You are not the Director

[Celebrim]

Good point.

So, perhaps I should say "In theory, the DM has complete control. In actuality, if he exercises complete control, he won't have any players."

The players essentially have the ultimate veto over the DM's control.

Yes, that's it in a nutshell. And you saved me having to write responses to a bunch of posts.

 

[Hussar]

On the division of power between players and DM, I'll chime in with another "Yup I agree" post. I think you guys have nailed that pretty well.

As far as "script" goes, I guess the problem comes from the use of the word. To me, a script is not necessarily the word for word dialogue of a play or TV show or whatever. After all, in, for example, Jackie Chan movies, the script would say, "they fight now" and nothing else.

Everything about that fight was then choreographed by the actors.

I don't have a problem with the idea of script being very loose. Lots of productions use very loose scripts. A TV show like "Who's Line is it Anyway" is predicated on a very, very loose script. Other than the MC framing the challenge, it's up to the participants to actually produce something that makes some degree of sense and is entertaining.

However, Whose Line is it Anyway is not 100% ad libbed either. It's controlled improv.

Heck, even improv acting usually has some sort of script at the very least to frame the scene.

I realize you, Celebrim, think I'm using "script" too loosely. I think you're using it too narrowly. To me, a prepared adventure is very much a script. It's telling the participants, in broad strokes anyway, what's going to happen tonight. It's telling the DM how things are going to react. It quite often actually, as you mention, contains boxed text in order to facilitate setting the scene.

But, word for word production is not a script, it's a transcript. A script need only set the scene and give some direction in order to be a script.

 

[Celebrim]

When dealing in analogies, that's what you'll get. If it fits precisely, it's not an analogy.

I'm not so sure. One problem with analogies is that people have a tendency to try to turn them into broader allegories, as if, despite the lack of perfect fit, the ability to compare one thing to another implies that there must be a one to one and onto relationship between everything in the two things compared. The thing with analogies is that even if two things make for a perfect analogy, when you give this analogy away very quickly you end up with an imperfect analogy because of the natural human process of finding patterns.

But, that isn't even the problem here. The problem isn't the imperfect fit of the anology or that we've gone from 'players are like actors' to 'modules are like a script'. The problem is that Hussar is asserting not that a module is like a script, but that it literally is a script.

 

[Fifth Element]

The problem is that Hussar is asserting not that a module is like a script, but that it literally is a script.

If you're talking about a published adventure module, then I'm inclined to agree. Most modules have scripted dialogue for NPCs, for instance. It's a scripted outline for a heavily-improvised performance.

 

[Celebrim]

As far as "script" goes, I guess the problem comes from the use of the word. To me, a script is not necessarily the word for word dialogue of a play or TV show or whatever.

Well, sure, the word script does not necessarily mean only that. That is why if you will open a dictionary that you'll find four or six definitions for the word script depending on how it is used. The problem is that the way you are using it isn't any one of those.

After all, in, for example, Jackie Chan movies, the script would say, "they fight now" and nothing else.

Everything about that fight was then choreographed by the actors.

No, everything would then be choreographed by the fight director, the stage choreographer, the stunt choreographer, and the director. It just so happens that in your usual Jackie Chan movie, some or most of those hats are all worn by Jackie Chan.

Secondly, an actual movie script tends to say alot more than "They Fight Now". This is a real example:

Lee grabs one of the men's towels and pulls it off. The man
covers his naked body. Lee is grabbed by one of the other
henchmen, but he escapes and begins kicking ass, using the
towel and his own robe to block and wrap another man's arms --
blocking, kicking, and punching everything in sight -- all
the while managing to keep his privates covered with a towel,
his robe, or some other found object.

Carter, meanwhile, uses his quick hands to send several men
flying back -- grabbing a towel of one of them.

CARTER
(ref: his privates)
Damn! No wonder you're pissed off.

Carter uses the towel like Lee did to block and trap one of
the men's punches.

In the middle of fighting, Lee is suddenly exposed -- he
flinches to cover himself and is punched from behind.
Momentarily stunned, he's lifted from behind -- two men
throwing him out the front door.

Carter is also overpowered by two men, who lift him over
their shoulders.

This script contains features that are never found in modules, and which, if they were found in modules would generally make the module 'poorly written'. Conversely, the script - because it is a script - must contain this sort of detail if it is to be considered a well-written script. Once again, you can't take a module, hand it to a Holliwood producer and expect him to think that's a movie. A module is not a script.

A TV show like "Who's Line is it Anyway" is predicated on a very, very loose script. Other than the MC framing the challenge, it's up to the participants to actually produce something that makes some degree of sense and is entertaining.

And that's such a loose version of 'a script' that the word 'script' ceases to have any meaning in that and in fact becomes an impediment to understanding. A show like "Who's Line is it Anyway" (which, IYWR, I first brought into this discussion) is frequently described as being 'unscripted' precisely to differentiate it from the usual sort of television program. For most of the program, they are running without a script.

