I'm going to give three simplified categories here:

1) Games that use traditional RPG mechanics, and also use fixed pre-canned story (either from a module or one that the GM created).  i.e. Dragonlance modules, Deadlands modules, or really any of a huge number of such - as well as railroading GMs.  

2) Games that use traditional RPG mechanics, but where the plot isn't fixed but rather created on the fly from interaction at the table.  

3) Games that use non-traditional mechanics that give players control over stuff other than their characters' actions, and where the plot isn't fixed but rather created on the fly from interaction at the table.  

While you can draw some historical connections, #1 and #3 are not at all the same.  Story gamers in general hate railroading, and the last decade of story game designs in play are nothing like railroaded adventures.  It's dumb to take arguments about #1 and pin that on #3.  

Generally speaking, while they vary in their usage, story games are generally quite clear in conveying what they are to potential players.  They'll use different labels - some use the label "RPG" but qualify it as "story-oriented" or "hippyish" or "GMless"; while others like Fiasco and Polaris abandon the label RPG altogether.  However, they make clear what they are and emphasize how they are different from traditional RPGs.  

I understand that some people blame their problems with 4th edition D&D on small-press story games, but I think that's bullshit.  Story game designers have tried to promote their products, and some of them have bad-mouthed traditional RPGs.  I dislike the latter and have spoken against it - along with plenty of other story game players and designers.  However, there's no conspiracy or mind control going on here.  If some people start playing story games more, it's because that's what they like playing.  It's a tiny fraction of the traditional RPG set.

Quote from: LordVreeg;565846No and bullshit, Aos.
 You are willing to talk about the amount of words and pages written about one thing versus another, yet decry the conversation about what the words mean???

I am willing to concede (and this is not much of a consession, admittedly, for those who read my few posts) that modules and canned shit leads people astray...hell, I don;t use them and haven't for decades...a company's modules are often attached to their own particular 'onewayism'.  
(mark that one for later convo)

But not understanding the importance of congruency of meaning and language is pure idiocy.  I don't ever say shared narrative is bad.  I just rail againt it the same whay I do with fools who conflate corrolation with causation. The problem you are so willing to relagate to disingenuity is 'merely' meaning and definition.

I like your stuff, and expect better.

I read this, but at some point I think you're assuming I'm responding to your initial textwall. I'm not. I've long been on record as saying I pass right over the walls of text. I don't read them- even when they are about me, as has once or twice been the case. Some might say that in this I am at fault, I disagree. the filibuster has long been a tactic used by both "sides" in this debate. I'm not going to bend a knee to it. This post actually is a bit longer than what I think is polite. Feel free to take umbrage with this attitude if you like or accuse me of being intellectually lazy. Imo, either would be perfectly reasonable, if mistaken. If it's any consolation, I wont be breaking down anyone's posts and responding line by line either, because that sucks too.

Other than that, I stand by the two thrust of the posts to which you respond-
1. Storygames are not a problem, if for no other reason than they have no real lasting impact, unless, of course, we accept the idea that 4e is/was a success, which would be terribly impolite to our grave dancing friends, if nothing else. Furthermore, even if such were the case, the seed of the problem was planted at TSR, not the Forge. The problem with D&D is, as it always been, D&D. Additionally, the language the forge is a dead language, we can take all the words back now if we have the balls to do it, or we can curl up like frightened puppies when someone uses the word story.

2. Modules are bad.

Some other points

Perhaps though, the overall thrust of my argument has been lost somewhere along the way it is as follows: this conversation is old, tired, repetitive, much ado about nothing and, in the end, less than the sum of its parts and beneath its participants, less one.

I'm, at best a mayfly in conversations such as this, and it's only a matter of time before I allow my boredom with the topic to sweep me away and leave the whole thing to those who actually think it's an important avenue of discourse.


I don't even know if I'm trolling any more.

Thank you for the complement; sincerely sorry to disappoint with my wrongthink.

P.S. When did I decry the conversation about the meaning of words?

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?

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.

Nope. Nor am I going to make the insane argument that storygames are RPGs. Or the insane argument that storygames are NOT RPGs.

