Quote from: The Butcher;565924If anything, the Forge's screed began in reaction to the "storytelling" ethos of the 1990s RPG scene, spearheaded by WWW (WoD) and TSR (AD&D 2e). The fact that trad RPGs require railroading to crank out a "story" (meaning a sequence of events that shows narrative coherency and adheres to genre-appropriate literary formalisms) is pretty much what motivated uncle Ron &co. to create games which tell such "stories" without having to fudge the proceedings at the game table towards predetermined outcomes. In an ideal storygame, the rules themselves shape the result of the session into a "story", without necessitating the underhanded intervention fom the GM that we see in badly-run trad RPG sessions.

Someone please be so kind as to correct me if I am wrong, preferrably with links or actual page quotes. But this is what I got from what little of Mr. Edwards' essays I've read.

You're not at all wrong. You are in fact absolutely right here.  Edwards' recognized something important: that all their pretentiousness and pseudo-artistic elitism aside, WW's WoD games were no better at 'storytelling' than D&D or any other RPG.  Their only real solution to this was to just try to make the GM or the adventure-designer or both into railroading pseudo-novelists while consequently reducing the players to powerless cheerleaders for the authorial brilliance of the GM or writers.

Of course, the thing you miss out here is that any intellectually honest person would have said, at this point "Ok, that means RPGs are NOT actually meant to tell a story! So instead, because that's what I want to do, I'll go out and create my own hobby and see if people will be interested in playing my storygames!".  But of course, Edwards didn't do that. Instead, in a tremendous act of slimy cowardice, he began his project to subvert and redefine RPGs into what fit his vision to try to parasitcally inherit the larger fandom of a more popular hobby than he knew his concept could ever possibly bring in if he struck out on his lonesome.

Also, it is worth mentioning that Edwards himself has a very skewed and highly-specific notion of what constitutes "story", ironically, one that would leave out what a lot of people would consider some of the most central elements and methods of literature.   So yes, "storygames" often don't have "scripting" but that's because Edwards' own twisted idea of what 'story' means doesn't actually put any importance on plot, only the "addressing of narrative themes".
So really, a lot of people who'd have nothing to do with the RPG hobby and do have an interest in literature would probably be left scratching their heads as to what the fuck was up with storygames, and go do a "story-making hobby" the right way by joining up with by far the single most popular story-making hobby around: fanfiction writing.

RPGPundit

Quote from: The Traveller;565942You didn't catch that shut-in podcast of

It was really terrible. They got the tone and pace all wrong, the delivery was done by an idiot.  They needed to get me to read it; or failing that, Johnny Depp, he'd have done a good job.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;566230go do a "story-making hobby" the right way by joining up with by far the single most popular story-making hobby around: fanfiction writing.

This exists, and there's even a term for it, which I cannot find nor remember. EDIT: It's called "simming".

Participants write their own sections, sometimes using RPG-like rules, and have limited power over the world outside of their own characters. Sometimes there is a "GM", who has nearly total control of the world, and writes everyone else. Sometimes not.

Frankly, it's less satisfying than a real RPG. I prefer the traditional GM "I am the world" and PC "I am my character", "Now lets roll dice" divisions.

I guess I'm just old fashioned.

Quote from: John Morrow;566131The one good thing about this forum is that you can call anyone out on what you think they are doing without getting banned.  I've called RPGPundit's style  lawn-crapping, a term he uses to describe people who make a hobby look bad and drive the good people out, and I've never got banned for it.

Of course you wouldn't get banned for it, but if you read the essay, its a misuse of the term.  There's a lot of more accurate things you could say about me that some could take as an insult.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;566228You'd have to explain, or give examples of, what you mean by "drama points" for me to be able to answer that.

RPGPundit

I interpret that as hero points, FATE points and other things where you get to modify a die roll or "fudge" results, even engage in "dramatic editing" within GM discretion.

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;566240I interpret that as hero points, FATE points and other things where you get to modify a die roll or "fudge" results, even engage in "dramatic editing" within GM discretion.

Let's add FASERIP Marvel's Karma, bennies from Savage Worlds, Edge from 4e Shadowrun, Karma from 1e Shadowrun and Earthdawn, those points from d20 Modern whose name I can't remember, and other such mechanics.

Then there's the Whimsy Deck, the Savage Worlds Deck, and Torg's Drama Deck. I'm pretty sure Bloody Stupid Johnson has some comprehensive coverage in his game design thread.

Quote from: RPGPundit;566229And yet for all that, this forum is at no risk whatsoever of "entering into a winter phase". Who'd have thunk it?

RPGPundit

I have no idea what any of that even means.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;566254I have no idea what any of that even means.

Pendragon reference.

Quote from: James Gillen;566240I interpret that as hero points, FATE points and other things where you get to modify a die roll or "fudge" results, even engage in "dramatic editing" within GM discretion.

JG

Yup, that's what I mean.

