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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7411637" data-attributes="member: 82106">No, because, for one thing, the genre of, lets say, 'Epic High Fantasy' is MUCH MUCH larger than 'what can happen in DL1' (Dragon Lance being Epic High Fantasy, though I'm sure we could hair split about that, but lets not). You understand the difference? In Story Now there's no 'plot', there's no 'adventures you can go on', or even well-established world-facts that can't be contravened for the sake of story. The very genesis of the story is also QUALITATIVELY different, and this gets back to what [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] said before, there's a qualitative dimension to this whole 'agency debate' thing. You cannot simply spit out numbers, or even relative measures, like [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] is doing. It simply doesn't work. He's also correct, IMHO, in his analysis of the very nature of 'agency' itself, which is that nobody who seriously has the sort of philosophical credentials to be serious about defining it is going to say that actual humans have '100% agency'. Many might say exactly the opposite!   The point is, players in [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game are not simply given choices of circumstances within which they must have their characters navigate. They have a higher level input, to help determine what those circumstances are, the very process of creation of them, from the very beginning. It may be that in [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game you can burn down the building and change the scenario, or walk away and go elsewhere, but, unless you engage him outside the realm of the narrative, you can't actually engage in the creative process of picking the elements that will go into the story, ab initio. This is a real difference, and its a dimension in which there is a quality which is existing in Story Now and not existing in Story Before or Story Later, or etc. The problem is, when you take the kinds of 'limitations' that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has in his game, you are simply stating that 'if its a game at all, then its just as limited as ANY game." By this notion there's no meaningful difference of any kind between any two RPGs. THREAD IS OVER! <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/erm.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":erm:" title="Erm    :erm:" data-shortname=":erm:" /><img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/glasses.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt="B-)" title="Glasses    B-)" data-shortname="B-)" /></blockquote>

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