Quote from: Itachi on February 11, 2023, 01:46:38 PM
Interestingly, I see that a lot of folks from the old storygaming/Forge crowd, or modern adherents of that culture, actually play and like OD&D/OSR. ...

In this sense, storygaming culture aligns pretty well with the OSR and their "rulings over rules" and "don't prep plots", etc. They differ in some details, but the overarching goal is the same: play a game where adventures emerge and are decided by players decisions, and not GM fiat or writer wannabe impulses.

I'll take this as a fair assessment, having never previously played a game worthy of this label.

Quote
I think their problem was with "traditional" gaming as seen in the 90s, which incentivized GMs to bring their pre-written stories to railroad players through.

Fully endorsed and agreeable sentiment, this is in fact also my conception of railroading, to anyone here that may be extremely interested to know that.

Anytime someone starts spouting off about railroading they instantly lose credibility. I have seen thousands of forum warriors play that card to distort and shutdown what the other person is trying to say.

Side note for ClusterFlusher, I'm not the biggest net-promoter of some of Geeky's posts, but your responses are over the top.

I will take that as a cue to simmer down, he can waste as much energy as he likes from here on out.

The Tick: I mean, okay, odds are it wasn't the real Santa. But how can you ever be sure?
Fledermaus: Here's a clue. If he jumps up and kicks you in the stomach, it's probably not Santa!

If I can do it using the AD&D 1E rules, it's probably not some newfangled idea trying to take down the hobby.

Mythic is just the 1E DMG Appendices in the generic tense.

Quote"Storygames" in the pejorative sense is the INVERSE of this. These are systems where the bait-and-switch is the mechanical demand where the Players play the mechanics in service to the GM's desire to tell a story that the players happen to inhabit. It's the same phenomenon as people that play D&D and cling to mechanical Sacred Cows regardless of what the settings in question demand, only in Storygames where the mechanics exist, they do so to serve the GM's needs over the players.

I have feeling for most of RPGsiters - storygames in Edwardsian sense are also pejorative even though they strictly forbade GM to make any narrative-plans for a party.
But could you give me some example - because the most classic Storytelling game I know is of course Vampire - and like most of this lot, it's actually trad game without any actual railroading mechanics that GM can us - whole storytelling aspect is promoted strictly by describing Game as Intended to GM, and advising him to run it that way.
But in storygames as genre, GMs power is often openly more limited.

QuoteThe distinction in my mind is in the area of control of the shared fiction.  In an RPG, the players control their characters and the GM controls everything else.  In a storygame, the players control things outside of their characters.

Blades in the Dark are commonly considered to belong to Storygame branch within RPGs and I played it, and honestly still it was almost only controlling own actions (even within flashback mechanics - you could fail). And I have feeling it's quite common for those games.

QuoteIf the story you're trying to tell, is more important than the results of the die rolls; then you are playing a story game, regardless of the ruleset being used.

No... that's just called fudging.
But on the other hand - yet again FiTD/PBTA games do not advice fudging and mechanic is balanced to make "yes, but..." most common result for roll.(though you roll less often).

QuoteRoleplaying: Emerging story you tell AFTER the events, there's no plot.

Storygaming: Bullshit term invented by morons who think themselves Auteurs.

Great so most storygames are not storygames at all, as there is no plot (in fact GMs are explictly forbidden).

A lack of plot is a tale, not a story.

I'm not opposed to tales--the problem with the common-use of the word "story" for this context has resulted in more distortions than clarifications, all for the benefit of political opportunism. Referring to these tales as "stories" just gives license to people who abuse the word for their novelty grifts, loyalty to which can be weaponized for political purposes. Conceding the need for this type of distinction is to not keep your feet after having stepped onto the road beyond your front door, and so we've been swept off to somewhere shite.

This problem and more exists within roleplaying debates because some have decided that using simple language in the service of efficiently spreading ideas must necessitate your waiving off any desire for conciseness in terminology.* It is erring on the side of caution, but it has obviously lead to a counter-productive overcompensation.

