Quote from: soviet;567819My game Other Worlds describes itself as a roleplaying game. I describe it as a roleplaying game too, but Pundit says it isn't. Who's right?

I can't really answer the question as I haven't read the rules. But I can tell you that according to its description, I'd pass on it thinking that it's a story-game.


That's due to the following claim: "you will find that in Other Worlds the rules serve to emphasise the story and increase the drama rather than getting in their way."


That statement indicates two things to me:
  -It contains Simple and uninteresting rules that aren't worth playing
  -A desire to control Story rather than character.

This tells me that it's not a tabletop RPG in any meaningful way.

Well, only one of those two observations does, although I'd quibble about simple not necessarily being uninteresting.

Quote from: Peregrin;567826But what's the overarching term, then?  Conversation games?

Fuck if I know.    I wouldn't mind having that conversation though.

Quote from: Peregrin;567833Well, only one of those two observations does, although I'd quibble about simple not necessarily being uninteresting.

Simple and uninteresting don't have to go together, but Other Worlds desciption indicates both apply.

Simply put, saying that the rules 'get out of the way' is just another way of saying that they don't engage the player's interest. Thus by defintion, they have to be (in and of themselves) uninteresting.

To me this fails for the Game part of an rpG

Quote from: Peregrin;567826But what's the overarching term, then?  Conversation games?

In France, the magazine Casus Belli, which was reporting about wargames, role playing games and board games such as Diplomacy, Hero Quest and others used the term "Simulation games" as the overarching umbrella term. I don't know if it'd apply to story games though, since they don't seem to simulate anything other than the act of building a story.

Quote from: CRKrueger;567834Fuck if I know.    I wouldn't mind having that conversation though.

That was painful to read.  

Hmm.  Maybe bullshitting games?  That could open up some possibilities for horrible puns.

Quote from: Benoist;567837In France, the magazine Casus Belli, which was reporting about wargames, role playing games and board games such as Diplomacy, Hero Quest and others used the term "Simulation games" as the overarching umbrella term. I don't know if it'd apply to story games though, since they don't seem to simulate anything other than the act of building a story.

True.

Honestly, I tend to just lump tabletop games together as one broad hobby, since there's so much crossover between genres nowadays and people who play different types of games.

Quote from: Peregrin;567838That was painful to read.  

Yeah sorry, been visiting Dan's IRC channel, the puns are getting to me.

Tabletop Games could work.
Would you put Card Games and Board Games under Tabletop?

A few comments on alternate terms:

"Hobby Game" is a common industry term for games that require more investment than simple pick-up-and-play - including most miniature games, campaign wargames, collectible card games, and role-playing games.  

"Adventure Game" is an uncommon label used by a wide variety of RPGs - like the original 1978 Star Trek RPG, the 1993 Buck Rogers RPG, the 1998 card-based Marvel RPG, the D&D3.0 basic set, and the 2005 Deryni RPG based on Fudge.  

Of course, the term RPG is used for shared-world online fiction-writing as well as for various computer-based games.  It is sometimes qualified by "tabletop" or "paper-and-pen" to specify D&D-like games.  

"Tabletop" is a qualifier mainly to distinguish computer games from other games.  

"Story games" is sometimes used to refer only to games different than traditional RPGs - but is also sometimes used to also include traditional and/or semi-traditional RPGs.

Quote from: The Traveller;567731Would you say that shared narrative games retain any significant element of surprise?

Depends on the game. But generally speaking, IME, yes. In many cases this surprise will be of a different type and potentially come from a different source than the surprise found in an RPG, but it's still surprise.

Quote from: Benoist;567754I for one have not been talking about "deep immersion". I'm talking about immersion, and that's it.

This is why I dislike the word "immersion" in roleplaying discussions: It has lost all meaning because it means something different to everybody who uses it.

Quote from: Benoist;567765Later I referred to this as "closing your eyes and imagining yourself being in the situation and reacting to what happens from there". That's not what I consider "deep immersion" at all.

Case in point. In this case, what people are almost certainly reacting to is the phrase "imagining yourself being in the situation". That's being read as self-identification with the character. And while that's one way to make decisions as if you were the character, it's not the only way.

Quote from: CRKrueger;567764However, I think it is important to acknowledge that the people who do not get deeply immersed, or self-identify as Justin puts it, or those who mostly are 3rd person roleplayers aren't necessarily in the best position to judge whether a mechanic interferes with roleplaying or not.

I'm going to restate my objection to the idea that 1st person vs. 3rd person description is anything other than completely tangential to whether or not someone is roleplaying.

