TheRPGSite

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 :D

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.

Heh.  I sorta thought we might have less to disagree about than it looked like on the surface.

So there are games out there that, in some small way, could be useful cross-training.

I totally agree with you that the vast majority of games are absolutely terrible cross-training tools.  You'd be foolish to try to use skills garnered from playing Paranoia to write the Great American Novel.

Most games are also very honest about that.  They don't lead people to believe that the skills are applicable elsewhere.  Anyone who thinks that Capes is going to train them to write a Stoppard play?  Well, they got there on their own.

Now, I've obviously slanted this question real seriously by the context it's being asked in.  I apologize for that.  I'm a bad person :(   But, anyway, my character flaws aside ... what do you think of White Wolf in this regard?

Personally, I think that their marketing intentionally led people to think that the skills gained playing V:tM would translate into more general story-telling skills, and I further think that a lot of my friends bought that hook, line and sinker and got some pretty silly habits about how stories are put together as a result.

Quote from: Levi KornelsenLearning 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.

Heh.  You deny the possibility of "unable"?  The only question is "unwilling"?

Personally, for myself, I'm with you.  I can do any of those three things at will.  Sometimes it's hard, but I can do them.  But I hear that there are people for whom those things are so hard that they have to work a long time before they are able to achieve them.  And I don't want to tell those people that if they actually tried they'd automatically succeed.

Quote from: ImperatorWordy McWord.

You quote one sentence of mine. Then you then add 7 setences, the last one that simply restates mine?  Who be the wordy one? :P

Quote from: blakkieYou quote one sentence of mine. Then you then add 7 setences, the last one that simply restates mine?  Who be the wordy one? :P

I think it's "Word!" as in "What you have just said is very true!"

Quote from: TonyLBHeh.  You deny the possibility of "unable"?  The only question is "unwilling"?

Learning disabilities are not something I would ever toss around lightly.

Yes, they exist.

No, I don't think this conversation would benefit from discussing them and how they relate to story and RPGs.  Offhandedly discussing stuff like that is a good way to bury yourself in shit up to your eyebrows.

As we've seen.

Quote from: blakkieYou quote one sentence of mine. Then you then add 7 setences, the last one that simply restates mine?  Who be the wordy one? :P

Oooops :o My English skillz failed me. I was trying to say that I fully support that idea. I've seen that phrase (the 'Wordy...') one used several times around Internet, and I thought...

Well, the idea is: I agree with you, and want to subscribe to your newsletter.

Quote from: Levi KornelsenLearning disabilities are not something I would ever toss around lightly.

Oh!  Totally not what I was talking about.  Unless, like, pride is a learning disability, which I don't think either of us believes.

There are people who (for instance) think and say that they can't be content with being actually right when they are suffering the appearance of being wrong.

Now I don't think that there's any argument to be made that, long-term they can't learn to do that ... in exactly the same way that I don't accept when someone I'm training says "I can't do a sit-up."

With practice, you can do a sit-up.  With practice, you can let yourself look foolish in public, while remaining serene in private.

But I have to accept that there are some people who literally can NOT do a sit-up today.  And I'm inclined to accept that there are some people who literally can NOT let go of their pride today.

Quote from: TonyLBPersonally, I think that their marketing intentionally led people to think that the skills gained playing V:tM would translate into more general story-telling skills, and I further think that a lot of my friends bought that hook, line and sinker and got some pretty silly habits about how stories are put together as a result.

I think that it is not unusual for teenagers to fall for marketing that tells them that if they do x they will be a deeper, more meaningful person and will get dates.  [Edit:  I'm not saying your friends were teenagers, I have no idea, it's more of a lead in general comment.]

WW used a classic marketing ploy, they told people that if they did this shallow thing they would become deep and meaningful and serious.  I suspect they probably believed it by the way, I don't think they were intentionally lying or anything.

But there comes a point where common sense and life experience need to kick in.  White Wolf games have nothing to do with story creation, in the literary sense of story.  Sure, they promised their games would let you create epic stories like the Illiad or Beowulf or something, but they gave you DnD with fangs.  The brilliance was to dress up DnD as something more than it was and is, which in the process IMO made it a less good DnD than had it been more honest about what it was.

But part of growing up is learning to cut through people's claims for what a product will do and learning to make up your own mind.  Some people never learn those skills, but they'll be so busy getting apparently favourable credit terms and thinking their favourite soap speaks to the human condition to have much time to play anyway.

Your friends were taken in by marketing, it happens to us all sometimes, I sympathise but at the end of the day it's not that different to buying a face cream because you think it will prevent aging.

