The book says, “A convenient way to describe Objective Characters is to divide them into two groups: Archetypal Characters and Complex Characters. Archetypes are commonly used objective characters, simple in function and easily recognizable by most audiences. Complex characters use the same character functions as Archetypes, but distribute the functions in more varied patterns.” The book goes on to give examples from published works where several characters were tweaked slightly from their base Archetypes, making them a more interesting (or at least more novel) and/or giving them greater depth.
In the extreme, Dramatica seems to allow for character functions to be some shuffled around that the original Archetypes on which they may or may not have been based become unrecognizable. The only rules are that a single character cannot “contain” both characteristics of any dynamic pair, the pool of characters should cover all character functions among them, and no two characters should share the same function.
Since you can take your structural design to that extreme, don’t the Archetypes become non-essential? If you use them, it helps with audience recognition and Story Reception, but they are not an inherent part of Dramatica’s structural model.
Similarly, common combinations of “the elements of structure, dynamics, character, plot, and theme” will be more recognizable to audiences than unconventional combinations, and this familiarity will impact the “audience’s experience of a story in the broadest sense”. If you deviate far enough from the conventional, the Story has no stereotypical Genre. Of course, the audience can still experience your Story, but Dramatica’s concept of Genre is that it “classifies the audience’s experience” (emphasis mine). My question is, is your Story really classifiable? If not, then does it have Genre?
Characters can exist without Archetypes, it seems. Can Story (or more precisely, a Grand Argument Story) exist without Genre?