It's popular to describe D&D as "collaborative storytelling", but I think that's misleading.
You can derive a story from the events of the game, after it's over, but that's true for many games from Cops and Robbers to Clue. Fundamentally, roleplaying games like D&D are about giving players meaningful decisions to make within the context of a fantasy adventure, which means making choices with consequences that are clearly related to the player's intent. The more meaningful decisions you make during an evening of D&D, the more memorable the experience: players will tell stories about what they did and what happened because of what they did.
Nobody wants to collaboratively re-enact all the events of Lord of the Rings, even if it is a great story in book form. If you don't get to make choices which change the outcome, that's not a game, and you'll have no story to tell after the game is over. But if Frodo and Sam get killed by Ringwraiths back at the Shire, and then the Ringwraiths send the Ring back to Sauron on a flying dragon which gets ambushed by giant eagles ridden by Legolas and Gandalf who then flee westward over the oceans with the Ring to buy time while Aragorn and the dwarves make peace with the goblins of the Misty Mountains and persuade them to betray Sauron and join the West in exchange for mining rights and patents of Gondorian nobility... if that actually works and you save the world that way, you might have a story you'll want to remember.
-B.C.
You can derive a story from the events of the game, after it's over, but that's true for many games from Cops and Robbers to Clue. Fundamentally, roleplaying games like D&D are about giving players meaningful decisions to make within the context of a fantasy adventure, which means making choices with consequences that are clearly related to the player's intent. The more meaningful decisions you make during an evening of D&D, the more memorable the experience: players will tell stories about what they did and what happened because of what they did.
Nobody wants to collaboratively re-enact all the events of Lord of the Rings, even if it is a great story in book form. If you don't get to make choices which change the outcome, that's not a game, and you'll have no story to tell after the game is over. But if Frodo and Sam get killed by Ringwraiths back at the Shire, and then the Ringwraiths send the Ring back to Sauron on a flying dragon which gets ambushed by giant eagles ridden by Legolas and Gandalf who then flee westward over the oceans with the Ring to buy time while Aragorn and the dwarves make peace with the goblins of the Misty Mountains and persuade them to betray Sauron and join the West in exchange for mining rights and patents of Gondorian nobility... if that actually works and you save the world that way, you might have a story you'll want to remember.
-B.C.
--
I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.
I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.
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