Quote from: John Morrow;566129I think you are missing my point, which is that "first person" and "third person" do already mean something -- whether a player says "I hit him with my sword!" or "My character hits him with a sword."  If I came upon a discussion using those terms without explanation, that's what I'd assume you meant.  You are using those terms to make a distinction that you want to make, but it's not necessarily what other people are going to think when they see them, since they ultimately refer to pronoun usage, not narrative focus.

If you want to look for guidance form literary analysis, you'll find that it's tied to pronoun usage, and the distinction you are looking to make is made by qualifying which characteristics of that third person voice -- subjective, objective, limited, omniscient, and so on.  But even that's a poor fit because even a book author writing in a first-person narrative voice has full control over the character and their setting.

Of course rec.games.frp.advocacy covered this same theoretical ground years ago with stances, which were then borrowed, changed, and misapplied by Ron Edwards into something less clear or useful.  Frankly, I think even the rec.games.frp.advocacy FAQ I linked to gets what was being discussed there wrong, too, but I think it does a better job of labeling the differences that you are talking about.

Quick aside: I appreciate your respectful tone, John. I'm a huge fan of polite discussion.

Now... I see what you're saying. I guess I'd have to counter that I feel I'm referring to an objective fact -- a fundamental difference between activities -- regardless of how inept I may be in describing said difference.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;566254I have no idea what any of that even means.

The direct reference was The Forge's "Winter phase", where the forums have been gradually shut down and eventually it will become a wiki on something or other.

The analogy for here would be if Pundit got bored of having to tell every new poster that he is right and they should stop interrupting the discussion of why exactly he's right and just listen to him being right, and replaced the site with a picture of him saying SPEND A FORTUNE TOKEN TO SUCK IT, UNBELIEVERS!!!

Quote from: CRKrueger;566150In some cases, yes.  In others, no.  Trail of Cthulhu, just one example, is specifically designed to prevent a "problem" that doesn't need mechanics to solve.  The entire Forge movement was designed as a corrective measure.

What is most of this thread complaining about - lousy GM's. Period.  

Faced with RPGs that are railroads due to lousy GMs and companies that are "branding IP" through metaplot, what is the answer?

1. Teach GMs how not to railroad and fall for the metaplot concept?
2. Develop failsafe mechanisms baked into the rules to try and prevent bad GMing?

The indie movement could have gone with 1, but having misaddressed the problem as well as being led by some ideologues, instead it latched onto 2, which only makes the problem worse.

Now John's right in that for many, it's an alternative, and many people do play both, but when you play a Trad RPG and a Storygame (and yeah, I do play the occasional session) it's definitely a different itch being scratched.

Not a big surprise that I agree with this.

I think much of this is at the root of why I like to have the definitions more set in stone, since I like a language that is very exact in description.  

ANd to the point that many have made, Many RPGs did latch onto specific literary based settings to increase their own profile and attract the fanbase (I inlude all the Moocock stuff as well as the MERP, rolled into Dragonlance, etc), which was done with dollars in mind but certainly pushed through a linear agenda.  I also think TSR and a few others aimed for a younger audience during the end of the AD&D period and going forward, which
exacerbated the issue.

But we are where we are.  Fogetting and dropping the handwringing and old wounds, and pertending that problem solving is part of the purpose here...

Would anyone argue that a 'Sandboxing' agenda would not be a good way to move forward for trad RPGs?  Not saying that people should do it to hurt the Shared Narrative RPGS, because they are a legitimate alternative, or because anyone is 'doing it wrong'.

But now that we actually have all these older, experienced GMs, and now that we can see where the hobby made a mistake, maybe we take this recent focus on 'sandbox' play and push it a little harder as a priority to counteract Linear adventure design, Railroading, and the Illusion of Choice...?

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;566247Let's add FASERIP Marvel's Karma, bennies from Savage Worlds, Edge from 4e Shadowrun, Karma from 1e Shadowrun and Earthdawn, those points from d20 Modern whose name I can't remember, and other such mechanics.
 
Then there's the Whimsy Deck, the Savage Worlds Deck, and Torg's Drama Deck. I'm pretty sure Bloody Stupid Johnson has some comprehensive coverage in his game design thread.

If it helps, the relevant post in my thread is here: http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=496230&postcount=27
 
Haven't actually discussed the Drama Deck in that post (sorry), which focusses on re-rolling mechanisms rather than 'narrative control' stuff. The Drama Deck does get a mention in the post on card-based randomization though.

Quote from: Ladybird;566270The direct reference was The Forge's "Winter phase", where the forums have been gradually shut down and eventually it will become a wiki on something or other.

That winter phase thing is the funniest shit I have ever read. Translation: nobody is reading or using our useless forums anymore so we'll spin it as a "winter phase" and make it into a wiki. We win!!11

But of course the gruesome twosome above already knew that.

It's worth pointing out that the demise of The Forge was remarked on over at story-games too.