On Role Playing, Literature, and Acting

[benlehman]

This was an essay, but I realized that it can be trimmed to one line:

The only similarity between acting, literature, and role-playing games is that they all use words and, sometimes, plot arcs.

Relvevant Forge thread:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=12711&highlight=

Anyone else have thoughts?

Comments

[arianhwyvar.livejournal.com]

I would guess that many of us have read and enjoyed books that lack much in the way of character development, i.e. change, over the course of the story. These books may not be of the sort that people would call great literature, but can be enjoyable nonetheless.

Long series about a particular character often do this. It's another adventure of... (Sherlock Holmes? Conan? Tarma and Kethry? Drizzt Do'Urden?) Sure, for some of these you can make a case that the character does change, but there are certainly plenty of stories where that change, if it occurs, certainly isn't a major focus.

And sometimes it's less fun. Of the Jhereg books, I really don't like Teckla, where the protagonist goes through a lot of (depressing) change. He doesn't change much over the course of some of the others, and frankly, I prefer seeing him do his normal thing of figuring it out and getting the better of the other guys.