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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6154696" data-attributes="member: 42582">This tells me what I think is not all that controversial - namely, that the typical D&D PC is not constructing a narrative. But it doesn't seem to tell me whether or not the players of typical D&D PCs are constructing narratives. Whatever exactly they're doing, it doesn't inovlve casting spells or using weaponry (as you note) but it does involve making assertions about, including intersubjectively reasoned and justified assertions about, a series of fictional events. One reasonably standard way of describing such activity in English is as the construction of a narrative.I don't see the difference between "narrating the setting" by saying things like "The room is very dark" and "narrating the setting inhabitants" by saying things like "The orcs greet you with the words "Please give us some pie." They look like hungry orcs." Some players also describe their PCs' actions in this sort of 3rd person way.Even if a player or GM moves into 1st person dialogue, that is still the production of a shared fiction (and hence, in some tenable sense of the word, of a narrative). Many novels, for instance, contain direct speech as well as indirect speech. They are still narratives. The move from 3rd to 1st person has aesthetic significance in some (maybe many) contexts, but doesn't change the fundamental nature of the activity.The events are fictional. The fiction has to be created by authors. In a typical D&D session those authors are both the GM and the players, and their authorship consists in many spoken and some written words. "Narration" is as handy a word as any to characterise this act of collecitvely producing those words and thereby authoring the shared fiction.I don't think anyone said that producing a narrative must be the ultimate goal of play. For some players, at least, it is clearly an instrumental goal. For instance, in a traditional D&D group playing Tomb of Horrors, the point of play is not to enjoy the aesthetics of the fiction generated, but rather for the players to make permissible moves according to the rules that constrain the fiction generation (which in ToH are often quite loose, as the module depends at key points on freeform resolution) so as to defeat the challenge that is posed to them. The fiction is a medium for posing challenge, not an end in itself.</blockquote>

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