Story games...

Ok, I know everyone here loves them, but I'm really not sure what to think personally.

On the Story-games.com website I started a discussion on how to model combat which was copy and pasted from the same thread I started here.

It's an interesting discussion and people contribute ideas, all of which are welcome. However there is mention of the Sorcerer system that, apparently (i've never played it), which bundles initiative and result into the same roll: the result determines how well you did and how quickly you did it. An interesting concept, I asked how that resolved actions that don't require a dice roll and it transpires everything requires a dice roll as that's the nature of opposed/contested actions.

Now I'm not opposed to story games. I don't find the 'swine' label helpful, nor do i see any real point in shuffling threads around to fit an agenda, but I am starting to wonder whether the 'story game' approach is one that I personally would want.

This isn't a rant and it's not intended as a 'those people over there suck' diatribe because that isn't what I think. However there does seem to be a fundamentally different approach to roleplaying games in the attitudes of the fans and perhaps designers of such games. That's their perogative of course. But it's almost as if the difference between 'trad' gamers and 'story gamers is that the former want the outcome of dice rolls to decide what we might call the story, and the latter want the outcome of dice rolls to fit the story, oddly enough.

Also that the rules need to be so simple that there is nothing in the detail of the result that creates any kind of narrative wrinkle or twist to work from. Simplicity is laudable as a design goal certainly but a lot of the time it's the same simple trait roll for every situation, no matter how varied, with no real depth. You must have some measure of depth even if it's relative to other rules, otherwise it's just...well bland.

So here's the example from that discussion; the point was to ask how you resolve initiative for actions using the above system that require no dice roll.

Three people in a room; person A wants to shoot B, person B wants to jump out the window and escpe, person C wants to shut the window.

How do you resolve person C shutting a window? Do you assume that shutting the window requires a dice roll? We are talking a basic window, not some complex machinery.

What about a sniper targetting a terrorist about to detonate a bomb. All the terrorist has to do is press the button, does that require a dice roll?

I'm not knocking these games; maybe i'm just not used to their way of thinking. I don't liek to denigrate other people's ideas, but some of this I really can't get used to. No big deal I suppose, so why did you write about it then? Moan moan moan.

Not sure why I posted this.

I'm not sure what you're asking. The answer depends on the system in use, not on what "story games" do. There is no monolithic story game to answer with.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;635488Not sure why I posted this.

Not a great way to start a thread, now is it.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;635482It's an interesting discussion and people contribute ideas, all of which are welcome. However there is mention of the Sorcerer system that, apparently (i've never played it), which bundles initiative and result into the same roll: the result determines how well you did and how quickly you did it. An interesting concept, I asked how that resolved actions that don't require a dice roll and it transpires everything requires a dice roll as that's the nature of opposed/contested actions.

The One-Roll Engine (ORE) system does this too: you roll a dice pool of d10s and find out how many "matches" (identical results) you have for each number. Any match is a success. Matches are described as number of matching dice ("width") x the number that these matched dice are showing ("height"). So if 3 of these d10 came up 8, you'd have 3x8. You can have multiple matches from a single roll (e.g. 2 dice came up 7 and 4 dice came up 9, 2x7 and 4x9), which is important in combat and opposed rolls, but not much outside of these.

Width determines how quickly do you obtain your result, while Height indicates the degree of success. So in combat, for instance, Width gives you initiative and Height gives you damage. On a library research roll, Height shows how much information you've gleaned on the subject, and Width tells us how long it took you to find these things out.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;635482Now I'm not opposed to story games. I don't find the 'swine' label helpful, nor do i see any real point in shuffling threads around to fit an agenda, but I am starting to wonder whether the 'story game' approach is one that I personally would want.

This isn't a rant and it's not intended as a 'those people over there suck' diatribe because that isn't what I think. However there does seem to be a fundamentally different approach to roleplaying games in the attitudes of the fans and perhaps designers of such games. That's their perogative of course. But it's almost as if the difference between 'trad' gamers and 'story gamers is that the former want the outcome of dice rolls to decide what we might call the story, and the latter want the outcome of dice rolls to fit the story, oddly enough.

