Sunday, December 5, 2010

A Quote that I really like...

Saw this when poking around at RPGSite:
"In chess, the basic rules can be written on a single page, but the possibilities in play are endless. The game has emergent complexity. You don't start off expecting that complexity, it's just what happens in play. Lots of games have this, this is what makes them interesting. "Story" is likewise an emergent property of play in rpgs." -- Kyle Aaron
Here's the actual post.

Kyle's assessment was particularly eloquent, so I thought I'd share.

I've played in and I've run games where there was an "overarching story" and as long as it's not too railroad-y, I can't say that I've minded.

I do find, when looking back at my gaming past, that the stories I cherish most were the ones that developed as a result of play rather than something that the play was built around.

2 comments:

scottsz said...

The last paragraph of your post sums it up for me.

I'm trying hard to stay out of this, as some of the 'story' posts and points are making my blood absolutely boil. Kudos to you, Trollsmyth, and others for seeing the game as more than just a dinner party pastime.

Anonymous said...

Excellent quote! And I find the same thing to be true regarding our past games. It's the things that develop unexpectedly out of our decisions and actions interacting with the game world that really engage everyone and remain memorable. Those are the stories we tell in RPGs, and they cannot be planned ahead of time. I don't tend to recall the "plot", or what we were supposedly doing, for whom, or why. I just remember the great interactions of players, NPCs, monsters that the DM never predicted would happen.