- For the character advancement mechanic, see Character arc.
Story, in the context of role-playing games, is the series of connected events that emerges from play. It includes the fiction (i.e. the events that take place in the game world) as relayed by the players to each other through conversation, but may also include out-of-character events such as the results of dice rolls that influence the fiction. The act of shaping a story during play is called storytelling.
Many different genres of stories can be told through role-playing games.
In media, a distinction is drawn between story and plot. Story is the sum total of all events that occur, whereas plot is the sequence of events that influence following events through cause-and-effect and the relationships between those events (meaning that plot may exclude scenes that develop characters if they do not have a direct influence on the events of the game). One view of plot in role-playing games is as the situations and events that are prepared in advance (either by the GM or game designer), for example as set out in a published adventure module, whereas story includes how the party acts with those situations. A single player could play the same module several times with different groups and experience a different story each time.