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?
Any game with a narrative is a Narrative or "Story Game". The games that market themselves as such can be better described as "Player Driver Rail-road, spotlight focus, Meta Narrative Control Games" or more simply put "Meta-Rollplay Games". As in these games you can do basically anything so long as you roll for it. Want to jump 3 stories? Alright you can, you may not actively jump 3 stories but there's a ladder right there and you can climb up and instantly catch up to the person you where chasing. You need to convince Bad Man Bill to become good? And you failed your roll? You can now spend a currency to reroll, get more dice, automatically succeed or argue with the GM for more dice. Also, the session is about whoever has the best stars for the current objective or is loudest at the table. Have fun.
Personally, I don't think all of these games are bad. I however think the vast majority are lazy. The idea of the One Page RPG or the Lite Narrative Game are all lazy. They are concepts that force the players or GM (normally both) to do all the heavy lifting as they try to be as "relax" as possible. Another thing I find is a trend amongst these games is how you basically have a 50/50 chance to succeed. Everything else is an outright failure or results in you not really getting what you want but making more problems for yourself. Which artificially prolongs the game. I played a game of Apocalypse World and our simple job of getting some lumber from a friendly if rival gang went from something that should have been a few rolls into a whole spiraling problem because we kept getting consequences.
Defenders of these games will cry "this isn't how it's meant to be played" when it's literally written this way. The GM can Ethier follow the rules or just throw them out at which point you may as well be playing something else. So myself, I have alot of beef with these games as they pretend to be new, flashy and accessible. But in reality they are incredibly flawed, require more structure and far more trust between players and the GM then your average game since the games encourage you to debate with the GM and go "fast and loose" with the almost none existent rules.
Tl;dr Narrative games rarely of ever actually provide mechanics that support stories. But instead provide mechanics that let you alter a story in anyway shape or form. Narrative games are deeply flawed and encourage bad behavior at the table or are lazily written putting more work on the players and GM.
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
In story gaming there is no rules, but rule of cool. If a player wants to do something, they'll do it, they'll always be a success and they won't face failure. In story gaming, entire sessions can be had with only a few social rolls while listening to walls of Grade D fan fiction from the players and DM concurrently. There is no stakes in story gaming. You will never know the rush of saving your party member's character you've gamed with for the last couple of months from being ate by a ghoul pack because the players never go down. The concept of a map with a grid for movement is foreign because everything is "theater of the mind", which makes movement and tactics almost useless. The game is no more a game, its more of a player validation scheme.
I dealt with a DM that pulled that crap once, absolutely horrible time was had by all at the table. Three hours, no combat, ridiculously corny lines and then at the last 15 minutes of time a weak combat. No concept of the three pillars or how to balance them.
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.
Story Game: Microscope. It has a framework of basic rules (types of scenes and taking turns) and you make up everything. The rules are about how to play (meta rules) and do not touch the game world.
Non-Story Game: AD&D 1e. I can't think of any meta-currencies or other rules aimed at making a good story. It's just a game with a story in the background or an emergent story that bubbles up from play. The rules touch the game world.
So the spectrum is:
Microscope <------------------------------------------------------------------> AD&D 1e
You get closer to Microscope when you have rules aimed at telling a good story. You get closer to AD&D 1e when you have rules aimed at modeling some version of reality. Of course, in many games you'll have a mix. So you also have to look at intent.
So my definition would be: A game aimed at telling a story with supporting rules that are independent of game world (meta rules).
There is a continuum between story and roleplaying games, but the defining difference is definitely the meta aspect. Any given game is pushed more in the direction of being a story-game, based on the extent to which the rules permit the player to control things outside of their character's actions.
