Quote from: -E.I agree with you about revision -- my point was that you can, in fact, start a story or a movie without knowing the ending.

Knowing the broad strokes ("Guy goes up the river to meet Kurtz who is/has become homicidal") is all in the set up.

That's knowing the ending, in my opinion.  If Captain Willard decided to go AWOL or died from a random gunshot wound like one of the other characters in the movie, would there have been a movie?  Would it have been good?

Quote from: -E.I will also note that the original screen play had a very different ending from the one on-screen. It might not be as true to the novel as you're thinking...

There are all sorts of reasons why that movie could be made the way it was made but it ultimately involved making it up the river and meeting Kurtz.

I would argue that the similarities you see about Apocalypse Now and a role-playing game have a lot to do with the type of story Apocalypse Now is.  It's a series of experiences along the way to a destination, such that the details of the actual experiences didn't matter all that much.  That's why they were able to cut out the scenes with the Playmates and the French plantation for the theatrical release and they could just as easily have cut out many of the other scenes if they wanted to.  Is the surfing scene cool?  Yes.  Would the story still work if you cut it out?  Absolutely.

Quote from: -E.Without revision, the story-product from an RPG is going to be less finished than one from an edited, revised work; but that doesn't mean they're "not stories" it may reduce the quality of the story -- but that's an aesthetic judgement.

Again, my argument is that the issue is not "story" or "no story" but whether or not the players and GM are concerned about story quality or not.  If nobody is concerned about story quality, then you aren't reliably going to get good stories.

Quote from: -E.I think Heart of Darkness / Apocolypse Now is a good example because it would make a pretty decent RPG scenario right out of the box, and almost any ending would be appropriate / themeatic.

As a role-playing adventure, it's incredibly railroaded.  The main character, in both cases, is ordered by their superior to go up a river and complete a mission.  The river has no decision forks along the way.  It's a single "track", all the way up and if the characters step off, the story doesn't happen.

Quote from: blakkie:yesmaster:
Sure, they turn and go the other way. Then what do you do. You did the front loading for a reason, right? Without the front loading there what do you do?

EDIT: I mean after these 3 or 4 tinpot tyrants up and told you how the game was going to be. :yesmaster:

Hey, if they leave the dungeon its probably because they have some other idea of where they want to be.

If they don't, they might be in for a fairly boring game session... unless the reason they were to go to the dungeon in the first place was because some great evil was in there trying to come out, in which case by not going to the dungeon they might have other consequences.
But in any case, what will guide my hand is the emulation of the setting, and not some kind of meta- concept of trying to create literature.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditI don't WANT that kind of game.

Frankly you aren't demonstrating much of an ability to identify what is what. :pundit:

But I've got to go now. Time for Thanksgiving dinner.

Quote from: RPGPunditIf your goal is actually playing the game, you LET them turn and head the other way. Case closed.
Which is why "front loading" is not the same as "creating story".

RPGPundit

I think I agree with this -- I would articulate my goals this way:

1) My #1 priority is the fidelity of the game. I would rather end the game with an anticlimatic TPK than violate the game for other concerns. I think this is what you call "playing the game." It is, indeed, my #1 *priority*

The characters can do whatever they do, even if it ruins the "story." This fidelity is *necessary* for me to enjoy a game.

2) But that doesn't mean I want my stories needlessly ruined. I'd prefer that the game result in a "satisfying story" (defined below).

Now here's the thing: I think #1 leads directly to #2 with the right set up. No one knows what the story will be, but odds are it'll be *good* -- no one knows how it'll end... but the excitement is finding out.

I get bored with games where there's no conflict, no sense of accomplishment, no sense of character or place. Games that have those things tend to be good stories.

In my experience, if everyone's playing their characters at a high energy level, in a well constructed situation, the story you get'll be spectacular. And the *risk* that it might not go well makes it even more satisfying -- that's why it's critical that the GM not railroad and the players stay in character as much as they desire.

Cheers,
-E.

Satisfying story: A story I'd want to hear about even if I wasn't in the game.

Quote from: John MorrowThat's knowing the ending, in my opinion.  If Captain Willard decided to go AWOL or died from a random gunshot wound like one of the other characters in the movie, would there have been a movie?  Would it have been good?



There are all sorts of reasons why that movie could be made the way it was made but it ultimately involved making it up the river and meeting Kurtz.

I would argue that the similarities you see about Apocalypse Now and a role-playing game have a lot to do with the type of story Apocalypse Now is.  It's a series of experiences along the way to a destination, such that the details of the actual experiences didn't matter all that much.  That's why they were able to cut out the scenes with the Playmates and the French plantation for the theatrical release and they could just as easily have cut out many of the other scenes if they wanted to.  Is the surfing scene cool?  Yes.  Would the story still work if you cut it out?  Absolutely.



Again, my argument is that the issue is not "story" or "no story" but whether or not the players and GM are concerned about story quality or not.  If nobody is concerned about story quality, then you aren't reliably going to get good stories.