Consider the issue using the favoured analogue:

"I didn't catch a fish today, but the sun was warm and the birds sang. The end."

This apparently counts as a "story" even if nothing at all happened, which is not infrequent in a game.

To be fair, it'd be cherry picking to leave it at that. Instead, how about:

"I caught another fish today--same size as yesterday's, still got the touch. Also, the sun was warm and the birds sang. The end."

Downed another tribe of orcs? No shame in that, but since you were out to do that against whatever got in your way anyway and you fulfilled the objective of your routine, still not a story.


Now consider grand tales and tall tales:

"I caught a whopper of a fish today! He fought me like hell, but after I got him, my boat got stuck on a sandbar while getting back to shore... Then I had trouble lighting the grill after cleaning my day's catch, until another fisherman stopped by to help with extra kindling. We drank some beers and talked about football until the evening, and then we parted ways. Throughout the day, the birds sang and the sun shined down with steady warmth."

vs

"You should have seen the size of this sea dragon I nearly caught with Ol' Reliable here! 17 feet long, teeth like a school boy's ruler! I nearly lost her, but even I can figure out how to handle these hooks I made myself, the way my grandfather taught me to do with a coffee can fire and some bits of an old, though sturdy horseshoe. Never let anyone tell you that catgut doesn't make good fishing line! Anyway, I have no idea how this thing got into the Mississippi river, but she had eyes as black as the ocean depths, and I felt a chill in my soul as she leaned forward to tear me limb from limb! I'm a faster thinker though, and with my sturdy sea legs from my service in the navy, I smashed the bitch in the gills after rolling with the slam of her maw! She was so fearful of my boxing skills, she flipped back into the water, but I was unbalanced just enough that I managed to drop my beer in after her! She's lucky I didn't throw the bottle in her damned eyes! Now, the fisherman I met on shore later couldn't believe what I'd just gone through, and so he calls me a liar--until I showed him the scrapes on my shoulder, where a single scale dangled from my collarbone just beneath my jacket! Anyway, I didn't catch anything because of her, so he kindly offered some of his own catch for the day for the grill. We drank some beers and talked about football until the evening, and then we parted ways. I'm certain that the birds sang later when everything settled down, and the sun shone down, warm as ever."


In either case, there is no call to action, because you were already out to go fishing, and you only go home with a variable number of fish (or lack thereof) to do it again the next day. There's nothing extraordinary about that. The next day gone fishing is as any other. Even with the sea monster in the river that one day, your trips are only a catalogue of experiences sorted by how fast they made your heart race, and anything else that you can brag about them.

There isn't rising action towards a climax; you could draw a plain start-middle-end from any example above, but you' do so as an itinerary, not a plot. Plot requires character motivation to continue the sequence events towards a conclusion that may not, and can not go unanswered or unresolved. The tall-taler would have several choices as what to do with his river monster if he caught it, but if he did he'd get an article in the local news, and a page in the Guinness Book of Records; but as for bringing back the magic elixir upon his resurrection, he's more likely instead to sit at the local pubs and spin his yarn for the tourists, for as long as they're in his hometown, up until the next big thing happens somewhere else. And he'll still be in those same pubs, spinning the yarn even longer for his neighbours. Unless, of course, he does something with the fame and prize money for a pressing matter that does require the efforts of heroism. Even in pulp fiction, which does not entirely rely on the monomyth per se, the villain or dilemma still looms over the hero; he can't just let the "sea monster" swim away only to let it bother himself again or someone else later. He'd also be a boring pulp fiction hero if he didn't take away some key lesson from all the calamity.


Stories need great men doing great things, which impacts his world in great ways.

Fishermen going fishing is something any NPC can do, as long as he can stomach the activity of gutting the fish himself. That doesn't mean these tales are doomed to be boring. If you had a slow day, you can even lie about coming up empty handed simply for the pleasure of carousing.

