What is / are the key elements that make a play "worthwhile" / long-lasting? Ie. What is it that distinguishes Hamlet, Macbeth and the like from your average B-movie? I'd hazard a guess, although other suggestions are welcome. I think that the key element might be a combination of an understanding of timeless human issues, ie. human flaws and motivations. Ie. The characters are deeper and more psychologically realistic than your average evil-overlord / superhero (James Bond etc) style characters. And their actions are influenced by their personality. How does this affect gaming? Well, if our stories are to be taken at all seriously, then they probably need to tap into human psychology, greed, love etc. The stories need to have resonance and seem to have some relevance to our lives. Rather than be stupid stories of caricature-like bad guys. (Not that there isn't a space for that too). (And do this taking into account the actions of the player too?). [edited by - Ketchaval on September 12, 2003 11:57:40 AM]

Wow, interesting question...I''m not master of literature or whatnot, but you asked for opinions, so I''ll pass my view of it all, being a writer and bard.

I think one of the important things in a story is the logic behind the characters'' actions. Unless the character is not of a sound mind, they should be somewhat rational. This is a prime example in classic works vs. b-movies. Here''s two contrasting examples:

Good logic -
MacBeth - Lord MacBeth is told that he would become king by the witches. He becomes so consumed with the thought, as does Lady MacBeth, that he becomes impatient and ends up murdering the king. Perhaps if the witches never got involved, he would have never been king because he wouldnt have become consumed with the thought of becoming king and thus committing murder.

Bad logic -
Jeepers Creepers - Two kids are driving down a road. After nearly being driven off a road by a maniacal driver, they pass a house, and the truck that nearly killed them is there, the driver dumping bodies into a sewer pipe. Afterwards, they get driven off the road by the same truck. The driver insists on going back to the house they passed to see if that really was dead bodies the guy dumped into the pipe. Very illogical. A normal thought would be to get out of town and call the police.

If the audience gets irritated with the character making completely illogical decisions, you can definitely lose them. So a key element is to make sure that the reasons and decisions are sound. There is never a "just because" in a good story... if a guy is going around killing ..lets say its a fantasy fiction story, and say hes killing elves....then there should be a logical reasoning behind it; whether it be that he is an evil race that kills good natured creatures, or maybe hes a human whose father was killed in a war between elves and humans needlessly, or whatnot. A good story has an explanation and the logic and actions of the characters makes sense.

Theres more things, but I have to cut this short for now.