As a role-playing adventure, it's incredibly railroaded.  The main character, in both cases, is ordered by their superior to go up a river and complete a mission.  The river has no decision forks along the way.  It's a single "track", all the way up and if the characters step off, the story doesn't happen.

Interesting post!

1) Railroaded -- I disagree; the original script had the Willard character teaming up with Kurtz. In the movie he kills Kurtz. In an RPG, the players would be free to make either choice... I think the intermediate scenes *did* serve a purpose -- to make it clear what going up the river would do to you; to illustrate the implications of such a choice. In the end Willard chooses civilization.

• Games with missions aren't by-defiition railroads
• Games with only-one-outcome are. Apocolypse Now wasn't that. Clearly the people involved with creating it considered several outcomes. Such would be the case in an RPG

If I were running it as a game, I'd present it as a game where you play a group of soliders who get an order to find and kill a high level deserter. Having high-level buy-in by the players isn't the same as rail-roading. If someone said, "Oh. If we play that, I'll go AWOL first thing," we'd do a different game.

If the Willard character decided, after the first few encounters, to abandon his mission, I think *that* could be a really cool story, too. I'd play it out and see.

2) If I ran it as a game, and Willard got killed part way through, it might be a less compelling story than the movie was. That's a risk I'd take; I'd be willing to accept that risk as part of making the actual reaching-of-Kurtz be meaningful to the characters.

I will note that the movie portrays characters with a reasonable chance of success in their mission; if I were doing it in a game I'd stack the odds in the PC's favor (high-level characters against reasonably low-level opposition).

3) To your point about caring about stories -- if no one cares about stories, stories aren't going to be important. And no one's going to do the up-front work required to develop a story-rich environment & characters. But since no one cares, no harm done.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Elliot WilenIt would be interesting to see whether people believe that it's meaningful to talk about a tension between one's personal vision of a character and what one thinks would be most interesting for that character to do, in terms of the overall story, bearing in mind that the latter can be justified by retroactively revising the vision of the character. E.g., could I reasonably feel tension between a belief that my character wouldn't reveal some secret, and a sense that revealing the secret is exactly the right thing to do, from the perspective of the story?

Meaningful, yes.

One of the things that happens in discussions like this is that some people seem to come to the table with something like the Platonic Ideal of the Story in mind; and their particular take on the Ideal Story we're all trying to emulate seems to involve a lot of action falling into patterns that are not too probable, not very likely to happen naturally.  Sometimes someone gets explicit about what The Story is -- "It's like the best Hollywood action movie ever made!" -- but often it isn't explicitly stated.  What does come out, again and again and again, is that the person who doesn't believe it's possible to be intentionally telling stories in an RPG without railroading or manipulation of resolutions and character choices for dramatic effect:

• Has a plot-driven, pacing-centered idea of what the best stories are;
• Has a natural working method that involves explicit development and manipulation of the plot.

Neither of which is bad; but the first isn't the only possible taste in stories, and the second isn't the only possible working method.

I have enjoyed different works of fiction for different reasons.  I read A Deepness in the Sky because I was interested in Vinge's ideas, and Cherryh's Hunter of Worlds for much the same reason.  I read The Chronicles of Narnia and Lovecraft primarily for the aesthetic effect of contemplating some of the images and ideas; I read The Lord of the Rings both for that reason and for plot and theme; I watched The Twilight Zone for the themes explored; I read Faust and Shakespeare primarily for the poetry; I read Asimov's robot stories partly because I was intrigued by the walking tension that was Susan Calvin; I watch Stargate for the adventure and the humor; I watched the old Star Trek partly for the adventure, partly for the themes, and partly because I was interested in the relationships among the characters.  I read Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn chiefly for the evocative description, and Terry Pratchett for the humor.  I read The Hunt for Red October for the suspenseful plot; I read the early X-men for the artwork and for interest in the conflicted and powerful Jean Grey.

Plot, suspense, and adventure certainly show up as reasons for me to be interested in fictional works, but they are not so overwhelming an interest that I ever say to myself, "Well, if I don't create a climax as tense as that in North by Northewest, I don't have anything -- it wasn't a good story."  There is no way I can compress my positive experiences with fiction into such a narrow band as plot-only, or even plot-first, without -- frankly -- lying.

You can see this as a semantic difference or not, and there is a sense in which it is: there may be people who find my campaigns enjoyable, but not as stories -- it's not necessary to believe that my methods will produce the same effect for all players.  However, the breadth of what I value in story goes to the heart of my experience with fiction, to the point where it is not useful to me to talk of story in the plot-driven-only sense, while attempting to cram imagery, characterization and character development, pacing, setting development and portrayal into the concept of 'game' (or anything else): that division produces such a snarl in my concept of fiction that it's an active hindrance to clarity of thought.  I was on board with the simulation = !story jargon once, but while it produced some useful insights, there came a point where it inhibited the development of further insights.  I abandoned it then, and I won't be going back.

I think I have made it clear that I don't see story as one thing, with that one thing being the plot.  When it comes to a tension between a particular idea of a plot, and the natural actions of the character, I don't find it necessary to conceive of this as tension between story and that which is not story, therefore.  It's a tension between two different approaches to the story -- or, which story did I want to tell?

