Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
As much as I dislike describing tabletop things in terms of story, I do think at least for this gritty/heroic/mythic breakdown, 'story' is the most closely aligned place for it to reside rather than things like 'system' or 'rules' or 'character' or 'setting' or even my usual go-to words for describing a bundled tabletop experience 'game' or 'campaign'.

That's why you can't really cleanly point to a game system or a setting and say 'this is a gritty setting' without someone finding an exception that actually feels like an authentic exception. Because in the end, the setting can be subjectively gritty or mythic from different points of view. Yet its also not inherently the character either. And it depends so much on the level of abstraction used...
As usual, I feel like you’re saying something smart, but I can’t quite manage to follow it. So… why can’t you use the word “campaign”? What does “story” entail, to you, that “campaign” does not?

And, for my own take, if I said I wanted a story/campaign to be none of the above, to be a mix of gritty, heroic, and mythic, would you opine that I’m saying something incoherent?