Quote from: Mistwell;687282This is a very candid interview Cordell and Schwab recently did.  It includes things like, "4e blew up D&D".

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/63941

I said it first, and while actually working for WoTC.

Quote from: RPGPundit;688025I said it first, and while actually working for WoTC.

OK, you get a cookie.  PM me a shipping address and I will send it to you...though it will probably be a "I said it first" mousepad or something.

Quote from: RPGPundit;688025I said it first, and while actually working for WoTC.

I said it 10 years ago.  I foresaw everything that would happen with respect to 4e.  *sigh*  

-- Cassandra

Quote from: CRKrueger;687354I hate to hear designers of D&D phrase things in terms of Tactical and Narrative solely.  There's the idea that really you're thinking about the game as rules or thinking about the game as fiction.  

What happened to forgetting the game and roleplaying the character?

They speak about definitions changing, and that part was very important.  Intentionally or accidentally, the new school narrative style games are changing the terminology.

Hell if I said there was a difference between thinking like a character and thinking as a character, even on this site people would throw a shitfit.

"In-character" and "roleplaying" are increasingly meaning solely the narrative-layer view of roleplaying a character within the game fiction not roleplaying as that character immersed into a world.

These parts are pretty much what I enjoy most about rpg's:

forgetting the game and roleplaying the character

roleplaying as that character immersed into a world

D&D did good things with 4e, innovative and remarkable things.  It also did some things badly, but it irritates me to hear WotC so liberally throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

They seem to have thought that D&D was like Warhammer 40k or Magic: the Gathering, where you could just kick out a new edition every couple of years and people would helplessly fall over and just buy the new edition because of, I dunno, their hypnotic powers.  Alas, RPGs (to state the obvious to everyone here) use a DM who interprets rules, so he can happily fix whatever house rules he wants to, and he and the group can simply use whatever edition they wish (as opposed to wargames or CCGs, where you have to hope your random opponent will agree to your edition choice).  So, shockingly, it turns out people who played through 15 levels of 3e D&D would rather play 15 more than stop and change how their characters work.

The real kicker is that this is nothing new, but D&D had lain fallow for so long that it was pretty easy to scoop up all those old D&D players, but that wasn't going to fly with 4e, and it's not going to fly with 5e.  The Pathfinder people aren't going to "see the light," as they're happy with what they have.  The 4e people are similarly happy enough with their games (and most I know are frankly ticked that WotC is acting like the game they enjoy was a big mistake).  It's just going to do what 4e did: update some die-hards and bring in new people into yet another edition.

Whatever.  I'll just play 13th Age or GURPS Dungeon Fantasy.

Quote from: CRKrueger;687354I hate to hear designers of D&D phrase things in terms of Tactical and Narrative solely.  There's the idea that really you're thinking about the game as rules or thinking about the game as fiction.  

What happened to forgetting the game and roleplaying the character?

They speak about definitions changing, and that part was very important.  Intentionally or accidentally, the new school narrative style games are changing the terminology.

Hell if I said there was a difference between thinking like a character and thinking as a character, even on this site people would throw a shitfit.

"In-character" and "roleplaying" are increasingly meaning solely the narrative-layer view of roleplaying a character within the game fiction not roleplaying as that character immersed into a world.

Agreed. That's one of the main issues I have with "modern" role playing game design: it's become assumed that a game has a tactical/"gamist" layer and roleplaying is being folded into "story", "fiction" and a subsequent "narrative" layer of design. Immersion, the world in motion, are not a thing. It is actually shocking to see how that part of the Forge propaganda made its way into some designers' minds (Ron and the "creative agenda" spiel, how gamism and narrativism express a clear agenda while simulationism is a non-style for people who haven't realized there's always a creative agenda at play in an RPG session) to the point they don't even understand what you're talking about when you say "no, role playing and story are NOT the same thing, and story can actually impede role playing and immersion for some gamers". They are so far down the rabbit's hole, it's like you're talking Chinese to them.

Quote from: Benoist;688463Agreed. That's one of the main issues I have with "modern" role playing game design: it's become assumed that a game has a tactical/"gamist" layer and roleplaying is being folded into "story", "fiction" and a subsequent "narrative" layer of design. Immersion, the world in motion, are not a thing. It is actually shocking to see how that part of the Forge propaganda made its way into some designers' minds (Ron and the "creative agenda" spiel, how gamism and narrativism express a clear agenda while simulationism is a non-style for people who haven't realized there's always a creative agenda at play in an RPG session) to the point they don't even understand what you're talking about when you say "no, role playing and story are NOT the same thing, and story can actually impede role playing and immersion for some gamers". They are so far down the rabbit's hole, it's like you're talking Chinese to them.