Did I conceive of the story as a particular plot, or a particular kind of plot?  In that case, if what the character's doing doesn't fit with it, maybe I'd need to adjust the character.

But maybe the story I want to tell is "How this character copes with their built-in conflict."  And if I want the story of a particular character as I conceived them -- if that's how my objective has come to me -- then I'm going to be thwarting, not furthering, my own end if I bend the character to fit external plot considerations.

In point of fact, I have tension between my vision of the main character and a version of the character who'd make the writing easier in a verse narrative I've been working on for some years now.

Some of the secondary characters are flamboyant and vocal.  It's easy to write dramatic scenes for them.

The main character is close-mouthed, and cryptic when he does say anything.  It's murderously difficult to write for him.  It'd make my life a heck of a lot easier if he were as vocal as the others: it'd be easier to get him to carry compelling and dramatic scenes, and not so easy for the secondary characters to upstage him.  Of course I should change him -- provided that it is my purpose to write any story about a similar character.

Which it isn't.  It's my purpose to write the story of the main character as I have conceived him; and unless I abandon my purpose, that rules out altering the character because writing somebody else would be easier.  What I need to do to fulfill the purpose I set out to accomplish is to develop the writing chops to compellingly portray a character who doesn't readily splash his emotions and tensions through the dialogue.

So -- certainly, I see the question as meaningful, and I've encountered something very like it in practice.  It just doesn't do anything at all to distinguish between story and game, or between theme and adventure, or speak to the difference between RPGs and non-RPGs; it doesn't fall on the story/!story boundary at all.

It is, in fact, this particular story, and this particular writing problem, that slapped me upside the head and made a Threefold critic out of me.  We'd have analyzed the same bloody problem in an RPG as a story/simulation clash -- as a clash between story considerations and non-story considerations.  But it's just as possible to analyze it as a clash between plot-driven story and character-driven story.

An awful lot of the semantic confusion vanished when I got specific and started saying 'plot' when it was plot I meant, and when I started saying 'preplanned plot' when I meant specifically that events were decided on in advance.  As soon as I did that, I quit having to pretend that hooks, pacing, characterization, character development, development and resolution of the setting, and all those other techniques that developed with the storyteller's art have no connection to it, and indeed may be employed in pursuit of an end opposed to storytelling -- when much of what's going on is that I let the characters drive the story, even as some novelists do.

Quote from: -E.1) Railroaded -- I disagree; the original script had the Willard character teaming up with Kurtz. In the movie he kills Kurtz.

Thus Coppola simply returned to an ending closer to the ending of the original story, probably because his new ending wouldn't have worked as well.

Quote from: -E.In an RPG, the players would be free to make either choice... I think the intermediate scenes *did* serve a purpose -- to make it clear what going up the river would do to you; to illustrate the implications of such a choice. In the end Willard chooses civilization.

As  I said, "It's a series of experiences along the way to a destination, such that the details of the actual experiences didn't matter all that much."  Yes, they served a purpose.  But any random selection of similar incidents could have served the same purpose.  Why?  Because they weren't driven by the choices of the protagonists.  They were things the protagonist simply experienced along the way.  He didn't shoot the girl hiding the puppy.  He didn't invite the Playmates.  He didn't want to go surfing.  They were set scenes.

Quote from: -E.

• Games with missions aren't by-defiition railroads
• Games with only-one-outcome are. Apocolypse Now wasn't that. Clearly the people involved with creating it considered several outcomes. Such would be the case in an RPG

A railroad is defined by a single track, not necessarily a single outcome.  And if story quality is a concern, many outcomes may be possible but only some will create good stories.  Others will create bad stories.  Some will produce mediocre stories, and so on.  If story quality is a concern, the GM and/or players will be encouraged to force the ending that creates a good story or they'll have to accept a mediocre or bad story.

Quote from: -E.If I were running it as a game, I'd present it as a game where you play a group of soliders who get an order to find and kill a high level deserter. Having high-level buy-in by the players isn't the same as rail-roading. If someone said, "Oh. If we play that, I'll go AWOL first thing," we'd do a different game.

Which means that the adventure relies on the players following the track. There are plenty of players who actually want and enjoy heavily railroaded adventures.  They want the GM to tell them a story and tell them what to do next.  That the players want it and buy into it doesn't make it any less of a track.

Quote from: -E.If the Willard character decided, after the first few encounters, to abandon his mission, I think *that* could be a really cool story, too. I'd play it out and see.

Or it could amount to nothing.  Again, I'm not saying that stories can't happen.  The issue is whether you try to guarantee good story quality or not.  If a movie that's been made on-the-fly goes off track, they can edit it back into shape.  That's not available in role-playing, most of the time.  If a rally cool story doesn't happen, then you are stuck with it.

Quote from: -E.2) If I ran it as a game, and Willard got killed part way through, it might be a less compelling story than the movie was. That's a risk I'd take; I'd be willing to accept that risk as part of making the actual reaching-of-Kurtz be meaningful to the characters.

