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Is RPGing a *literary* endeavour?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7608175" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Can I pick up on your example (bolded by me to call it out) and a possible risk in play? Not to denigrate the example, but to try to connect it into how I'm thinking about things.</p><p></p><p>It seems to me that it is <em>possible</em> that the GM might narrate the koblds' <em>drool and bloodshot eyes</em>, hoping and intending to evoke a particular response and engagement from the players, only instead to trigger responses about the kobolds having had a hard night out, being stone/hungover, etc. (Similar to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s reference, I think upthread, to players making d*ck jokes.)</p><p></p><p>This is a risk that arises in the spontaneous back-and-forth of RPGing that doesn't come up the same way in a book. A reader might snigger at some line or phrase in a work, but there's at least a tenable sense of "work" in which that response leaves the work itself unchanged. Whereas when we think of the RPG experience as yielding a "work", the player response can't be excluded in the same way.</p><p></p><p>So to begin an answer to your question - and it's not more than a beginning - while prep can of course be helpful (for everything from thinking up situations, to thinking up choice phrases, to drawing some maps or pictures that might be useful for communicative or - in some RPGs - resolution purposes), I think the nature of RPGing will always tend to bring the dynamics of the here-and-now to the fore.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7608175, member: 42582"] Can I pick up on your example (bolded by me to call it out) and a possible risk in play? Not to denigrate the example, but to try to connect it into how I'm thinking about things. It seems to me that it is [I]possible[/I] that the GM might narrate the koblds' [I]drool and bloodshot eyes[/I], hoping and intending to evoke a particular response and engagement from the players, only instead to trigger responses about the kobolds having had a hard night out, being stone/hungover, etc. (Similar to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s reference, I think upthread, to players making d*ck jokes.) This is a risk that arises in the spontaneous back-and-forth of RPGing that doesn't come up the same way in a book. A reader might snigger at some line or phrase in a work, but there's at least a tenable sense of "work" in which that response leaves the work itself unchanged. Whereas when we think of the RPG experience as yielding a "work", the player response can't be excluded in the same way. So to begin an answer to your question - and it's not more than a beginning - while prep can of course be helpful (for everything from thinking up situations, to thinking up choice phrases, to drawing some maps or pictures that might be useful for communicative or - in some RPGs - resolution purposes), I think the nature of RPGing will always tend to bring the dynamics of the here-and-now to the fore. [/QUOTE]
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