For some people, yes.  For some people, no.

When you practice something, right or wrong, you're going to do that thing that you practiced more easily in the same context in future.  If anyone's got a beef with that basic axiom ... uh ... I don't know what to do.  I don't have an argument for it, just ... that's what happens.  Lame, I know.

So, anyway, if you feel that telling/viewing a story is the same context as playing an RPG and if the things you practice while playing an RPG are bad skills for telling/viewing a story then I figure that playing RPGs is probably going to skew the way you tell and view stories outside of RPG play.

That's a lot of "ifs," and I know it.

If, by contrast, you don't think of the two activities as being even remotely connected then the odds are that your brain's going to happily file the skills in two vastly disparate compartments, and they're never going to interfere with each other.  That's cool.

Note:  It doesn't matter, like at all, whether the two activities really are the same.  What matters is how you think about it, because that impacts how your brain processes and sorts the information.  So, really truly, I will gleefully ignore anyone who tries to make an argument about whether RPGs are "really" story media or not, because it's completely irrelevant to this thread.

Likewise, if you think that the context is similar enough that playing RPGs is cross-training for telling/viewing stories (as, personally, I tend to think) but you play games that teach good habits for telling/viewing stories (as I like to think I do) then the skills will jump in there and make you stronger in both activities.  That's cool too.

But I gotta say that, in my life, I've met some folks who clearly jumped on board with thinking that games would teach them to understand stories better, and then learned themselves some skills that just didn't help them at'all.

I can't resist the obvious cheap shot:  There are people who think that Underworld has a good story.  Now I think it's a fine movie, filled with action-fluff and pointless angst, and very very funny ... but a good story?  Uh ... no.  What it has is a story that is very, very, very similar to the kind of thing one would construct by playing V:tM.

So I think the potential to pick up really bad habits, and to cross-pollinate them into other places in your life, is there.  I've seen it happen.  I also think that the potential to pick up cross-train on really good habits is there, and the potential to keep things easily firewalled from each other is there.

And that's what I think.  What do you think?

Quote from: TonyLBSo, anyway, if you feel that telling/viewing a story is the same context as playing an RPG and if the things you practice while playing an RPG are bad skills for telling/viewing a story then I figure that playing RPGs is probably going to skew the way you tell and view stories outside of RPG play.

I see RPGs as simply a different medium.  In much the same way as a movie is a different medium than a book. A story done up in a book sort of way using the movie medium often fails due to not taking advantage of the movie medium's strengths and not avoiding it's weaknesses or pitfalls.

If you aren't aware of the medium in which you are working you'll run into problems.  If you are using a hammer like a screwdriver you often run into problems. *shrug*  Now if you can pull off the translation between the two mediums you might be able to push the envelope of the tool you are using successfully. But that's usually a high risk venture because you are going out past the signposts of civilization as it were.

As with the "Game Designers / DMs do wrong" thread this one really needs a definition of "story."

If a story has to be told in a specific media, then RPGs aren't going to satisfy that need. If a story is anything told asa  narrative then RPGs are just another media for that, with it's own strengths and weaknesses. Or in other words: what blakkie said.

Quote from: blakkieIf you aren't aware of the medium in which you are working you'll run into problems.

Wordy McWord.

I'm gonna use a beloved example of mine to prove this. When I watched the LotR film adaptation, it rocked. And the movies are not true 100% to the tiniest detail of the books. But they successfully translate the story from one language to other. For example, if Peter Jackson had made appear in the movie that sucker of Tom Bombadil, I would have left the cinema

In the book, Bombadil is great, but I doubt that he could be successfully ported to the movie.

With RPGs is the same. You can have great stories, but these stories are not going to be like the stories produced by other media.

Ok,

Firstly, I don't think that playing rpgs will help at all with creating other forms of story, in fact I think it will probably hinder that by siphoning off the creative energy that would otherwise have gone into story production.

More importantly, I think that it is misguided to think that the way rpgs are played will be of any assistance in creating stories in other media, unless you play a particular type of rpg such as PTA which I guess might help.

Now, if you are someone who thinks the activities are related, I think you will have problems, in part because I think you are making a category error akin to someone who likes participating in amateur dramatics imagining that that would help them write movie scripts.

I also think you will run into problems because rpgs are best suited IMO to telling essentially shallow stories.  That sounds nasty, it isn't, rpgs are a pulp genre full of action, passion, stuff happening and victory and loss.  Few rpgs are about the human condition, and I intentionally include indie rpgs here.

RPGs are mostly about stuff happening, they are not so much about relationships or feelings, save insofar as those relate to stuff happening.