That's not a story-oriented concern.  That's a character- or world-oriented concern.  You are willing to risk story for a greater concern.  That's the hierarchy that matters.

Quote from: -E.I will note that the movie portrays characters with a reasonable chance of success in their mission; if I were doing it in a game I'd stack the odds in the PC's favor (high-level characters against reasonably low-level opposition).

That's simply a world-oriented way to produce a story-oriented trip down the tracks.  The odds are stacked in the PCs' favor to produce a story-like result.  That's not necessarily a bad thing but it's essentially another form of script immunity.

Quote from: -E.3) To your point about caring about stories -- if no one cares about stories, stories aren't going to be important. And no one's going to do the up-front work required to develop a story-rich environment & characters. But since no one cares, no harm done.

Correct.  But there is also a lot of middle ground in there where conflicting priorities can come into play.

Quote from: KeranMeaningful, yes.

One of the things that happens in discussions like this is that some people seem to come to the table with something like the Platonic Ideal of the Story in mind; and their particular take on the Ideal Story we're all trying to emulate seems to involve a lot of action falling into patterns that are not too probable, not very likely to happen naturally.  Sometimes someone gets explicit about what The Story is -- "It's like the best Hollywood action movie ever made!" -- but often it isn't explicitly stated.  What does come out, again and again and again, is that the person who doesn't believe it's possible to be intentionally telling stories in an RPG without railroading or manipulation of resolutions and character choices for dramatic effect:

• Has a plot-driven, pacing-centered idea of what the best stories are;
• Has a natural working method that involves explicit development and manipulation of the plot.

Neither of which is bad; but the first isn't the only possible taste in stories, and the second isn't the only possible working method.

I have enjoyed different works of fiction for different reasons.  I read A Deepness in the Sky because I was interested in Vinge's ideas, and Cherryh's Hunter of Worlds for much the same reason.  I read The Chronicles of Narnia and Lovecraft primarily for the aesthetic effect of contemplating some of the images and ideas; I read The Lord of the Rings both for that reason and for plot and theme; I watched The Twilight Zone for the themes explored; I read Faust and Shakespeare primarily for the poetry; I read Asimov's robot stories partly because I was intrigued by the walking tension that was Susan Calvin; I watch Stargate for the adventure and the humor; I watched the old Star Trek partly for the adventure, partly for the themes, and partly because I was interested in the relationships among the characters.  I read Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn chiefly for the evocative description, and Terry Pratchett for the humor.  I read The Hunt for Red October for the suspenseful plot; I read the early X-men for the artwork and for interest in the conflicted and powerful Jean Grey.

Plot, suspense, and adventure certainly show up as reasons for me to be interested in fictional works, but they are not so overwhelming an interest that I ever say to myself, "Well, if I don't create a climax as tense as that in North by Northewest, I don't have anything -- it wasn't a good story."  There is no way I can compress my positive experiences with fiction into such a narrow band as plot-only, or even plot-first, without -- frankly -- lying.

You can see this as a semantic difference or not, and there is a sense in which it is: there may be people who find my campaigns enjoyable, but not as stories -- it's not necessary to believe that my methods will produce the same effect for all players.  However, the breadth of what I value in story goes to the heart of my experience with fiction, to the point where it is not useful to me to talk of story in the plot-driven-only sense, while attempting to cram imagery, characterization and character development, pacing, setting development and portrayal into the concept of 'game' (or anything else): that division produces such a snarl in my concept of fiction that it's an active hindrance to clarity of thought.  I was on board with the simulation = !story jargon once, but while it produced some useful insights, there came a point where it inhibited the development of further insights.  I abandoned it then, and I won't be going back.

I think I have made it clear that I don't see story as one thing, with that one thing being the plot.  When it comes to a tension between a particular idea of a plot, and the natural actions of the character, I don't find it necessary to conceive of this as tension between story and that which is not story, therefore.  It's a tension between two different approaches to the story -- or, which story did I want to tell?

Did I conceive of the story as a particular plot, or a particular kind of plot?  In that case, if what the character's doing doesn't fit with it, maybe I'd need to adjust the character.

But maybe the story I want to tell is "How this character copes with their built-in conflict."  And if I want the story of a particular character as I conceived them -- if that's how my objective has come to me -- then I'm going to be thwarting, not furthering, my own end if I bend the character to fit external plot considerations.

In point of fact, I have tension between my vision of the main character and a version of the character who'd make the writing easier in a verse narrative I've been working on for some years now.

Some of the secondary characters are flamboyant and vocal.  It's easy to write dramatic scenes for them.

The main character is close-mouthed, and cryptic when he does say anything.  It's murderously difficult to write for him.  It'd make my life a heck of a lot easier if he were as vocal as the others: it'd be easier to get him to carry compelling and dramatic scenes, and not so easy for the secondary characters to upstage him.  Of course I should change him -- provided that it is my purpose to write any story about a similar character.

