>>43325728Well, as a narrative student I can assure that the journey the mythological hero embarks on - ordinary world, dream world, return as a master of both - is great for classic D&D because it's great for all the stories. Even Back to the Future, if you recall, follows the three plot points very literally.
So it's not that people try to stray away from that basic formula with different settings, tones or moods. Because if you're telling a story you really can't do that. The problem is player agency and independence from a storyteller - the DM.
I agree that in a OSR game people have different expectations. But even then the problem can arise if the DM detaches from the analogous position of a the movie director or playwright. The job of the DM, in my opinion and in the way I do it, is to take the chaos of reality and guide it to order, as David Mamet would say.
So I don't mind players doing what they want with the game. Soap opera, murder mystery, anything works, I don't care. Because all of those genres end up falling exactly the same way into old, timeless narrative structures that the DM must enforce.
Think about it like this. Once you understand how stories work, your players can do anything they want. In the end, if you as a DM did things in order, provided the right scenes and moods at the right time, even something that may not be a story will feel like one, just because it works like one.
But yeah in thing we do agree: D&D is about stories. Going into the dream world, return wiser. More or less metaphorical, anything else is a waste of everyone's time.
