I generally keep storygame moniker for those RPG-s and post-RPGs (I consider Fiasco or Microscope no more RPGs let's say) that arose from Forge brainstorms.

Gygax and Arneson and their design has nothing to do with SG, because SG is not answer to Old School but to Trad School (and it's extreme sometimes called as Nordic LARP RPG).
Ergo RPGs more centred around some narrative, rather than freeforms sandboxes of OS. Classic example - Call of Cthulhu and Vampire: the Masquarade.

Both arguably trad RPGs - theoretically as intended - story heavy. But the mechanics does not really support it. It's fully in hands of GM and adventure writers.
And this started to devolve quickly to more and more railroady scenarios and that was actual problem. Still is - since Storygame RPGs didn't really abolished Trad, and their heavy procedural nature cause new problems, as they were very counterintuitive to most players.

So ironically storygames are opposite to storyteller games.
In storyteller games it's up to GM to force players to heavily narrative game. In storygames it's up to game procedures to do it - if you want to engage with game, you need to use it - and therefore keep story within it's genre boundaries - like score - downtime structure of FiTD let's say or TV-episode format of Monster of the Week. And indeed it's usually way less narratively coherent compared to stories kept tight by GM's for better or worse, despite fact that roles results should cause narrative not simulationist results in fiction.

But as this thread shows - even within limits of such small boards - people have plenty, often totally opposite definition of storygame. And even different definitions of story itself (preplanned railroad versus genre support for instance). So I advice - in practice -  rather than meandering about very general takes - ask about specific game and see how it's served.

[double x]

Quote from: Chris24601 on October 15, 2022, 08:54:29 AM

Quote from: Wisithir on October 15, 2022, 01:01:13 AM
For me, the top "story-game" anti-roleplaying elements are:
- Players narrating beyond declaring character action
- Metamechanics for players altering the game world
- Complications at player discretion instead of GM adjudication

Yet both 13th Age and Savage Worlds allow players a degree of narration beyond their character action and/or spending metacurrency to declare alterations to the game world, and yet clearly fall on the RPG side of the divide. So the first two criteria are either wrong or need a function of degree to make distinctions between rpgs and storygames.

I'll add MSH to that list. A venerable game that predates any such notions of "storygaming". And as someone that runs Savage Worlds a *lot* I am a Sandbox GM to the bone and there is no *story* to any of my games. There are situations in-setting. The players interact with everything as they see fit.

I used to give some cache to the idea of Storygames... but now... I'm more of the notion that ANYONE that plays the system AS the game is missing the larger point of what TTRPGs could be.

QuoteI used to give some cache to the idea of Storygames... but now... I'm more of the notion that ANYONE that plays the system AS the game is missing the larger point of what TTRPGs could be.

Which is quite ironic - because Gygax and quite large chunk of OSR precisely declares that to play properly you need to first play it as game with drama and worldbuilding coming second, and they would condemn your way as storygaming (well not GG as he died before term was coined - but gamists OSR-ers.)

That doesn't surprise me that Wargamers from the proto-era of TTRPG's would adopt mechanics they used for years to abstract the vagueries of war for the purposes of gaming would adopt them to what would become TTRPG's and have the same mindset.

The "problem" is GM's are responsible for producing the world to the players, and without getting into any depth in making the mechanics service the setting. This takes time to learn to do well. So most of the time it's people bashing monsters, getting gold, leveling up etc. etc.

This is fine. But it does produce its own issues when 1) the engagement in the game is only that 2) this leads to people specializing in playing only that way 3) this breeds a competition for system-efficiency to feed both player expectations and pulls the verisimilitude from the setting assumptions and if the GM cares, forces them to compensate with House Rules. More often they just go with the flow.

"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.

That's about as abstract as I can generalize about it.

GM's that run D&D like a railroad, can be a Storygame. Some systems are overtly designed to be played this way. This is why unless the mechanics are designed to express an in-setting form of play, the GM will have to make allowances for not letting the system get in the way of the actual game.

Case in point - even in Savage Worlds, which I run a LOT of, there are sub-systems which exist simply to give players a means to DO things that are not necessarily "fun" in the regular task-resolution mechanics, that make it more involved (and presumably more fun) by abstracting those normal task resolution mechanics out, and letting the GM interpret those rolls more broadly. Players get an absolute say in what and how they go about it - the rolls dictate their level of success or failure. This allows a tremendous amount of streamlining play without anyone feeling they got gipped (gasp!) and it saves time and a good GM worth his salt can add as much drama and flair as they want.

Conversely the GM could also go pure granularity and go tick-tack round by round and have players do active skill checks. Yes, there are meta-mechanics in SW, but those meta-mechanics also serve other important functions in the game beyond just giving PC's a free win.

Most Storygame (pejorative) that people rightly shit-upon have ulterior needs and demands for their games that really are at the heart of the matter.

Huh, I saw that I posted here several times without actually addressing the question of the OP.  To correct that ...

The 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. 

I see this went well. A big problem with getting the definition of story-gaming right involves the method used in finishing the story, and I don't mean "Three Act" as that's broad enough to cover any TSR published adventure. I don't think meta-currencies are strictly necessary for any of the following distinctions. They're really are all story games, it's only that there's a few different ways (and one clear wrong way) to do it.


I'm not holding hard and fast to these terms, pick something out of a hat if you feel, within your heart of hearts, that you have something better. I'm only choosing words that are consistent with how a story is driven, not how a setting is handled or the rules/dice are fudged, just for consistency.