I've been listening to a lot of D&D podcasts recently, especially interviews with highly-regarded adventure writers and DMs. And it's really sad how they all talk about detailed PC backgrounds and motivations, three-act stories, and climactic encounters, etc. The very idea of setting-based adventures and campaigns is totally alien to him. It seems an entire generation has grown up and gone on to become veteran writers and developers, who have never experienced non-railroad D&D. Everything is about kidnapped sisters, nuanced villains with deep backstories, and dramatic stakes. No mention of how to evoke ruined citadels, colorful cults, weird forests, and cthonic tomb complexes. I don't get how you could play D&D for over 20 years and not recognize that story happens organically when you combine imaginative people with evocative settings. And it's obvious that so many of these guys are frustrated novelists. Either that or pure system wanks. So no wonder they don't get immersion.

Quote from: Haffrung;688476I've been listening to a lot of D&D podcasts recently, especially interviews with highly-regarded adventure writers and DMs. And it's really sad how they all talk about detailed PC backgrounds and motivations, three-act stories, and climactic encounters, etc. The very idea of setting-based adventures and campaigns is totally alien to him. It seems an entire generation has grown up and gone on to become veteran writers and developers, who have never experienced non-railroad D&D. Everything is about kidnapped sisters, nuanced villains with deep backstories, and dramatic stakes. No mention of how to evoke ruined citadels, colorful cults, weird forests, and cthonic tomb complexes. I don't get how you could play D&D for over 20 years and not recognize that story happens organically when you combine imaginative people with evocative settings. And it's obvious that so many of these guys are frustrated novelists. Either that or pure system wanks. So no wonder they don't get immersion.

Those of us who prefer our "stories" to grow organically from play instead of being engineered for drama are an endangered species. Game design talk nowadays revolves around tactical play or storywank. The concept of an actual game existing beyond the rules is a foreign one to the hipster game design crowd. Its the nature of the beast. Perhaps the winds of change will swing things back around to organic immersive play at some point. We cannot control fads. All we can do is play how we like while others do likewise.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;688493Those of us who prefer our "stories" to grow organically from play instead of being engineered for drama are an endangered species. Game design talk nowadays revolves around tactical play or storywank. The concept of an actual game existing beyond the rules is a foreign one to the hipster game design crowd. Its the nature of the beast. Perhaps the winds of change will swing things back around to organic immersive play at some point. We cannot control fads. All we can do is play how we like while others do likewise.

You can't control fads, but at the same time, we can work to prevent the change of language, or at least attempt to stop the elimination of an entire playstyle from the conversation.

Quote from: Haffrung;688476I've been listening to a lot of D&D podcasts recently, especially interviews with highly-regarded adventure writers and DMs. And it's really sad how they all talk about detailed PC backgrounds and motivations, three-act stories, and climactic encounters, etc.

That is sad because I really hate that crap.  Talking about act structure and knowing the climactic encounter before you start means that it's really just a big fucking railroad made by some wannabe writer trying to make players walk through their wankfest fiction.
 
As a DM or player, I want situations where no one knows how it's going to end because the characters get the chance to make real decisions and totally change the directions of their lives.  Roleplaying is the chance for personalities to impact each other and affect decisions; it's not a sidebar of conversation between encounters.
 
I think WOTC never entirely understood this as you can see that they've created very few good adventures for either 3e or 4e.  Even their dungeons feel more like dungeon tours rather than dungeon exploration, as the players are walked from one pre-planned encounter to the next.
 
I've come to really hate the term narrative because it's used in a hundred subtly different ways.  It often comes off as old designers trying to use the new street lingo to sound young and hip but they end up looking even older and more pathetic because they use it incorrectly.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;688493Those of us who prefer our "stories" to grow organically from play instead of being engineered for drama are an endangered species. Game design talk nowadays revolves around tactical play or storywank. The concept of an actual game existing beyond the rules is a foreign one to the hipster game design crowd. Its the nature of the beast. Perhaps the winds of change will swing things back around to organic immersive play at some point. We cannot control fads. All we can do is play how we like while others do likewise.

