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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pedr" data-source="post: 4893900" data-attributes="member: 33464">It is of course worth noting that parts of the DMG2 (and, I'd wager, this chapter) are written by Robin Laws who is unashamedly about producing products which focus on the narrative coherence of rpg sessions/adventures/play. From my rough understanding, HeroQuest 2, which he wrote/was lead designer on has mechanics which explicitly act to emulate the ebbs and flows of tension and drama in a story. In other words, while there's clearly a well-understood continuum from 'role-play heavy' to 'hack-n-slash tactical game' in RPGs, perhaps the one we're discussing here is the 'story-telling' to 'improv' spectrum. At the 'improv' end, the characters are faced with situations which they explore through play, as the player predicts the character would react. At the 'story-telling' end, the players take on the role of characters in a story, sometimes modifying their actions to reflect the nature of the story being told. D&D has tended to be at the improv end, of course, but there's no reason that it can't support or encourage aspects of story-telling. No-one's going to play D&D expecting something like 'Primetime Adventures' (where the role of the players is explicitly to make use of their characters to help the group 'create' an episode of the tv show they've invented) - but recognising that the activities of the players are part of a fantasy story and highlighting that at times - through flashbacks, or cut-scenes giving information to the players which the characters don't know, to heighten the players' anticipation of scenes to come, or so on - can help the players to inhabit the story as it is being written.</blockquote>

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