On Thu, Jan 26, 2006 at 12:22:58PM -0600, Mike Harvey wrote: >For something like 10 years I've been gradually meandering down the road from >my origins in gamist D&D through simulationism and then into storybook land >(and recently pulling back again), but I'm starting to feel a little lost. >RPGs and SPGs (story-playing games) overlap in the middle, and most of us >play somewhere in that middle. But where I used to see narrative as an >evolved aspect of RP, lately I'm starting to see it as othogonal to RP; >something that is non-RP, something from Outside. Umph. You can have tactical conflict simulations without narrative: that's your basic dungeon-bash (to call "we kill everything, take its stuff and spend our loot on ale and whores" a narrative is to dilute the term to uselessness). Can you have something that involves actual role-playing? To me, narrative is the structure that gives you a reason to play a role; it may arise from player or GM actions, but essentially it is the larger story of a character's progress. On Thu, Jan 26, 2006 at 12:31:58PM -0600, Karen J. Cravens wrote: >That's one gripe I've had with most game theory... it's all floaty >high-level stuff that doesn't actually help me *play*. You know, with the >bad acting and stuff. I want some theory that's practical, down at the >actually roleplaying stuff level. I think that's called "GM advice" rather than "theory". :-) -- Roger, gaming grognard Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
