Damn, what an unintended shitstorm.

I think it's safe to say that no rule system can be categorized objectively as "getting in the way of roleplaying".  That's been proven here I think.  Everyone is going to accept a certain level and certain type of metagaming and that differs from group to group.

A few things...

I think the GM does have to be the ultimate arbiter to make the rules work.  Seanchai, twofishes and Gnomeworks probably aren't going to have too much fun at Jeff's, Ian's or Kyle's table, but that's just fine.  Any GM that tries to cater to too wide a spectrum of gamers is going to end up making everyone miserable.  You game with people that share your views about role-playing, or can at least deal with them, or you walk.  Jeff made that ruling with Gnomeworks at the table, Gnome would probably end up walking away.  That's a good thing. No gaming is always better then bad gaming.

As far as the storygaming isn't roleplaying argument, that all stems from the word "roleplaying" encompassing so broad a definition as to be meaningless concerning a discussion of game theory.  We need new definitions.

Storygaming seems to be a pretty good title for the style of roleplaying where immersion and simulationism take a back seat to the metagame of the story.

Roleplaying is a pretty good fit for immersive/simulationism and describes it perfectly, but if you define immersive simulationism as roleplaying then, basically, Pundit is right.  Storygaming is not roleplaying.  The fact that every type of roleplaying wants to claim the original name as theirs means we need a new name for immersive roleplaying.  Simulationist carries too much Forge baggage, Immersion is going to cause a shitstorm with the LARP/Jeep crowd, so I don't know what the hell is going to take the place of roleplaying.

Then you have the other end of the metagaming spectrum where immersion and simulationism take a back seat to the mechanics of the game itself.  With Necromunda and Mordheim GW used the moniker "narrative wargame" to describe a wargame with persistence, individual advancement and rules for times between skirmishes.  Calling any type of RPG a wargame though causes a shitstorm, Gamist brings up the Forge-hate, etc...

Personally I would be ok with using Immersive Roleplaying as the Immersive/Simulationist genre, Narrative Roleplaying as the narrative metagame genre, and Tactical Roleplaying as the mechanical metagame genre.  Of course any RPG is going to include all three elements to some degree, but some games could easily be described as an IRPG, NRPG or TRPG.

One thing is sure, the game that goes around twofishes table which I'm sure his players enjoy is going to be much different then the game around Pundit's table, which I'm sure his players enjoy.  As long we use the same term for both, we're gonna always get stuck in these "yeah but that's not roleplaying" arguments.

Oh yeah, as far as the grenade goes.  Since jumping on the grenade is basically taking an area-of-effect weapon and turning it into a shaped charge, from what I remember of d20 SW Revised, I would have taken the "same square" damage, added it to 2-4 times the "everyone else" damage (depending on how hard the surface was the character was laying down on) and then applied it directly to wound points, bypassing vitality.  Mathematically possible to survive, but on average...chunky salsa, just like you would think.  However, I learned from my very first Shadowrun game some 20 years ago, to always have detailed rules for grenades and make damn sure the players know what those rules are going in.

Quote from: CRKrueger;360881One thing is sure, the game that goes around twofishes table which I'm sure his players enjoy is going to be much different then the game around Pundit's table, which I'm sure his players enjoy.

Except what bugs me about these distinctions is that I suspect that what's actually going on around the table is really not that different at all. In both cases it probably looks like a group of players, each personally in charge of a fictional character and describing the actions of that fictional character in a shared collaborative fiction. In most cases on both sides of the fence, there is one player who doesn't control a single character, but arbitrates the way the shared fictional setting responds to the characters of the other players. On most cases, on both sides, crucial decision points are met by rolling dice. Really, the only differences lie in player priorities and precisely when and why dice are rolled and how the results are adjudicated.

When you get right down to it, we're a bunch of nerds debating about the finer points of a pretty marginal hobby. I can totally understand a desire for careful language when discussing the finer points of gameplay, but going off the handle, calling people swine, or making allusions to Maoist communism (a la "the little red forgey handbook") is just retarded! Really.

Quote from: Seanchai;360860I agree that the GM can certainly do that and many do. However, assuming by default that GMs as a whole will - particularly in a GM as God climate - is off base. Often times, such as the grenade example or one I previously posted about how fast bears can move, they don't give a damn what players want or think is "realistic."

Seanchai

Show us again on this doll where the naughty GM touched you, Seanchai.

Quote from: two_fishes;360827Except that he seems to dismiss or ignore that story creation is often a very high priority for players.

None of the Players that I have met outside of the internet consider story creation to be the highest priority.

Quote from: two_fishes;360827what i am suggesting is that there is sometimes a disconnect between the way that rules are implemented and what the players are actually trying to achieve with their play. I believe this is actually to the point of the OP--where do rules interefere with role-playing?

And we are back to square one...

Quote from: two_fishes;360884Except what bugs me about these distinctions is that I suspect that what's actually going on around the table is really not that different at all. In both cases it probably looks like a group of players, each personally in charge of a fictional character and describing the actions of that fictional character in a shared collaborative fiction. In most cases on both sides of the fence, there is one player who doesn't control a single character, but arbitrates the way the shared fictional setting responds to the characters of the other players. On most cases, on both sides, crucial decision points are met by rolling dice. Really, the only differences lie in player priorities and precisely when and why dice are rolled and how the results are adjudicated.