---

* I don't mean "nuance," that concept has also been beaten beyond death because nuance is hardly concise, that's what makes it so easy to weaponize against the merely ignorant.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 12, 2023, 12:37:32 PM
A lack of plot is a tale, not a story.

I'm not opposed to tales--the problem with the common-use of the word "story" for this context has resulted in more distortions than clarifications, all for the benefit of political opportunism. Referring to these tales as "stories" just gives license to people who abuse the word for their novelty grifts, loyalty to which can be weaponized for political purposes. Conceding the need for this type of distinction is to not keep your feet after having stepped onto the road beyond your front door, and so we've been swept off to somewhere shite.

This problem and more exists within roleplaying debates because some have decided that using simple language in the service of efficiently spreading ideas must necessitate your waiving off any desire for conciseness in terminology.* It is erring on the side of caution, but it has obviously lead to a counter-productive overcompensation.

Consider the issue using the favoured analogue:

"I didn't catch a fish today, but the sun was warm and the birds sang. The end."

This apparently counts as a "story" even if nothing at all happened, which is not infrequent in a game.

To be fair, it'd be cherry picking to leave it at that. Instead, how about:

"I caught another fish today--same size as yesterday's, still got the touch. Also, the sun was warm and the birds sang. The end."

Downed another tribe of orcs? No shame in that, but since you were out to do that against whatever got in your way anyway and you fulfilled the objective of your routine, still not a story.


Now consider grand tales and tall tales:

"I caught a whopper of a fish today! He fought me like hell, but after I got him, my boat got stuck on a sandbar while getting back to shore... Then I had trouble lighting the grill after cleaning my day's catch, until another fisherman stopped by to help with extra kindling. We drank some beers and talked about football until the evening, and then we parted ways. Throughout the day, the birds sang and the sun shined down with steady warmth."

vs

"You should have seen the size of this sea dragon I nearly caught with Ol' Reliable here! 17 feet long, teeth like a school boy's ruler! I nearly lost her, but even I can figure out how to handle these hooks I made myself, the way my grandfather taught me to do with a coffee can fire and some bits of an old, though sturdy horseshoe. Never let anyone tell you that catgut doesn't make good fishing line! Anyway, I have no idea how this thing got into the Mississippi river, but she had eyes as black as the ocean depths, and I felt a chill in my soul as she leaned forward to tear me limb from limb! I'm a faster thinker though, and with my sturdy sea legs from my service in the navy, I smashed the bitch in the gills after rolling with the slam of her maw! She was so fearful of my boxing skills, she flipped back into the water, but I was unbalanced just enough that I managed to drop my beer in after her! She's lucky I didn't throw the bottle in her damned eyes! Now, the fisherman I met on shore later couldn't believe what I'd just gone through, and so he calls me a liar--until I showed him the scrapes on my shoulder, where a single scale dangled from my collarbone just beneath my jacket! Anyway, I didn't catch anything because of her, so he kindly offered some of his own catch for the day for the grill. We drank some beers and talked about football until the evening, and then we parted ways. I'm certain that the birds sang later when everything settled down, and the sun shone down, warm as ever."


In either case, there is no call to action, because you were already out to go fishing, and you only go home with a variable number of fish (or lack thereof) to do it again the next day. There's nothing extraordinary about that. The next day gone fishing is as any other. Even with the sea monster in the river that one day, your trips are only a catalogue of experiences sorted by how fast they made your heart race, and anything else that you can brag about them.

There isn't rising action towards a climax; you could draw a plain start-middle-end from any example above, but you' do so as an itinerary, not a plot. Plot requires character motivation to continue the sequence events towards a conclusion that may not, and can not go unanswered or unresolved. The tall-taler would have several choices as what to do with his river monster if he caught it, but if he did he'd get an article in the local news, and a page in the Guinness Book of Records; but as for bringing back the magic elixir upon his resurrection, he's more likely instead to sit at the local pubs and spin his yarn for the tourists, for as long as they're in his hometown, up until the next big thing happens somewhere else. And he'll still be in those same pubs, spinning the yarn even longer for his neighbours. Unless, of course, he does something with the fame and prize money for a pressing matter that does require the efforts of heroism. Even in pulp fiction, which does not entirely rely on the monomyth per se, the villain or dilemma still looms over the hero; he can't just let the "sea monster" swim away only to let it bother himself again or someone else later. He'd also be a boring pulp fiction hero if he didn't take away some key lesson from all the calamity.