Philisophically, a roleplaying game places it's focus on immersion. The goal is to let each player vicariously live the life of their PC, so the rules for players are all about what actions the PC can physically conduct within the game world. They usually eschew structured narratives in favor of randomness, under the logic that it represents a more believable simulation of a person's life. Story games focus instead on narrative, so they usually give the players rules which further that, such as the ability to influence the setting, retcon the continuity, control the NPCs, or break the standing game rules for narrative purposes (also known as the "rule of cool"). Basically an RPG mechanic is one that furthers the simulation of the PC within the game world, and a story-gaming mechanic is one that facilitates a structured or exciting narrative.
A lot of RPGs these days include what I would consider to be story-gaming mechanics, particularly fate/fortune points, but also rewards based on fulfilling character motivations or narrative goals, and even arguably D&D's inspiration mechanic. Moreover, the story-gaming mindset has been gaining ground in the RPG world. There's a million and one exceptions, but over the last 10 years or so, there's been a general trend away from random outcomes and sandbox play, and towards plotted campaigns and TV-show style story arcs. Arguably the trend shift in RPG design is explicable by designers responding to the shift in what players expect from a game. That's probably the part that most OSR players react so strongly against.
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
Out of curiosity, does that include describing character action? As in: if the player says "Throndor snarls with fury, as he leaps down the stairs and hacks at the goblin with his battleaxe", does that move it into story-gaming territory, or does he have to just say "I move and attack".
In practice, there are a wide range of games that might or might not be story games, depending on one's criteria. On The Forge and at the Story Games forum, Burning Wheel was considered a story game in common with the others. It is a mechanically involved dice-pool game with lifepaths, but it also has mechanics for PC goals and motivations in experience.
Other questionable cases: the Amber Diceless RPG is one of Pundit's favorites, and has a lot of GM power, but also encourages player rivalry and competition. There are cinematic games like Toon, Torg, and Cinematic Unisystem (the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG and kin) - which give players metagame points to spend but also have a lot of focus on dice-rolling action. White Wolf's Storyteller is similar.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 15, 2022, 12:12:01 PM
Story Game: Microscope. It has a framework of basic rules (types of scenes and taking turns) and you make up everything. The rules are about how to play (meta rules) and do not touch the game world.
Non-Story Game: AD&D 1e. I can't think of any meta-currencies or other rules aimed at making a good story. It's just a game with a story in the background or an emergent story that bubbles up from play. The rules touch the game world.
So the spectrum is:
Microscope <------------------------------------------------------------------> AD&D 1e
You get closer to Microscope when you have rules aimed at telling a good story. You get closer to AD&D 1e when you have rules aimed at modeling some version of reality. Of course, in many games you'll have a mix. So you also have to look at intent.
So my definition would be: A game aimed at telling a story with supporting rules that are independent of game world (meta rules).
A lot of AD&D rules are aimed at making for a structured game rather than representing a fictional reality, and sometimes at emulating the genre when the in-game reality isn't defined. This is even more clear when you get to games like Hero System and GURPS, where game balance is an explicit construct. This goes further in hybrid games like Mechwarrior or the Rune RPG, where there are some explicitly wargame rules outside of the fictional reality.
I think original Traveller, RuneQuest, and Harnmaster are probably the closest to pure reality-modeling rules. AD&D mixes in some game-balance rules and some genre rules. The zero-to-hero leveling doesn't work as reality modeling, for example. Gygax was explicit about how some rules were for game balance in his editorials in Dragon magazine.
Quote from: ForgottenF on October 15, 2022, 02:10:36 PM
A lot of RPGs these days include what I would consider to be story-gaming mechanics, particularly fate/fortune points, but also rewards based on fulfilling character motivations or narrative goals, and even arguably D&D's inspiration mechanic.
Meta-currency has been part of rpgs fairly early in their development. DC Heroes and Marvel Superheroes rpg's come to mind. The reason I point this out is because story games like to claim they have created something "new". and a use of meta-currency seems to be at the top of the list. Just bullshit. Story games mangle the thoroughly tested concepts of roleplaying games and should drop the pretension of being a role-playing game.
Quote from: Chris24601 on October 15, 2022, 08:54:29 AM
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.