Which it isn't.  It's my purpose to write the story of the main character as I have conceived him; and unless I abandon my purpose, that rules out altering the character because writing somebody else would be easier.  What I need to do to fulfill the purpose I set out to accomplish is to develop the writing chops to compellingly portray a character who doesn't readily splash his emotions and tensions through the dialogue.

So -- certainly, I see the question as meaningful, and I've encountered something very like it in practice.  It just doesn't do anything at all to distinguish between story and game, or between theme and adventure, or speak to the difference between RPGs and non-RPGs; it doesn't fall on the story/!story boundary at all.

It is, in fact, this particular story, and this particular writing problem, that slapped me upside the head and made a Threefold critic out of me.  We'd have analyzed the same bloody problem in an RPG as a story/simulation clash -- as a clash between story considerations and non-story considerations.  But it's just as possible to analyze it as a clash between plot-driven story and character-driven story.

An awful lot of the semantic confusion vanished when I got specific and started saying 'plot' when it was plot I meant, and when I started saying 'preplanned plot' when I meant specifically that events were decided on in advance.  As soon as I did that, I quit having to pretend that hooks, pacing, characterization, character development, development and resolution of the setting, and all those other techniques that developed with the storyteller's art have no connection to it, and indeed may be employed in pursuit of an end opposed to storytelling -- when much of what's going on is that I let the characters drive the story, even as some novelists do.

This is an awesome post and, I think, gets to the heart of the question posed.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Elliot WilenI really don't see how this, along with Keran's anecdote about Tolkien, doesn't completely support Settembrini's arguement. Both anecdotes are examples where in order to meet the needs of "story", the first impulse of the creators had to be mindfully overridden.

No comment on Settembrini's argument, because as far as I can tell, I agree at least with the part about needing to define story if we're going to use it to discuss RPGs, and I'm not sure I have a solid grip yet on the rest of it.  

But -- stop me if I'm wrong -- it sounds like you're making another not-necessarily-correct assumption here: that the initial idea is what would naturally have happened, and that the override is in favor of The Plot Beautiful.  That doesn't have to be the case.

I had to scrap the first draft of the previously mentioned verse narrative.  I had a plot, and it seemed like a perfectly good one at the start; but as I wrote about the main character, I began to realize that he never would have taken the action I ascribed to him for the reason I had him taking it: it was out of character.  It would've worked for one of my other characters -- but not this one: he was too cautious.  In a plot-driven story, I could've adjusted the character concept to fit the plot, and had a heck of a lot less work to do over; but I was writing to discover and to tell the story of this particular character, which meant it was the plot that had to go.

It is necessary to the telling of a good story that the actions ascribed to the character should fit the character, or that the reason for the character taking an unusual action should be explained; but it is not necessary to story that, in case of a clash between plot and character, the character should be adjusted to fit the plot.

Quote from: John MorrowAre there a handful of naturals who can write stories correctly the first time without revision?  Absolutely.  Does that mean that Heinlein's advice that "You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order" was good advice for most writers?  No.  

Nor is the advice to "let the characters go" and "see what happens."  Could you produce a good story that way?  Absolutely.  But many if not most people can't and won't.

• Do you have a poll of published writers, showing what proportion of them know the end when they set out at the beginning?
• The existence of a single counterexample is sufficient to show that preplanned plot is not necessary to the successful execution of story.

QuoteGenerally, unless you are a Stephen King or a Tolkien, then it's often silly to think that what works for them will work for you.  If it does, and you are a Stephen King or a Tolkien, stop wasting your time on Internet message boards and go out and write best sellers.

And Rex Stout's method -- which was to write everything the first time and not revise at all -- didn't work for Tolkien, who revised extensively.  And Patricia C. Wrede's method, which is to write an outline that she then doesn't end up following because the characters do something else, but which gives her enough confidence to begin, doesn't work for Holly Lisle.  Patricia C. Wrede never thinks consciously about theme; another writer whose name I don't remember hearing, but whom she's mentioned, finds it essential to start with it.

You're apparently making an unsupported generalization based either on what you think ought to be true, or what works for you.  But I can't support it as a general principle of writing from my own knowledge, based on the reports of the published writers I listened to at rec.arts.sf.composition or at Forward Motion.

Patricia C. Wrede also teaches writing and disagrees sharply with the notion that there is any One True Way to write: she's had a lot of experience seeing different writers succeed with different methods.  She's left an awful lot of evidence of this opinion behind in the archives.  I decline to accept a contrary opinion apparently based on an idea of how things ought to work, rather than the reports of writers' own experiences.

Quote from: John MorrowAs  I said, "It's a series of experiences along the way to a destination, such that the details of the actual experiences didn't matter all that much."  Yes, they served a purpose.  But any random selection of similar incidents could have served the same purpose.  Why?  Because they weren't driven by the choices of the protagonists.  They were things the protagonist simply experienced along the way.  He didn't shoot the girl hiding the puppy.  He didn't invite the Playmates.  He didn't want to go surfing.  They were set scenes.

I don't buy that the experiences aren't all that important.