Yeah, I hate to tell you this, but plot-having adventures have been at least 50% of the non-rules content published (and sold) by the big players since the 80s.

I don't think you're so much endangered, as maybe you are only now coming around to notice it.

Quote from: Nicephorus;688503That is sad because I really hate that crap.  Talking about act structure and knowing the climactic encounter before you start means that it's really just a big fucking railroad made by some wannabe writer trying to make players walk through their wankfest fiction.

There are two sides to the narrative coin in RPGs. One is the Storytelling side you mention. It's the pre-Forge storytelling approach: the story-script scenario design, the illusionism, the railroading.

The 2000s post-Forge narrativism is generally not like this. The Forgists generally hate railroading just as much, if not more, than we do - that's basically a part of the original "brain damage" argument of Ron when he talked about storytelling WW gamers. Post-Forge narrativism is about story-building, "Story Now", that is, there's no railroad at all, but the collaborative construction of a piece of fiction through the act of play instead.

People who are into that kind of Post-Forge narrativism often say "well yeah! I hate railroads too! But that's not what this game (*world, whatever) is about! There are no railroads in those games!" and they are RIGHT, because the game itself is about building the storyline, building the narrative, it's an authorial process happening in the act of play, instead of being pre-canned in a script-scenario.

Now, the important part, as far as I'm concerned, is that this debate of whether storytelling is synonymous with railroading or not is a huge red herring. The point is that I don't play a role playing game to build a story, before, during, or after the act of play.

To me, whether you have pre-Forge storytelling railroading, or post-Forge non-railroady story-building, I am EQUALLY unsatisfied by the act of play, because what I want is to NOT construe the game as a fiction or narrative, I do NOT want to be reminded all the time that I am supposed to be the co-author of a story. I want to experience the world from the point of view of my character and make decisions in the game AS my character. Period. Full stop. (NB: When I GM, my character is the World. The same logic applies.) I want the world to feel real, and to have organic, coherent developments based on the world's logic and point of view, not because of a meta-narrative layer dictating what would be dramatically convenient at any given point of the game. It's about immersion, let's pretend, being in the world and the world responding to my actions through my character, to me. It's not about building a story. At all.

Quote from: mcbobbo;688508Yeah, I hate to tell you this, but plot-having adventures have been at least 50% of the non-rules content published (and sold) by the big players since the 80s.

And much of it sucked.  The trick is to have plot without being a railroad.  Some of the better CoC adventures achieve this.  You need a dynamic environment with NPCs trying to achieve things and events unfolding by default without a list of encounters to be checked off in order.

Quote from: mcbobbo;688508Yeah, I hate to tell you this, but plot-having adventures have been at least 50% of the non-rules content published (and sold) by the big players since the 80s.

I don't think you're so much endangered, as maybe you are only now coming around to notice it.

That's true. But it's not so much that the market seems to prefer scripted adventures; it's that guys who have been working in the industry for 15 years now, and who take part in all sorts of theorizing about design, and talk about all the tools at their disposal - these guys seem completely unaware that there's any other way to write adventures except as scripted stories. That mode of design is actually being lost from collective memory in the hobby, the way the descendants of the Mongols forgot how to make composite bows.

I've seen some reviews for recent WotC and Paizo adventure that praise them as sandboxes, when in fact, the party still starts at A and ends at Z, but after D they have the choice between E or F, and after S they have a choice between T or U. Some sandbox.

I understand a lot of readers feel cheated if their adventure doesn't include a story. So I'd understand if publishers had to identify the adventures as setting-based, in order to satisfy expectations. But at least give GMs the option. They publish adventures will all kinds of other whacky, narrow premises - pirate, horror, etc. Just for a goof, they should publish a setting-based adventure once in a while. Who knows, it might even catch on again.

Quote from: mcbobbo;688508Yeah, I hate to tell you this, but plot-having adventures have been at least 50% of the non-rules content published (and sold) by the big players since the 80s.

I don't think you're so much endangered, as maybe you are only now coming around to notice it.

Who is objecting to adventures with plots? One of my all time favorite published modules is L2 The Assassins Knot.

It is filled with plotting npcs, thier motivations, resources, and timeline of what could happen barring PC action.

Its the handholding of players, leading them from scene to scene, presupposing what they choose to do that sucks donkey cock, not the existence of plot elements.