Heck, even improv acting usually has some sort of script at the very least to frame the scene.

Framing the scene is not providing a script. If you can't read it or perform it verbatim, then its not a script. Interestingly, in theater the scene framing you are talking about is generally referred to as a 'game'. A show like 'Whose Line is it Anyway' is a series of publicly performed theater games, which makes the fact that it is 'a game show' something of a pun.

I should say that the special case of the DM reading a portion of the text of a module is a script (a scripted section of the module), but that even then, the module is not a true script because the contents are not known to all the participants. The players parts are still unscripted even for the narrow case where the DM scripts his part. And even then, the DM does not necessarily know what 'his lines' are to be, or in what order they will be performed if at all. This makes a module very much not like a script and some of the worst examples of poor understanding of what a module is come to us from 2e adventure paths where the writer employed the sort of techniques you'd use to write a script.

I realize you, Celebrim, think I'm using "script" too loosely. I think you're using it too narrowly.

I'm a computer programmer. I believe that words should be used in very concrete ways in order to facillitate as much understanding as possible. I believe I'm using 'script' in a way that is justified by its definition and common usage. I believe you are using the word 'script' to mean 'anything which provides structure to a play even in things that are normally unscripted like improvisational theater and roleplaying games'.

But, word for word production is not a script, it's a transcript.

No, no, no. You are doing it again. You can't just arbitrarily assign a definition to soemthing. A transcript is an exact written copy of some other thing, not just an exact script. To make a transcription is to turn an actual event, like a court case or a television program or a roleplaying session or the performance of a student over the school year, into a written document. My point was that you could only make an actual script of a role-playing session through transcription, after or during the fact. At that time, you could recreate the session using the script you created. In point of fact though, this is in fact rarely done so that a script for a roleplaying game almost never exists.

 

[Fifth Element]

And that's such a loose version of 'a script' that the word 'script' ceases to have any meaning in that and in fact becomes an impediment to understanding. A show like "Who's Line is it Anyway" (which, IYWR, I first brought into this discussion) is frequently described as being 'unscripted' precisely to differentiate it from the usual sort of television program. For most of the program, they are running without a script.

What about movies like those of Christopher Guest? As I understand it, the scripts for those movies set the scenes, but the dialogue is entirely improvised by the cast based on their characters.

I'm a computer programmer. I believe that words should be used in very concrete ways in order to facillitate as much understanding as possible.

It's unfortunate that your first language is English, then.

 

[Celebrim]

What about movies like those of Christopher Guest? As I understand it, the scripts for those movies set the scenes, but the dialogue is entirely improvised by the cast based on their characters.

Then those scenes are unscripted.

It's unfortunate that your first language is English, then.

Indeed. I find English maddeningly difficult to teach to my children because it is imprecise, because each word has so many separate meanings, and because so many different words have the same sound. It's amazing to me that humans learn to speak at all, and its a real tribute to the amazing processing power of the human brain that we are able to communicate despite the limitations of our language. Of course, all of this makes it even more difficult to create computers that can speak and understand natural language.

 

[Fifth Element]

Then those scenes are unscripted.

So, to you a script refers only to dialogue then? Because in those movies the scenes (location, motivation, events) are quite well-defined, it's just the dialogue that's improvised.

Indeed. I find English maddeningly difficult to teach to my children because it is imprecise, because each word has so many separate meanings, and because so many different words have the same sound.

It's both the best part of the language, and the worst. Children just pick it up naturally (for the most part), regardless of how complex a language is. It's really quite amazing when you think about it.

 

[billd91]

It's both the best part of the language, and the worst. Children just pick it up naturally (for the most part), regardless of how complex a language is. It's really quite amazing when you think about it.

Sure, it's tough to teach. Enables a lot of the literature to be pretty f-ing brilliant though.

 

[Celebrim]

So, to you a script refers only to dialogue then?

Did I say that? Do you actually see that anywhere in my posts?

Because in those movies the scenes (location, motivation, events) are quite well-defined, it's just the dialogue that's improvised.

Then that dialogue is unscripted. It wasn't in the script.

I see where you are going with this and its an interesting line of argument, and I think you might actually get there if in fact a module was typically divided up and handed out to all the players so that they would know what to do, what scenes they were supposed to perform, what events were supposed to happen, what thier motivations were, what the goals of each were, and so forth. But modules don't normally work like that. Modules don't even necessarily work that way with respect to the DM, because a module doesn't necessarily tell the DM what order scenes occur or what is going to happen in them. Modules are still modules even when they are very very unlike a script, having no textboxes, no sequences of events, and no plot structure. Granted, many of these script like elements have become quite popular because they make the DM's job easier and they produce a sort of game that is highly esteemed (that is, one with a story structure), but that doesn't make modules into scripts.

Concievably you could have a module that was a script that did work like that (and some of the DL modules come close), but if you did, I think you'd have alot of legitimate complaints.