Sooo .... I've been reading about world war III stuff and such lately (aka the news) and begin thinking about the current game and the nature of PCs. To whit: If we ran Middle East: the RPG, PCs would be nuclear weapons. They don't all go off, but they have the potential to. They change the world just by existing in it. If the world were a river, the PCs get to be stones and dams and anything else that fits that metaphor.
One of the major aspects of the world is that PCs Matter. The things you do create ripples, spreading out. The world isn't as much a powder keg as it is stuck in a stasis that the existence of PC s breaks, both for good and for ill. The things you do and friendships your characters make -- to say nothing of enemies -- echo into the wider world as they do. The point of PCs is that they change the world: having kewl powerz and such is only one aspect of being awesome and the stars of the show.
What is made of it depends on Sparkie, of course :)
