It's quite a meaningful distinction in the context of this thread. The key is that modern storygames, though not generally using prewritten scenes, carry on a goal of molding the action to story concerns. The meaningless death is to be avoided, just as in the pre-storygame approach of PC death only happening if the player allows it.

All this is quite in contrast to the Ur-D&D ethos where character death "just happens" in the context of a setting-centered campaign. This is what I take ostap bender to be referring to when he or she writes "before there was story there could be no discontinuity".

Jumping in to correct this as a misrepresentation of storygames is a bit of a non sequitur. But as long as you brought it up, I doubt that story games have really increased the incidence of PC death except in hyperfocused one-shot type games such as Fiasco, MLwM, The Mountain Witch, etc.

Quote from: Arminius;835147It's quite a meaningful distinction in the context of this thread. The key is that modern storygames, though not generally using prewritten scenes, carry on a goal of molding the action to story concerns. The meaningless death is to be avoided, just as in the pre-storygame approach of PC death only happening if the player allows it.

Ahem, you're using quite the generalisations here, by assuming there is a common approach all storygames take (that's why I noted "many" or "most" where relevant:)).
What prevents you from dying in Apocalypse World, for example? How about The Sundered Land?
Both are about emergent gameplay, too:).

QuoteAll this is quite in contrast to the Ur-D&D ethos where character death "just happens" in the context of a setting-centered campaign. This is what I take ostap bender to be referring to when he or she writes "before there was story there could be no discontinuity".

Same as it is in Apocalypse World. It just happens, or it doesn't happen;).

QuoteJumping in to correct this as a misrepresentation of storygames is a bit of a non sequitur. But as long as you brought it up, I doubt that story games have really increased the incidence of PC death except in hyperfocused one-shot type games such as Fiasco, MLwM, The Mountain Witch, etc.

No, I'm not jumping in to correct a misinterpretation of storygames (because I don't care enough to do so). I'm jumping in to correct a misinterpretation of emergent gameplay, using storygames as an example.