Poor Mark Mohrfield, never to have read this classic of gaming
culture.
In the four fold path, RQ was chosen as the system to represent roleplaying
(powergaming was D&D, of course, and wargamer was Chivalry and Sorcery,
which dates it a bit). Storytellers do important, legendary, impressive and
fascinating things, be it wooing maidens with a love that will be spoken of
for centuries, or leading battalions in doomed tragic charges. Roleplayers
just do... stuff. The roleplayer character was Timmy the Trollkin, whose
greatest achievment was collecting teeth from all the major species of
Praxian herd animal. In storyteller games, the GM tells you whats
happening, and the plot is of great importance (on occasion overriding
free will), in roleplayer games the players come up with ideas and
occasionally the plot happens while they are making other plans.
Ah, to this day in my gaming group anyone who hasn't named their character yet will have it temporarily christened G7 (a joke from the wargamer writeup - 'give me time, I'll think of a name').
Cheers
Davdi
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