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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emberashh" data-source="post: 9317530" data-attributes="member: 7040941">I'm still of the opinion that ultimately what pretty much this entire topic is arguing about, but not really getting their teeth into, is that this is just different variants on the improv game, specifically an elaborate and long term narrative improv game, where the various improv players have differring levels of input on how the overall scene or string of them progresses.The rules are a player, as is the GM, as are the colloquial Players, and all three contribute to the overall scene(s) in terms of what happens, how it happens, and why it happens, and how all of these scenes connect with one another in sequence. People have found the idea that the rules are an improv player weird, but they should keep an open mind, as it is the cornerstone of what makes RPGs not just improv. (And after all, theres a reason theater kids end up getting into RPGs, and why the most popular recorded/live plays all end up with a heavy improv focus; its not because it happens to be entertaining)The types of games that tend to be pointed as "narrative" tend to depress the GMs input while increasing that of the rules and the Players. We can see that taken to its (imo) best form with Ironsworn and Star Forged, where the GM can be eliminated entirely.That, however, doesn't mean only those games are capable of that balance. You can run any RPG in existence with the MythicGM, and it will work, in terms of how the improv game works, in the same way as those games.Meanwhile your more conventional (re: popular) games tend to have relatively equal balances (DNDlikes outside of modules), with some depressing Player input to some degree (COC). And of course as mentioned, things like modules or Adventure Paths will typically depress GM and Player input in heavy favor of the rules, which it should be said, is entirely intentional, as such things are intended for groups that are either completely new to the improv game, or those who simply don't want to put in that kind of effort at all.Modules and APs don't reflect on what a given game is or isn't, because no RPG that has ever been written was designed to work only with such things. But even if there is one, it'd have to be one convoluted design if it somehow breaks if the GM and the Players start concocting their own story threads.That all said, I did have a couple side points:None of this is exactly surprising, given these folks are rhetorically descended from the Forge whose sole purpose beyond teaching people how to self-publish was to invent a bunch of jargon so they could make their own in-group.Particularly because in this example we're witnessing a hijacking of a word based on the completely wrong kind of protagonist and justified by a surface level reading of a Wikipedia topic synopsis.Game Protagonists do not have the same functions as a Written Protagonist. A game protagonist hinges around interactivity (ie, gameplay), which is what drives the story of that protagonist, whether its a prewritten movie script ala Mass Effect or a completely generated story ala Dwarf Fortress.A written protagonist, which is whats trying to be held up as the applicable definition here, doesn't work like that. Written protagonists are 100% as prewritten as the overall story is, and not a single thing they do in a given narrative is emergent from anything whatsoever. The author made it up, and there are no Players.And meanwhile, as should be obvious now, the idea of "de-protagonizing" even being a thing is complete hogwash.I have had the misfortune of having read much of the forge, going back as far as I could. I don't think its coincidental I kept getting the impression a lot of their motivations were rooted in really, really bad DMs screwing over their OC characters. Or just their characters being bad because they didn't actually like the game they were playing enough to make a good one. Even still today, I believe a lot of people don't actually like RPGs but don't otherwise know how to articulate what they do like and go do that instead.</blockquote>

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