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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9768936" data-attributes="member: 42582">There can also be more to it than the quality of performance.When watching a film or a theatrical performance, I don't have the opportunity to intervene and diffuse whatever tension might be rising. The performance may generate pathos, or may incline towards bathos, but either way I have to sit there and let it wash over me. Whereas, in a RPG, I am a participant, not just an audience member. I can intervene to defuse, or affect in some other way, a performance that is making me feel uncomfortable. That sort of intervention can take the form of declaring an action for my character, but it can also take the form of a direct interjection into the social (real world, OOC) situation at the table.And even if a performance is not feeling me uncomfortable, as a participant I can make those sorts of interventions, and thus change the meaning of what is going on. Only in very GM-directed play am I, as a player, obliged to sit at the table like an audience member and accept the GM's performance on its own terms.</blockquote>