Also that the rules need to be so simple that there is nothing in the detail of the result that creates any kind of narrative wrinkle or twist to work from. Simplicity is laudable as a design goal certainly but a lot of the time it's the same simple trait roll for every situation, no matter how varied, with no real depth. You must have some measure of depth even if it's relative to other rules, otherwise it's just...well bland.

That's pretty much my stance (oops) on the topic as well. I have nothing for or against storygames or storygamers, and if someone shows up at my table with a copy of Apocalypse World or Mist-Robed Gate or whatever in tow I'll give it the same clean break I give just about every game that comes my way. (I'd rather be playing octaNe, though )

Nevertheless, so far my tastes lie strongly in the traditional RPG camp.

QuoteHow do you resolve person C shutting a window? Do you assume that shutting the window requires a dice roll? We are talking a basic window, not some complex machinery.

[/I]

The bolded bit is the problem - it's like you're trying to simulate reality rather than the genre (thriller ?). Bend to the genre.

As you know, working out who succeeds first is just too bland just by itself so spice it up by having a bidding system - using Chi - so what you're asking the player is - how much do you want to succeed and push your luck/fate/karma or call upon the gods/your drives/motivations/passions. Suss out when you refresh chi (when you succeed first ? when you fail ? laters ?). I prefer - when you fail. You get more ebb and flow that way.

Greg Stolze's "say yes or roll the dice" may apply here. Dramatic interest trumps physics in this sort of gamie. Suie, you can get killed crossing the street, but if it doesn't make for the sort of story you want the game to crank out, you just handwave it.

Now, of course I don't require rolls from PCs crossing the street in odinary circumstances in my very traditional game. Thouygh it may yet come up (e.g. PC cop chasing a perp through crowded streets, botches a skill roll = goes and gets himself hit by car). I like to think that I'm sacrificing a tiny bit of realism in the name of expediency, rather than some overarching aspiration to storytelling; but as a conscientious objector in the storygame wars, I don't really care whether there's a difference. Oink oink.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;635488Not sure why I posted this.

Thanks for posting anyhow.
My 2c:
I think that the idea that trad gamers want dice rolls to decide the story, storygamers want outcome of dicerolls to fit the story" is an interesting one, and has some truth to it.

That reminded me of this rpg.net thread started awhile back:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?578938-Why-I-don-t-like-your-quot-story-game-quot

Particularly this bit

QuoteAnother example is the mechanic used in Dogs in the Vineyard and I believe in other games, where you roll the dice before describing your action. You go into a situation and say in very simple terms what you want to do, then you roll the dice, THEN you describe your actual actions after finding out whether you succeeded or failed. This is pure third person - you can respect your character's decision-making process but you have to jump way out of their perspective to describe all that results from their actions.

Which sort of touches on the idea that not just dice rolls but even character actions don't control so much what happens as get chosen to justify game events.  There was another podcast on that somewhere with Vincent Baker I think (I'm not sure which one it was anymore), where he discussed that aspect, that in a game like say DiTV players/character's are limited by the game rules in what actions they can attempt. The abstract rules generate success/failure in a different way to a trad game, being abstract players can't  try to creatively justify additional bonuses from the physics engine so much.

PS: Unrelated to that Pendragon has the same issue with Initiative, where you can have to roll for an automatic action just to see when it occurs, despite being traditional. In cases like that the roll would really just an initiative roll though with no chance of failure IIRC.

Quote from: Brad J. Murray;635502I'm not sure what you're asking. The answer depends on the system in use, not on what "story games" do. There is no monolithic story game to answer with.

The system in question resolves initiative with the result of the die roll used for the action. Why would I need to roll to shut a window? All that's important is to know when i can shut the window: before or after the guy tries to jump through.

Quote from: The Butcher;635505Not a great way to start a thread, now is it.

I confused myself while typing.

QuoteThe One-Roll Engine (ORE) system does this too:

Yes, i have some familiarity with it, but it's not to my taste personally. It all sounds like weights and measures really and relies and fairly substantial dice pools.