Partly because, as I mentioned before, I've seen plenty of people roleplaying with a deep connection to their character while still describing the character's actions in 3rd person. And partly because I've also seen plenty of people using the word "I" while exercising narrative control mechanics in favor of their avatar playing piece.

Quote from: soviet;567777Maybe, I don't think I've read any but it sounds plausible. Surely in those games this is represented as some kind of willpower leading to pyrrhic victory thing, which is not only optional on the part of the player but also perfectly translatable into an in-character POV?

If you're looking for a fairly pure example of a game in which players routinely decide whether their character succeeds or fails, you just have to look at Fiasco: The bulk of the game is based around people deciding whether they're going to (a) control the setup of the scene or (b) control the outcome of the scene.

There are no other mechanics tied to controlling the outcome of the scene: If you choose to do that, you are 100% in control of whether or not your character succeeds or fails.

Quote from: soviet;567789OK, well the bit I don't understand is how traditional gamers can be immersed in the game but not in a character and still be roleplaying, but somehow storygamers cannot. What is the traditional gamer doing or feeling that the storygamer is not?

I sense part of your confusion here may be coming from a false premise: STGs are not a "roleplaying free zone". Lots of roleplaying happens during the play of STGs.

The distinction between an STG and an RPG is that, when you use the mechanics of an STG, you are exercising narrative control. When you use the mechanics of an RPG, you are playing a role. (Roleplaying Games vs. Storytelling Games)

Of course, just as there's usually lots of roleplaying in an STG when the mechanics aren't being used, there's usually lots of roleplaying in an RPG when the mechanics aren't being used.

What I believe Benoist is trying to express is that, when he's playing an RPG, he wants the game to be completely focused on roleplaying. STGs don't let him do that because every time you use a mechanic in an STG you have to stop roleplaying.

Fiasco is, once again, a very clear example of this: You roleplay, roleplay, roleplay... And then you have to stop roleplaying (stop making decisions as if you were your character) in order to make a mechanical decision about scene control.

Quote from: soviet;567805But that doesn't mean that storygames are not also a type of roleplaying games.

At the risk of being burned at the stake here, I would suggest it would be more accurate to say the opposite: Roleplaying games a specialized subtype of storytelling games.

Why? Because roleplaying a character (i.e., making choices as if you were the character) is one way of exercising narrative control.

This is, charitably speaking, why a lot of story gamers have a really tough time understanding that roleplaying games are doing something different than STGs: Because when they play an RPG, they're thinking of roleplaying as a form of exercising narrative control.

Quote from: gleichman;567530This concept goes a long ways towards explaining the OSR crowd's reaction to the 4E, they finally read the rules and judged them objectively for the first time in perhaps decades.

If they ever got around to doing the same with the older versions with their "ingrained mechanics glasses" turned off, I bet a lot of them would have the same negative reaction. But I doubt they are capable of such an objective viewing at this point.

Well I am, that's why I quit playing D&D years before 4th.  

JG

Do you wanna know something funny? To me, D&D always felt very childish to the point of breaking my immersion, because when I play a roleplaying game I want the game to depict me as a real in-fiction character, while D&D always made me feel just like this wargame mini or videogame pixel where all that matters is its class and attack power and Level and armor class and treasure, etc. This kind of combat-centric design bother me to no end. I wouldnt see a problem if the game was about world war 2 or military special forces, but to sell itself as heroic fantasy and then present to me a full-tactical-combat-centric game, I feel cheated (Aladin wasnt about tactical combats, Conan and Fafnir and Arthur neither).

Now, maybe if I was introduced to the game through OD&D, which I think sold itself more honestly than is sucessors, than I would probrably like it better. Also, in this regard, 4e always felt more honest to me too.

Dammit, I'm going to have to break my response up or else nobody will read it.

First John Morrow, as he's the longest.

Quote from: John Morrow;567468So, storygames do a better job of giving the player a metagame experience solely from the perspective of their character?  Which one does that.  I'd be interested in playing it.

Do you consider Sorcerer, Don't Rest Your Head, and Apocalypse World to be 'storygames'? If so, then those.

Quote from: John Morrow;567468If you throw a pitch during a baseball game, you don't get to choose if it's a strike or not.  If you shoot an arrow at a target, you don't get to decide if it's a bullseye or not.  If you ask a woman out on a date, you don't get to decide if she says yes or not.  If you do a gymnastics routine, you don't get to decide if it's a perfect 10 or not.  Do I need to go on?

Who says you get to choose to throw a pitch? Perhaps your arm cramps up.

Who says you get to choose to shoot an arrow? Perhaps the shaft breaks.

Who says you get to choose to ask a woman out? Perhaps you lack the courage.

