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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8271026" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think whether an RPG session will look like a work of fiction is up for grabs: I've achieved this with one-shots using Cthulhu Dark and Wuthering Heights, and I think it can be done pretty reliably. Our Prince Valiant sessions also tend to be pretty reliable in build-up/pay-off.And most 4e combats that I ran had a pretty solid rising-action => crisis => resolution sequence to them.Systems that make it a bit harder to manage pacing than the ones I mentioned in my first paragraph, and that lack the mechanical support for it of 4e combat, are less likely to produce satisfactory narrative feel over the course of a given session. Some of our Traveller sessions play more like build-up or interludes or come back next week to see what happens to our heroes. But I don't think RPGing has to be hostage to premature failure or anticlimax. Avoiding the first focuses on premature, which is connected to prior conceptions of how things should unfold; avoiding the second focuses on what is at stake in the moment of resolution. One of the best discussions of this in the context of RPGing advice that I know is from Luke Crane, in the BW core book and in his Codex/Adventure Burner.</blockquote>