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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 2853293" data-attributes="member: 2067">I think it's a semantic problem.A story is passive. It's something that is presented to you. You read a story -- a passive act. You don't get to change the story, alter the story, or manipulate the story. A game is interactive. It is something you do. You play a game -- an active process. You get to control the game, change the game, and manipulate the game.RPGs are story games. At times, telling the story comes into conflict with playing the game because the two are fundamentally different ways of spending time that are melded together in an RPG.If choices change the story, then that is part of a game (choices don't come into the Lord of the Rings or The Matrix or The Iliad or Conan novels) not part of a story.Choosing your adventure is playing a game. If you can interact with the plot, it isn't purely a story anymore, and the more you can interact with the plot, the more game it is. If you shape the story through the actions of interactivity, then you are playing a game mostly, I'd say. It's defined by interaction, by playing. If you shape the story more through narrative (an inherently passive thing), you're telling a story mostly I'd say. It's an active/passive dichotomy. Game = Active, Story = Passive. You can't be both at once, though you can alternate between the two, and the ratio of the two helps to differentiate play styles in D&D. I'm not using "story" to define everything non-rules-related that happens in D&D, nor am I using it for a synonym for railroading. When you read a book, watch a movie, or hear a song, you are recieving a story. A story is something observed. In the best examples (like Shakespeare, for instance), it's every detail is lovingly crafted to support a core theme -- the story can be said to be about something true to the human nature, but it's not something that an observer can disrupt.I'm not using "game" to define everything mechanics or crunch-related in D&D, nor am I using it to embody some ideal of free form. When you play a game, you are actively participating in an event. A game is something engaged in, something actively performed. In the best examples (say, Poker), the rules are crafted to present a combination of luck and skill that leads to reward. The game can be said to be a contest, a race, a challenge, but it's something you have to interact with.I don't know of any D&D group who would be happy being told a story where the occasionally roll dice for no reason, and I don't know of any D&D group who would be happier playing Poker. RPG's try to fuse this active/passive dichotomy. It's a story because it has characters and stage and actors, it's a game because there are challenges and random chances and skill tests. In that, D&D becomes an active story and a passive game. Rolls are made without the players (think random encounters or treasure rolls), while a story is selected, altered, and chagned by choice (which is a game). You try to "play the story." Different groups like different levels of this. You know that game where one person has the stick, starts telling a story, and then moves the stick onto the next person after about a paragraph, who must then tell the same story, keeping everything the former person did intact? That's a game. It's all about story, but it's interactive and challenging and random and a test of skill. It's a game where you play the story. It's more game than it is story because choices for amusement take prescedence over choices of theme, character development, and plotting concerns.If your story is flexible, then I'd say you're more playing a game than telling a story, because I wouldn't go up to Shakespeare and tell him King Lear would have been better if he randomly generated the plot in comittee, but I would tell him a game of King Lear would be more fun like that.</blockquote>

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