Quote from: talysman;565717I think he's just hyperfocused on the bit about (some) storygames he doesn't like. There was a bit of so-called Forge theory called "Stances" -- pawn, actor, author, director -- which was kind of useful. The only problem with it was that the Forgeoisie became extremely anti-pawn stance (the "pieces on the board" approach you mention) and overly enthusiastic about director stance, to the point of demanding that almost all games be 75 to 90% collaborative world-building. Granted, not even the Forgeoisie define "storygaming" as "predominately director stance", but it's a pretty damn common focus.

Me, I'm OK with light director or author stance in some games. I'd even allow a player to occasionally create some element of the world in standard OD&D. But I tend to dislike mechanics that draw attention away from the fiction and direct it to system mastery or metagame elements instead. Like, I'm OK with occasionally using some kind of counter to determine when an event occurs in the game, but I'm against games written so that most of the player activity is about taking control of that counter and coming up with strategies to move it in the direction you want. I don't want to play poker to determine whether my character gets to be the center of the story, or whether it's a tragedy or a comedy.

That's all fine, but are you then going to make the insane argument that games with those mechanics that you dislike are not RPGs?

The difference between the two approaches is slightly more significant than the difference between a dice pool mechanic versus a roll-versus-target number mechanic, and slightly less significant than a game that uses dice versus a diceless one. Apocalypse World and D&D have more in common than either do with Amber Diceless.

Quote from: noisms;565734That's all fine, but are you then going to make the insane argument that games with those mechanics that you dislike are not RPGs?

It's not "insane". You're just a fucking twit about it is all.

Quote from: noisms;565689I run a game of straight-up classic D&D right now, after closing up a Cyberpunk 2020 campaign, but in the past year have also played Lady Blackbird, Apocalypse World, Ghost/Echo, and other games from the forge and story-games. So I think I'm fairly well placed to say IT IS THE SAME HOBBY.

I play caps and poker and watch porn with the same people folks! I'm fairly well placed to say: ITS THE SAME FREAKING HOBBY GUYS.

Quote from: Benoist;565747It's not "insane". You're just a fucking twit about it is all.

I find that, as a rule, the greater the degree of hysterics displayed by the stout defenders of shared narrative games the more likely it is that they, lacking merit of their own, are drawn instead to the perceived yet in fact hollow pseudo-intellectual renaissance-posturing higher ground of forgeism to bathe in its wan and pitiful reflected "glory". A glory indeed more of the morning kind, swiftly passed with yesterday's waters.

Quote from: The Traveller;565757I find that, as a rule, the greater the degree of hysterics displayed by the stout defenders of shared narrative games the more likely it is that they, lacking merit of their own, are drawn instead to the perceived yet in fact hollow pseudo-intellectual renaissance-posturing higher ground of forgeism to bathe in its wan and pitiful reflected "glory". A glory indeed more of the morning kind, swiftly passed with yesterday's waters.

From my experience talking about these sorts of distinctions, when we're separating games with a purpose of immersion and direct experience of the game world as opposed to an author's stance building a "narrative" and "story", there are two types of people disagreeing out there: (1) those who in fact totally understand what we are talking about but either think we're just splitting hairs or have an active hate-on at the idea that we might be actually right (because they have vested interests in us being wrong, because that would invalidate their products, their gaming preferences as it pertains to RPGs they'd like to see changed like D&D or Warhammer or whatnot), and (2) those who really, honest-to-God, have no fucking idea what the distinction actually means in actual play, because they have always played RPGs from an author's stance and have no fucking idea what immersion actually is, at all, so from there they assume a whole bunch of stuff and go "WTF is this shit" when we're talking about it.

It's hard to tell them apart sometimes, because the first types pretend to be the second, more often than not.

Quote from: Benoist;565763From my experience talking about these sorts of distinctions, when we're separating games with a purpose of immersion and direct experience of the game world as opposed to an author's stance building a "narrative" and "story", there are two types of people disagreeing out there: (1) those who in fact totally understand what we are talking about but either think we're just splitting hairs or have an active hate-on at the idea that we might be actually right (because they have vested interests in us being wrong, because that would invalidate their products, their gaming preferences as it pertains to RPGs they'd like to see changed like D&D or Warhammer or whatnot), and (2) those who really, honest-to-God, have no fucking idea what the distinction actually means in actual play, because they have always played RPGs from an author's stance and have no fucking idea what immersion actually is, at all, so from there they assume a whole bunch of stuff and go "WTF is this shit" when we're talking about it.

