Yes, though personally, I would agree with Jay that games designed
this
way are removing the game from the story, because those elements are
not
interactive. The more constrained the possibilities, the less
interaction
and collaborative creation there is - the more it is just fixed
storytelling and the less it is a game.
I guess that, in a large part, what makes an RPG a "game" for me is
the role
playing and cooperation between the players.
Cooperation occurs in a campaign that places the PCs within the
context of a
story with a plot or in an "open" type game where in the players exist
within a domain created by a setting and the players are allowed
"run free"
having random encounters from time to time.
One might say that a campaign game is a novel with a plot that has a
beginning, middle, and end. While, on the other-hand, the
continuous setting
game is more like an episodic short stories or periodicals. Star
Wars vs.
Star Trek.
In any case, my experience has been that whether the game is a
novella or
episodic, the story or setting is a vehicle for the game play, not
an end
unto itself. On the other-hand, there are those GM's that delight in
creating universe after universe. Some have formed a sub-hobby of
bolting on
various modifications their settings. However, that's the GM's
hobby, not
necessarily shared by the players.
Ray Rangel
ray.rangel@cox.net
http://xraysvision.blogspot.com/
=====
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"