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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 4997836" data-attributes="member: 3820">Just clarification, please. A preset ending to a scene is a logical jump to a preset ending to a game. If you didn't mean the former, I owe you a particularly heartfelt apology.That would make sense. I think most games aren't quite that simple, though; at least those with rulesets. There is usually some sort of resolution mechanic in play. A good example would be some sort of resource like, let's call them "Drama Points" that you can expend to change one particular outcome. Players bid from their pools to see just what will happen, or whose preference will come out on top. And often there are mechanics to twist or alter that preference, so you throw in a dramatic rider. If one person gets to determine "He gets away with the loot," another mechanic adds a "but" to it, like "but in the process he left something he values at the scene." Sure. I believe in the case of most story games, you may or may not have a preferred conception from the beginning of the scene, as the scene is expected to evolve. Plus also, scenes and stories evolve like potluck dinners, as each player adds new complications and such. And presumably the mechanical part played out sufficiently that you were able to pull off that narration.I really am not trying to be your dogged opponent here. I'm really just trying to elaborate more on what the "game" part of story game might entail. For instance, I don't think that most people go into an average scene knowing the specifics of how it ends. They may apply solid narrative control to the beginning of a scene, but that's somewhat different. If I seem a bit persistent here, it's because the idea that an average scene in a story game is predestined to end in a certain way implies a certain level of futility. Most story games are faced with that problem, and work to solve it in interesting ways (you may know the basics of an ending, but the devil is in the shifting consequences, or you don't know how a scene ends but you know a lot about how it begins). It's kind of a negative thing, and some (not you) have maintained that story games must be futile because of the presence of narrative influence or control. I apologize for reading that implication of futility into your original post; I can only hope you can see how someone else, bereft of vocal tone or facial expression, could have gotten that reading.</blockquote>

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