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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8957866" data-attributes="member: 29398">And in any media, it doesn't take much for those contrivances to pull me out of the story; coincidence can only explain so much and after that, it just becomes absurd.That said, there's a few specific places in RPGing where absudr degrees of contrivance are IMO not only acceptable, but highly useful; the most common of which is getting a new PC into the game/party/scene.I think there's a bit of misrepresentation in there.Drama doesn't figure much in our games, this is true; mostly because none of us are really interested in all the angst etc. that comes with that territory  But it does often arise in one way: romances etc. between PCs or between PCs and NPCs.But story does.  And the PCs are first and foremost the protagonists.  BUT: here's the difference: the PCs are the protagonists not in themselves, but as the party they comprise; and the story that figures prominently is the story of the party as a whole.Sometimes it becomes difficult to see the forest for all the trees trying to whack you in the face, yes.  And that's fine.Which kind of mirrors the real world.  What's at stake might be making your store sales goal for the month of March or else you get demoted, but what you care about right now is that the store's toilet has backed up and everyone including you is busy trying to deal with that.  Not everything has to speak to the main goal or stakes.The former often manifests as an unexpectedly easy player-side win either due to good luck or good planning, and I'm cool with that.  The latter often manifests as appearing to be low statkes in the here and now but in fact being just a part of a much higher-stakes situation.For example: in a typical dungeon crawl there might be (depending on which route the party takes and-or how thoroughly they decide to clean the place out) something like 5 to 15 minor combats or encounters, each of whcih individually is pretty low stakes but when taken in aggregate are more significant, in that the stakes of aggregate success is to earn the right to take on the BBEG at the end.</blockquote>

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