Who says you get to choose to do a gymnastics routine? Perhaps you're delayed at the airport too long.

Every action we take is an intent. Every result we assume is an expectation. This is how people operate. It is the mental model we use, and people differ in the specifics. Understanding this makes you a master manager. Dismissing it leaves you only able to deal with people using the same model.

Quote from: John Morrow;567468Sure, but I don't need rules to simulate intuition.  When I'm thinking in character, the intuition just happens as part of that.  If youa re looking at the game through the character's eyes, you can actually see the battlefield through that character's eyes.  That's what many of us mean by "immersion".

Ahhh

I do EXACTLY the same thing. For example, when one of my characters is in a bar fight in a western town, I see the tables and chairs, I smell the beer, I hear the sound of broken glass, I'm THERE. Whatever makes sense to visualize.

But what happens when I go behind the bar and grab the shotgun? Wait, WHAT shotgun? The shotgun which I ASSUME WILL BE PRESENT in a western bar where fights tend to break out. And if a shotgun ISN'T present, it needlessly disrupts my immersion, just as it would if the GM suddenly corrected me and said the bar's walls were painted hot pink.

For immersion to work, you have to allow players to make assumptions based on their character's PoV which are valid in the shared fiction. But most GMs I've played with haven't gotten the hang of this yet. Nor have most systems.

Quote from: John Morrow;567477And the last D&D 3.5 game I played in (and perhaps the only true D&D game I've ever played) was a great experience largely in spite of the D&D rules, not because of them.

DOES NOT COMPUTE >_<

Quote from: John Morrow;567793When a player can both grab the key and run down the stairs in one move, it makes it difficult for the other players to add, interrupt, or stop something from happening.

No it doesn't.

Quote from: John Morrow;567793I have no interest in describing my own fumbles and would find doing so an unwelcome chore.

What about describing your own 'crits' like in RuneQuest 6?

Quote from: John Morrow;567793In my experience, most people are casual players and the relationship that many (of not most) casual players have with the rules are "I rolled a 15.  What happens?"

Not if they're excited and engaged with the situation. The trick is getting them there, but it's not exactly difficult most of the time.

Quote from: John Morrow;567793They wanted to describe what their character did, roll some dice to produce a number, and then have the GM tell them what happens.

The problem is that the game limits what they can describe as a valid action. And unless the group shares expectations on this, a new player will be less likely to act because of it.

Quote from: John Morrow;567802The real world isn't perfectly balanced to provide the sort of Karma that systems like Dogs in the Vineyard or even Fate using Fate Points to activate traits present.

Prove it

...then Benoist...

Quote from: Benoist;567463People advocating that storygames and role playing games are the same thing seem to have never felt an emotion from their character's POV or taken decisions from an immersive POV EVER.

I don't advocate that they're the same thing. I advocate that the definition's often wrong, and that things like Apocalypse World and Sorcerer are most definitely RPGs because they're far more immersive for me than any iteration of D&D or d20 ever was.

Quote from: Benoist;567464I'm just being clear that there is a fundamental difference between experiencing the game live from an immersive point of view and assuming a different personality and characterization thereof.

Well yes, but again neither were prioritized by the original founders.

Quote from: Benoist;567464People who played D&D at Lake Geneva didn't seem to give much of a shit about characterization. It does not follow they weren't immersing themselves in situation at all, or not experiencing the exploration live as it occured, as opposed to "building a narrative" or "collaborating in a story".

First, not prioritizing one =/= prioritizing the other. Second, immersing themselves in situation? That's sounds like moving goalposts because so far we have not been discussing situation immersion, but character immersion.

Now gleichman...

Quote from: gleichman;567530This concept goes a long ways towards explaining the OSR crowd's reaction to the 4E, they finally read the rules and judged them objectively for the first time in perhaps decades.

I think you may have something here.

Quote from: gleichman;567605To bring this back to Story-Games and their like, I'm of the following opinion.

*snip*

That...is the most eloquent and rational explanation for what The Forge did wrong that I have ever read.

Quote from: gleichman;567675Others (like John Morrow) have standards that I likely couldn't meet.

I feel the same way about you gleichman, as well as a lot of others here. At least you're clear. Others here seem downright self-contradictory at times.

Quote from: gleichman;567558a few weeks before I printed my first real book at Lulu- I realized that I had left out a critical rule. I did so because it was so ingrained that I forgot about it and never wrote it down.

That causes me to wonder how much else I left out.

I deal with this kind of thing all the time myself. And while I've gotten much better at the kind of self awareness required to avoid this kind of thing, having (preferably non-gaming) editors when designing a game is still extremely important.