It's hard to tell them apart sometimes, because the first types pretend to be the second, more often than not.

(1) is most charitable, particularly given the remarkable efforts they put into attempting to bully and intimidate all perceived "opposition" and (2) is just depressing. Are there really people that have never roleplayed while thinking they were roleplaying? This canker runs deep! Well, more sauce for the iron I suppose, man the bellows.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;565577If "you are the character" in an RPG, then it's still a story, but the viewpoint is first-person rather than third-person. The first-person perspective allows the character (and the player) to experience events realistically as they unfold, which makes all the difference between an RPG and a "storygame."

Does that even make any sense? I've been fighting insomnia all fucking night. And losing. Now it's damn near dawn and I haven't slept. Hell with it.

The story is people describing what happens after the session is concluded. While it is happening it is not a story no more than living life is a story. Afterwards people select elements of what occurred to form a narrative just like stories about real life events.

What novel about RPGs is the discovery of using game mechanics by a referee to adjudicate the actions of players playing individual characters allows the creation of a alternate reality that is entertaining to experience.

A RPG referee could use elements of a story to construct a campaign but at the expense of turing the experience into a series of linear events. Doing this robs RPGs of much of their entertainment value by limiting the range of choices the players can make for their characters.

Sometimes it can't be helped due to other factor such as alternate forms of roleplaying games like MMORPGs, LARPs, Organized Tabletop play, or publishing for a mass audience. So have the common characteristic of trying to cater to a large group of players simultaneously.

But even then it is still isn't the player creating a story, because choice is still present even as limited they are. Because only when the session or campaign is concluded can a person use the experience to craft a narrative.

from a different pair of postings...dealing with the difference between shared narative and roleplaying games.  Maybe helpful, maybe not.  Not saying one is bad, or one is good, but this explains my sytance why a shared narrative game is not the same as a roleplaying game.

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Well, this is some of the meat of it.  And immersion can be decreased at one level (the game style and ruleset), while still being increased at another (excellence of players and GM), the two posibilites do not cancel each other out.
Immersion is not a feeling.  Immersion is a state.  And it is important to define this, since the basic for conversation and debate is some level of shared knowledge base.

Definition of IMMERSION
: the act of immersing or the state of being immersed: as a: baptism by complete submersion of the person in water b: absorbing involvement c: instruction based on extensive exposure to surroundings or conditions that are native or pertinent to the object of study; especially: foreign language instruction in which only the language being taught is used

from this definition, we can see that the level of immersion is consistent with the depth or completenesss of the state.  IN other words, one cannot be simultaneously immersed and not immersed; the term equates to an absolute level. The part of t thing that is immersed cannot be non-immersed at the same time.

From here we have many studies at to what creates Immersion and they often define it.  And I need to stress that not all of these completely agree; and if you look hard enough in narrative based game sites, some might dispute this.  Nonetheless, in terms of videogames, in terms of psychology (where the term roleplaying and immersion in roleplay come from), and in terms of most RPGs, it is pretty much agreed (especially in the earlier, psychological usage) that the definition of Immersion is the amount a person(actor, patient, player) is speaking/seeing from the position of the role they are playing. Complete immersion is very difficult, most immersion is only partial, but we still can measure the amount of immersion as the amount the character is in the inside of the character's head looking at the setting/world, as opposed to amount the person (actor, patient, player) is looking from an outside-in position.  Especially from psychology, where the amount of immersion is considered essential to the extent of any success of a roleplay.

And that is at the crux of it, any amount of attention/presence spent on the player collaborating in the story is attention paid to the game rules (metagaming) and looking from the outside in, and is attention/presence that is Not immersed looking from the outside in.  When one plays a character, one does not know what might be behind a door, does not think about story and what they might or might not change, or about what the rules say might be there, or even what the GM might be thinking....that is all metagaming.  If one is playing a role from the immersed position, one needs to open the door or find someway within the in-setting logic (a spell, an NPC, or a decision not to open it) to figure it out.  
The amount of presence/attention spent in the immersed state within the role cannot be spent outside the immersed state, metagaming and immersion are opposites.  Any portion of a person immersed in water cannot be unimmersed at the same time.  

