaborate plans to catch the bad guys that don't involve shooting them.  But you still get to experience a story.The thing is, when we play a D&D story, it may have a beginning, middle and end, but the players DON'T know it.  They get to experience it as it is unfolding.  It's like watching a movie that no one at the table has seen before but everyone gets to be actors in and you don't get any scripts given to you, you just get the basic idea of your character and then improvise.I liken it to a more structured improv acting exercise.  One person acts as a mediator or judge of the improv.  He sets the scene and tells you the rules of the scene.  He can call out changes any time he wants and you have to flow with them.  But you get to decide what your character says and how he "solves" the scene.  The fun comes from working within those restrictions.  Without them, it's really easy to "win".  You just yell out "I pull out a missile launcher and shoot and it kills everyone!"</blockquote>

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