The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread
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payn
Glory to Marik
Its a sad state of pizza these days. Folks who do not think pineapple should be on pizza are shrugging off new potential pizza chefs that not only eat pineapple pizza, but lie and are hypocritical about it. It's just become too important for anti-pineapple chefs to be in the kitchen to worry about character or integrity for these folks.
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
"Because [D&D] is a gradual series of revelations / That occur over a period of time / It's not some carefully crafted story / It's a mess, and we're all gonna die. . "
So if you've followed my posts for any time or read my campaign story hours you know it is a hobby horse of mine to push against the idea of D&D as a story game with notions of closure or emulating narrative or cinematic conventions as a goal of the game or even any particular scene or encounter.
This is the place where if I were @Snarf Zagyg, I'd have a subtitle that said something like "Every time I hear someone say 'Everything happens for a reason' I want to punch them in the face just to prove them right."
I was listening to NPR's Fresh Air the other day and the guest host (Terry Gross was on vacay, which is why I bothered listening) was interviewing Rachel Bloom. I have never watched Crazy Ex-Girlfriend but they played a clip of one of the songs from it and I fell in love with the song (embedded below + lyrics). Not only because I agree with its view of life. . . but because that is my ideal view of D&D. If you listen to it with D&D in mind, it really kinda works. It makes me think of how in my longest and most successful D&D campaign, while the PCs resolved what became the central concern of the game, there were still about a dozen loose threads and the game ended satisfactorily after 5+ years (real-time) with the party dissolving to pursue whichever of those mattered most to them, some of which would put the PCs - now fast friends - into conflict. The End. Everyone loved it.
Also the lyric about "People aren't characters. They're complicated / And their choices don't always make sense" makes me think of all the times I've witnessed players argue about the in-game choices of another "not making sense" (something I would put the kibosh on these days). The people who play D&D characters are not characters themselves.
Anyway, I was gonna start a thread about this, but then I decided, what's the point? I'll share it in that wackadoo thread instead.
So if you've followed my posts for any time or read my campaign story hours you know it is a hobby horse of mine to push against the idea of D&D as a story game with notions of closure or emulating narrative or cinematic conventions as a goal of the game or even any particular scene or encounter.
This is the place where if I were @Snarf Zagyg, I'd have a subtitle that said something like "Every time I hear someone say 'Everything happens for a reason' I want to punch them in the face just to prove them right."
I was listening to NPR's Fresh Air the other day and the guest host (Terry Gross was on vacay, which is why I bothered listening) was interviewing Rachel Bloom. I have never watched Crazy Ex-Girlfriend but they played a clip of one of the songs from it and I fell in love with the song (embedded below + lyrics). Not only because I agree with its view of life. . . but because that is my ideal view of D&D. If you listen to it with D&D in mind, it really kinda works. It makes me think of how in my longest and most successful D&D campaign, while the PCs resolved what became the central concern of the game, there were still about a dozen loose threads and the game ended satisfactorily after 5+ years (real-time) with the party dissolving to pursue whichever of those mattered most to them, some of which would put the PCs - now fast friends - into conflict. The End. Everyone loved it.
Also the lyric about "People aren't characters. They're complicated / And their choices don't always make sense" makes me think of all the times I've witnessed players argue about the in-game choices of another "not making sense" (something I would put the kibosh on these days). The people who play D&D characters are not characters themselves.
Anyway, I was gonna start a thread about this, but then I decided, what's the point? I'll share it in that wackadoo thread instead.
RealAlHazred
Frumious Flumph (Your Grace/Your Eminence)
So, if somebody wants to use D&D to make it play like a movie, that's fine. It's not how I usually like to run, but I can adjust my style if that's what people want and I've run that way at conventions and game days for people who like more scripted play. If they try it out and it works for them, that's great! I hope everybody has fun!
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing (He/They)
"It's pointless! Well, except for that point. And that one too, that's a good point. Oh and that one. And that one, and that one..."
trappedslider
Legend
yes
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
I have no problem if people want to play that way. I just get annoyed (perhaps unreasonably so) when the assumption is that the game makes stories or plays out stories, rather than stories are made out of what happens - if you see the difference. As a GM I do not find, "that is what'd happen in X movie or novel" a compelling argument for allowing something. I'm not into playing or running D&D that way. I know there are other RPGs specifically designed to make stories. I would be willing to try one of those.
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