There are other problems with the result=initiative system not least of which is that it doesn't replace traditional initiative, which you may only need to roll once per combat (as per 40k for instance), in terms of speed. Since you need to know when someone can act, whatever they do, you need to roll, which is a bit of a curious twist when many story game systems also advocate only rolling for actions that are important (a good principle all round, shared by trad gamers as well). I would also submit that it requires a lot of work from the GM; for each player it's simple, pick a trait and roll. But the GM has to decide for each NPC up front, then roll for each NPC, then record/memorise every NPC and PC's results to calculate the final order of events and go from there.

QuoteThat's pretty much my stance (oops) on the topic as well. I have nothing for or against storygames or storygamers, and if someone shows up at my table with a copy of Apocalypse World or Mist-Robed Gate or whatever in tow I'll give it the same clean break I give just about every game that comes my way. (I'd rather be playing octaNe, though )

Nevertheless, so far my tastes lie strongly in the traditional RPG camp.

Quote from: Sean !;635514

So do mine. I'm happy to check out any game that appeals to me, no matter who made it. What separates story games the most for me is that the design ethos seems to revolve around a couple of mechanics or the presentation thereof (eg playbooks), but no real setting. Nothing to get one's teeth into. The main appeal of games, for me, is cracking open a nice book and getting into a new world and finding good mechanics that support that. I don't really see that with games like AW or Sorcerer.

QuoteThe bolded bit is the problem - it's like you're trying to simulate reality rather than the genre (thriller ?). Bend to the genre.

The problem is deciding when someone acts. All action scenes use reality to some degree, otherwise it just becomes a silly fantasy where nothing has any meaning. Reality means people fall out of windows, smash through glass, get shot and hurt themselves. If that refernece point isn't there the scene has no meaning.

QuoteAs you know, working out who succeeds first is just too bland just by itself so spice it up by having a bidding system - using Chi - so what you're asking the player is - how much do you want to succeed and push your luck/fate/karma or call upon the gods/your drives/motivations/passions.

That's a reasonable idea, but i suspect it's too much hassle in play. Besides people will want to plan ahead so they will think "how do i know whether something even more bizarre is about to happen, i better act conservatively", so it becomes self defeating. Setting up regular refresh points is difficult in the environment of rpg's. They aren't like boardgames where you can collect 200£ each time you pass go as the board is a fixed size. The board is the imagination and it's entirely subjective.

Quote from: The Butcher;635520Greg Stolze's "say yes or roll the dice" may apply here. Dramatic interest trumps physics in this sort of gamie. Suie, you can get killed crossing the street, but if it doesn't make for the sort of story you want the game to crank out, you just handwave it.

It's not about saying yes, it's about working out when. You can't assume the guy leaping out the building has more narrative authority than the guy operating the window, so why shoudl the latter have to say yes?

The core concept to dwell on here is the difference between task resolution v. conflict resolution.

Task resolution is very discrete in time-space. Being a small effect with potential big ramifications, greater lack of control is allowed as nothing further down the line has been determined.

Conflict resolution is larger in time-space. Success determines more than one discrete task in the future, often determining several as if a pre-written part, or 'narrative' if you will.

People at the table will have vying narratives proposed; however group genre expectations limit what sort of narratives will be acceptable (no random orbital satellites raining laser death in S&S Conan). People contest other conflict resolution narratives by bidding wars, which may trigger additional whizbangs and widgets for other people at the table in their conflict narrative bids later. The winning bid's dice roll thus conforms to being the degree with which the winning conflict narrative is accepted.

That is why both the dice roll and the character action options feel constrained. They are constrained for different reasons, one being acceptable character actions through table genre expectations, the other being succeeding dice roll interpreted through the winning conflict narrative. However the source cause of this is the same, a shift from discrete time-space resolution to broader time-space resolution, a.k.a. task v. conflict resolution.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;635585Thanks for posting anyhow.
My 2c:
I think that the idea that trad gamers want dice rolls to decide the story, storygamers want outcome of dicerolls to fit the story" is an interesting one, and has some truth to it.

