Okay, all of the comments by RPGPundit made me try out a local Storygame meet-up.  It was definitely eye-opening.  Now, one thing that is utterly clear is that the people stating that RPGs and Storygames are equivalent are bonkers.  They are very different types of games.  

We played something called MetroFinal, and while it was interesting the objectives were just different.  

But what was interesting was that three of the four people at the table were new.  The result was actually a pretty enjoyable game where we could jump into the action and have fun.  The last time that I played D&D like that was in the early 80's (am I dating myself).  The other two new players got into a pathfinder discussion during a break, where the topic was something along the lines of "if you find a way to do something silly using the rules the GM has to allow it" and this made the game less fun because the GM had a lot less room to be creative.  

I think this linked in well to a lot of our discussions about D&D Next and GM agency.  There are good things about the modern era of RPGs.  But the sheer ability to allow newcomers to enjoy themselves is different than I usually see.

I wonder if we could learn these lessons from the Story Gamers?  I am tempted to print out Basic (available from Drive Thru RPG) or see if any of the modern clones is anywhere near as simple.

Quote from: Votan;624328We played something called MetroFinal, and while it was interesting the objectives were just different.  

Never heard of it. I just googled it and it seems to be a seven year old unreleased beta of a boardgame linked from someone's blog post. Do you really think that's what people are talking about when they say storygames are a kind of RPG?

Quote from: soviet;624330Never heard of it. I just googled it and it seems to be a seven year old unreleased beta of a boardgame linked from someone's blog post. Do you really think that's what people are talking about when they say storygames are a kind of RPG?

Why don't you provide Voton with a free copy of Other Worlds so that he can try a real authentic storygame.

Quote from: soviet;624330Never heard of it. I just googled it and it seems to be a seven year old unreleased beta of a boardgame linked from someone's blog post. Do you really think that's what people are talking about when they say storygames are a kind of RPG?

Well, it was a meet-up group called "Story Games".  Maybe this was a misnomer?  

The complete list of pitched games was: Metrofinal, Monsterhearts, Microscope, My Daughter: The Queen of France

There was also some discussion of Burning Empires but it did not get offered.  If this is somehow different than the Ron Edwards line of games (i.e. Sorcerer) it wasn't dreadfully immediately obvious.  But I suppose that it is possible that there are two hobbies with the same name . .

Quote from: Votan;624339Well, it was a meet-up group called "Story Games".  Maybe this was a misnomer?  

The complete list of pitched games was: Metrofinal, Monsterhearts, Microscope, My Daughter: The Queen of France

There was also some discussion of Burning Empires but it did not get offered.  If this is somehow different than the Ron Edwards line of games (i.e. Sorcerer) it wasn't dreadfully immediately obvious.  But I suppose that it is possible that there are two hobbies with the same name . .

Well, storygames are a spectrum. A lot of storygames (like Burning Empires and Sorcerer) are only a couple of notches away from a traditional RPG. These also tend to be the most popular storygames. A very small number of storygames are a bit more out there. What happens on this site is that criticisms that maybe apply to the latter games (that I don't give a shit about) are applied sloppily to the former games (which I do). I seem to have assigned an agenda to your OP that wasn't there, sorry about that mate.

Jeff's right though, Other Worlds is great, you should buy it today!

Quote from: soviet;624347Jeff's right though, Other Worlds is great, you should buy it today!

And if you were a publisher worth a gamer's time, you would give your game to this man for free. You have claimed that your game is great, so let Votan have a copy for free and let him play it in order to prove your claim.

Quote from: jeff37923;624348And if you were a publisher worth a gamer's time, you would give your game to this man for free. You have claimed that your game is great, so let Votan have a copy for free and let him play it in order to prove your claim.

Your logic is faulty here. Why does this necessarily follow? So TSR sucked because they charged for D&D and AD&D?

-clash

Quote from: soviet;624347Well, storygames are a spectrum. A lot of storygames (like Burning Empires and Sorcerer) are only a couple of notches away from a traditional RPG. These also tend to be the most popular storygames. A very small number of storygames are a bit more out there. What happens on this site is that criticisms that maybe apply to the latter games (that I don't give a shit about) are applied sloppily to the former games (which I do). I seem to have assigned an agenda to your OP that wasn't there, sorry about that mate.

Jeff's right though, Other Worlds is great, you should buy it today!

Let me browse and see what it is like (other Worlds).  Who sells it?

No problems re: agenda.  I was mostly commenting on how this reinforced my intuition that a low barrier to entry yet fun starter game would be very, very good for the RPG hobby.  Something like the Moldavy Basic set, where you could imagine a lunch hour adventure at a high school.

A long lost poster (Justin Alexander) used to discuss an Open Table concept, which I think would match some of the same feel.

Quote from: Votan;624328...  "if you find a way to do something silly using the rules the GM has to allow it" ...

I wonder if we could learn these lessons from the Story Gamers?  ...

Some of us have. I went on a nearly two year long journey playing various story games. My experience taught me;

1) People don't generally roleplay from a first person "in character" perspective. It's like they're directing parts in a play. This pulled me straight out of the world of make-believe. I felt like we were literally collaborating on the design of a movie script. Under a different circumstance this could've been great fun, if someone hadn't tried to convince me it's just like my roleplaying, only better.

2) Things get gonzo. Every time. People get weird at the story game table, trying to accomplish things that seem WAY out of genre just because they can. Again, this constantly pulled me out of the world of make-believe and made my experiences less enjoyable. I constantly felt like I had no idea what to expect next (Alice in Wonderland effect?). Worse, I felt like this affected my connection to the game. It never felt as intense or involved to me.

