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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7594824" data-attributes="member: 42582">Absolutely! But in my view the main job of a GM is not performing. It's establishing compelling situations, and helping resolve them (together with the other participants).I was thinking more about exhibiting emotional responses themselves, than evoking them in other participants. But that can happen too, eg when the whole table is on edge wondering whether a player will make a certain call, or how some declared action will turn out; or when the players are debating something among themselves, trying to decide what it is that they want to do.So here, too, I'm not seeing the players' role as one of performance: it's about inhabiting their characters in the fiction.When I'm watching a film or reading a book (or being read a book) I'm experiencing a performance or someone else's composition. That work evokes a response in me (assuming it's any good).When I'm playing a RPG, I'm being my character. I'm making choices in the context of a situation that the referee has established. As in real life, the emotion comes not from appreciating a performance or a composition, but from having to choose and facing the (imagined) consequences of that choice. That's what makes it imaginative play.To put it another way: in a film, the lighting of the set, the framing of the shot of the farmstead, the soundtrack (or it's absence0 are all crucial. But in a RPG, the narration is secondary - it's role is to estabnlish an imagined choice sitution. It's the choosing, for my character, and having to (in the ficiton) wear the consequences of that, which produce the emotional weight of the epxerience.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7594824, member: 42582"] Absolutely! But in my view the main job of a GM is not [I]performing[/I]. It's establishing compelling situations, and helping resolve them (together with the other participants). I was thinking more about exhibiting emotional responses themselves, than evoking them in other participants. But that can happen too, eg when the whole table is on edge wondering whether a player will make a certain call, or how some declared action will turn out; or when the players are debating something among themselves, trying to decide what it is that they want to do. So here, too, I'm not seeing the players' role as one of performance: it's about inhabiting their characters in the fiction. When I'm watching a film or reading a book (or being read a book) I'm experiencing a performance or someone else's composition. That work evokes a response in me (assuming it's any good). When I'm playing a RPG, I'm [I]being[/I] my character. I'm making choices in the context of a situation that the referee has established. As in real life, the emotion comes not from appreciating a performance or a composition, but from having to choose and facing the (imagined) consequences of that choice. That's what makes it [I]imaginative play[/I]. To put it another way: in a film, the lighting of the set, the framing of the shot of the farmstead, the soundtrack (or it's absence0 are all crucial. But in a RPG, the narration is secondary - it's role is to estabnlish an imagined choice sitution. It's the choosing, for my character, and having to (in the ficiton) wear the consequences of that, which produce the emotional weight of the epxerience. [/QUOTE]

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