1. They are important to the audience (at least this audience member) as part of "the story." They, amongst other things, illuminate character and setting.
2. They would be important to me as a player in an RPG (from an immersed standpoint and making decisions about how I view right and wrong or at least who my character is).

QuoteA railroad is defined by a single track, not necessarily a single outcome.  And if story quality is a concern, many outcomes may be possible but only some will create good stories.  Others will create bad stories.  Some will produce mediocre stories, and so on.  If story quality is a concern, the GM and/or players will be encouraged to force the ending that creates a good story or they'll have to accept a mediocre or bad story.

I think I would be able to "hold story quality as a concern" and still accept a poor story the same way I'm willing to hold "getting out of the dungeon alive" as a concern and still accept a TPK.

I'd accept a bad story. It makes the cool storys that much richer, IMO.

QuoteWhich means that the adventure relies on the players following the track. There are plenty of players who actually want and enjoy heavily railroaded adventures.  They want the GM to tell them a story and tell them what to do next.  That the players want it and buy into it doesn't make it any less of a track.

Does this make all dungeons railroads? After all, there's a series of rooms and the players can't get to some without going through others?

Does this make Dogs in the Vinyard a railroad since the PCs are pointed at a town and instructed to uncover the sin and judge it?

I mean, if so, then some huge percent of RPG-play seems to fall into this category. It seems that if in each encounter along the way, the player gets to make a choice that is meaningful to them (either as an audience member thinking it's interesting that he doesn't take the girls or surf or as an invested player--deciding not to give back the surfboard) then gets to decide what to do at the end (join up or kill the target)--I don't see how that's more railroady than a dungeon or Dogs play.

QuoteOr it could amount to nothing.  Again, I'm not saying that stories can't happen.  The issue is whether you try to guarantee good story quality or not.  If a movie that's been made on-the-fly goes off track, they can edit it back into shape.  That's not available in role-playing, most of the time.  If a rally cool story doesn't happen, then you are stuck with it.

Again, my problem here is with *guarantee*--that seems like playing D&D where you *guarantee* that everyone will survive and get rich and level up because that's what someone has decided the 'goal of the game' is.

QuoteThat's simply a world-oriented way to produce a story-oriented trip down the tracks.  The odds are stacked in the PCs' favor to produce a story-like result.  That's not necessarily a bad thing but it's essentially another form of script immunity.

I think there's a big difference in script immunity and favorable odds (of course depending on "how favorable"). Certainly taking the chance-of-death down to a fairly low level will tend to produce a low-death game ... but lots of games and systems (Hero) are fairly low fatality at most power-levels.

-Marco

Quote from: KeranBut -- stop me if I'm wrong -- it sounds like you're making another not-necessarily-correct assumption here: that the initial idea is what would naturally have happened, and that the override is in favor of The Plot Beautiful.  That doesn't have to be the case.

No, you are right about that. It's a detail I missed, but both here and in your previous reply you do recognize a difference between "plot-driven" and "character-driven" stories, which I think is very close (at least) to what I've been calling story/game.

I wonder if it would help at all to recall that, back when David Berkman made a splash on rec.games.frp.advocacy with all his hyping of Theatrix, a bunch of people attacked the idea of "plot-based" games, while he vigorously defended the use of "plots". Only after tons of virtual ink had been wasted did Berkman clarify that what he meant by "plot" was, essentially, an interesting situation, not a predetermined course of events. That is, pretty much the reverse of how you're using the term. (Berkman based much of his argument and terminology on Syd Field, the writer of a manual for screenwriters.)

In short these discussions get nowhere when people fixate on what they think certain terms mean, instead of what the other people are trying to say--how they use those terms in the context of the conversation.

The same applies to RPGPundit's statements about whether certain games are or aren't RPGs. I think the argument over the term "RPG" is more trouble than it's worth, but underlying it is a claim that certain games or approaches to playing are fundamentally different from others. All this business about front-loading is a terrible distraction. Irrespective of whether they see the purpose of RPGs as "creating stories", most of the people here think that front-loading is okay. If someone is looking to have a real debate instead of semantic quibbling, they must look elsewhere.

Quote from: KeranOne of the things that happens in discussions like this is that some people seem to come to the table with something like the Platonic Ideal of the Story in mind; and their particular take on the Ideal Story we're all trying to emulate seems to involve a lot of action falling into patterns that are not too probable, not very likely to happen naturally.  Sometimes someone gets explicit about what The Story is -- "It's like the best Hollywood action movie ever made!" -- but often it isn't explicitly stated.  What does come out, again and again and again, is that the person who doesn't believe it's possible to be intentionally telling stories in an RPG without railroading or manipulation of resolutions and character choices for dramatic effect:

• Has a plot-driven, pacing-centered idea of what the best stories are;
• Has a natural working method that involves explicit development and manipulation of the plot.

Neither of which is bad; but the first isn't the only possible taste in stories, and the second isn't the only possible working method.