Or, to quote one of the best set of articles I've read (although I do argue with the author on occasion)

WHAT IS A ROLEPLAYING GAME?
 
All of this is important, because roleplaying games are ultimately defined by mechanics which are associated with the game world.
 
Let me break that down: Roleplaying games are self-evidently about playing a role. Playing a role is making choices as if you were the character. Therefore, in order for a game to be a roleplaying game (and not just a game where you happen to play a role), the mechanics of the game have to be about making and resolving choices as if you were the character. If the mechanics of the game require you to make choices which aren't associated to the choices made by the character, then the mechanics of the game aren't about roleplaying and it's not a roleplaying game
From here...
http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer

Now, this was done so you know where my head is at and the set of definitins and analysis I am coming from.  This soes not mean that anyone else is wrong in their definions or ideas or games.  But this is where I am coming from, and I hope that helped.


Some more good reading.
 http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~pcairns/papers/JennettIJHCS08.pdf
http://w3.uqo.ca/cyberpsy/en/pres_en.htm
http://www.gmsmagazine.com/articles/inmersion-in-games

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I appreciate this conversation and where it has gone. As is our wont, and I can blame Steerpike as well, this has grown from the OP into a different area.  

Based on my background in psychology and my experiences, I very respectfully disagree with being able to look through both sides of the microscope at the same time.
Playing in an RPG is, like many things, a learned skill. Emulating the real-life equivalent of passively recieving data and acting on it is learned and becomes easier as the players learn the skill of using the GMs words and their own questions to replace their eyes, ears, and memories.   Asking questions is part of working in the enviroment.  AS you and I have both mentioned, no GM can prepare everything.  Nor, do I believe deep immersion happens for more than a few seconds at a time.  That is why the GM has 3 very distict roles, referee, creator and translator.   And in a game when the GM bought the adventure, it is just referee and translator. It is important to understand that during the game, the GM, to not appear like an opponent or anything but a neutral position, is in the 'translator' mode,  They translate the game world as seen and felt and known in memory to the players.
In my "what's behind the Door" analogy below, the player may have to ask questions to get the information they need.  Asking questions out loud, for a player, is one of the ways they feel the world around them.  These questions do not break immersion (unless someone starts cracking up, which has happened), it is the process all players go through constantly to 'see' the world around them and 'know' things their character would know.  Asking questions and getting feedback is the equivalent of how we really interpret the world around us; our eyes, ears, nose, memories are 'passive receptors', taking in data.  Staying in character requires information gathering to be a 'passive reception'.
Because playing the role and roleplaying requires the player to act like they do in the real world as a person does.  I can sit here at my desk and look around the room, and look around, listen or look back into my memory or knowledge base.  I can also stand up and turn on the stereo that I see in the room.  And the equivalent if I was playing myself in a game is I would ask what I see and hear around me and what I know about a subject, or I could declare my character gets up and turns on a stereo that was described.  But in the real world, I don't get to decide  that the stereo is a 50k huge wall unit., ot that I have a background in sound-system design (which I don't).  And because there is no real-world experiential equivalent to 'shared narratve rules', I cannot envision them as roleplaying in any way.  In the former examples, we are passively receiving the data from the outside world and acting on it; not creating the data.
 Jumping ahead, it is part of Vreeg's Fifth (to tie back to the OP a bit) to keep the player in character by having the data at hand or enough of it so the player never sees the GM go into creator mode during the game.  
You mention the issue that a player 'breaks the immersion' by asking the GM questions the PC would know before speaking in character.  This does not break immersion normally, it is part of the process of 'thinking out loud, or asking questions out loud'.  It allows the player to keep thinking as the character, which is the point.  I still remain convicned that any part of the player that is 'roleplaying in the setting' cannot be also 'narrating' or 'creating the setting'.  In my personal understanding and experience, limited though it may be, attention spent 'roleplaying from the inside out' is mutually exclusive to attention spent 'narrating/creating from the outside in'.  When the System allows the player to simply create bits of information, then the player must move from the inside-out viewpoint and cannot be passively recieving and acting from that.
I am not saying your points about 'engagement' or 'enjoyment' are correct or incorrect or that they nay or may not make a more or less fun game for some people.  They are just sideline and unrelated to the subject, as I see it.

