Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
It is the only kind of story I want out of an RPG. I know there are many vocal fans of other kinds of game, and I hope my lack of enthusiasm for that style of play doesn't yuck their yum.
D&D General How Often Should a PC Die in D&D 5e?
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Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
How can the book continue until more of it is written? I seriously am having a hard time with your perspective here.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
How do improv actors do improv comedy? How does an extemporaneous speech exist when the speaker only has brief notes, not explicitly written out paragraphs? How does a jazz musician compose a performance on the fly?
These are all examples of creative works that only exist in the now. They don't take the form of a clean, collated, structured accounting of past events. Nor do they take the form of a complete construction/composition before the performance itself occurs. Instead, they draw upon prior knowledge and skills, and manifest in the actual act of performance itself. Extemporaneous speeches are particularly common, because a fully and explicitly prewritten speech can quickly become wooden, and risks falling apart if the speaker loses their place. By focusing on extemporaneous delivery, the speaker is free to respond to audience reactions and to deploy elements and information strategically.
Using the book analogy, there can be more story (but not more "book" proper) before the book is written, because the author has extensive but not yet collated, streamlined, cleaned-up notes. The Silmarillion existed as those notes before it was cleaned up by Christopher Tolkien, and The Book of Lost Tales leans closer to being the raw notes, in part because some of them were too incomplete to finish.
With TTRPGs, since the experience is crafted by all the participants, the jazz example is rather more fitting IMO. Often you'll have a beginning and ending for a jazz performance where it is, if not strictly "written down," then at least rehearsed, but the middle simply flows. Each performance will be different, with the musicians playing off one another and taking inspiration from the venue, audience, time of day/year, or whatever else tickles their fancy. That doesn't somehow mean the performance only and exclusively takes on meaning when reflecting back upon it. Indeed, many would argue that the whole point of music is to hear it played; that it isn't a story except when it is "now", and at all other times it isn't truly real or meaningful, because then it's just notes on a page or bumps on a disk or whatever.
Chaosmancer
Legend
Because you are asking the wrong question.
If I tell you I am writing a book, and your response is "No, you are not writing a book. You are writing a sentence, it only becomes a book after you string together sentences into paragraphs which fill pages until you make chapters which are bound together into a book" then... your position does not make sense to me. An incomplete book is still a book.
You keep insisting that an ongoing story within DnD cannot be a story, until it is completed and looked back on. Until the sentences become paragraphs, become pages become chapters. But that is just not accurate. And actually, reading some of your later comments, I don't think that even describes what you are actually against.
You are against narrative thinking and pre-plotted adventures. Which... okay I guess? Like, sure, pre-plotted adventures are a taste thing, you can be against them and I don't care. Narrative thinking is a bit harder for me to call out as something that you can be against though. I know what you are thinking that would mean. You would be against a player thinking "I am the defender of the group, so it is my job in the story to take the blows meant for them". Which, I can see why that would bother you, but it is just a different perspective on "I am my friend's shield! I shall defend them!" or "I'm the toughest here, I need to weather these attacks!"
And, honestly, this sort of thinking is entirely internal. I use this when DMing a bit, mostly because I am a writer, and so it is easier for me to think from that angle of "What type of character are they encountering" and "what is the tone I want for this scene". And you can not like doing that personally... but even to ask other people at your table to not do it would be vastly overstepping yourself, because you would be telling them how to think about their own acting. I know you are thinking of this in terms of "I want these to be real people, not characters." but no one is a "real person". Even the people you meet at the gas station are just performing their public face. And disagreeing with that is a matter of philosophical debate, not an approach to how someone decides to act a role in an RPG, which is by definition putting on a character who is not themselves.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
It is not about people not accepting your preferences, it is about people not accepting your unorthodox definition of the word "story."
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I don't consider it unorthodox, sorry. But it really doesn't matter whether or we agree on what constitutes a story. We can agree to disagree.
CreamCloud0
Hero
i don't see why not, why can't the cult from party's plot be an offshoot from the cleric's church, why can't the rogue's deeds against said cult be approved of by the nobles, or the cult being researching and having information on the relics the artificer is collecting,
and okay so maybe everyone's plots can't each be the main focus at the same time, but that doesn't mean only one plot can be part of the focus at a time.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
The creativity itself and the process thereof exists in the "now", sure. No argument there.
But the result - the story, the music, whatever - doesn't exist in any useful form until after it is created; when the music reaches the ear of the listener either then or, via a recording, later; or when a written story reaches the eyes of its readers. And here the result - i.e. the end output as seen/heard later - is what we're talking about as being story.
Put another way, I could (and do) have story ideas in my head right now but until I get on and do something with them that's all they are: ideas. And if I put down some notes on those ideas that's all they are: notes (or, to use a sometimes more accurate term, game prep
). But any story that might grow out of those notes doesn't yet exist.There's another possible delimiter here: that a story doesn't functionally exist until someone else other than its creator(s) has access to it via reading it, hearing it, seeing it performed, or whatever means, even if that access is never used.
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