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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9538805" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Improvisational jazz does not exist in any useful form, because it doesn't exist in any form, unless it is currently being performed. That's the whole point. It only exists Now. It does not exist Before, because it is improvised, developed on the spot in response to the current situation, participants, etc. And it does not exist After, because it isn't ever written down in the first place. The whole point is that the art, the experience, only exists in the moment of producing it, and no other time.This only applies to written, collated stories. It does not apply to a wide variety of other storytelling methods. Hence why I referenced things like improvisational acting, extemporaneous delivery in speeches, and jazz.Another example: Philosophy. While I have many disagreements with Socrates about the alleged awfulness of the written word (his arguments read like every "these kids with their newfangled thing are going to be the death of culture and learning!!!"), there really is a kernel of truth in it, specifically when it comes to the study of philosophy. An argument merely inscribed upon a page is dead. It has no power, no life, no use. It is only when we are putting these ideas to the test, whether through discussion, observation, or demonstration, that they actually have value.I agree that the notes are not the story yet though. But the notes that come after the play may not be the story either. Instead, for some styles of play, the story is in the moment to moment action, just as jazz is in the moment to moment "right" choices for the next note, the next chord; or how the story of a live rap battle is in the back-and-forth between the contestants, which would lose its most valuable aspect by being nailed down, trimmed up, pressed, laminated.Some stories--indeed, probably most stories!--are Story Before (a fiction conceived in advance of actually experiencing it) or Story After (a cleaned-up and collected accounting of someone's experiences after those experiences have ended). TTRPGs permit a process of storytelling where the story occurs in the moment of the experience happening, and that is what Story Now aims for. Not all games are or should be that way. Indeed, I suspect most games shouldn't work that way. But this emphatically is not some bizarro non-story just because it is happening in the moment of the experience. It is perfectly valid to understand story forming as the person experiences something, even in purely real-world stuff. "Live tweeting" or "live blogging" is a recent example; reading something like a real person's journals, recorded as they experienced their life rather than written down after the experiences have fully finalized, is very much a written form of Story Now.I mean, sure, but you already included in that the "it must be live" options: not just a reader perusing a fossilized story, but a literal "audi"ence, people hearing or witnessing a live performance. As an example, I've been led to believe that you can't truly experience the Rocky Horror Picture Show unless you attend a live performance, because it is designed to involve audience participation; to experience it without such audience participation is to fail to actually get the "story" of the work. Hence, by that standard, it is a story that cannot possibly exist in the way you demand a story exist, as a fossilized entity on slices of processed dead tree.Edit: That said, having now read Chaosmancer's analysis, I'm a lot less persuaded by this. Plenty of stories exist that are known only to their creator(s).</blockquote>

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