I personally am coming to the table with one very simple assumption -- that there are good stories and bad stories.  That assessment doesn't even need to be objective.  It can be entirely subjective for every participant.  It could include a plot-driven pacing-centered idea of what a good story, which is what  I think most people think of when they think of the aesthetics of story, or it could include any of the other things that you talk about -- the desire toe explore certain ideas, imagery, theme, language, adventure, humor, a particular character, and so on.  But, ultimately, it's a desire for a specific result.

When a human being is given a choice and selects choices that they think will produce something good or avoids choices that they think will produce something bad, it creates a pattern that is not natural, because nature don't care about a good story or a bad story.  The aesthetic filter that gets applied leaves a  pattern in what passes through it.  The more the filter is used, the more obvious it's mark will generally be.

In other words, when you intentionally set out to produce a certain effect, that intent can leave a noticeable trace.  It doesn't have to be as heavy handed as railroading or script immunity.  It can even be more about what doesn't happen than what does -- for example, if the players never simply stumble into the solution to a problem without having to work for it.  If the GM intentionally sets out to create a good story, no matter what that means, it will determine how the game plays out.  In other words, if you are trying to intentionally tell stories, either you can manipulate what happens to produce good stories or you can be indifferent to quality, unless you believe that good stories are always an inevitable outcome of any sequence of events.

For example, if the story goal you have is to see how a character copes with a built-in conflict, you will likely avoid any situations where another character or external event resolves the conflict for the character because that will rob you of experiencing the story you want to experience. If you apply a filter that prevents the conflict from being taken away from character or resolved in a mundane way though an external flow of events in the story outside of the character's control, then ever time you apply that filter, it leaves behind the mark of intent.  Often, that mark is not noticeable in isolation, but the more frequently the filter is applied, the more of a mark it leaves behind and the more likely it will be noticed.

The reason why people discuss your "Platonic Ideal of the Story" that "seems to involve a lot of action falling into patterns that are not too probable, not very likely to happen naturally" is that this is a very clear way of illustrating the application of a filter and how it is noticeable.  It's easier to notice script immunity in a violent game than it is to notice subtle shifts in NPC behavior to keep them from stepping on a PC's built-in conflicts.  But that doesn't mean that it's not possible to notice more subtle patterns, especially over the course of many games and a long "campaign".

Quote from: KeranI have enjoyed different works of fiction for different reasons.  I read A Deepness in the Sky because I was interested in Vinge's ideas, and Cherryh's Hunter of Worlds for much the same reason.  I read The Chronicles of Narnia and Lovecraft primarily for the aesthetic effect of contemplating some of the images and ideas; I read The Lord of the Rings both for that reason and for plot and theme; I watched The Twilight Zone for the themes explored; I read Faust and Shakespeare primarily for the poetry; I read Asimov's robot stories partly because I was intrigued by the walking tension that was Susan Calvin; I watch Stargate for the adventure and the humor; I watched the old Star Trek partly for the adventure, partly for the themes, and partly because I was interested in the relationships among the characters.  I read Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn chiefly for the evocative description, and Terry Pratchett for the humor.  I read The Hunt for Red October for the suspenseful plot; I read the early X-men for the artwork and for interest in the conflicted and powerful Jean Grey.

Plot, suspense, and adventure certainly show up as reasons for me to be interested in fictional works, but they are not so overwhelming an interest that I ever say to myself, "Well, if I don't create a climax as tense as that in North by Northewest, I don't have anything -- it wasn't a good story."  There is no way I can compress my positive experiences with fiction into such a narrow band as plot-only, or even plot-first, without -- frankly -- lying.

Would any of those books have been as successful if they didn't have a good plot?  That a story does other things well and can capture your attention in other ways does not mean that the fundamentals of plot, pacing, and so forth are not very important.  You don't need the climax of North by Northwest to have a good story but the absence of any climax or plot structure is going to leave most people going, "Jesus, Grandpa, what did you read me this thing for?"

Quote from: KeranI was on board with the simulation = !story jargon once, but while it produced some useful insights, there came a point where it inhibited the development of further insights.  I abandoned it then, and I won't be going back.

The simulation == !story was developed to explain why David Berkman's game Theatrix, which was heavily plot-oriented to the point where it was heavily influenced by Syd Field's books on screenplay plotting, didn't appeal to some of the regulars on rec.games.frp.advocacy.  That's why the language and focus deals with that distinction.  It does a very poor job of making distinctions between various types of story concerns and, as theory that revolves around resolution techniques, it does a very poor job of speaking toward set-up concerns such as setting up story-rich characters or settings, even if no sense of story actually gets forced during the game.

Quote from: KeranI think I have made it clear that I don't see story as one thing, with that one thing being the plot.  When it comes to a tension between a particular idea of a plot, and the natural actions of the character, I don't find it necessary to conceive of this as tension between story and that which is not story, therefore.  It's a tension between two different approaches to the story -- or, which story did I want to tell?

Do you agree that the natural actions of the character may not produce a good story?

Quote from: KeranDid I conceive of the story as a particular plot, or a particular kind of plot?  In that case, if what the character's doing doesn't fit with it, maybe I'd need to adjust the character.

