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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4496325" data-attributes="member: 42582">I didn't say they were amazed by unfamiliarity with those things. They tend to be amazed by familiarity with them - casting Presence (a Rolemaster spell) and learning that there is a 50th level Presence nearby causes them to be amazed. Not by the rarity, but by the power (and the implications that power has for the upcoming confrontation with their PCs).Well, the PCs in my game have already faced down Tharizdun in dreamcrystal form twice, have rescued him in child simulcrum form once (not knowing back then who he was), have captured and kidnapped him in fallen-to-earth-and-weakened-and-imprisoned form once, and now have to engage him in full-strength voidal form. The issue of familiarity or unfamiliarity is not really relevant. Their interest is (i) in the story and (ii) in the game-mechanical resolution of the action.That depends a lot on the details. I frequently listen to the Ring Cycle on CD as I work, and it continues to evoke awe and wonder in me (in some ways more over time, as the subtelty and implications of the work become more evident). The first time I ever handled a Euro it was new to me, and I guess I got a bit of a thrill, but nothing that I'd describe as awe or wonder.My contention is that what produces awe or wonder in the players of an FRPG is (at least in many cases) not very closely connected to what would create awe and wonder in the PCs in the gameworld. The players are surrounded by the familiar (their friends, their house/gaming room, their dice, etc) and are engaging in a shared act of narration. I think what will produce awe and wonder is the elements of that narration - plot, theme, delivery etc - and that the rarity, in the fiction, of particular tropes (dragons, spells, etc) is not a big contributor to this.To put it another way - Graham Greene's The End of the Affair invokes, in me at least, far more awe and wonder than does the typical fantasy story, although it deals almost entirely with the mundane. This is because it is well written. I think much the same is true for an RPG (making appropriate allowances for the difference of medium).</blockquote>

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