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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nedjer" data-source="post: 5347501" data-attributes="member: 83796">The complex part is not learning crunch and grind, it's allowing RPGs to play as RPGs. Movies, magazines, videogames, off-the-shelf modules, multiple monster manuals . . . are all about fixed narratives, which discourage open-ended play, player choice and improvisation.It's clearly possible to play any RPG as open-ended, player (rather than rules) led and improvisational. Unfortunately, as systems become larger, get more rules to cover everything, have more options decided on the roll of a dice, favour combat-focused solutions and characters . . . play is constantly being channelled towards fixed narratives and linear challenges.This model is seen as necessary to companies, which see themselves as the content creators instead of helping players to act as their own content creators. The ready made module or MM3 is convenient but comes at the expense of discarding the magic pixie dust made from players' imaginations.Lego offers a pretty clear analogy. You can buy Lego kits with instructions for making a particular model for a particular setting, e.g. Prince of Persia or Atlantis. From the word go the kit, with its final outcome, follow the instructions, 'win mentality' is shaping players' experience and gameplay.Equally, you can take a bunch of Lego bricks and make your own desert fortress or undersea kingdom. This can have all sorts of shapes and forms, be populated by your characters and 'run' your ad hoc, opened-adventures.As a result, instead of play being channelled towards admiring a finished model and/ or playing with the model in the cast of a PoP movie, the model is ever-changing and play may touch on 1001 Nights, Beau Geste, The Four Feathers, the Mummy, your last adventure, your favourite characters - in a creative crucible filled with players' ideas and aspirations, rather than those handed down from 'above'.</blockquote>

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