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Why we like plot: Our Job as DMs
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<blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5015314" data-attributes="member: 80487"><p>Doug, I still don't know what, if anything, does <em>not</em> "look like a story" to you.</p><p></p><p>The folks who insist that a lot of DM manipulation is necessary to produce "story" obviously do not believe that whatever happens to emerge in a more wide-open campaign qualifies.</p><p></p><p>I'll bet your intentions are benign, but perhaps the styles are at least divergent enough to be acknowledged on their own terms rather than whitewashed into "if we close eyes then it doesn't exist" dismissal.</p><p></p><p>Most of the classic modules -- certainly that one, and indeed all of the G and D series -- were tournament rounds. An even greater majority of modules, "classic" or not, are (at least by default) limited scenarios.</p><p></p><p>Where do you get the notion that such contrivances, utterly divorced from any campaign context at all, have anything necessarily to do with a <strong>D&D campaign</strong>?</p><p></p><p>For my kind of campaign, the apparatus of a rigidly programmed scenario must be stripped away and replaced with a <em>situation</em>. I need a dynamic environment, not a relatively static sequence of events.</p><p></p><p>See, you are taking your definition so far out into left field as to make it useless. If everything is a story, nothing is a story.</p><p></p><p>I say that the scrolls are <em>game elements</em>. We play a game, and depending on the choices of the players and the luck of the dice events happen. Afterward, we can tell a story about what happened.</p><p></p><p>The Loyal Opposition says the scrolls are <em>story elements</em> -- not "a story" in themselves. There is a limited set of sequences of events (not necessarily just one) that by prior criteria constitute the story that it is the DM's job to produce. The DM eliminates the remaining non-story (or at least bad-story) possibilities to keep players on a "right" path until they arrive at a "proper" outcome.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ariosto, post: 5015314, member: 80487"] Doug, I still don't know what, if anything, does [I]not[/I] "look like a story" to you. The folks who insist that a lot of DM manipulation is necessary to produce "story" obviously do not believe that whatever happens to emerge in a more wide-open campaign qualifies. I'll bet your intentions are benign, but perhaps the styles are at least divergent enough to be acknowledged on their own terms rather than whitewashed into "if we close eyes then it doesn't exist" dismissal. Most of the classic modules -- certainly that one, and indeed all of the G and D series -- were tournament rounds. An even greater majority of modules, "classic" or not, are (at least by default) limited scenarios. Where do you get the notion that such contrivances, utterly divorced from any campaign context at all, have anything necessarily to do with a [B]D&D campaign[/B]? For my kind of campaign, the apparatus of a rigidly programmed scenario must be stripped away and replaced with a [I]situation[/I]. I need a dynamic environment, not a relatively static sequence of events. See, you are taking your definition so far out into left field as to make it useless. If everything is a story, nothing is a story. I say that the scrolls are [I]game elements[/I]. We play a game, and depending on the choices of the players and the luck of the dice events happen. Afterward, we can tell a story about what happened. The Loyal Opposition says the scrolls are [I]story elements[/I] -- not "a story" in themselves. There is a limited set of sequences of events (not necessarily just one) that by prior criteria constitute the story that it is the DM's job to produce. The DM eliminates the remaining non-story (or at least bad-story) possibilities to keep players on a "right" path until they arrive at a "proper" outcome. [/QUOTE]
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