"All the characters and plots were predetermined. Games make bad plots"
About this Quote
Weis is taking a neat little scalpel to a fantasy fan assumption: that if you just “play it out,” you’ll get a satisfying story. “All the characters and plots were predetermined” isn’t an apology so much as a clarification of craft. In a novel, authorial control is the engine. The writer chooses what a character wants, what they fear, when the secret drops, which coincidence is earned and which is cheap. Predetermination isn’t a flaw; it’s the entire point of narrative design.
“Games make bad plots” lands because it’s both a provocation and a warning label. Games excel at agency, surprise, and the messy delight of outcomes no one planned. That same mess is poison for pacing. A table’s funniest detour or most “realistic” failure state rarely obeys the emotional math readers expect: setup, payoff, escalation, closure. What feels electric in play can read like narrative stalling on the page.
The subtext is also about medium boundaries and fan pressure. Weis, associated with Dungeons & Dragons-adjacent fantasy, is speaking into a culture that loves behind-the-screen lore and treats story like an emergent byproduct of systems. She’s insisting that novels aren’t transcripts of adventures; they’re engineered experiences. The line defends the legitimacy of shaping events, pruning randomness, and, yes, steering characters toward destinations that satisfy theme rather than dice.
It’s a modestly heretical statement in fandom spaces, which is why it works: it punctures the romance of “organic” storytelling and replaces it with a harder truth. Art isn’t fair. It’s made.
“Games make bad plots” lands because it’s both a provocation and a warning label. Games excel at agency, surprise, and the messy delight of outcomes no one planned. That same mess is poison for pacing. A table’s funniest detour or most “realistic” failure state rarely obeys the emotional math readers expect: setup, payoff, escalation, closure. What feels electric in play can read like narrative stalling on the page.
The subtext is also about medium boundaries and fan pressure. Weis, associated with Dungeons & Dragons-adjacent fantasy, is speaking into a culture that loves behind-the-screen lore and treats story like an emergent byproduct of systems. She’s insisting that novels aren’t transcripts of adventures; they’re engineered experiences. The line defends the legitimacy of shaping events, pruning randomness, and, yes, steering characters toward destinations that satisfy theme rather than dice.
It’s a modestly heretical statement in fandom spaces, which is why it works: it punctures the romance of “organic” storytelling and replaces it with a harder truth. Art isn’t fair. It’s made.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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