Quote from: TonyLBPersonally, I think that their marketing intentionally led people to think that the skills gained playing V:tM would translate into more general story-telling skills, and I further think that a lot of my friends bought that hook, line and sinker and got some pretty silly habits about how stories are put together as a result.

Thought I'd just come back on the "intentionally" bit, I think they did intentionally do that, but I think they may actually have been far up their own backsides enough to believe it.

Whatever, they did do that and they were factually wrong in their claims.  I don't think though one can then extrapolate to lasting damage to story telling abilities or anything silly like that, it's just another product that didn't live up to its hype and that is not an uncommon thing in our world.

Quote from: TonyLBBut I have to accept that there are some people who literally can NOT do a sit-up today.  And I'm inclined to accept that there are some people who literally can NOT let go of their pride today.

...Ah.  

....Huh.

I dunno.  Could be.

Quote from: ImperatorOooops :o My English skillz failed me.

Well it did allow you to come up with what I'd consider a good example.  In fact that very one was sitting at the back of my mind when I wrote the original post. :)

Quote from: BalbinusTo 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.

In what way is the game about role-playing (that is, playing a role)?

Quote from: NicephorusI 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've seen odd coincidences in games. Quite a number in fact.  If you aren't I suggest you aren't looking, or perhaps you aren't letting the dice have some control. Or you're doing something else different? Sometimes the coincidences aren't so much too. You retroactively make something foreshadowing be consciously deciding that it was.

Also characters dieing moves the plot forward.  The rub between stories in a book and stories coming from an RPG is often more of how it is decided how the plot moves forward. In many ways the snuffing of a key protagonist is somewhat disruptive in both formats, but tends to happen more readily in an RPG.

RPG stories tend to have more unfinished ends.  Because of the random and multiple input nature you are constantly creating points where the plot could jump off from, and often you do create more of stub down those branches.  But in book form often these are editted out and pushed to the back because they are thought of as a distraction.

Quote from: John MorrowIn what way is the game about role-playing (that is, playing a role)?

Each player has a character, they dicate that character's actions and words much as in any other game.  You play the role of that character.

Where I see it as diverging isn't in that bit, it's rather that you have a greater element of authorial power such that you will be introducing scenes and situations so as to bring out that character's issues and the stuff that makes them interesting.

So you do play a role, but you don't create stuff in the game from within that role necessarily if that makes sense.

Hence I see it as a game in which you play a role, because it is a game and you do play a role, but I see it as being different to a classic rpg as your character is not necessarily your main vehicle for action.

Oh, I wouldn't necessarily say it is about playing a role, rather it is a game about story creation and as a means to that end you play a role.  The mechanics therefore are more about story creation than playing the role, and that is why it makes a better story creating game than most story-games which to my mind get muddled up the conflict between creating a good story and playing a role (often even denying that is a conflict).

Edit:  I appreciate that others may not view this as sufficient to count as an rpg, for me though it is sufficient.  Others must make up their own minds as to where they draw a line, should they wish to draw one.

Quote from: BalbinusYour friends were taken in by marketing, it happens to us all sometimes, I sympathise but at the end of the day it's not that different to buying a face cream because you think it will prevent aging.

This is so close to the example I was going to use to describe the phenomenon (and my low level of concern over it) that it's eerie.

Mind you, I was going to talk about those Calvin Klein ads that have men wearing the jeans while making out with nubile young women in the surf.  I understand that the makers of the clothes do not, in fact, stand behind the guarantee I feel is implicit in those images.  But apart from that we're on exactly the same wavelength.

Hm, I have to admit I hadn't expected quite so much agreement.

Other than PTA, can you think of any rpgs that you think are a positive aid to developing story skills?  I can't, though there may well still be some.

I would say that I think most story-games are nothing of the kind and people are largely kidding themselves, most of them are (whatever Pundit thinks) fairly traditional rpgs which have tinkered at the edges a bit in terms of authorial power.

PTA to me is one of the first true story-games.  Dogs, to take a popular example, is to me ultimately not as different to DnD as it is similar to it.  That's not a criticism of Dogs, but to me it's plainly on the rpg side rather than the story supportive side.

Actually, I think Dogs trains the GM really well ... the whole town creation system gives you a very good mindset for how to establish a situation that is rife with tension, and then how to explode that tension in any of a number of entertaining ways.

Amber teaches you that fictional power is a function of personality, even when that flies in the face of logic.  That's a damn fine lesson for some styles of fiction.

And, to toot my own horn, I think that Capes does a damn fine job of teaching you how to make the "what" of events subordinate to the "why," which I think is another lesson that can be helpful.