It's like asking "are full-color books reference books, or not?" It's two different sets that intersect, but are not identical. I've played -- and like -- InSpectres, and I'd say it's both a storygame and an RPG. Some storygames are less RPG-like.

This has to be the strangest argument I have ever seen on an RPG message board. Is this really the great storygame debate? Whether or not we do it according to Gygax law? lol WTF?

Somebody please give me some perspective because as it is, I am astonished at how much of a mountain has been made out of a mole hill.

If what I am reading is that modules, and adventure paths are making people run the game incorrectly for how Gary intended us to run all RPGs, then I have to ask, why...in all the essays and interviews...did Gary never talk about this?

I have never read anything from Gygax that said, modules are fucking everything up, and story paths are killing the heart and soul of the game.

"The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience." ~Gary Gygax
That sure sounds like the opposite of what is being argued as Gary's method.

I can see the damage caused by the hipster bullshit about this being some art form, and overshadowing everything with pretension and self-importance, but to say that things as simple as Adventure Paths and Plot Points are "not the way it was intended" is just idiotic rpg-luddism.

I don't run my games like Gygax, because I am not him and I don't want to be him. I run my games with my own personal touch, and if somebody else things I am not playing an RPG because of that...they can go fuck themselves. Who cares what they think?

I was really thinking this debate was something else entirely.
IMO this has been the truest thing said so far, from my nearly completely noobish observation.

Quote from: noisms;565689The way some RPGers organise themselves is sort of reminiscent of those left-wing revolutionary cliques who are at the absolute extreme of human political thought, and in a tiny minority to boot, and yet manage to divide themselves into even smaller groups who despise each other more than anything else. Like those Jewish revolutionaries in The Life of Brian.

I hope there is something else to discuss here than why we hate people who play the game in the wrong way.

Beyond respecting the fact he played a major role in the hobby's formation, I don't give a fuck about EGG or anything he said or intended.

I think modules suck and should be avoided but don't really have an actual problem with them or people who use them, because I assume none of those people are tailoring their games to suit my fuckwit bias.

As a younger man, I bought modules all the time, took the maps, NPCs and whatever else I needed and made my own story with them. Sure, we played a couple of them, but my players never stayed on the rails long enough to care.

But now, I buy them because I don't have time to make all that shit up even if I am stealing half of it from other sources. Past that, I don't give a shit whether the story is good, bad or indifferent because I am a not only a good GM, I am an experienced GM and I make it fucking entertaining regardless.  
 
Whether my games have too much narrative to be considered an RPG is of so little importance to me, I find the whole debate mind boggling. Who gives a fuck?  
 
Do green haired douche bags who paint their nails black annoy me? Yes. Do hipster idiots who claim to be nerds their whole life and are trying to get me to understand why Mouse Guard is the best shit since air bug the hell out of me? Yes. Do 4-ons who talk about 4E like it's the best game ever designed and is perfection make me giggle? You bet.  
 
Do I give a shit about them? No, because I don't hang around game stores, and since the internet has pretty much put all game stores out of business I don't have to deal with those people pretty much ever. And I can't for the life of me see how any of it is negatively affecting the hobby as a whole, especially since the who OSR revolution seems to be exactly  the cyclical reaction to that sort of thing one would expect.  
 
People talk about about the hobby dying and this and that...well that;s bullshit. What is dying is the notion that somebody could get rich selling these games.

There's more game systems now than there was in the 80s! The community is linked up and sharing ideas in ways we never dreamed possible in the 80s. The hobby may be smaller now, but it's better than ever. There's more than enough room for different styles of gaming.

Quote from: estar;565833For me the clincher is this photo

This post might be of interest to you.

Quote from: estar;565834I can't wait to see what you do with the rough draft I sent you.

I promised an honest appraisal, and that's exactly what you shall get my friend!

Quote from: Pariah74;565875If what I am reading is that modules, and adventure paths are making people run the game incorrectly for how Gary intended us to run all RPGs, then I have to ask, why...in all the essays and interviews...did Gary never talk about this?

You should actually read the 1e DMG one day. It's a good read.

Quote from: Pariah74;565875This has to be the strangest argument I have ever seen on an RPG message board. Is this really the great storygame debate? Whether or not we do it according to Gygax law? lol WTF?