So, a novel might deal with a woman discovering on the death of her husband a new self as she tries to make life on her own, and might extrapolate from that individual condition to broader human concerns on purpose, the nature of identity and the choices we make in life.  That is not an easy subject matter for rpgs, and IMO most rpgs designed to tell that kind of story will still do it more superficially.

Hm, I'm struggling a bit, Tony if you can challenge me on some of this stuff that might help me formulate what I'm getting at.  In short, I think it would cause problems because the person is making an erroneous analogy of very different media that do not really cross-fertilise IMO.  

Also, where do you see good habits coming in, because right now that's escaping me.

Quote from: blakkieIf you aren't aware of the medium in which you are working you'll run into problems.

I think that's problem with rpg as story - if you treat a game as a story also treating it as its own thing, the game will like have issues.  Books and movies have odd coincidences, characters killed just to move the plot forward, some characters being forgotten about for huge stretches, deux ex machina endings, lead to one inevitable conclusion, etc.  that would make for a lousy player experience.

But that's not to say pulling in storytelling elements is in itself bad, it just needs adapting.

I'm not quite sure what point you are trying to make here, other than to point out that different areas in our life experience inform each other, which is without a doubt true. Otherwise we wouldn't learn anything.

But one part of your post struck me as rather strange:

But I gotta say that, in my life, I've met some folks who clearly jumped on board with thinking that games would teach them to understand stories better, and then learned themselves some skills that just didn't help them at'all.

Understand stories? You either get a story or you don't. If you're talking about understanding story structure better and the technicial aspects of creating stories, then this fits in with learning through experience. If not, i don't get what your point is here.

This is a tangent, but actually although I think rpgs can tell stories I think they are very poorly suited to doing so, due to shared narrative control.

Put simply, I think a story that is the product of one authorial voice is more likely to have thematic consistency than one that is the product of multiple voices.  I think if you want story, you are better off creating or buying one.  

So this whole rpgs can't be used to create stories thing I think is nonsense, I think they can, I just don't think the resulting stories have much by way of real depth.  Not compared to the depth of a great movie or book (Lawrence of Arabia say or The Age of Innocence).

RPGs to my mind can be treated as games, as vehicles for story creation or as both at the same time, but IMO they are far better suited to working as games than as story devices, and I think that the guys thinking they are creating great stories are in much the same camp as the guys who think Underworld is a great story.

Okay, Tony, I'll question part of your basics.  It's the mental 'filing' you're talking about that's wrong - the overlap is too broad.

I've sat down and actually just told stories.  I told bible stories to classes of kiddies years ago; I've played a werewolf and told my own made-up epic yarns to other werewolf players around a campfire, too.

I've also created story in RPGs, as a railroader in some cases, and with the group as a whole pitching in to make stuff just emerge in others.

I read and watch and appreciate stories, too, in a vast profusion of media; most of us do this.

After playing an RPG, you develop habits based on expecting input from others when you're doing a verbal back-and-forth.  Now, if you sit down to just make up and tell a story, some of those habits can get in the way.  But after a few quick runs at it, the habits break up - they get refiled, so to speak, and strart breaking up into useful components.

Playing RPGs has made me better at reading the crowd when simply telling a story.  If I was unwilling to learn that, and insisted on applying the skillset across those borders, then it might instead have made me simply unable to tell a story to a crowd because of the relative shortage of input.

The calcification of habit into singularity of opinion comes when people refuse to learn, to refile that stuff.

Refusal to learn is the only problem I'm seeing here.  It ain't unique to us.

Quote from: BalbinusMore importantly, I think that it is misguided to think that the way rpgs are played will be of any assistance in creating stories in other media, unless you play a particular type of rpg such as PTA which I guess might help.

I think you're probably right here, and I'd like to ask you to expand on it ... you think that a game such as PTA might help.  Why?

I'd suggest that it is because the skills you build playing that game are at least somewhat suited to other activities.  It's not like trying to cross-train for a marathon by learning to cook crepes suzette.

So, if that's what you think then, basically, I agree with you, and I think you may even agree with me.  If that's not what you think then hopefully we're a step closer to getting our respective positions on the table.

Quote from: Levi KornelsenThe calcification of habit into singularity of opinion comes when people refuse to learn, to refile that stuff.

Refusal to learn is the only problem I'm seeing here.  It ain't unique to us.

Mmmm   I like a lot of what you're saying, but I (regretfully!) don't think it's quite that simple.

