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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4022824" data-attributes="member: 4937">I understand why you'd think that, but that's not my experience.First, it involves a very narrow definition of 'story'.&nbsp; It is true a gamist or simulationist game often has very few of the formal dramatic elements of a story - rising action, denoument, epiphany, conclusion, or whatever - but it almost always has the one essential element of a story - conflict.&nbsp; Without the formal elements of a story we expect a story to have, it might not be a very enjoyable story in the telling of it, and it might notably lack a meaning, but it will still be a story.And in defence of that, you could point out that in real life, very few peoples lives follow classic narrative arcs, and even when they appear to do so, we often find that it is because the biographer has taken some dramatic license with the person's life in choosing what events to emphasize or leave out, according to the needs of the story that the biographer formulated.I have certainly been in simulationist games where stories evolved into being.I've also been in narrativist games where the failure of the participants to compose a story, led to the same sort of meandering narrative that you would expect to be composed by a simulationist or gamist game.&nbsp; This is particularly true of games that are played in weekly sessions, such that the participants tend to focus entirely on the current scene and not its place in the larger story to the extent that eventually there is no story - only a series of (hopefully) emotionally cathartic scenes.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 4022824, member: 4937"] I understand why you'd think that, but that's not my experience. First, it involves a very narrow definition of 'story'. It is true a gamist or simulationist game often has very few of the formal dramatic elements of a story - rising action, denoument, epiphany, conclusion, or whatever - but it almost always has the one essential element of a story - conflict. Without the formal elements of a story we expect a story to have, it might not be a very enjoyable story in the telling of it, and it might notably lack a meaning, but it will still be a story. And in defence of that, you could point out that in real life, very few peoples lives follow classic narrative arcs, and even when they appear to do so, we often find that it is because the biographer has taken some dramatic license with the person's life in choosing what events to emphasize or leave out, according to the needs of the story that the biographer formulated. I have certainly been in simulationist games where stories evolved into being. I've also been in narrativist games where the failure of the participants to compose a story, led to the same sort of meandering narrative that you would expect to be composed by a simulationist or gamist game. This is particularly true of games that are played in weekly sessions, such that the participants tend to focus entirely on the current scene and not its place in the larger story to the extent that eventually there is no story - only a series of (hopefully) emotionally cathartic scenes. [/QUOTE]

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