If you look at a game and say "Would this exact method, reproduced with me sitting at a word processor, create a good story?" then your pool of candidates is pretty small.  If you say "Does this game train me in skills which can be useful to writing and understanding fiction?" then the pool gets larger, quickly.

Hm.  I think that character development is an important story skill -- being able to make a set of qualities on paper seem like a real person with motivations and logic to their actions.  This is something that many RPGs are good at training.  

I also think that having a deep, consistent background is a useful story skill, at least for some class of stories.  Tolkien, for example, was a master at this.  This is again something that many RPGs are good at.  

RPGs will usually teach nothing much about dramatic structure or pacing -- but those aren't the whole of storytelling.  There are a great many works, especially in television and mainstream film, which are terrible at having logical characters or consistent background.  Characters suddenly turn and do things for no good reason to advance the plot; plot holes you can drive a truck through abound, etc.  I think some of these writers could use a little role-playing cross-training.

Was typing quickly earlier so wasn't clear

Quote from: blakkieI've seen odd coincidences in games. Quite a number in fact.  

I mean the whole story hinging on a coincidence that you would have to force in a game.  For example, Jim overhearing something through the events while in the bathroom.  That's fine for a story but I prefer games where the rest of the plot doesn't hinge on one action or getting any one piece of into - I prefer more than one possible path.

Quote from: blakkieAlso characters dieing moves the plot forward.  

Should have said deaths in opening scene/act moves things forward.  I prefer not to kill PCs at the very start.  Death does change things - but a story might depend on a death, I would hate to plan on killing a particular PC on a particular session.  

In a good game, you also want all PCs to have something to do.  They shouldn't do something critical at the end of the first act and then not be heard from until the final scene.

I guess, the big difference for me, is that a writer/director can sit down with a strong vision of exactly how things are going to pan out, sometimes even working backwards from the cool ending.  That makes a very unsatisfactory, railroaded game where player actions have no effect on the results.  I think a game should be more akin to interactive storytelling where everyone has ideas that they want to pursue but no one is sure where it's going to end up.

There are things from storytelling that I find helpful, especially editing for pacing.  In old school gaming, you might spend half a session moving around on the map, stopping for directions, and have a couple of random encounters before getting to the temple.  In a more cinematic approach you might cut from the players deciding that the temple is the key to "After three weeks of travelling along the route handdrawn on the map that Hazul's cousin gave you, you arrive at the temple."  It keeps players focused on the plot more instead of them trying to remember what happened a few sessions ago that made the temple so important.

I also fudge rules a bit in the interest of what would be a cool story.  One time, I had a bad guy who was doomed.  I fudged his hp so he lived long enough to teleport a short distance to his tomb.  It wasn't intended to have him get away, just change the scene of the final battle.

QuoteThat's fine for a story but I prefer games where the rest of the plot doesn't hinge on one action or getting any one piece of into - I prefer more than one possible path.

Some of the best authors will tell you that every story developes like that. You create the characters and put them into situations. If you've done it right they drive it forward. That's not much different from a group sitting around the table. The primary difference comes in there being multiple authors, which complicates things but also multiplies your possibilities exponentially.

Here's what I think:

RPG gaming is more like oral storytelling than screen writing or novel authoring.

While RPGing might not *teach* anky skills, it is certainly a forum where oral storytelling skills can be practiced, observed, and learned/refined:

• It teaches a handful of applicable skills -- mainly around characterization (drawing a character through diction, behavior, description, etc.)
• It might also teach some skills around drawing a mood or whatever (the same skills one might use to tell scary stories around the camp fire).
• Games can also be a forum to practice comedic story telling and timing and so on (largely by speaking for NPCs)

There's probably some skills that might translate to writing, but very few and almost nothing reliable.

Cheers,
-E.

I see RPGs as a medium that benefits from storytelling skills.  I grew up in a culture that values oral history, spent most of my childhood telling and retelling the same stories with my dad until I'd learned the million little things that make a good story (variation, reading the crowd, playing with tone and diction, etc.)

I can say that those skills I learned as a little kid have made me a better GM, compensating for the numerous weaknesses I have in the medium of RPGs.  What I can't say is that my experience as a GM has informed my storytelling.

While both are intensely social experiences that rely on group dynamics, improvisation and timing, the differences between the versatility of the two are such that A improves B while B doesn't improve A.

Quote from: fonkaygarryWhat I can't say is that my experience as a GM has informed my storytelling.

In your case, it might be due to which you learned first of levels of experience - the highly trained skill can inform then new skill more than vice versa.

If were to take two people with zero oral storytelling experience and one of them had been a gm for a decade, they would probably have an edge in reading the crowd and improvising.