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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 6413403" data-attributes="member: 85555">'Whether one characterizes something as a story is a bit subjective. And like I said story has multiple meanings, some of which will apply to most RPGs. A man telling the President not to touch his wife at the voting booth was a story in the news but it was also a real event that happened. People went to the event were not there to experience a story they were there to participate in an actual moment in time. For sandboxes, that is more the experience they are after. And I think the goal for them is not a story, therefore story is emergent, not the purpose. I think they are coming from a reasonable position in that respect. Where I think people go wrong is trying to say story doesn't exist there or that we can;t use the word story to talk about in game events. But where I think your post starts getting into the realm that creates problems in these discussions is you pivot on that very broad and basic meaning of "story" to then say sandbox is all about narrative control. I think that is not the case. Narrative control is about conscious manipulation of plot and events external to your character. Sandbox is about inhabiting a single character and exploring a world through that character. A character in a sandbox campaign has the same level of narrative control over its experience as I do over my experience. Your definition of narrative control then would stretch it so far that it is essentially meaningless because every game ever made has it. But we know when we talk about narrative control in games we are not referring to taking actions through your character, we are talking about things that allow you to edit the script or the "fiction", to assume powers over the setting that a sandbox game would limit to the GM. The problem with saying "you should therefore tell a good story" is once you do that now you really are focusing story as a literary concept. It suggests that a game shouldn't just have mechanics for resolving conflict but it should propel narrative forward and that a good adventure should have themes and make use of pacing and plot devices. I don't think this is true. Sure for some people that is what they want from a game and that is what they expect from an adventure, but I really have no desire for such things. This is a taste issue. And this kind of rhetoric is exactly why people are so hostile to the word story in RPGs. If you are going to use it to just talk about the stuff that happened in game, no one will care. But if you turn on that to tell people how they should play and how their games should be designed, as if that is the only or the best way, then you will meet resistance and the term will continue to generate a negative response from some gamers.</blockquote>

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