Correctly filing your mental inventory is a skill.  Some people are good at it, and some people are bad at it.  I know this because I used to be awful and now I'm so-so.  Given that, I think there are possibilities beyond a conscious refusal to learn.  There might be people who just don't do it right.

Quote from: TonyLBI think you're probably right here, and I'd like to ask you to expand on it ... you think that a game such as PTA might help.  Why?

I'd suggest that it is because the skills you build playing that game are at least somewhat suited to other activities.  It's not like trying to cross-train for a marathon by learning to cook crepes suzette.

So, if that's what you think then, basically, I agree with you, and I think you may even agree with me.  If that's not what you think then hopefully we're a step closer to getting our respective positions on the table.

Sadly, that is what I think.  I think PTA is an rpg, but a very new kind of rpg.  I would not in fact put PTA in the same category as Sorceror, which I view as much closer to Gurps than it is to PTA.  I would say the same of most rpgs.  [Edit:  The sorceror/gurps thing isn't a dig, merely broad categorisation.]

PTA is an rpg, but more importantly I think it is one of the few games I have seen that is genuinely a story telling game, a game that has rules designed to help you tell stories.  That makes it exciting to me, that's why I want to play it as on paper it looks to me like the most important thing the indie movement has produced, a genuinely new form of rpg and not just the same old with a different focus (much as I do love the same old).

PTA forces you to ask what would make for a dramatic scene, what would add interest or conflict, it is the only rpg I can think of (though there may be others) that could make that plot about the widow both gameable and interesting.  So, PTA is a different sort of beast and that is why I care about it.

Of course, when I finally get to play it I may hate it, but the actual play reports on it make it clear I think that it does do what I think it does, it helps you tell stories.

To be honest, partly by breaking the primacy of the player/character bond, you have a PC but it's not about identifying with them, and I think thinking in terms of being the character is unhelpful from a story production perspective.

Quote from: TonyLBCorrectly filing your mental inventory is a skill.  Some people are good at it, and some people are bad at it.  I know this because I used to be awful and now I'm so-so.  Given that, I think there are possibilities beyond a conscious refusal to learn.  There might be people who just don't do it right.

Learning is easy.

Let go of certainty.  Accept that the duration of your dignity matters more than the appearance of it.  Try new things that look and sound silly.

People unwilling to do at least one of those things are refusing to learn.

It is my observation that writing a story and creating the starting situation for a game is a similar endeavor.

It is my observation that playing in a game is quite different.

So, for starters, I would think that if someone considers playing in a game the same kind of creative endeavor that one uses to write stories then their experience is quite different than mine and I would want to know exactly how they are equating the activities (this is for traditional games, of course).

Secondly, from what I have read, the concept of 'story' becomes ingrained around age 8 (before then, stories are very basic) and most people in western culture will be bombarded by classic stories in the form of cinema far, far more pervasively than an RPG can hope to accomplish.

Thirdly, I have read (but cannot cite directly since I am not home) that some related activities (speaking and writing) stem from similar activities in the brain--that is, if I am speaking one set of words and writing another, that will be very, very difficult since although speaking and writing are different activities they stem from a similar source.

However: the way practice effects each of these is *very*, *very* different. Aside from the difference in motor functions (fine-motor vs. speech) the kinds of tasks one uses to practice can be extremely different as well (practicing effective writing and effective oratory are different disciplines ... although related).

So here's my assessment: I see no evidence that RPG-play is habit forming in any *elemental* sense to the way people think about stories. I don't believe that playing White Wolf games will make you think Underlworld is how all stories should be if you weren't the kind of guy who thought that before (my bud who LOVED underworld and considers it art ... no joke ... has never seen a WW game or played RPGs to any real extent).

On a basic level, RPG-play might teach you something about story-telling in terms of knowing when your audience is listening, yes. But I don't think that the operative elements of "story" such as "conflict" and "structure" are going to map closely enough. I doubt D&D players will watch Lord of the Rings and go "Man, that was great--but I can't understand why they didn't spend a lot more time shopping for gear or getting magic treasure."

-Marco

Stories told through RPGs can have depth. It's definitely harder to achieve a Lawrence of Arabia level, but that's because of the collaborative aspect, not the RPG aspect. You have the same problem with other collaborative media, such as television and screen plays. When is the last time you saw an episode of CSI that was deep and meaningful.

Note that it isn't necessarily a failing of RPGs vs. movies, because the goals are different. RPGs are much closer to TV shows than movies in that they're collaborative efforts on a time schedule. As such your stories frewuently end up more episodic than a book or movie. Not a bad thing, just a fact of the medium.