Stories need great men doing great things, which impacts his world in great ways.

Fishermen going fishing is something any NPC can do, as long as he can stomach the activity of gutting the fish himself. That doesn't mean these tales are doomed to be boring. If you had a slow day, you can even lie about coming up empty handed simply for the pleasure of carousing.

---

* I don't mean "nuance," that concept has also been beaten beyond death because nuance is hardly concise, that's what makes it so easy to weaponize against the merely ignorant.

Did you run your post through an AI chatbot before posting?  Or is English not your first language?  Because your post requires almost more trouble than it is worth to follow.

QuoteThis problem and more exists within roleplaying debates because some have decided that using simple language in the service of efficiently spreading ideas must necessitate your waiving off any desire for conciseness in terminology.

Did you just seriously complain about people not using simple language in that monstrosity of a sentence?  Self awareness...

As to what little substance that I can whittle out of your post, you seem to be hung up on the definition of "story" as it pertains to story games.  Welcome to the party.  That's the primary issue that plagues all of these discussions.  At one level, some people want to define "story" so expansively that it will apply to the average grocery list.  Their opponents have a definition of story so narrow that it only applies to six published works in all of human history (hyperbole intended).  What is missed by most is that the definition of story doesn't determine the meaning of story game.  Story games are defined by the relationship between the mechanics and the story.  If the mechanics of the game are directed towards creating a shared narrative (as opposed to describing the results of choices and events), then you are playing a story game.  Despite the reductive logic of some of the folks here (who I respect, but disagree with), AD&D is NOT a story game.  Can a story come from an AD&D game session?  Absolutely!  But the mechanics of the game are not structured to care about whether the outcome of the game is a compelling narrative.  The combat rules don't differential between getting killed by a sewer rat in a random encounter and dying heroically defeating a dragon in the final battle against the evil overlord.  And THAT is the primary distinction between story games and rpgs.  The rules of an RPG are focused on adjudicating the results of the characters in a manner consistent with the realities of the fictional world they inhabit.  Storygames contain rules and expectations that transcend the simple adjudication of actions to extend to the purpose and outcome of the larger campaign/theme/story.  That's the dividing point.  Whether employed in the service of a "story" or "tale" is irrelevant...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 12, 2023, 01:09:28 PM
As to what little substance that I can whittle out of your post, you seem to be hung up on the definition of "story" as it pertains to story games.  Welcome to the party.  That's the primary issue that plagues all of these discussions. 
At one level, some people want to define "story" so expansively that it will apply to the average grocery list.  Their opponents have a definition of story so narrow that it only applies to six published works in all of human history (hyperbole intended). 
What is missed by most is that the definition of story doesn't determine the meaning of story game.
Story games are defined by the relationship between the mechanics and the story. 
If the mechanics of the game are directed towards creating a shared narrative (as opposed to describing the results of choices and events), then you are playing a story game.
The [AD&D] combat rules don't differential between getting killed by a sewer rat in a random encounter and dying heroically defeating a dragon in the final battle against the evil overlord.  And THAT is the primary distinction between story games and rpgs.
Despite the reductive logic of some of the folks here (who I respect, but disagree with), AD&D is NOT a story game. 
Can a story come from an AD&D game session?  Absolutely!  But the mechanics of the game are not structured to care about whether the outcome of the game is a compelling narrative. 
The rules of an RPG are focused on adjudicating the results of the characters in a manner consistent with the realities of the fictional world they inhabit.  Storygames contain rules and expectations that transcend the simple adjudication of actions to extend to the purpose and outcome of the larger campaign/theme/story.  That's the dividing point.  Whether employed in the service of a "story" or "tale" is irrelevant...

