Quote from: estar;623803The key element of RPGs isn't mechanics but a group of players playing individual characters and a referee. That was Gygax and Arneson key innovation. That the focus of a tabletop RPG.  Everything else is preference, a useful aid for consistency or for easing communication. This makes RPGs a broad cloud of games not a tight cluster. This also means that "cloud" overlaps other game forms.

In the first issue of Gygax Magazine there's an article that discusses just that. It's "The cosmology of role-playing games" by James Carpio. It's an interesting take on the evolution of the hobby. It includes a sort of galaxy map that represents the evolution of role playing games from the center of the "galaxy", Dungeons & Dragons, outward, with clusters of different planets/games and different concentric circles representing the different "waves" of changes over the years. You find all sorts of games on this map Pathfinder, Grimm, Fudge to Apocalypse World, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire to Delta Green, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Twilight 2000, Mouseguard, OSRIC, AS&SH and many others. It's pretty cool.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;623834That's fine. My primary point isn't how far apart the two different activities are, but that they are different. And, for many RPG'ers, intrusive.

I prefer narrativist mechanics, if present in an ostensible RPG, be easily ignorable without having to rewrite the game. My preference, mind. Not a categorical moral imperative.

Of course they are different. To a comic afficionado there's a huge difference between goody two shoes super heroics of the sixties and the grim n gritty nineties, to a science fiction fan there is a difference between Star Wars and Cyberpunk (or even between Star Wars and Star Trek, or even ST: TOS and ST: DS9).

I am a board game fan but there are types of games I have no interest for, and that I will never play.
But that's as far as I go. I don't want them to not be labeled board games anymore, and I still feel a kind of kinship with players of those games.

And in RPGs I will gladly ignore and houserule narrative mechanics. As I said, Dungeon World I would probably play like the success table from OMNI/Talislanta:
1-7 miss
8-9 half/mixed success
10+ full success.

(But I will also look at most of those games in case they do something in a way that might enrich a trad game.)

Quote from: Benoist;623859In the first issue of Gygax Magazine there's an article that discusses just that. It's "The cosmology of role-playing games" by James Carpio. It's an interesting take on the evolution of the hobby. It includes a sort of galaxy map that represents the evolution of role playing games from the center of the "galaxy", Dungeons & Dragons, outward, with clusters of different planets/games and different concentric circles representing the different "waves" of changes over the years. You find all sorts of games on this map Pathfinder, Grimm, Fudge to Apocalypse World, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire to Delta Green, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Twilight 2000, Mouseguard, OSRIC, AS&SH and many others. It's pretty cool.

Still waiting for my issue, but this article definitely looks interesting.

You take my life, but I'll take yours, too!

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;623868Still waiting for my issue, but this article definitely looks interesting.

You take my life, but I'll take yours, too!

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;623864Of course they are different.

I'm not sure it's an "of course", because every time I point out that RPG's are not Storytelling, I get a lot of static and contradiction. Not sure why, but the assertion that those two endeavors are exactly identical is common, and wrong.

Hence my desire to point it out, especially when I see people claiming the opposite is true.

Quote from: Sommerjon;623438Why I said the worst thing to happen to the RPG hobby was the internet.

We can't be happy that people are engaging in the hobby.  No, that isn't good enough.  We have to put labeled boxes on everything.
Whoa be to you if you are not in the correctly labeled box.

Keep clutching those pearls, Sj. That's what you do best.

Quote from: 1989;623878You take my life, but I'll take yours, too!

This Avatar has been getting quite the reaction.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;623879I'm not sure it's an "of course", because every time I point out that RPG's are not Storytelling, I get a lot of static and contradiction. Not sure why, but the assertion that those two endeavors are exactly identical is common, and wrong.

This isn't the same phrasing as you used before, and which the "of course" was applied.  Two different statements:

1) "Traditional RPGs are not the same as more recent RPGs with narrative mechanics."

2) "RPGs are not storytelling"


I would agree with #1, but disagree with #2.  Many games identify both as RPGs and storytelling - including more traditional games like Vampire: The Masquerade as well as more recent games like Tremulus.

Quote from: Phillip;623830To point out that this or that mechanism departs from role-playing seems a lot more fruitful than pointing to Rules & Raconteurs Vol. IV and labeling all R&R games as "not role-playing".

Not sure exactly what you're referring to, sounds strawmanish, who said something similar to what you're referring to?

Quote from: jhkim;623907Many games identify both as RPGs and storytelling

Then they're wrong. Wrong mediums, wrong endeavor.

And that blog post (which also was posted here, in a couple of places) explains why.

RPG's are not storytelling.

Quote from: jhkim;623907This isn't the same phrasing as you used before, and which the "of course" was applied.  Two different statements:

1) "Traditional RPGs are not the same as more recent RPGs with narrative mechanics."

2) "RPGs are not storytelling"


I would agree with #1, but disagree with #2.  Many games identify both as RPGs and storytelling - including more traditional games like Vampire: The Masquerade as well as more recent games like Tremulus.

"RPGs are not storytelling" is correct.
"RPGs cannot contain storytelling" is incorrect.

However, it's also immaterial.

When I am storytelling I am, by definition, thinking of my character's actions in a larger context then IC.  In other words, the act of narrative creation is not the act of Roleplaying.  Standing and fighting despite assured death to let other's escape is IC Roleplaying.  Choosing to do it because my character wants to go to Valhalla and have his legend live forever is IC Roleplaying. Choosing to do it because I'm picturing 13th warrior with my character as Buliwyf is Storytelling and not Roleplaying.

Quote from: Warthur;623778I am somewhat more sympathetic to CRKrueger's position that a good game should be able to be happily played in multiple different ways, even if I don't agree with his personal definition of pure RPGs. I think I could happily run a game with Fate Points involved, for instance, and include Krueger as one of the players because in most such games you don't have to use the Fate Point mechanic yourself if you prefer decision-making from a purely IC stance, and as I understand his argument Krueger doesn't mind how the other people around the table choose to play the game so long as they're happy to let him play the game his way. The idea that you should ideally be able to play an RPG the way you want to play it without doing a root-and-branch rework of the rules, to my mind, is basically a restatement of the Big Tent philosophy.

When I identify a mechanic as metagame, and whether it is optional or not doesn't mean I think the existence of a mechanic invalidates an entire game as an RPG.  Sometimes I use Fate Points sometimes I don't.  If you play for hours and once or twice you use a metagame mechanic, it's easy to just skim over.  When you're constantly using metagame mechanics just to accomplish core tasks, it gets hard to buy that you're Roleplaying.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;623792I wasn't defining games, I was defining one individual mechanic. As you yourself did.

When'd I do that, bub?

You're the one who is framing the whole discussion as a contrast between roleplaying and your (personal, idiosyncratic) definition of "simming".

Here's an idea: you don't like it when storygamers link what they do with traditional RPGs. Why is it OK for you to link storygames with simmers when the two pursuits actually have multiple points of difference?

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;6237951.) Just to be clear, I was stating my own preferences, what I like in a game, not attempting an RPG Inquisition to burn all game books which contain Henchmen-like mechanics. (This seems to be a point of confusion, so clarity is obviously required.)

How could I possibly be so stupid to imagine that someone who writes little manifestos about the best tactics to use against the storygamers in the War Of Ideas might be getting pretentiously militant?