Somebody please give me some perspective because as it is, I am astonished at how much of a mountain has been made out of a mole hill.

If what I am reading is that modules, and adventure paths are making people run the game incorrectly for how Gary intended us to run all RPGs, then I have to ask, why...in all the essays and interviews...did Gary never talk about this?

I have never read anything from Gygax that said, modules are fucking everything up, and story paths are killing the heart and soul of the game.

I did not claim Gary said or wrote anything on the issue. My comments are based  on observations and a handful of writings on how the earliest campaigns were played. For example First Fantasy Campaign published by Judges Guild.

It written in response to various posts about how most campaigns are played and explains why I thought it was that way. I don't consider any particular style of play wrong or incorrect.  I  have my preferences and I am enthusiastic about them. But they are not the right or only way to play. They have limitations as well as advantages.

If there something I am becoming hard line about, it is about the reality check of actual play.  When it comes to disscussions like this, when the past is brought up I look to what the folks actually did, how they played their campaigns. Especially with Gygax as so much of his writings are obviously driven by commercial interest and the pressures he was experiencing at the time.

W WGGD?

Jg

The fact that some adventures created for a RPG are actually railroads following a set plot simply means some module authors suck.  

It does not mean that narrative metagaming from the point of view of a director or author somehow becomes roleplaying because...Dragonlance!  That's just silly.  

Silva if you don't want to be bothered, don't care enough, or are too ignorant, lazy or drunk to read Lord Vreeg's text, fine.  Don't project your intellectual shortcomings or ulterior motives on him however, when he (as always) is trying to honestly and completely explain his position.

When did Americans become afraid to read?  Aren't some you guys trying for advanced degrees?  They do still make you read for those, right?

I'd like to know where is it that people got the notion that storygames are scripted.

Silva is right in that, in brute numbers, this sort of scripting (railroading) shows up far more often in trad RPG modules and campaigns. Yes, these modules and campaigns suck, but that doesn't make the problem any less real. I don't think silva is being disingenuous or dishonest, I think theRPGsite has just gone into wagon-circling death-to-Forge mode as it is wont to do whenever someone uses "story" and "RPG" on the same sentence.

As a side note, I think LordVreeg's post is an eloquent defense of the merits of traditional roleplaying, merits which I suspect a good portion of the Forge-aligned designers often fail to comprehend; and as far as personal tastes go, I stand with him. However this has little bearing on what Aos/Gib and silva already said -- "storygame" does not equal "railroad" and vice versa. Railroading is much more of a problem in the trad RPG community, than in the much-maligned storygaming medium.

If 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.

Quote from: The Butcher;565924I'd like to know where is it that people got the notion that storygames are scripted.

Occam's razor. It comes from the conflation of "story games" with "storytelling games," especially those of the 90s school of game design. It's just a symptom of a lack of knowledge about the difference between the two, or carelessness in posting about one and/or the other and not being clear about which one you are talking about in any particular instance.

Quote from: The Butcher;565924I'd like to know where is it that people got the notion that storygames are scripted.

Silva is right in that, in brute numbers, this sort of scripting (railroading) shows up far more often in trad RPG modules and campaigns. Yes, these modules and campaigns suck, but that doesn't make the problem any less real. I don't think silva is being disingenuous or dishonest, I think theRPGsite has just gone into wagon-circling death-to-Forge mode as it is wont to do whenever someone uses "story" and "RPG" on the same sentence.

If 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 events towards predetermined outcomes.

Someone please be so kind as to correct me if I am wrong, preferrably with links or actual page quotes.

Who said Storygames are scripted?  I've said before (I think backing up Peregrine or Skywalker) that railroads are indeed anathema to the Storygame crowd, moreso even then in RPGs, which only makes perfect sense, since there's no point in playing a game about shared narration if the narration is not shared.  That's kind of like playing basketball without a net.

That, however, has very little do with the core differences in experience between an RPG and Storygame.  The whole railroad issue is a deliberate sidetrack, whoever tries to use it, because it is completely beside the point.

Roleplaying vs. Storygaming is Role vs. Story, Character vs. Author.  Playing as a character rather then someone controlling one.  It's that simple.  All the other bullshit is smoke and mirrors.