Quote from: Benoist;606560I get that's where you're coming from.

For me, that's a different matter. When I am invited to play a role playing game and find myself playing in the position of the co-author of a story, I feel like I am playing a radically different game than what I was expecting, which was to play AS my character in an emulated world. I find the differenciation of story games and role playing games useful, at the same level that the differenciation between wargames and role playing games is useful to determine what type of game I'm going to play tonight.

I don't know if we're that far apart -- when I play my character, I don't want to co-author the world, I want to play as my character, too.  To me, all of the gloss -- say, TBZ's reverse death spiral/final death mechanic, or Exalted's stunts, or whatever else -- are simply ways of saying, "This is the kind of fictional world we're in."  In some of them, my guy can die from a dirty knife wound days after being stabbed, and in some, I know that I have to make a willing choice for my character to die.  But that's all "world rules," rather than me co-authoring, just like TORG's different genre settings.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;606554Huh?  He's emphatically a character in a story.  

No; in the novelization of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon he may be a character in a story. In an RPG, he's a real (virtual) person existing in a real (virtual) world. RPGs are not literature, they're world-emulators.

QuoteNo, because as I've said, people have been trying to emulate stories in their games since day one.  You don't get to revise away decades of stuff that happened to support your jihad against a clique you don't like and which appeared, like, two years ago.

Oh yeah, I saw your nice little story about being 6 and wanting to play out a story about bilbo back in the dawning days of AD&D.  Very nice. Probably made up; but suitably well-crafted for rhetorical purposes; nothing wrong with that if you're trying to use it to prove a point.

However, most little boys don't want to "play out a story about bilbo", they want to BE Bilbo, not to pretend they're JRR Tolkien writing a novel, thinking about what would bilbo do and how things would happen around him according to literary necessity; but to pretend that they can really transform into a hobbit and actually live in middle earth, and pretend that middle earth is actually a real place somewhere, and not "just a story".

THAT is what has been there since day one. That is what defines the RPG: IMMERSION into virtual characters in an Emulated World.  And its pretty piss-poor to want to replace that with a hobby that consists of trying to generate stories in a really awkward and confusing way.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Future Villain Band;606563I don't know if we're that far apart -- when I play my character, I don't want to co-author the world, I want to play as my character, too.  To me, all of the gloss -- say, TBZ's reverse death spiral/final death mechanic, or Exalted's stunts, or whatever else -- are simply ways of saying, "This is the kind of fictional world we're in."  In some of them, my guy can die from a dirty knife wound days after being stabbed, and in some, I know that I have to make a willing choice for my character to die.  But that's all "world rules," rather than me co-authoring, just like TORG's different genre settings.

In TORG the GM can kill you without having to ask your permission.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;606557If it were those guys, OVER THERE, having a good time, I'd have no problem with them.  But they're not over there; they're here, pissing in my garden.  They're trying to steal the name "roleplaying game" and re-appropriate it for a hobby that looks nothing like the games I play.

I didn't draw the line in the sand; its always been there. I'm just pointing at it and saying None Shall Pass.

RPGPundit

As shocking as it may be to most of the posters we have here now (most of the originals have gone now) i used to share this view.

I shared it because whenever i heard 'storygame', the game in question almost always turned out to be some sort of fucked-up attempt at "edginess" or some twee lecture on how traditional gaming was badwrongfun.

I shared Pundit's views because i didn't want those games and those authors being associated with my hobby.

Thing is, i think that the fucked-up crowd are actually now a fringe of a fringe and everyone knows who they are and point and laugh when they raise their heads (or lick their arse if they're an original Forge fan-boy).

So, these bizarre fetishistic storygames that seemed to be nearly the whole output of the movement (yes it was a movement) seems to have lessened to a degree that i really don't give a shit anymore what they call their games.

I'll still point and laugh when something too stupid to live turns up, but otherwise, meh.