When you get right down to it, we're a bunch of nerds debating about the finer points of a pretty marginal hobby. I can totally understand a desire for careful language when discussing the finer points of gameplay, but going off the handle, calling people swine, or making allusions to Maoist communism (a la "the little red forgey handbook") is just retarded! Really.

Agreed, for someone outside the hobby it can seem like a ridiculous technicality, but for people within the hobby, playing Dogs in the Vineyard is different then playing 4e, and we can't call them all the same thing and not end up bumping dickheads in every thread.

Quote from: jgants;360811Exactly.

If you want to correctly correlate movies to RPGs, use ensemble action movies.

The Untouchables, Red Dawn, The Dirty Dozen, The Wild Bunch, Aliens, A Bridge Too Far, Saving Private Ryan, etc.  Ensemble action movies are full of protagonist deaths.

An excellent point. I'd expand a bit on it by saying: If you were going to compare rpgs to any other medium, it'd be tv series. Each has its "season" where a particular bunch of events and ideas are dealt with, and we hope resolved - if this resolution and the process are interesting enough, we will afterwards say, "that was a story." But often it's not, it wandered around too aimlessly.

And each has, as you say, an ensemble cast where some members might die along the way. Spooks is an excellent example of this.

It's telling that the proponents of "let's make rpgs into storytelling" and "GMs are oppressive!" make the comparison not with ensemble movies but with lone hero movies. They're not comfortable with being part of an ensemble, they want to be the star. Which explains a lot, really.

Quote from: bouletI think fudging isn't seen as a huge issue around here. It doesn't have to be. But it would be fair to say that "it gets in the way" for a few players (whatever political branch of the hobby they align with). So if a game system manages to minimize the need for fudging (and there might be many more reasons for fudging that I didn't explore) maybe it manages to not "get in the way" of roleplaying?

In other words, "if only we had the One True Perfect System, everything would be okay." Which is all a bit Rodney King "why can't we all just get along?" It's true but it misses the point: we're human. We're imperfect and creative.

Because we're human and imperfect no system will ever cover every situation that comes up at a game table, the system will always be imperfect in some way. Because we're human and creative players will always come up with something the rules never thought of.

I come to this from the perspective of living in a Commonwealth country under common law. Until a couple of years ago my state's legislation didn't even have a definition of "murder" on the statute books. We just had common law - the series of judgments made by magistrates and higher courts over the years, combined with the judgment of the current magistrate, based on their personal experience and common sense.

We managed fine for 150 or so years without any thorough definition of "murder" - which is a pretty glaring omission from the "rules" of our society, I'd say. I mean we've got more rigorous definitions in our fucking parking laws. But we did alright nonetheless.

The common law system doesn't expect to ever reach a One True Perfect set of laws, it expects to always have to muddle along. This means that mistakes are made; but the system of appeals and so on usually sorts that out, and in general the system gets things more or less right. The system assumes humans are imperfect and does its best to make up for that.

So that's how I see a GM. They don't expect the rules to be complete and to cover every situation coming before them. They make judgments based on precedent - how they or some other GM ruled on similar situations in the past - experience and common sense. Individual decisions may be imperfect, but in general they get it right.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;360937It's telling that the proponents of "let's make rpgs into storytelling" and "GMs are oppressive!" make the comparison not with ensemble movies but with lone hero movies. They're not comfortable with being part of an ensemble, they want to be the star. Which explains a lot, really.

Ouch, that's a pretty rough statement and worthy of a thousand-post flamewar all by itself.  However, I think you're probably right. It comes down to player motivation.  

Generally speaking, I think Immersive roleplayers prefer to mold a setting through the actions of a character, whereas Narrative roleplayers want to mold a setting through the actions of the player.

Quote from: jeff37923;360889None of the Players that I have met outside of the internet consider story creation to be the highest priority.

My Exalted and Gurps GMs both think story is the highest. They get irritable when dice get in the way of their ideas, and when they GM they do a lot of railroading, though the Exalted guy is better at hiding it.

Quote from: Cranewings;360998My Exalted and Gurps GMs both think story is the highest. They get irritable when dice get in the way of their ideas, and when they GM they do a lot of railroading, though the Exalted guy is better at hiding it.

Do you enjoy their games?

!i!

Quote from: Seanchai;360860I agree that the GM can certainly do that and many do. However, assuming by default that GMs as a whole will - particularly in a GM as God climate - is off base. Often times, such as the grenade example or one I previously posted about how fast bears can move, they don't give a damn what players want or think is "realistic."

Seanchai

In my (not inconsiderable) experience GM's that routinely fail to deliver what players want find themselves (quickly) without players.

Note that this may not look like a collaborative approach to GMing -- it's not unusual for groups to prefer a GM who makes quick, decisive calls they may or may not agree with to keep the game moving over one who spends a lot of time reaching consensus.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;360937An excellent point. I'd expand a bit on it by saying: If you were going to compare rpgs to any other medium, it'd be tv series. Each has its "season" where a particular bunch of events and ideas are dealt with, and we hope resolved - if this resolution and the process are interesting enough, we will afterwards say, "that was a story." But often it's not, it wandered around too aimlessly.