That reminded me of this rpg.net thread started awhile back:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?578938-Why-I-don-t-like-your-quot-story-game-quot

Particularly this bit


Which sort of touches on the idea that not just dice rolls but even character actions don't control so much what happens as get chosen to justify game events.  There was another podcast on that somewhere with Vincent Baker I think (I'm not sure which one it was anymore), where he discussed that aspect, that in a game like say DiTV players/character's are limited by the game rules in what actions they can attempt. The abstract rules generate success/failure in a different way to a trad game, being abstract players can't  try to creatively justify additional bonuses from the physics engine so much.

PS: Unrelated to that Pendragon has the same issue with Initiative, where you can have to roll for an automatic action just to see when it occurs, despite being traditional. In cases like that the roll would really just an initiative roll though with no chance of failure IIRC.

That thread (and i have not read all 58 pages!) articulates better than I have.

Thing is, in all games i've ever read/played, rules add to the experience. That is to say, some detail is necessary to increase the opportunities, storytelling, narrative environment open to the players. While simplicity is absolutely a virtue story games do seem to revolve around a level of simplicity that can be off putting.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;635600The board is the imagination and it's entirely subjective.

The board is the rules, framing the action.

Quote from: Opaopajrthe source cause of this is... a shift from discrete time-space resolution to broader time-space resolution, a.k.a. task vs conflict resolution.

This.


An example:

In Shadowrun (task reslution), if I want to snipe at that police car and make it out of the highway, I must:
1. roll my firearms skill for the shot,
2. GM rolls for the car driver to resist the damage
3. GM rolls for the driver to keep control of the vehicle under fire,
4. GM rolls on some scatter table to see where the vehicle goes to, and if it goes out of the road,
5. GM rolls the conseuqneces if the car crashes (passanger npcs damage, car explosion, etc)

In Apocalypse World (conflict resolution), it would be
1. Player declares his intentions ("to put the police car out of the road") and rolls relevant ability. If it a success, the car is out of the road. If its half-sucess, GM improvises some hard choices and ask the player to pick: a) the shot missed but player keeps his own position hidden, or b) the shot hits, the car is out the road, but players position if revealed to the passengers that (oops) just survived the crash. If its a fail, the GM improvises the worst possible outcome for the situation (the shot misses AND his position is revealed )

First game tries to physically simulate (and roll) for each individual action involved. Second game groups all actions in a bigger "time chunk" (and just 1 roll) and see what happens. Whats best will depend on your group tastes and playstyle, and each game premise.

P.S: notice that Apocalypse World is not a storygame, but a (fairly) traditional rpg, really. No shared narrative or story rules at all.

Quote from: Opaopajr;635609The core concept to dwell on here is the difference between task resolution v. conflict resolution.

Task resolution is very discrete in time-space. Being a small effect with potential big ramifications, greater lack of control is allowed as nothing further down the line has been determined.

Conflict resolution is larger in time-space. Success determines more than one discrete task in the future, often determining several as if a pre-written part, or 'narrative' if you will.

People at the table will have vying narratives proposed; however group genre expectations limit what sort of narratives will be acceptable (no random orbital satellites raining laser death in S&S Conan). People contest other conflict resolution narratives by bidding wars, which may trigger additional whizbangs and widgets for other people at the table in their conflict narrative bids later. The winning bid's dice roll thus conforms to being the degree with which the winning conflict narrative is accepted.

That is why both the dice roll and the character action options feel constrained. They are constrained for different reasons, one being acceptable character actions through table genre expectations, the other being succeeding dice roll interpreted through the winning conflict narrative. However the source cause of this is the same, a shift from discrete time-space resolution to broader time-space resolution, a.k.a. task v. conflict resolution.

I haven't seen so much bullshit on the internet since the last time I used the Internet Bullshit Generator.*




*yes this is a real thing

I was going to start a new thread on this question, but I think asking it wihtin this thread might be interesting.

I'm writing a framework of the rules I intend to use for my game right now. I have some basic ideas, but I find that it's getting very easy to be sucked into increasing levels of complexity (more tea vicar!). I intend for opposed rolls to be very simply a contest of trait roll vs trait roll; highest result wins. But I'm finding myself wondering how much detail for opposing situations I need

IE: as well as combat, do i need rules for social combat (might be fun), arm wrestling, tea drinking, beer drinking contests, chess, vehcile chases (yes, actually)? How much do I need? I don't know whether some or all of these things will turn up.