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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1504363" data-attributes="member: 151">Assuming what you say is true, what is he missing, exactly? He's just pointing out that, when reduced to a basic plot level, there have not been any new structures introduced in a long time.  Consider the Star Trek (original) episode "Balance of Terror". Captain Kirk faces off against a Romulan commander in a game of cat-and-mouse, the two ships hunting each other in a tense battle. It's a great episode, one of my favorites. And it is rumored to have originally been written as a WWII drama concerning a US destroyer and a German U-boat commander for one of shows like Studio 80 or Playhouse. It certainly bears more than a passing resemblance to the 1957 movie "The Enemy Below". The details are different, but the basic plot is nearly identical. With a few changes, the setting could be virtually anywhere. Memento, as another example, does not feature a revolutionary plot. In 2 hours, you don't have a huge amount of time to establish tons of characters and threads. Memento establishes a murder mystery that is told in a unique way, and involves a protagonist with a unique condition...but that isn't the same as having a new plot; it's a new way to deliver the plot. I mean, it's not that far a leap from "Tale of Genji" to "I, Claudius" to a Jackie Collins novel, plotwise. The devil is in the details. Which has no relevance at all on telling a good story, or even messing with the plot, some. If, in Kill Bill, if Uma Thurman's characters kills Bill, then that's a standard plot. If she doesn't Kill Bill, then that's a standard plot (or standard variation on the plot), too. It's as much about the journey as the destination. And, as others have pointed out, when you're inside the story, it feels much different. Your players don't have all the information you, as the DM, do. Their perception of the plot can be radically altered from the uncertainty of being inside it. And knowing the plot doesn't mean they know the story, which is the difference between being in The Seven Samurai, the Dirty Dozen or Tremors. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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