And each has, as you say, an ensemble cast where some members might die along the way. Spooks is an excellent example of this.

I've got to say, in those instances where I do compare RPGs to other media - and I try not to, because it's a really bad habit and no comparison is ever going to be completely accurate (there'll always be some techniques and ideas in one medium which just don't translate well into the other) - I use the TV series analogy. TV shows with ensemble casts - especially casts who investigate/pursue particular agendas together - are an absolute goldmine for game concepts. Star Trek, Firefly, Buffy, even The Wire or The Shield. (I'm of the firm opinion that "cop drama" is an ideal genre for modern-day campaigns with no supernatural or science-fictional or otherwise "weird" elements - I'm convinced that it's a niche is just waiting to explode, just like the zombie genre in RPGs exploded after All Flesh Must Be Eaten came out.)

It's not a perfect analogy of course. In the ensemble there's usually one or two "leads", and they are vastly less likely to die than the supporting characters (unless it's a season finale, in which case anything goes). But I think the analogy is good because of two reasons:

a) The ensemble cast, as has been pointed out.

b) The weekly nature of most TV shows. Most RPG campaigns (let's put one-shots aside, especially since in my experience players are much more happy about sudden PC death in one-shots) occur in an episodic format, with people meeting up at regular (or perhaps wildly irregular, depending on people's schedules) intervals, and many of the issues GMs need to think about when coming up with material for that format are issues with TV scriptwriters also have to think about. What is this week's episode going to be about? Are we going to end on a cliffhanger or wrap the episode's story up in one go? How much longer do we have until the end of the "season"? Once the "season" is over, are we getting renewed, or does it look like that's going to be the final end? Have we addressed this character's background feature yet? What's going on with this loose plot thread?

It's still a bit more of a "narrative" way of thinking I like. But it's at least one a  bit more grounded in the realities of how people actually experience RPG campaigns than analogies to movies.

Quote from: Seanchai;360860I agree that the GM can certainly do that and many do. However, assuming by default that GMs as a whole will - particularly in a GM as God climate - is off base. Often times, such as the grenade example or one I previously posted about how fast bears can move, they don't give a damn what players want or think is "realistic."

Seanchai

I've only encountered one GM in all the years I've been playing RPGs that I couldn't agree with. Not off-base at all from my perspective. Plus, I agree with the idea that jumping on a grenade should result in a casualty by default. The reasons for this are many and have already been expressed.

Quote from: CRkruegerPersonally I would be ok with using Immersive Roleplaying as the Immersive/Simulationist genre, Narrative Roleplaying as the narrative metagame genre, and Tactical Roleplaying as the mechanical metagame genre. Of course any RPG is going to include all three elements to some degree, but some games could easily be described as an IRPG, NRPG or TRPG.

We are going to MBTI the whole roleplay world?  Fine.  I'm in.
This does get to the meat of it, as we should all be happy when any game system does well.
It DOES also necessitate a reworking of the term 'Roleplay', however.  Becuase, as I've maundered over before, the term predates our gaming system and actually has meaning outside our little worlds.  That is one of the things that sticks in my craw; that this whole hobby was called an RPG in the first place for a reason.  It's changed, and the definitions need to be changed with it.  

Quote from: Cranewings

Quote from: Originally Posted by jeff37923None of the Players that I have met outside of the internet consider story creation to be the highest priority.

My Exalted and Gurps GMs both think story is the highest. They get irritable when dice get in the way of their ideas, and when they GM they do a lot of railroading, though the Exalted guy is better at hiding it.

For a very rules-heavy game, my groups looks at the story they are creating as an extremely high priority as well, coupling it with the roleplay as one event.  Players risk characters and sometimes lose them over this regularly.  Contrary to Crane, my game sems to involve an enjoyment of the dice taking the game slightly different places then the players expect, but still, the game-narrative is incredibly important.
 

Quote from: CRkruegerGenerally speaking, I think Immersive roleplayers prefer to mold a setting through the actions of a character, whereas Narrative roleplayers want to mold a setting through the actions of the player.

I'm grappling with this.  Player-first vs character-first makes sense.  But I don't think they want to mold the setting so much as the story.  The setting is the backdrop.

Quote from: LordVreeg;361078Players risk characters and sometimes lose them over this regularly.  Contrary to Crane, my game sems to involve an enjoyment of the dice taking the game slightly different places then the players expect, but still, the game-narrative is incredibly important.

This has been my experience too. Dice have always been part of the "story" in my games. What makes a game interesting, IMO, is that the player has an idea of where she wants the narrative to go and sometimes the dice enables this, sometimes it doesn't.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: -E.;361012In my (not inconsiderable) experience GM's that routinely fail to deliver what players want find themselves (quickly) without players.

One would hope, but there are other factors such as friendship and availability of space and other GMs that come into play. From my personal experience and what I've read on the Internet, it unusually isn't that quick if it happens at all...

Seanchai