Scripted:
The story has to move towards a given conclusion, everything up to that point is negotiable, even player adjustments to the game-world (sometimes). I'm throwing most FATE adventures that might count here, for now (e.g. escape dinosaur planet, before the volcanic cataclysm erupts). Published adventures with a goal to defeat Strahd or Tiamat generally included. GMs have priority (NOT fiat) to adjudicate for the interests of the world is prioritized (NOT as absolute) for any of this to work (NOT as pre-planned). This is not an oxymoron, it's not uncommon for actors to give the director ideas on how to guide the show that they're working on. Because there's a magical, fluid property about scripts called editing!

Algorithmic:
The story has no set conclusion to move to, generally speaking, as any pure sandbox is good at. Players feel their way through the dark, with the game-world having elements that largely react to player choices--but players don't adjust this world, just those elements within it. AD&D, as-is, to the letter. It could be argued that a published campaign setting without the use of any published adventures can fit here. There's not GM fiat, but definitely management of the world while the players discover things and maybe lead to inspiration to something else.

Rationale:
The story is nigh-completely player driven, with the game-world being adjusted to ensure everything still makes sense. Honestly, give these guys a setting where the main action happens strictly in dream sequences, with harder rules for the waking world regarding social intrigue, and there might be some money in that. GMs are strictly along for the ride, if they're even necessary.

Fatalist:
The dreaded "rAiL-rOaD", but otherwise legitimately as:
The GM is the fatted tyrant with the Ark of the Covenant!
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here;
Resistance is futile;
You cannot escape what is coming;
Dance, magic dance;
[the full replicant's mournful speech prosaically given whilst dying in the rain at the hands of its misguided disciplinary officer/bounty hunter/all-around lonely guy];
fucking yada yada yada, "just write your novel already, but do it somewhere else" kind of bullshit.


You're not getting anywhere in this herpetic debate of morbid interest without some clearly defined lines approximating the above.

Also, a (non-exhaustive) list of what else constitutes rail-roading:

Random monster tables. Maybe the dice decide for you, but you've populated them with hyper-specific options. Why not a table of monster types? Or better yet, ask the players what they want to fight right before the combat begins?

Skill-focused game systems. Why are you being racist against my etheral skill set from my inter-planetary teleporting negative neutron star-jacker from an alternative-alternative-inverted-negative-alternative-dreamscape dimension? And Feats, also for the same reason.

Using dice at all. They're killing my player agency, everything should be settled by rock-paper-scissors. With my own shadow on the wall, none less.

Doritos? Mountain Dew? Begone with this staid filth, we shall have full five-course turkey dinners prior to--and after--every game.

Why should I play a hero? Why should I play a villain? Why should I play a farmer? Why not a platypus. No, not a magical, intelligent, cybernetic platypus. An ordinary, run-of the mill platypus, for whatever that proposal is worth. I will need a full supplement published for platypus mating season, for any planetary continent, just so that I can promptly throw it into the trash, because take THAT, Mr, "The Man", III, Esq. of Lombardy! I don't need no stinkin' RULES!

Having the party meet in the same place to do anything, including introductions, ever. The GM must respect my agency as a player to physically sit with at least seven other people at a real life table for a truly solipsistic experience, because fuck this tired cliché of muh adventurer tEaMwOrK. Also, each of us at the table has a right to play an entirely different system, with an entirely different rules set, with entirely different magic items available (even when that wouldn't make any sense to the story!)

If 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.

If the dice rolls are more important than the story, you are playing a computer game, regardless of the lack of silicon chips and LED screens.

That is, you surrender all of your mental sovereignty, diminishing your agency as a *human being* to systematic protocols and flow charts.

And here I thought you guys were libertarians.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 10, 2023, 08:57:19 PM
If the dice rolls are more important than the story, you are playing a computer game, regardless of the lack of silicon chips and LED screens.

Thus, you surrender all of your mental sovereignty, diminishing your agency as a human being to systematic thinking.

And here I thought you guys were libertarians.

Why roll dice, if the result doesn't matter?

Quote from: Jam The MF on February 10, 2023, 09:00:17 PM
Why roll dice, if the result doesn't matter?

Why does this game matter?

Is this craps, or D&D?

Jack Chick thinks its craps.

You could assert dice supremacy in a tournament setting, but then min-maxing is all that matters from the options presented.
At that point, you're only in any other game to "win" rather than accomplish.

However, you can win at Magic: the Gathering, that game is consistent with that view of gaming.
The cards' order, as they appear during play, does in fact matter, or that game becomes unintelligible.

If you replaced dice rolls with a well designed meta-currency, D&D would still be a coherent game.
You could use cards instead, even a 52 card, 4 suite deck as is traditional, though not strictly by picking from those cards at random.

Quote from: Jam The MF on February 10, 2023, 08:01:49 PM
If 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.

Eh, some dice rolls are more important to let lie than others.

If I'm rolling on a random events table to add some adventure because I'm feeling uninspired that night, it's not a Storygame because I decide one of the rolls is nonsense for the situation and pick something else or roll again. Ditto for random encounter or treasure tables.

Dice to resolve actions in an encounter though are a completely different matter. The system I actually use has players rolling for everything (i.e. monsters have a static attack number and the players roll for defense) so there is no fudging the outcomes in those situations.

Static attack, very cool idea

Quote from: Tasty_Wind on October 15, 2022, 12:01:58 AM
I'm just curious what y'all would consider a "story game" or "story gaming". There seems to be no small amount of contempt for the concept among those in the OSR scene, but what qualifies?

Coming in like four months late but "story gaming" is just improv for people who couldn't cut it in the local theatre group. I play real roleplaying games, not trying to be the best at acting.

Real example: I do some stuff with my buddies in Vegas. Won't get into what it was due to legalities. Years pass, we still talk about those shenanigans, the stories, per se. We didn't intend to be complete fools, it just happened that way.

"It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for."

After you do stuff, the story is what you talk about later.