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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6644471" data-attributes="member: 42582">Page 2 of the Basic PDF says:Together, the DM and the players create an exciting story of bold adventurers who confront deadly perils. . . . f everyone had a good time and created a memorable story, they all win.It seems to me there are at least two key elements to that description of the goals of play.First, there is a differentiation of roles, and hence (presumably) functions, between GM and players. According to the same page, "the Dungeon Master (DM) [is] the game’s lead storyteller and referee. The DM creates adventures for the characters, who navigate its hazards and decide which paths to explore." The players, not being lead storytellers, are presumably subordinate storytellers. What is the nature of their subordination? The same page states that "each player creates an adventurer (also called a character) and teams up with other adventurers (played by friends). . . . [T]he players decide what they want their adventurers to do." Each player is primarily in charge of playing his/her PC.If a player, in playing his/her PC, was meant to approach the game in much the same way as a GM does when playing NPCs, what would be the point of the player/GM divide? It seems to me that a player is not expected to play his/her PC in the same way that the GM plays NPCs. For instance, while (as page 2 suggests) the game needn't come to an end if a PC dies, it seems to me that a player is not expected to be indifferent to the fate of his/her PC in the same way that a GM is expected to be indifferent to the fate of his/her NPCs.Second, there is the injunction that everyone should have a good a time. There are many RPG players who don't have a good time if they have to play their PCs from the GM's bird's-eye point of view rather than from the point of view of the PC him-/herself. Or, to flip it around, part of their pleasure in play comes from the fact that they get to contribute to the creation of a memorable story without having to to make that the explicit goal of their decision-making.After all, this is part of the distinctive pleasure of RPGs (as opposed to, say, round-robin story telling), that they can produce memorable stories emergently, out of the players doing their thing while the GM does his/her different thing. I think it tends to make for insipid RPGing if a player is expected to underplay his/her PC because it makes for a better story. A well-designed RPG should produce a good story when the players play their PCs at full tilt within the mechanical parameters set by the game.(A comparison: a friendly game of chess or backgammon may be most fun when the game is close and tense, but that doesn't mean that either player should be playing with the aim of making the game close and tense. Rather, the game parameters should ensure this. That might mean, among players of somewhat mixed skill levels, preferring backgammon to chess, or perhaps having the stronger chess player grant a handicap to the weaker.)I think <a href="https://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/" target="_blank">this blog post</a> by Eero Tuovinen elaborates these points well.</blockquote>

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