I don't think we're looking at the fringe of the fringe. When you consider something like Dungeon World, a variant built on Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World, and that the game is talked about in some OSR circles/blogs as this great old school traditional RPG with some hip parts to it, you tell yourself that there's a problem somewhere.

I can tell you right here and now, if I was invited to some Hangout game that was sold to me as traditional dungeon crawling and the like, and that I found myself sitting at a table of Dungeon World, I'd wonder if I was hallucinating the whole thing.

Quote from: Benoist;606582I don't think we're looking at the fringe of the fringe. When you consider something like Dungeon World, a variant built on Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World, and that the game is talked about in some OSR circles/blogs as this great old school traditional RPG with some hip parts to it, you tell yourself that there's a problem somewhere.

I can tell you right here and now, if I was invited to some Hangout game that was sold to me as traditional dungeon crawling and the like, and that I found myself sitting at a table of Dungeon World, I'd wonder if I was hallucinating the whole thing.

What pisses me off the most is that you know they don't give a shit about dungeons; in fact its one of the things they HATE about Regular RPGs; but they do stuff like this because the OSR is big and successful and they feel like its their sacred cause to infiltrate and subvert it.

They have such little faith in their own product that they always feel like they have to lie and try to trick you into playing it. That should tell you something right there.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;606529Please do.

Actually no, you're not gonna like this. Finishing Blow (Coup de Grace to people who are out of Vitality) cannot be delivered to player characters if they haven't checked the Dead box.

QuoteThink about the action movies or anime you’ve seen: Why doesn’t the villain simply finish off a fallen enemy? Because it’s simply not interesting. The PC has a place and a time where they are fated to be finished off. Of course, the player may declare that this is the time and place by checking that Dead Box. In that case, the GM should respect the player’s wishes and finish them off if they lose all of their Vitality and go down.

Until that time, though, the enemy will do things that villains usually do: Walk away, not realizing that the character still faintly clings to life. Or realize that the PC is still alive, and simply gloat while exiting the stage to push their evil agendas further. Or the characters could be taken captive. Or they could be publicly humiliated. There’s a lot of options which the GM can employ, the default being that the enemy simply walks off, presuming the PC is dead:”Oh, that’s all she had in her, eh? Humph, good riddance, I’m off to the castle/tavern/pleasure district.”

This is somehow super different than always letting people speak their mind before shooting in the head, but I don't particularly care how precisely.

Quote from: RPGPundit;606557Hit points can reach 0 without player permission. There's nothing of Attempted Literature or Always Rick Hunter about that.

What about gaming groups where no one really ever dies? I have played like that. The GM just says "there will be no character death in this campaign." You can very well do that in D&D. Does that make a non-storygame into storygame.

QuoteIf it were those guys, OVER THERE, having a good time, I'd have no problem with them.  But they're not over there; they're here, pissing in my garden.  They're trying to steal the name "roleplaying game" and re-appropriate it for a hobby that looks nothing like the games I play. They're consistently lying, cheating, and manipulating language to try to achieve that end.  This thread is only indicative of that; where you have some of the biggest Swine on the site coming on and claiming loudly and to the rafters that this game is a "totally traditional RPG" and that at the same time it proves how great the innovative mechanics of storygaming are, and that even the japanese can understand that so why can't we?

They are sniveling lying little twerps with a constant double-discourse who can't just man up and admit that they want the hobby to be different from what it actually is; who can't, in other words, fight an honest fight face to face and let the best man win, if getting to be called the RPG hobby instead of going off and starting their own storygaming hobby is so important to them.

So there is no equivalency here. They shot first, and from behind, and even now continue to try to sneakily subvert the hobby at every turn. It matters because they can convince and manipulate the design-level of the hobby; they did so enough that D&D 4e was made to conform to GNS theory, and that may well have destroyed motherfucking D&D's viability as a product!  So yes, it does matter. I'm not out to destroy storygaming, storygaming is out to destroy RPGs; I'd be fine with letting them be the Storygaming Hobby somewhere else, but for Storygaming to actually be the RPG hobby it has to by definition convert or destroy the existing RPG hobby first.

