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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 9116728" data-attributes="member: 87792">Yes in exactly the way I mean - just not in the way you mean. Stories are what happened and a good game encourages interesting stories to grow out of it. And pre-Dragonlance did through artificial environments that were designed for interest not for realism (the ear seeker makes no sense in any environment and e.g. lurkers above, lurkers below, and gelatinous cubes are jump-scare monsters) and the characters have expected character arcs from "part of a mob-handed team with hirelings" from levels 1-4 to the hirelings becoming chaff and the party going in as a team without hirelings to "by this axe I rule" and the PCs getting defined lands or guilds or churches at level 10-ishn and retire from most orthodox adventuring to become movers and shakers.This is as much hard coded story as most good modern narrative games have. The fundamental rule is "play to see what happens". And what makes something a storygame as opposed to a trad RPG was defined when the term was created as irrevocable changes and bounded play with an intended endgame rather than being open ended. The first storygame was My Life With Master which told the story of a group of minions who are cruelly treated by a master (played by the GM) until one rebels and tries to kill the master - when either they win and the master dies or they lose and they die. This is about the same level of hard coding of oD&D. A couple of outline story beats for character development (as oD&D had) with some worldbuilding that was different for almost every game (as oD&D had). It just had a much shorter story arc.What you mean by narrative I suspect is the hard coded adventure paths and metaplot that took over starting with Dragonlance (and an absurd amount of GM force) where the PCs are guided from plot point to plot point and where the story is written in advance. Modern narrative games are a reaction against that. Play to see what happens, and stories are about character growth and change with the PCs able to affect things in ways where the outcomes are unforseen. Stories are about change and character growth - and a clear marker of that is that someone ends the story in a different place from where they started (generally in more consequential ways than having gained a couple of spells and half a dozen hit points).</blockquote>

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