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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nnms" data-source="post: 6263017" data-attributes="member: 83293">I think the disconnect here is that in old school play you don't attempt to "create the story" at all.  The fiction I'm talking about is not a story in the literary structure sense.  It's the content of the description of the participants.  You play to see what happens and what you can do and let any "story" just emerge as it does (more on this below). The last time I played Keep on the Borderlands, [spoiler]we had issues related to magic artifacts turning some of the party chaotic, we had the dealings with the medusa and the townsfolk.  Tons of dialogue interactions with a wide variety of creatures and characters.[/spoiler]  Needless to say we never had any issues having tons of story-like fictional content emerge from our complete lack of effort to create it.I think the issue you are highlighting is one of confusing fictional content with a story in the literary sense.  I am most certainly not talking about a plot or narrative when I talk about the concentration of the game on the fiction.  By fiction, I mean the description of environment, situation and character action and dialogue and nothing else.Which might highlight another common element to old school RPGs.  Playing to see what happens.  The referee sets up the situation or environment and whatever happens emerges from players acting in response to the situation or environment.It's much like our lives.  Humans naturally interpret the various events and happenings in their lives into tales they tell other humans.  We have a natural skill to look at a series of events and construct a tale to communicate them to others.  Whether it's talking about what a co-worker did that we don't like or perhaps telling one's children how you met their other parent, we naturally create stories out of our experiences of events with little or no effort.That's what you do in old school gaming.  Let the experiences happen, see what happens and naturally tell the stories about it after the fact.[HR][/HR]EDIT:  I figured I'd add a bit about prepping for my 1980 Runequest game and talk about how I almost fell into the trap of attempting to create or tell a story.I'm running the game using one of the sand box supplements published around 1980.  The players latched onto one of the details that sounded interesting to them and are now trying to find an ageless shaman.  We ended the session as they started their journey to another settlement where they believe they'll find out more about where this being is.So I started thinking to myself "wouldn't it be cool if one of the characters ended up killing this shaman?  And becoming a traitor to his people and the one who killed a great hero of the spirits."  I started thinking about what the scenes would look like when the player found out things this shaman has done (as he's not a good guy exactly) and scenes where he got the means to kill the shaman and finally a scene where it actually happened and then the escape and aftermath of killing such a great hero.I almost had to shout "NO!" at myself out loud.  It's not my job as the referee to tell a story.  Or to arrange what will happen.  Or to control the plot.  Or to make the game about producing a story like that.Not my job one bit.So I scrapped that idea and went back to prepping the environment and situation.  Figuring out the details the players will come accross as they travel and pursue what interests them.  Perhaps the players will discover that the shaman has sacrificed some of their family members and ancestors for magical power.  Perhaps they'll never meet the person who can tell them that and they'll never learn of it.  Perhaps they will see the sacrifice as necessary and not try to get revenge.  Or perhaps in their travels to find this shaman, some other point of interest will grab their attention and this whole shaman related quest will be set aside.It's not my job to decide any of that.  Just like the players, I will see what happens when they make the choices they do.This whole "rpgs are about story" is definitely a post-old school approach and will kill the feel of an OSR gaming experience pretty quickly.</blockquote>

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