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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 6182005" data-attributes="member: 6688937">So there needs to be something better at it for me to say it didn't succeed? I don't think that makes sense. But I'll elucidate.Firstly, look at the predecessors of the game, namely wargames. Early D&D characters and mechanics don't have "literary" traits that function the way literary characters do, they have "tactical wargame" traits that function like tactical wargame figures do. Characters in literature die to serve dramatic purposes, characters in D&D die in random ways while failing a save. Speaking of failing saves, consider poison. In literature (and in life), poison is (usually) a long drawn out affair with lots of suffering and long-term debilitation, problems to solve and drama all around....in Old-School D&D: miss save-die-"Who wants his stuff?" When you start to examine the mechanics, very few of them function in anything like what you'd expect to see from a similar situation in a novel. Certainly, in some cases, that's just a matter of efficiency for the game table. (At the very least, we're changing media from book to rpg.) However, in a lot of them, that's not the case. (Or at least, if they were  trying to make a novel-simulator, they could/would have easily done it differently.) The interplay of characters and the world is different and things aren't driven by dramatic needs (not that I'm saying they should be) story arcs are either happenstance or railroaded, etc. I've recently been playing some of the older stuff with my group and  its...well its not really good at reproducing that sort of literary  story (not that the new stuff is necessarily much better).   In any endeavor that takes place of multiple events and/or long periods of time (like D&D or sports) humans will see or invent stories, even if they aren't really there. Its part of how we see the world. But that doesn't mean the game itself was doing that. On that, I agree.</blockquote>

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