So, your hobby is being hijacked by the Japanese from 15 years ago? Man, I think you're fucked.

Quote from: Benoist;606582I can tell you right here and now, if I was invited to some Hangout game that was sold to me as traditional dungeon crawling and the like, and that I found myself sitting at a table of Dungeon World, I'd wonder if I was hallucinating the whole thing.

Don't you ask about what you're going to play before signing up?

Quote from: RPGPundit;606517If said mechanic is "The GM can't kill you if you don't consent".

Again, you incorrectly place emphasis on the subject of the rule to make your distinction and not the rule itself.

Quote from: RPGPundit;606516Yes, it is absolutely a genre conceit that reflects the "physics" of the world. In the Doctor Who universe, people don't move faster when talking, but when someone talks it seems a universal rule that everyone waits to see what they say.

Whereas you admit readily that what's going on in TBZ is not reflective of the universe but an attempt to establish Literary Protagonism.

No, they are both genre conceits. This post alone shows your failure to make a valid distinction between these two mechanics.

Quote from: Benoist;606582I don't think we're looking at the fringe of the fringe. When you consider something like Dungeon World, a variant built on Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World, and that the game is talked about in some OSR circles/blogs as this great old school traditional RPG with some hip parts to it, you tell yourself that there's a problem somewhere.

I don't think Dungeon World threatens my hobby.

I'll point and laugh all day long at the parent game and its author, though.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;606563I don't know if we're that far apart -- when I play my character, I don't want to co-author the world, I want to play as my character, too.  To me, all of the gloss -- say, TBZ's reverse death spiral/final death mechanic, or Exalted's stunts, or whatever else -- are simply ways of saying, "This is the kind of fictional world we're in."  In some of them, my guy can die from a dirty knife wound days after being stabbed, and in some, I know that I have to make a willing choice for my character to die.  But that's all "world rules," rather than me co-authoring, just like TORG's different genre settings.

FWIW I am the same I personally dislike co-authoring a story as a player, but I am a fan of rules that embed the rules of the fictional world the game is set in when playing my PC, even if they are narrative as termed by CRKrueger. I always have been since I started RPGing in the early 80s.

Quote from: Skywalker;606612Again, you incorrectly place emphasis on the subject of the rule to make your distinction and not the rule itself.

I think it is actually rather important (not to pundit of course) that it's not that much consent as it is encouragement or celebration. TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL kind of thing.

Quote from: RPGPundit;606552It appears to be a natural rule; not just for the Doctor but for everyone. In doctor who, anyone who pauses to make a speech has everyone wait until he's done, with hardly any exceptions.

And, in Dr Who, only protagonists and major antagonists get Story Points...

Quote from: vytzka;606607Actually no, you're not gonna like this. Finishing Blow (Coup de Grace to people who are out of Vitality) cannot be delivered to player characters if they haven't checked the Dead box.

Right, so its a Storygame.

QuoteWhat about gaming groups where no one really ever dies? I have played like that. The GM just says "there will be no character death in this campaign." You can very well do that in D&D. Does that make a non-storygame into storygame.

No, that's the GMs choice. I think its a stupid choice; but its the choice of the group.
Likewise, you could take a storygame and houserule it to try to make it run like as if it was an RPG; but that wouldn't make the game itself an RPG.

QuoteSo, your hobby is being hijacked by the Japanese from 15 years ago? Man, I think you're fucked.

No, its suffering an attempted hijacking from a group of people translating a 15 year old japanese game to try to use it as ideological fodder in their efforts.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;606624No, its suffering an attempted hijacking from a group of people translating a 15 year old japanese game to try to use it as ideological fodder in their efforts.

Ron's Hate On Zebra? I know, right!