Quote from: yosemitemike on April 02, 2024, 07:14:21 PMThey insist on insinuating themselves into everything they can, co-opting it and making it all about themselves.

You left out the part where they kick out the people who made the stuff in the first place after claiming they were "gate-keeping". No matter how much you hate marxists, it's not enough.

Quote from: Omega on April 03, 2024, 03:37:41 PM

Quote from: THE_Leopold on April 03, 2024, 10:01:25 AM
Vampire the Masquerade and all it's subgenre's are still around and thriving.

Storygaming comes back to 2nd Edition AD&D where all you had to do was pickup a copy of Dungeon magazine or a module around that time and realize you are just reading someone's novel that decided to put RPG stats in.

What's Old Is New Again.

Nice try. But all the WoD RPGs are not storygames. And neither were the Dungeon modules.

Try again please.

You are telling me the walls of texts in early Dungeon magazines do not qualify for "Storygaming" where the author literally spends pages gorging the reader on prose and expecting you to follow his process to a T? War of the Lance ring a bell?

Quote from: Mishihari on April 03, 2024, 03:54:26 AM
@Zeno & Omega, thanks for the explanation

Storygames actually sound fun to me.  I'm a storyteller by nature - what DM isn't? - and have enjoyed the few occasions I've done it cooperatively with others.  Giving it some structure with rules as a game sound intriguing.

Such games though are very different than RPGs and trying to combine them sounds like a disaster.

Narrative games can work quite well with the right crowd.  If you try to run them for OSR types, you are probably going to have a bad time.  They are an entirely different sort of rpg with different goals.  I don't agree with the storygames vs rpgs dichotomy.  I would consider them different subsets of rpgs in general except for the odd outlier like Alice is Missing where they left out the g in rpg.  A lot of storygames are made to do a pretty specific sort of thing.  They work pretty well to do that thing but start falling part if you want to do anything else.  Some, like The Mountain Witch, are made to do one specific scenario.  I'm not sure what a game that tried to combine OSR style sandbox gameplay with a narrative system would even look like but I doubt it would work on any level for anyone.     

Quote from: Brad on April 03, 2024, 05:28:58 PM

Quote from: yosemitemike on April 02, 2024, 07:14:21 PMThey insist on insinuating themselves into everything they can, co-opting it and making it all about themselves.

You left out the part where they kick out the people who made the stuff in the first place after claiming they were "gate-keeping". No matter how much you hate marxists, it's not enough.

I would include that as part of the process of co-opting something.  They insinuate themselves into a space, set themselves as gatekeepers in the name of fighting largely invented gatekeeping and then try to force out anyone who doesn't get with their program.   

Quote from: THE_Leopold on April 03, 2024, 06:31:31 PM

Quote from: Omega on April 03, 2024, 03:37:41 PM

Quote from: THE_Leopold on April 03, 2024, 10:01:25 AM
Vampire the Masquerade and all it's subgenre's are still around and thriving.

Storygaming comes back to 2nd Edition AD&D where all you had to do was pickup a copy of Dungeon magazine or a module around that time and realize you are just reading someone's novel that decided to put RPG stats in.

What's Old Is New Again.

Nice try. But all the WoD RPGs are not storygames. And neither were the Dungeon modules.

Try again please.

You are telling me the walls of texts in early Dungeon magazines do not qualify for "Storygaming" where the author literally spends pages gorging the reader on prose and expecting you to follow his process to a T? War of the Lance ring a bell?

Seeing as how the 1e Dragonlance modules included rules to fudge any "untimely" deaths (PC and NPC) that would screw up events in future modules, it's probably got a bit of precursor storygame DNA (sorta like a dinosaur is the precursor of a bird), but is more accurately a set of heavily railroaded modules.

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 03, 2024, 07:27:42 PM

Quote from: THE_Leopold on April 03, 2024, 06:31:31 PM
You are telling me the walls of texts in early Dungeon magazines do not qualify for "Storygaming" where the author literally spends pages gorging the reader on prose and expecting you to follow his process to a T? War of the Lance ring a bell?

