Exploring the Potential

One of the big advantages that I foresee in the application of the Impressionistic Narrative is that it can convert a two dimensional world into a three dimensional world.

When the GM looks at module notes, things tend to be in 2D. Maps are almost always 2D. Take this snippet for example, from Forgotten Realms 3rd Edition:

Can you answer this question based on that map: Can someone standing at the edge of Ardeep Forest see the Lost Peaks? To answer that question you would need to see the lay of the land and have a keen eye for distance. Module descriptions are not even written in a way that would answer the question either. If you look up the Ardeep Forest or the Lost Peaks, you are going to get descriptions of those locations, not their relationship.

But if you are writing in the impressionistic style, then you can easily do that. It would be a part of the description because the design tells you what to describe to the players. They would be walking out of the Ardeep Forest and it would say: small hills / up ahead / then great forest / jagged peaks rising up. You would narrate that to the player and they would feel like a part of the living world.

Now I know that you can do that with the current module design, if you are clever and your players ask about it. But you may very well slide right past it.

This reminds me about how Fallout 3 took this:

and turned it into this:

And that made a HUGE difference in how I perceived post-apocalypse to be. The perspective angle of Fallout 2 made you focus on what was close at hand, while Fallout 3 let you see the world as a real person would.

I hope this concept can do that for tabletop RPGs.