Everyone knows what a "story" is. Here's a simple (and familiar) one: > A little girl wearing a red hooded cape leaves to deliver food to her grandmother. While walking through the woods, she meets a hungry wolf, who asks where she is going. > > When the wolf learns her destination, he advises her to pick flowers for her grandmother as a distraction. He then sneaks off to her grandmother's house, devours her grandmother, and disguises himself in her grandmother's clothes. > > When the girl arrives, she notices her "grandmother's" strange appearance. After she comments on her "grandmother's" teeth, the wolf leaps out of bed and eats her. While the wolf sleeps off his meal, a hunter arrives and cuts the wolf open with an axe, freeing the girl and her grandmother. This is "how the story goes." But what if it *wasn't*? Imagine, if you will, that this story is told by *four* people instead of one: the little girl, her grandmother, the wolf, and the hunter. The hunter is quite pleased with how the story turned out—he shows up when all seems lost, and is celebrated as a hero. But the girl, her grandmother, and the wolf aren't quite so happy. So, we rewind the story back to the first moment when the characters disagree. This might be: * the moment when the girl goes to pick flowers instead of warning her grandmother * the moment when the wolf enters the grandmother's house * the moment when the girl arrives at her grandmother's house * the moment when the hunter arrives What happens if the girl insists that she would have noticed the wolf's malintent, but the wolf insists that his deception was complete? What happens if the wolf insists he made no sound at the door, but the grandmother insists that she would have heard him? What happens if the wolf insists that he ate the girl fair and square, but the girl insists that she would have gotten away? The answer is simple: We create a natural system for *adjudicating* disputes—a set of rules—and designate a chosen *adjudicator* to apply and interpret them. In other words: we create a TTRPG—and choose a Dungeon Master. (By tradition—though not by necessity—the Dungeon Master also creates the setting in which the characters act and represents the interests of all non-protagonist characters, though the position could easily be divided into three roles or more.) A TTRPG is not simply a game, like Monopoly or chess. A TTRPG is an *engine for producing authoritative versions of collaborative stories when different characters disagree about how the story should end*. Put differently, a TTRPG is a machine that turns *gameplay* into *narrative*. This is the purpose of a TTRPG—and it will form our framework in the chapters to come. <hr> **Next Chapter: [[1b. Stakes]]**