An open door
‘Anything can happen in RPGs!’ we say. But, generally, it doesn’t.
Players meet funny little creatures and larger, scarier ones. They woddle down dungeons, poking at grimacing statues and glaring terminals. They shoot laser beams and swing axes. They do all that adventure stuff. Fun, if samey.
We daydream of tension, drama, even shock. It can be achieved, but it’s a fine balance along the edge of a wide and comforting groove made of bias and assumption, convention and tradition.
I think storygames were invented for this purpose. They take the blank page of imagination, and demark a space somewhere to the left of the comfort zone. A venn diagram of fun. The circles they draw, their systems, pull us away from the cosy embrace of the familiar.
But they don’t half lay it on thick! Not so much a demarkation as a diagram, a blueprint, an equation. Insert player agency into this fruitful void here, and leave the rest to me.
I prefer a lighter touch. An invitation rather than an instruction. I usually know roughly what direction I want to go in. If I’m stuck between the walls of my comfort zone; all I really need is a friend to say ‘hey, let’s go outside’.