Granted, I have a bad habit of being unclear when I'm in a rush to say something.

I'm hung up on this definition in order to refute several stances at once it seems, especially because of the overlap that systems like PbtA can provide. That is clearly futile if the compound word used for the "new thing" is more than the sum of its parts. Trying to distinguish tales from stories with respect to sandbox roleplay gaming was fanning a different set of flames from the ones I wanted to try to put out.

From what you've explained, I never once thought of AD&D as a storygame also, and part of the frustration since I got here has been my inability to say plainly that I like the sandboxes that AD&D can build specifically because of their flexibility to generate story-plots or tales, so naturally they should be able play out any lightly-managed ones that have been minimally planned (e.g. "Defeat That Guy before X, figure it out from there"). I also don't consider it impossible for a roleplaying game to start as a sandbox for a few levels, have a full story-plot for another few levels, and then revert back to a sandbox for another few levels; or any combination thereof, including a complete lack of one of the two. I assumed that many grognards already did that, but perhaps this might have gotten lost in translation over the years. I'm not here to force anyone out of their sandboxes, I do in fact hate the GM micromanaged play that is railroading, and I'm not here to assert that AD&D is something that it's not. I've never had trouble with the level/level/level thing with games like AD&D, but those terms are contained within that game, and not spread across the gaming industry in a manner that got everyone digging trenches.

I thought that this was going to be way more straightforward than what happened, man was I wrong, and you guys didn't need all that trouble.

Q: What is story gaming?

A: Commie bullshit.

My definition of "story gaming" is one which relies principally on dissociated mechanics (apologies for referencing Justin Alexander again). In any case, in a story game the mechanic the players most interact with does not have an analogue which the character can understand: fate points, scenes, complication indices, narration theme. All of these are concerns that the player has outside of playing the role of the character.

Of course that every game has mechanisms which can be described as dissociated (like 3e+ "action economy") but in a story game the main game loop, as it were, has to be concerned mostly with these out-of-character resources.

Quote from: Wtrmute on February 12, 2023, 07:07:22 PM
My definition of "story gaming" is one which relies principally on dissociated mechanics (apologies for referencing Justin Alexander again). In any case, in a story game the mechanic the players most interact with does not have an analogue which the character can understand: fate points, scenes, complication indices, narration theme. All of these are concerns that the player has outside of playing the role of the character.

Of course that every game has mechanisms which can be described as dissociated (like 3e+ "action economy") but in a story game the main game loop, as it were, has to be concerned mostly with these out-of-character resources.

Because it's not about roleplaying, or even playing, it's about being "An Auteur!"

Quote from: Spinachcat on February 12, 2023, 06:44:53 PM
Q: What is story gaming?

A: Commie bullshit.

Greetings!

Damn right brother!

Story games are for Commies. Storygames need to be bathed in napalm!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Wrath of GodBut could you give me some example - because the most classic Storytelling game I know is of course Vampire - and like most of this lot, it's actually trad game without any actual railroading mechanics that GM can us - whole storytelling aspect is promoted strictly by describing Game as Intended to GM, and advising him to run it that way.

Just a sideline here, but I think it's fair to say that "Vampire the Masquerade" indeed had some GM advice in it's text that could be interpreted as, and incentivate GMs to, write their chronicles to push players through in linear fashion. I don't have the book with me right now but I remember reading it and getting this idea (same with Shadowrun, by the way, other game from the same era that we used to play).

I'll try to quote some parts from my copy later.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 12, 2023, 01:09:28 PM
As to what little substance that I can whittle out of your post, you seem to be hung up on the definition of "story" as it pertains to story games.  Welcome to the party.  That's the primary issue that plagues all of these discussions.  At one level, some people want to define "story" so expansively that it will apply to the average grocery list.  Their opponents have a definition of story so narrow that it only applies to six published works in all of human history (hyperbole intended).

