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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gorice" data-source="post: 8995816" data-attributes="member: 7032863">Let's put aside the term 'degenerate', since it is a bit fraught (I meant it in the technical sense, but never mind). I think the key bit is in your last paragraph, on the role of uncertainty. Let me quote your example of play from the original post:First of all, this is great and really interesting (not that it needs my endorsement). Players are effectively setting the scene and making statements about other people's characters (as in the Jackie/Marissa relationship -- were there limits to how much you could do this? Was it established beforehand? Do you still do it in other games?).Anyway: if everyone has control (mostly) over their own characters, and they make statements in turn, and the players are actually paying attention as building on each others' statments (as in your example)... It looks to me as if play would inevitably throw up some unexpected situations, and test/reveal characters in ways that weren't planned. Does this fit with your experience?Right! This is what triggered my 'degenerate' comment before. A problem statement is just classic storytelling. Leaving it open looks like old-fashioned 'story now' play. My character has this big issue, let's find out how they deal with it. If you write the answer in stone before you even get there, what then?From my end, it looks like we're dealing with different but intersecting axes, here. Like, the trad character typically doesn't change much, while the story now character is expected to be challenged (though they may not actually change much). That's one axis. Both types can bring a lot or a little backstory. That's another axis.I think in both cases (but especially story now), turning the backstory up to eleven makes it hard to actually play the character, for the same reason it's hard to play in a setting with too much detail. If everything is already decided, anything I or anyone else does at the table risks contradicting the truth that is already established. This is why I look at these characters with detailed backstories and carefully planned arcs and wonder whether they are actually fun to play, or even possible to play at all, as written.When I look at the example of freeform roleplay given by [USER=6801252]@The-Magic-Sword[/USER] , it seems to me that you couldn't actually plan detailed character arcs and be sure everything would work the way you planned. The same goes for backstory -- what if another player suddenly implies your two characters used to have a relationship?</blockquote>

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