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Storytelling in role-playing games (RPGs) is the act of intentionally adding story to, or enhancing the quality of story during, play. It is a collaborative activity that can be done by all players in a group, although the GM often has greater authority and ability to influence the story because of authorial privilege. While story emerges from play, there is not always an intentional process of shaping the game's story and therefore not all play is storytelling. Also, while narration is a useful tool for storytelling, some narration in RPGs in not intentional storytelling and not all storytelling is in the form of narration.

Storytelling can be its own end, but may also be done for the benefit of others as a form of performance. Player stances such as author stance and director stance are often explicitly associated with storytelling.

Storytelling in RPGs can use similar techniques as in other media, but because RPGs are collaborative and have no predefined plot, many techniques are slightly different. In contrast to primary storytelling, like in a novel, storytelling in RPGs is mediated by narration, resolution, and immersion. One does not simply "tell stories" in an RPG, stories emerge during play through a combination of these processes, including but not only traditional narration.

Fractal storytelling[]

Fractal storytelling is a storytelling technique in which the structure of a story is conceptualised the same at every level of granularity, essentially meaning that stories are made up of smaller stories. This does not mean literally that characters tell each other stories about characters who tell each other stories (except in rare examples like The 1001 Nights), but rather that the story structure (beginning, middle, end) can apply not just to the story as a whole but to parts of that story.

In role-playing games, this means that:

  • a campaign has a beginning, middle and end;
  • a campaign is made up of scenarios (aka adventures), each of which also has a beginning, middle and end;
  • a scenario can be made up of episodes (generally sessions), each of which also has a beginning, middle and end;
  • an episode or scenario is made up of encounters, each of which also has a beginning, middle and end.

Further than this, it could be considered that every action also has a beginning, middle and end, roughly represented by the IIEE stages of resolution: beginning is Intention and Initiation, middle is Execution, end is Effect.

Because story in an RPG is determine collectively by the choices of the group of players, how closely any given level will resemble a classic story structure will vary greatly. For instance, of a campaign stalls before it reaches a conclusion, it is clear that it won't have a complete story structure. Sessions are less likely to have a beginning, middle and end in a serial play than in episodic play, since the beginning of one session is generally assumed to be the end of the previous one.

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