Seeing as how the 1e Dragonlance modules included rules to fudge any "untimely" deaths (PC and NPC) that would screw up events in future modules, it's probably got a bit of precursor storygame DNA (sorta like a dinosaur is the precursor of a bird), but is more accurately a set of heavily railroaded modules.

Most of the story games from The Forge and its descendants were a reaction against railroaded modules. They were by designers who hated how players were railroaded, and instead wanted to give players GM-like power to control the story so that railroading was impossible. That's not to everyone's taste, but it's a very different thing than railroading.

The cluster of games that most embraced railroading were the 1990s trend of cinematic action games like Deadlands and Torg. There was a period in the 1990s when modules - including many D&D modules - were often written with an explicit sequence of acts and scenes.

Quote from: RPGPundit on April 03, 2024, 04:36:32 PM
Storygamers are also the degenerates who forced "safety tools" into the hobby. Almost everything bad in our hobby today first appeared in the hobby in the Storygames movement.

I never made that connection before. I never understood safety tools outside of a convention setting but they make some sense in the story game world when everyone is throwing their own whims and strange ideas into the adventure instead of having an all powerful Game Master controlling the nonsense and keeping things on track.

Quote from: yosemitemike on April 03, 2024, 07:01:06 PM
Narrative games can work quite well with the right crowd.  If you try to run them for OSR types, you are probably going to have a bad time.  They are an entirely different sort of rpg with different goals.

This!

The irony is that when you get into highly mechanical games, you see "roll playing" more and more, because narrative "games" lack the mechanics to give players much of anything else to focus on.  Not saying people don't role-play in D&D/RoleMaster/etc., but we've all seen (and probably done) roll-playing in those games from time to time.  Hard to do that with something like, say, Nobilis.

Quote from: THE_Leopold on April 03, 2024, 06:31:31 PM
You are telling me the walls of texts in early Dungeon magazines do not qualify for "Storygaming" where the author literally spends pages gorging the reader on prose and expecting you to follow his process to a T? War of the Lance ring a bell?

To paraphrase Pierre Berton, there is no difference between OSR shitbeards and storygaming swine, and the surest way to demonstrate this is to point this out to an OSR shitbeard.

The OSR shitbeards can hand-wring about storygamers "taking over the hobby" but the overwhelming majority of RPG players play with their friends, the same friends they've been playing with for years, playing the same way they've been playing for years regardless of what the rules in the book say.  It's only the terminally online who get het up about this stuff.  I could host the average "storygamer" con in my bathroom.

The en suite.  Not the big one.

Quote from: RPGPundit on April 03, 2024, 04:36:32 PM
Storygamers are also the degenerates who forced "safety tools" into the hobby. Almost everything bad in our hobby today first appeared in the hobby in the Storygames movement.

It sure as hell feels like it sometimes.

Also note that they love to give themselves power and all too often abuse it as DM and player. They seem to gravitate to railroading "for the fiction!"

I've had a running battle with these fucks on MUCKs where they always fucking push to make the places they infest in character only and lobby to ban or even get rid of any OOC places and mechanics. And 50% of the time they end up abusing being in character or even force themselves on others.

Quote from: THE_Leopold on April 03, 2024, 06:31:31 PM

Quote from: Omega on April 03, 2024, 03:37:41 PM

Quote from: THE_Leopold on April 03, 2024, 10:01:25 AM
Vampire the Masquerade and all it's subgenre's are still around and thriving.

Storygaming comes back to 2nd Edition AD&D where all you had to do was pickup a copy of Dungeon magazine or a module around that time and realize you are just reading someone's novel that decided to put RPG stats in.

What's Old Is New Again.

Nice try. But all the WoD RPGs are not storygames. And neither were the Dungeon modules.

Try again please.

You are telling me the walls of texts in early Dungeon magazines do not qualify for "Storygaming" where the author literally spends pages gorging the reader on prose and expecting you to follow his process to a T? War of the Lance ring a bell?

