That mean that RPG Game by necessary contain element of fiction. And fictional = in story.
"I jumped 24-feet into the air today."
That is fiction. That's not a story. Fiction means it's not real or factual. Yes it's a function of storytelling. But an actual story has a beginning, middle and end. You can make a semantic argument that a horrible story doesn't need those things - but most normal people, and *anyone* in the business of publishing actual stories for consumption will say otherwise. I'm one of those people.
It runs simultaneously with raw game mechanisms which are usually somehow divided from fiction itself, serving as way to decide what will be results of risky actions taking by PC's in relatively unbiased manner (ergo in a way to limit GM's power over narrative), and somehow randomized to add thrill of hazardous situation to the whole mix.
You are making a semantic argument about mechanics - not about story. Something *can't* run simultaneously within the game unless you're outside of the game telling a story *about* playing a game. The game is happening - you don't know what has happened until you've done the *thing*.
Case 1) I'm telling you a story about how Tenbones is playing an RPG. He finishes the game before your eyes. It was fun. <--- this is what you're talking about.
Case 2) Tenbones character enters an encounter:
?? <---- this is what I'm talking about. I don't know what happens until I actually do the encounter. Then and only then I can tell you what Tenbone's PC did and contextualize it as a story within the context of the game. This happens *after*.
Gaming itself isn't a story - it's an action that has elements that can become a story if you're so inclined - but it'll happen after the fact. Like when we're having a beer and telling each other about our favorite PC moments etc.
I'd say generally GAME serves STORY - as mechanism pushing it forward and making it more interesting string of situations and resolutions, tough of course whole Gamist stance of GNS theory, goes other way Story is just excuse to check how my Monk/Shadowdancer/Cyberknight multiclass tiefling works against elemental dragons or smth
It's completely meta. Your character may be *planning* to do things. But do you roleplay that? Do you sit there and brood out loud to your fellow players like you're doing theater for the *purpose* of roleplaying? Normally you just do it - or out of character you do it with the GM and then do it in game. That's the *game*. When you re-tell it to your friends (or think about it yourself) you're doing it after the fact. You plan the big heist, in the game you DO the big heist. Afterward you tell the story about how the Big Heist unfolded (and whether it worked or not, and why).
The game is merely the act of doing, and whatever bits are fun. Is there a narrative? Sure - but that's an emergent property because you as a player have no control over what is going to happen. The GM has no control over what you as the PC is going to do. And so you dance. What emerges is what you will later contextualize into a story (good or bad).
And where did that ends? There is no clear ontological difference between situation and borders of smaller story. Presented situation in novel or TV may be for instance cliffhanger purposefuly ending entire small sub-segment on UNRESOLVED, for narrative purposes. Some unfortunates ended on such cliffhangers. The point is - in written fiction such divisions are artifical way to organize ongoing narrative in way that sells well. In RPG there's like no need for that, I mean if such divisions appear in our mind it's mostly because situations in our mind connects with some dramatic rules of TV or books, but other than that it serves no much purpose. The only beginning and ending in RPG campaign will be ultimately beginning and ending of game.
Again, you're hung up on the metacontext. A Serial is a design construct for the purposes of psychological retention. It's there to keep you turning the page. The STORY is what happens between the beginning, the middle and the end of a narrative work that is fiction or non-fiction. If the cliffhanger never continues - then you don't have a complete story. You might have complete situations that resolved up to the cliffhanger - but the story is not complete, therefore it is not a story.
UNLESS you're telling me a story about how a story never completed. That's the meta part you're getting hung up on.
Yes, but your wife expertise is connected to narrow definition of story - specificaly published written works of fiction. Which is probably mayor but still just one of sub-categories of fiction. And even then ontologically I'd disagree. Maybe such story is lame, and usuitable to publishing, ergo it's bad product, but ontologically still.
I'm not familiar with stories that *aren't* actual stories (beginning, middle, end). If you want to believe a situation is a story, then I *highly* suggest you don't take up storytelling in any form as a profession. If we're discussing philosophy and the use of semantics - then you're still on shakey ground because deriving meaning from a "situation" is highly dependent on the metacontext of the person trying to resolve that meaning from any given situation and is further dependent on the philosophical bandwidth of whomever is listening. It does not make that situation a story, unless again, you're telling a story about two people talking about semantics of meaning as it regards emergent narratives from a singular non-story situation.
This is what we call "circle-jerking".
And of course editors of written fiction professional definitions hold no power over either gaming or English language at large.
I'll duly note that to my editors of my future gaming publications, and send emails out to my former gaming publishers, and my wife while we argue about the use of English. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this politely: unless you're into fan-fiction and spewing it out onto the web, you must not understand a whole lot about publication. As a profession... you're gonna a need an editor. In fact if you had an editor, they would have redlined that entire line and told you to never utter it verbally, or in the written form, LOL.
Gaming unless it's chess, Monopoly or smth like this, runs simultaneously with fiction. And this fiction is by ontological necessity a story. Both situation estabilished and solved are story. Any statement about fictional world is.
Why do you say that? You're making an arbitrary decision free of context. I'm not saying I don't understand what you're meaning - I'm saying you're making distinctions that do not comply with mechanical aspects of reality. Story is narrative driven - TTRPG's have narrative elements but they're mechanically driven. Even diceless games are mechanically driven. But *ANY* game - even Chess or Monopoly can be turned into an narrative RPG (as silly and unfun as it may sound) - but even by doing so, the "story" of what that narrative is happens *after* the fact.
You're hung up on this idea that these things happen in parallel. Okay. I'm not denying that. But I'm saying a "story" isn't a story until it has an ending. And yes you can have stories within stories. You can have stories within aborted stories without endings, but they all happen *after the fact*. I can tell you the story about the Redemption of Jamie Lannister - but the larger story is not complete.
Gaming is different in the sense that you have to enact the agency in the game (mechanics and task-resolution) that is normally left to the writers (and their beautiful editors) of fiction to do with a wave of their proverbial pen. The story itself in fiction isn't dependent on such mechanics. But gamers *require* it. That's the point of gaming.