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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2179506" data-attributes="member: 27012">I'm not saying that you didn't.  I'm simply trying to avoid a trip down the path of calling other styles illegitimate.In a certain sense?  No.  But people don't read novels or go to see movies about real life, which is why "reality" shows aren't.  They want to see a "story", in a sense far more narrow than the sense you are using it.Go to the reference section of a book store.  Pick up books on writing "stories".  The odds are very good that they won't tell you how to write real life.  And I think that's closer to how most people understand the term.  Yes, we can go down the path of rec.games.frp.advocacy or The Forge and jargonize the term "story" to mean whatever we want it to mean.  But what do most normal human beings think if you say, "I'm running this game to create a story about your characters."?  Do you think they'll imagine the sort of game that you are talking about?And I think that if you use the word "story" in a discussion with role-players who haven't spent a lot of time on an Internet message board discussing role-playing theory and style, there is a very good chance that they will expect something very different than what you are doing, just as you'd probably be confused if you went to a movie or read a novel and rather than getting a traditional "story", you got the sort of "story", in the broad sense, that you are talking about.  There is something called an authors "contract" in a lot of writing books.  Basically, when people watch a movie or pick up a novel, they expect a "story".  And the type of "story" they expect is a lot more narrow than what you are talking about.  To put this another way, I'm not arguing that you can't use the word "story" the way you are using it.  Yeah, it can be used that way.  I'm arguing that it's confusing and doesn't explain or distinguish what you are doing in any meaningful way.  And given the experience I've had discussing various models of role-playing, trying to force people to use a jargonized form of a common word is just asking for trouble.  The fact that so many people are reading "story" to mean "the GM guides the game to produce a certain plot" suggests that it's a bad pick as a way to describe what you are doing.  It's already being used to describe a style in most people's minds.</blockquote>

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