You failed at trying again.

WW claimed alot of things that were blatantly false. The WoD rules are no more storygame than D&D is. Blocks of prose do not a storygame make.

Try again please.

Quote from: jhkim on April 03, 2024, 09:12:15 PM
Most of the story games from The Forge and its descendants were a reaction against railroaded modules. They were by designers who hated how players were railroaded, and instead wanted to give players GM-like power to control the story so that railroading was impossible. That's not to everyone's taste, but it's a very different thing than railroading.

The cluster of games that most embraced railroading were the 1990s trend of cinematic action games like Deadlands and Torg. There was a period in the 1990s when modules - including many D&D modules - were often written with an explicit sequence of acts and scenes.

Sorry to burst your bubble but Torg was not even remotely railroad or storygame. It had the card element but that was it and it had a defined system of what you could and could not do. I know. I was there for the playtests and GMed it alot.

Quote from: yosemitemike on April 03, 2024, 07:01:06 PM
A lot of storygames are made to do a pretty specific sort of thing.  They work pretty well to do that thing but start falling part if you want to do anything else. 

In other words, a design failure (see "living world" or ask Pundit about it). A game that is good for only a single thing cannot be considered good in any way.

Specialization is good, overspecialization like this is universally bad.

Quote from: Omega on April 04, 2024, 11:03:47 PM

Quote from: jhkim on April 03, 2024, 09:12:15 PM
Most of the story games from The Forge and its descendants were a reaction against railroaded modules. They were by designers who hated how players were railroaded, and instead wanted to give players GM-like power to control the story so that railroading was impossible. That's not to everyone's taste, but it's a very different thing than railroading.

The cluster of games that most embraced railroading were the 1990s trend of cinematic action games like Deadlands and Torg. There was a period in the 1990s when modules - including many D&D modules - were often written with an explicit sequence of acts and scenes.

Sorry to burst your bubble but Torg was not even remotely railroad or storygame. It had the card element but that was it and it had a defined system of what you could and could not do. I know. I was there for the playtests and GMed it alot.

Did you run any of the published modules? I don't have them all, but the ones I have are divided into literally "Act One", "The Major Beat", "Scene 1", "Scene 2", "Scene 3", and so forth. There is a long storyline, and every scene is laid out for it.

I don't mean to single out Torg, because the vast majority of published modules are pretty linear - but some games embrace that more thoroughly than others, and I thought the scope of explicit acts and scenes in structure were more blatant than some other games.

Quote from: Omega on April 04, 2024, 11:00:58 PM
WW claimed alot of things that were blatantly false. The WoD rules are no more storygame than D&D is. Blocks of prose do not a storygame make.

I distinctly remember the first time I played Vampire: The Masquerade. Our characters were trying to plan out breaking into a place, and I asked one of the other players "How long does your invisibility last for?" and the player answered "It lasts for one scene." Then I responded with, "No, I was asking in-character how long does your invisibility last." Then there was a long pause and the player didn't answer.

I agree that Vampire: The Masquerade is rules-wise largely a traditional RPG, aside from some scene mechanics. However, it's also true that a traditional RPG with an all-powerful GM can easily be used to railroad players.

2000s-era story games were not the source of railroading. There was tons of valid complaints about railroading in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

Quote from: jhkim on April 05, 2024, 02:35:58 AM
Did you run any of the published modules? I don't have them all, but the ones I have are divided into literally "Act One", "The Major Beat", "Scene 1", "Scene 2", "Scene 3", and so forth. There is a long storyline, and every scene is laid out for it.

I don't mean to single out Torg, because the vast majority of published modules are pretty linear - but some games embrace that more thoroughly than others, and I thought the scope of explicit acts and scenes in structure were more blatant than some other games.

And yet the modules still play as normal modules. You people seriously need to stop taking things at face value. Just because WW called their games Storytelling does not automatically make them so. And just because Torg modules used Act, or Scene does not make it a storygame or railroad. They are somewhat linear. But not lockdown like the rare few that are pretty railroads.