Quote from: John Morrow;565656It's possible for the player to play their character either in the first person (e.g., "I attack the orc!") and third person (e.g., "My character attacks the orc!") and possible for the players to move their characters around on a sketch or map grid from a third person perspective but what they all share in a traditional role-playing game is that the player's scope of control is deciding what their character decides to do and their window on the events in the same setting is what their character experiences.  I don't think I'd use "first person" and "third person" here to describe that.

It doesn't matter if the player sees a physical representation of this character in 3rd person IRL or refers to his character in 3rd person. If the player is experiencing the setting only via his character's senses and affecting the setting only through his character's abilities, he is playing the game 1st person. "My character attacks the orc" is still playing 1st person. "My character attacks the orc and hits" is playing 3rd person.

All I see when I read this wall of text is someone trying to promote his preferred way/style of play as the only valid one, while discarding another one he dont likes as non-valid. So, Im with Butcher and Noisms on this one:

Quote from: ButcherTo me it's all a big ol' Internet pissing match between neckbeards and hipsters, each insulted at the others' idea of fun, and fighting over the label "RPG"

Quote from: NoismsHave you checked around the hobby lately? Most GMs of 'traditional' RPGs are frustrated novelist shit heads who plot out the entire story arc of every campaign and adventure in advance. They design villains and quests and create set-piece fights and narrowly constrain outcomes. There is far more obsession with 'story' amongst D&D players in the modern age than there is amongst people at story-games.

Fucking this.

Quote from: silva;565783All I see when I read this wall of text is someone trying to promote his preferred way/style of play as the only valid one, while discarding another one he dont likes as non-valid. So, Im with Butcher and Noisms on this one:

Fucking this.

"Story" is a disingenuous use of the language in this case, deliberately so by my estimation. I mean everyone like stories, right? But of course storygames have fuckall to do with stories and much more to do with the hobbled philosophy espoused by an intellectually crippled self-anointed internet personality. Shared narrative games are either bad impromptu theatre or worse RPGs. There's a great deal more to it than flavour of the month, as has been expounded upon ad infinitum by many hereabouts.

Perhaps it might be an idea to try reading and understanding the wall of text next time?

With that said, sure some people enjoy them, and why not, but don't pull the dog's teeth and tell it to chew steak. They sure as hell aren't RPGs, and are incapable of functioning as such. Even WoW comes closer to an RPG than shared narrative games.

Quote from: silva;565783All I see when I read this wall of text is someone trying to promote his preferred way/style of play as the only valid one, while discarding another one he dont likes as non-valid. So, Im with Butcher and Noisms on this one:

I'm not on here as much as I would like...but read and comment if you like, but if you aren't able to do so, kindly keep your mouth shut.

If you agree with this.

Quote from: NoismsHave you checked around the hobby lately? Most GMs of 'traditional' RPGs are frustrated novelist shit heads who plot out the entire story arc of every campaign and adventure in advance. They design villains and quests and create set-piece fights and narrowly constrain outcomes. There is far more obsession with 'story' amongst D&D players in the modern age than there is amongst people at story-games.

then you have not read one damn word about creating an open Sandbox that I, Ben, Estar, and others have written.  It has nothing to do with controling outcomes and everything to do with playing from within the role of the character in a setting vs. sharing the narrative control.

Or, to put it another way..play in my game (or at least respond intelligently) before you tell me what I am doing.

So now we're down to name calling, textwalling, making assumptions about other people's experience, and telling others how to approach the discourse.

Fuck it.

Vreeg, you and Estar and Ben and I can run sandboxes perfectly and thats fine. And Im not questioning that.

But my experience with the "traditional" roleplaying GM in general is the same as Noisms said: they come up with a "story" that they pull out from their asses and want me and other players to follow along with our characters. And before someone come up saying they are bad gms, just look at all adventure modules out there and notice 90% of them are pure railroad crap, a story already made from beginning to the end.

Contrast this to games like, say, Freemarket, Apocalypse World and Houses of the Blooded (just to name a few that Ive seen called "storygames" around here) and you see these games propose a much more open-ended gaming structure that (ironically) makes the so-called "traditional" ones look like the true "story-games" in comparison.

Quote from: silva;565801But my experience with the "traditional" roleplaying GM in general is the same as Noisms said: they come up with a "story" that they pull out from their asses and want me and other the players to follow along with our characters. And before someone come up saying they are bad gms, just look at all adventure modules out there and notice 90% of them are pure railroad crap, a story already made from beginning to the end.

They are bad GMs, and the majority of modules out there are crap.