"Campaign" is still the best

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Post originally by Robert at 2004-03-04 18:19:27
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RPGs are a literary medium - stories told with words. Movies and television are visual mediums. Regardless how "cinematic" your rules system may be, your RPG story will still be told in words, words and only words.

The rythmn of RPG storytelling does not follow the rules of a movie script or television show, or even a poorly written book - therefore taking their lexicon is invalid. The closest to a movie may be a one shot game with a clear beginning, middle and end.

Maybe a game like RUNE where every adventure is a self-contained one shot would have something in common to a TV series. But an ongoing D&D campaign where the characters wander the land, whacking monsters and meeting people, does not have a clear and precise Three Act structure.

If anything, a RPG campaign could be a called a Memoir because it has the rambling style of a story that wanders from high point to high point and meanders as the hero goes through life.

Most importantly, CAMPAIGN is our word. It is the word used by gamers to describe our particular brand of storytelling. To change it would be to lose part of our culture.

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Post originally by Connor Boone at 2004-03-04 21:43:59
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Hehe...

Tell that to my latest campaign. The Temple of Elemental Evil: The Series!

And, of course, not all television is entirely episodic. Think of 24, or many anime shows. Just because it is entirely serial does not preclude the use of an episode structure.

It just requires a bit of creativity on the GM's part. Preplanning and forethought are essential, as is a narrative flow, even in a dungeon crawl. The pacing varies wildly, from ominous descriptions of words, words, and only words, as you put it, to frenetic action sequences that do rival the pace of modern movies. (We've cut down injuries from wildly flying dice of late, really!)

I find that players have a lot more fun when each session has a distinct beginning, middle, and end. That way, we know when it's time to pack up and go home. (Or break out the HeroQuest, but that's another matter entirely.) Pacing is essential to continuing the interest in the game, and the episodic structure makes it easy to remember where things left off when the game revolves around your life, rather than your life revolving around the game.

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Post originally by Sergio Mascarenhas at 2004-03-05 05:08:49
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<< RPGs are a literary medium - stories told with words. Movies and television are visual mediums. Regardless how "cinematic" your rules system may be, your RPG story will still be told in words, words and only words. >>

Not exact. Rpgs are done (not told, done) with words plus expressions and body language. They are not strictly literary. They are different from a literary medium. They are about conversation, dialogue. Not about writting or narrating.

<< a RPG campaign could be a called a Memoir because it has the rambling style of a story that wanders from high point to high point and meanders as the hero goes through life. >>

Once more, not correct. Paraphrasing your own words, "the rythmn of roleplaying does not follow the rules of literary writing, non-fictional narration or even a poorly written journalist piece - therefore taking their lexicon is invalid."

RPGs are not about story writing because writing is always about a static verbalisation of past events, detached from the act of writing. In a roleplaying game we are living the action, not writing about it.

And this points to the fact why "campaign" is still the best option, if not perfect. Because a military campaign is about life, it is not only about the description of past events. Unlike a story that is written about something that happened, a campaign can be prepared (like the GM prepares his game), lived through (as when the roleplaying happens) and, yes, narrated afterwards.

We could borrow the language from history and say that a scenario is a rpg "conjuncture" while a campaign is a rpg "structure". But, then, who would consider such language appealing?

Sergio

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Post originally by hero-fan at 2004-04-24 10:50:39
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> Tell that to my latest campaign. The Temple of Elemental Evil: The Series!

That's really not relevant. A game master may demand that his or her players refer to him or her as the god of their world, their game maestro, their lord-high-referee, whatever, and it still does nothing to change the empirically-verifiable fact that the generic term is currently "game master". Similarly, a game master may demand that his players refer to his or her campaign as a saga, series, chronicle, conte grande, whatever, and it still does nothing to change the empirically-verifiable fact that the generic term is currently "campaign".

Of course, a person can always argue that the term should be changed, and if enough people want to use a different term, well, soon enough that term will be the new norm. But for the moment, it isn't.

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Post originally by hero-fan at 2004-04-24 10:55:38
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Well, I've always preferred the terms "saga" or "chronicles" because of the mythic/epic feel, but I've always known that to be an idiosyncrasy to my campaigns and not a generic term.