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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 3187001" data-attributes="member: 11760">I think this is a great theory, but deeply unsatisfactory in practice. While the overall plot can (and should) continue, these sorts of stories work best in chapters.Think of a game session: How often do you stop in the middle of a conversation with an NPC and say "OK, next week, he'll answer that sentence, and then we'll continue talking for an hour and then do something else?" Probably not routinely.I suspect most people like to end a session on a cliffhanger or having resolved something. In a game where the primary form of solving a problem is sticking three feet of sharpened steel into it, that resolution is often combat. And again, while you could end a session after the group kills Random Guard #3, doesn't that seem a bit dissatisfying?What's more, it's not realistic: Power structures imply someone at the top, probably served by lieutenants. It's not only more dramatically interesting and more satisfying to have the player characters conquer a lieutenant at the end of a long game session, it makes more logical sense than "OK, you kill all the faceless bureaucrats and search their file cabinets. Cross-referencing the results of last year's audit with the most recent census, the group discovers the next place to go." In real life, there'd at least be a middle manager guarding that file cabinet, surrounded by his army of temp-mooks.</blockquote>