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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7768740" data-attributes="member: 29398">We agree, then, that the party-as-a-whole is what the story ends up being about.&nbsp; Good.Now consider the difference when that party, over its ten-adventure existence, has seen 35 characters pass through as members at some point due to perma-death and other types of turnover - and where none of those that started the saga were around at the end (this to me is very much OS); as opposed to if that party had mostly the same 5 characters all the way through (which to me says NS).&nbsp; The end-result stories of those two parties-as-entities, assuming all other things were roughly equal, ends up roughly the same.&nbsp; But in the first the story (or the party, same diff) was clearly bigger than any one character; not so much the case in the second.This one always red-flags to me as a bad (or at least very inexperienced) DM warning, in that if a game or story is built around a certain character then a) that character is inevitably going to be treated with favouritism and-or b) things have real potential to go sideways should that character perma-die or otherwise leave the party.I often get a sense - particularly from the story-now crew* - that the real interest lies in the stories of individual characters, with the story of the party as a whole merely tagging along for the ride.* - though I suppose these could almost be defined as post-NS.Oh, there's no denying that all sorts of modes of gaming and-or storytelling have been around for ages.&nbsp; It's general trends toward/away from one or another that we're looking at here; and how some things once generally seen as poor have become good while things once seen as good have become viewed as poor.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 7768740, member: 29398"] We agree, then, that the party-as-a-whole is what the story ends up being about. Good. Now consider the difference when that party, over its ten-adventure existence, has seen 35 characters pass through as members at some point due to perma-death and other types of turnover - and where none of those that started the saga were around at the end (this to me is very much OS); as opposed to if that party had mostly the same 5 characters all the way through (which to me says NS). The end-result stories of those two parties-as-entities, assuming all other things were roughly equal, ends up roughly the same. But in the first the story (or the party, same diff) was clearly bigger than any one character; not so much the case in the second. This one always red-flags to me as a bad (or at least very inexperienced) DM warning, in that if a game or story is built around a certain character then a) that character is inevitably going to be treated with favouritism and-or b) things have real potential to go sideways should that character perma-die or otherwise leave the party. I often get a sense - particularly from the story-now crew* - that the real interest lies in the stories of individual characters, with the story of the party as a whole merely tagging along for the ride. * - though I suppose these could almost be defined as post-NS. Oh, there's no denying that all sorts of modes of gaming and-or storytelling have been around for ages. It's general trends toward/away from one or another that we're looking at here; and how some things once generally seen as poor have become good while things once seen as good have become viewed as poor. [/QUOTE]

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