Eh. I see more instances of people accusing others of pulling to extreme definitions than I see examples of people actually pulling to extreme definitions. Granted, I don't read every last post. I do have a garbage filter. And I may have missed some extremely low-grade commentary. But from where I sit, asserting the definitions of others are extreme, is a bigger problem than the definitions themselves.

But I also just don't think degrees of extreme has anything to do with the root of the problem. It looks a lot to me like people NEED story to mean one thing or another. Definitions are motivated rather than having any sort of basis in truth or understanding. And a definition pitched right down the middle can be just as guilty of this.

QuoteStory games are defined by the relationship between the mechanics and the story.  If the mechanics of the game are directed towards creating a shared narrative (as opposed to describing the results of choices and events), then you are playing a story game.

I agree on the first half of that. It's what I've been saying the entire time. The second half, not so much. Describing the results of choices and events is itself a method of creating a shared narrative. These are not opposed ideas. It's possible to walk and chew gum at the same time.

QuoteDespite the reductive logic of some of the folks here (who I respect, but disagree with), AD&D is NOT a story game.

I must have missed a lot of posts. Because I haven't seen that claim make it through my garbage filter at all. And you're saying there are folks plural making that claim? And that these are people you respect, not just garbage posts? And you're no longer doing the hyperbole thing, right?

Just to make sure I'm being clear, when someone carves out a definition of storygames and I say AD&D fits the definition, I'm not saying AD&D is a storygame. I'm saying there's something wrong with the definition, and AD&D is the receipts. It works as a counter-example precisely because it's unambiguously not a storygame. No one in their right mind would choose this of all games as the one to try to sneak past the goal posts.

QuoteCan a story come from an AD&D game session?  Absolutely!  But the mechanics of the game are not structured to care about whether the outcome of the game is a compelling narrative.

Nuance noted. But am I supposed to believe it's all coincidence then? I mean it's not like it's an altogether uncommon experience for a group to walk away from the table after an AD&D session having experienced a narrative. And they were clearly compelled by something that kept them there for 4 hours. Why would we assume it was the math homework and not the very story they were praising? I mean it really just comes down to your assessment that the mechanics were not structured to do exactly that. How often would something like this have to happen before we're forced to reassess?

I've pointed out that Mythic is a lot like the 1E DMG appendices. But I can also clearly and succinctly point out the differences, and they are differences that go directly to the relationship between the mechanics and story. Just like you said. And I can make that distinction without ever having to imply AD&D isn't designed to make stories. Without ever needing to assert a theory that goes against decades of experiences people had playing D&D. And without having to dial back the explicit mention in the 1E DMG Foreword that lists "an opportunity to watch a story unfold" as one of the benefits.

Quote from: Itachi on February 11, 2023, 01:46:38 PM
Interestingly, I see that a lot of folks from the old storygaming/Forge crowd, or modern adherents of that culture, actually play and like OD&D/OSR. I think their problem was with "traditional" gaming as seen in the 90s, which incentivized GMs to bring their pre-written stories to railroad players through.

In this sense, storygaming culture aligns pretty well with the OSR and their "rulings over rules" and "don't prep plots", etc. They differ in some details, but the overarching goal is the same: play a game where adventures emerge and are decided by players decisions, and not GM fiat or writer wannabe impulses.

I consider this a "developmental stage". Where the kids of early 80's D&D grew up to do their own games, and got douchie and experimental, turned 20 and thought they "figured it out".

Then came the Forge Wars... and many of them realized that gas they were huffing was coming out of their own asses and surreptitiously gave up their disgusting habit and retreated back to a more logical pasture. Or they realized that what they *really* want to do is write novels... then they realize how crappy their ideas and skills really are. But that's another story (/rimshot).

Many of their former compatriots, figured out how to liquify their fart-gas and started mainlining it...

And well... Corporations figured out a little bit of that liquified dung-aerosol, measured in tiny doses can be a nice additive to their profit margins. It's almost like their consumers are blissfully unaware of it. /shrug