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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6212705" data-attributes="member: 17106">The point is for you to find out what will happen.Playing the character is fundamentally about experiencing things from the character's perspective. The player may or may not be able to exert any effective influence on the game, because a character may not (as a person may not).In fact, depriving a player of the ability to control outcomes is quite thematically appropriate for epic fantasy, which classically revolves around the idea of fate, wherein the characters really don't have control over what happens. Neither Hercules nor Beowulf nor Frodo has much control (if any) over his story, and that theme is central to those narratives. Horror, as well, is a diverse genre but is frequently about the protagonists' agency being subverted or removed. Being helpless is part of the experience. And then of course, there's our actual reality, wherein we often attempt actions that are futile or meaningless, often unknowingly.In a typical fantasy session, a player may make dozens or hundreds of die rolls, thousands of discrete decisions, but may have only a few chances or even a single chance or even no chance to meaningfully impact the narrative. Those choices are set up by the DM, and it's often of critical importance to keep it a secret where the meaningful decisions are. The DM may prepare only one set of encounters and throw them at the players no matter where they go, and realistically the outcome of any battle that arises will almost always fall the players' way, but their choice to fight or negotiate with one of those seemingly hostile creatures may have long-lasting repercussions.***None of this is to say, of course, that a group of people couldn't get together and decide to engage in a "shared storytelling" exercise as you describe. A fundamentally different experience, but both have their value.</blockquote>

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