Wendy Murphy, you rock!

"When you say things out loud like that, do you hear yourself? Do you go home and -- like, do you just bang your head on the wall?"

Thanks to peaseblossom for pointing this out.

By the way I find it amusing to be having the conversation going on in my gaming circles (and the similar one in comic circles) at the same time.

All Games are Story

A story is any form of text, regardless of medium, describing a sequence of events caused and experienced by characters.

I'm sick and tired of hearing that some games aren't story, or that some rpg-gamers don't intend to tell story. All gaming is about describing a sequence of events. All games are narrative. The story being narrated is that sequence of events that make up the gameplay. Whether it has three acts or aristoelian format or dramatic heft or whatever buzzword you want doesn't matter. Story happens in the gamepsace. It doesn't matter if you are playing D&D, World of Darknes, Amber, or Cowboys and Indians. Its all damn story.

Please note sophistication doesn't enter into it, nor does knowing choosing to tell certain types of story or narratvie structures. Those are cool and stuff that I'm all for working for. But that doesn't change the matter that the 5 year old playing time machine on the playground or the 12 eyar old playing Palladium or the 30-year-old playing World of Darkness are all, at heart, doing the same thing which is telling story.

If certain people got off their damn high horse and stopped trying to say "We tell stories, they don't" we'd be a whole lot better off.