But maybe the story I want to tell is "How this character copes with their built-in conflict."  And if I want the story of a particular character as I conceived them -- if that's how my objective has come to me -- then I'm going to be thwarting, not furthering, my own end if I bend the character to fit external plot considerations.

You also might not wind up telling an interesting story.  Is it possible that the way the character copes with their build-in conflict is boring or simply not terribly interesting?  And if you find yourself telling a story that's not terribly compelling for others to read, do you adjust your character, their build-in conflict, or events in the story or do you just let it go because you enjoyed the exploration of the character as a writer and don't care if the result is a story that other people would enjoy reading?

Quote from: KeranIn point of fact, I have tension between my vision of the main character and a version of the character who'd make the writing easier in a verse narrative I've been working on for some years now.

Some of the secondary characters are flamboyant and vocal.  It's easy to write dramatic scenes for them.

The main character is close-mouthed, and cryptic when he does say anything.  It's murderously difficult to write for him.  It'd make my life a heck of a lot easier if he were as vocal as the others: it'd be easier to get him to carry compelling and dramatic scenes, and not so easy for the secondary characters to upstage him.  Of course I should change him -- provided that it is my purpose to write any story about a similar character.

Which it isn't.  It's my purpose to write the story of the main character as I have conceived him; and unless I abandon my purpose, that rules out altering the character because writing somebody else would be easier.  What I need to do to fulfill the purpose I set out to accomplish is to develop the writing chops to compellingly portray a character who doesn't readily splash his emotions and tensions through the dialogue.

It is possible that your purpose isn't to write a story?  Is it possible that even after you develop your "writing chops", the character will not be compelling?  Are you writing to tell a story to others or are you writing to explore a character as an author?  You seem to assume that what you are doing will eventually work the way you intend.  Why are you so certain that this character addressing their built-in conflict will be an interesting story, no matter how it plays out?

Quote from: KeranSo -- certainly, I see the question as meaningful, and I've encountered something very like it in practice.  It just doesn't do anything at all to distinguish between story and game, or between theme and adventure, or speak to the difference between RPGs and non-RPGs; it doesn't fall on the story/!story boundary at all.

It is, in fact, this particular story, and this particular writing problem, that slapped me upside the head and made a Threefold critic out of me.  We'd have analyzed the same bloody problem in an RPG as a story/simulation clash -- as a clash between story considerations and non-story considerations.  But it's just as possible to analyze it as a clash between plot-driven story and character-driven story.

Do you care about the story quality of the end result or not?  If, for example, you reach a point where the way the character deals with their built-in conflict just isn't interesting, do you change the conflict, change the character, or simply live with the result because you accomplished your goal?

I read an interesting article about matching character to story that described swapping Othello and Hamlet into each other's situation.  Basically, Othello would just get on with the killing and the play would be boring.  Hamlet would do nothing and the play would be boring.  Not every combination of character and conflict produces an interesting story.

Quote from: KeranAn awful lot of the semantic confusion vanished when I got specific and started saying 'plot' when it was plot I meant, and when I started saying 'preplanned plot' when I meant specifically that events were decided on in advance.  As soon as I did that, I quit having to pretend that hooks, pacing, characterization, character development, development and resolution of the setting, and all those other techniques that developed with the storyteller's art have no connection to it, and indeed may be employed in pursuit of an end opposed to storytelling -- when much of what's going on is that I let the characters drive the story, even as some novelists do.

The issue with story is not necessarily pre-planning.  It's about the intentional manipulation of events in a game toward a certain story-like end.  And that's what all of those techniques are for.  If those issues didn't have to be managed and manipulated by an author to produce a good story, then they wouldn't be such important writing techniques.  And applying those techniques to filter what can and can't happen in a game or story can leave a noticeable footprint.

Quote from: Elliot WilenIt would be interesting to see whether people believe that it's meaningful to talk about a tension between one's personal vision of a character and what one thinks would be most interesting for that character to do, in terms of the overall story, bearing in mind that the latter can be justified by retroactively revising the vision of the character. E.g., could I reasonably feel tension between a belief that my character wouldn't reveal some secret, and a sense that revealing the secret is exactly the right thing to do, from the perspective of the story?

Interesting indeed. Correct me if I'm wrong but is it your contention that one of the shortcomings of "story" is that the player would be constrained by trying to keep within the perimeters of the story - or rather the story that is apparently being created? Because the tension that exist at least in my experience is not "what is right for the story" but rather "what is right for my character". If I misread your post, I apologize in advance.

Regards,
David R

Edit: I read Keran's post and your post upthread. Sorry, this is what happens when one joins the party late.

And here we see therpgsite starting to look like The Forge. Long, detailed posts splitting fine semantic hairs, with an excess of courtesy, "Because you are a poor writer and I'm a worse reader, you seem to be saying X. Given that, I say Y. Of course I may have misunderstood and I'm terribly sorry if I have." Plus that annoying affectation of writing posts like emails. "Dear Bob... blahblah... Love Jim."

I thought this was going to be a place of simple, plain and clear speech?