I still feel like it's a preferences thing. If people enjoy story games, they should play them. I however learned from playing them. These are not the games I'm looking for.

Quote from: flyingmice;624357Your logic is faulty here. Why does this necessarily follow? So TSR sucked because they charged for D&D and AD&D?

-clash

soviet has put forth the claim that his game is great, so let him prove it by giving his game away to Votan for free to let him try it.

TSR happened in a different time with a different brand of hucksterism in play.

Quote from: trechriron;624360Some of us have. I went on a nearly two year long journey playing various story games. My experience taught me;

1) People don't generally roleplay from a first person "in character" perspective. It's like they're directing parts in a play. This pulled me straight out of the world of make-believe. I felt like we were literally collaborating on the design of a movie script. Under a different circumstance this could've been great fun, if someone hadn't tried to convince me it's just like my roleplaying, only better.

and that's the weird part, the proselytization.  The games are specifically designed to give you that narrative feel.  System Matters, that's the whole point of the Forge and narrative movement.  Do NOT be like White Wolf, who put out a completely traditional system and called it Storytelling, use actual mechanics to tell stories.  Then when someone says they don't like that specifically crafted to be different experience, the response is, "well this is no different, really, just better." :eek: Soviet and John admit differences, even Anon says calling Dungeon World "old school" is inappropriate and weird (because despite the arguments, these guys are level headed and honest), but sewers like awfulpurple are filled with these...hell...groupies is as good a term as any, who end up taking the game they like, and proceed to convince other people to run screaming away from it.

Quote from: trechriron;6243602) Things get gonzo. Every time. People get weird at the story game table, trying to accomplish things that seem WAY out of genre just because they can. Again, this constantly pulled me out of the world of make-believe and made my experiences less enjoyable. I constantly felt like I had no idea what to expect next (Alice in Wonderland effect?). Worse, I felt like this affected my connection to the game. It never felt as intense or involved to me.

I feel like that even without the extreme gonzo, so I can understand what you mean.

Quote from: trechriron;624360I still feel like it's a preferences thing. If people enjoy story games, they should play them. I however learned from playing them. These are not the games I'm looking for.

Absolutely, do your own thing and have fun doing it.  Just stop trying to convince people this is Roleplaying 2.0, an advance and purification of the form.

Quote from: CRKrueger;624366Just stop trying to convince people this is Roleplaying 2.0, an advance and purification of the form.

You and trechriron, i finally thank you for describing what a "storygame" actually is.

(The reason why White Wolf called their system "The Storytelling System" was probably because they 1) Wanted to focus more on the narrative/plot and 2) mark themselves as thus having a different focus than the more rules-complex D&D and Palladium.)

By the way, from the description of Storygames that you have given, it sounds like a cross between rpg and pre-production of a play, screenplay, or even a computergame ....
I agree with trechriron, it is not my kind of rpg, and i agree with you, it is clearly not "rpg2.0".
If anything, it is a divergation of the form, and it is only puryfing a few aspects of it, and not the full concept of an rpg.

(I like to see my rpg-system as 2.0, but noone seems to agree with me ... yet ... but then, perhaps it is just at 1.8, currently )

I know hereabouts we have a Meetup group that call themselves storygamers who focus on boardgames that 'tell stories'... by which they mean things like Arkham Horror, Fury Of Dracula, Ghost Stories, etc... no actual roleplaying games or those other 'Storygame' things (the other Meetup boardgame group here is for 'Eurogames' like Ticket To Ride, Carcassone, Tulip Mania, Power Grid, etc.).
So that adds to my confusion as to what sort of game the OP was actually playing.

With "story" as the defining term, a lot could fall under the rubric.

Back in the 1980s, the two games that I most identified with the category were:

Kenneth Rahman's Dark Cults (Dark House Publishing, 1983) -- a card game in which one team represents the forces of Life, their opponents those of Death

Eric Goldberg's Tales of the Arabian Nights (West End Games, 1985) -- a "paragraph-system board game"

Each of those involved story telling (in the straightforward, common sense understood by the general public) at some point.

At one point, I experimented with what I thought of as a "hybrid" using RPG-style mechanisms but with more improvised and abstract (compared with simulation-type) factors. By analogy with more recent games, it was sort of like Risus in loose structure, but with dice rolling more like Hero Wars.

What I considered the main "dramatic game" innovation was that, for instance, Tarzan might be just as badass when equipped with his customary knife and loin cloth as some other figure in armor with a sword, or a third packing a pair of six-guns. Another was just a little extension of the way combats in D&D were often played out: the dice were rolled, and then description of what happened was based on that (so, abstract game-mechanical results were determined first, then specific game-world causes and effects).

There was nothing in any of these games to do with the kind of "plot line adventure" that started to appear in RPG publishing. I had great success with a couple of scenarios of that sort that I designed for use with pretty typical RPG rules sets.

Greg Stafford's Prince Valiant: The Story-Telling Game (Chaosium, 1989) had more of the usual panoply of RPG rules systems, but it also had rules that specifically gave players "authorial" powers (as opposed to controlling only things their characters controlled). It emphasized somewhat plotted adventures (rather than environments for exploration) from the start.

Quote from: jeff37923;624365soviet has put forth the claim that his game is great, so let him prove it by giving his game away to Votan for free to let him try it.

TSR happened in a different time with a different brand of hucksterism in play.

Every other publisher and author here says their games are great, too. Should they give their games away free? Should we have a sticky "Download your free copies of Arrows of Indra and Lords of Olympus here!" topic?