Bennies, Hero Points, Willpower, or Destiny Points allow for rerolls, buffs, damage mitigation, retroactive provision of a mundane item, or a cinematic survival. However, anything more than a reroll or buff/soak requires GM approval. Players request alteration of reality or only alter probability before the result is adjudicated and GM remains the final arbiter instead of the player getting to unilaterally declare the outcome.
They are story-game elements but they do not break GM fiat or the narrate-declare-adjudicate cycle.
Quote from: ForgottenF on October 15, 2022, 02:18:55 PM
Out of curiosity, does that include describing character action? As in: if the player says "Throndor snarls with fury, as he leaps down the stairs and hacks at the goblin with his battleaxe", does that move it into story-gaming territory, or does he have to just say "I move and attack".
Is there an implied "I want to do the following?" Does it occur because the player declared it, or will there be an acrobatics and/or attack roll before the action is resolved? If the player narrates that "the goblin was terrified and Throndor took its head off with one swing of the axe" it a story-game "scene." Conversely, if the GM decides by fiat or dice roll whether the goblin was terrified and and how badly it was axed, before narrating the outcome, then it was a pen and paper RPG "scene."
I can definitely see where some folks are coming from with respect to player narration. If a player can narrate how something goes within a scene as a dungeon master would, outside of just using their specific and well-defined abilities, even if it has an in-world and in-mechanics explanation, like luck magic, I'd call that story gaming. Especially if it uses something like FATE points to invoke aspects or the like, which tie into tropes and narrative factors the player has some degree of domain over either with or without the expenditure of resources. Story gaming, in the sense that the story is up for grabs and narrative manipulations which may or may not have in-world backing are part of the game itself for all participants. Likewise, I don't see resource management as intrinsically tied to story gaming, but that being said I feel metanarrative currency is almost always a signifier that you're playing a story game.
Though I suppose by this narrower definition, some of the games that use the "Storytelling System" (albeit not all, or even most, and definitely not gamelines like the Mage ones) wouldn't actually be story games. Because abilities do specific things, there are defined dice pools and specified possessed skill and attribute levels generating them, specific rules for resolving actions including combat, and even powers in certain gamelines tend to not be narrative in nature unless they are for beings played by the DM. That lack of designation kinda seems a bit off to me, but I guess it could still work.
All said, though, I guess I'd also be inclined to consider games with a strong focus on social interactions and an emphasis on storytelling as falling under the same designation. (Likely including such systems.) Though this isn't to say such games can't have solid skill challenges, and I guess even workable combat provided it is primarily the purpose of said things to drive and be driven by an evolving narrative. Basically, if the main focus is the story being told and interactions between characters as opposed to more concretely winning or losing encounters of whatever nature.
Though I'd also put into that category the rather separate setup of a game with the primary focus being the DM telling a fancy story rather than the players playing a game with mechanics that can derail the narrative. I guess rationally extending this principle, if the DM fudges dice rolls and uses quantum monsters and the like to railroad players or "protect the integrity of the narrative" over the integrity of the rules and player agency, that might count too.
So for me personally the term can have at least three separate subcategories. Unsurprising, I suppose, given that this is kinda just a question of subjective definitions. Still, if I had to stake my claim for what I and folks in my gaming circle consider it, this would probably be it. Hard to give an overarching connection between the three, though, other than that they seem to prioritize storytelling or something. It's really nebulous how associations like this are made, and an argument could probably just as easily be made that all TTRPG games are story games, or even that all games more generally are story games, because stuff happens and that's the basis of a narrative, quality be damned.
Story gaming before it was co-opted could mean a few different things. Usually a more story oriented style of gameplay over mechanics. Or more often mechanics that facilitated storytelling elements in some way.
Later it came to be used to describe some oracle systems like Mythic and FU. One or more tables to roll on and then use that as a springboard for ideas. Works perfectly for solo and DM-less RPGing.
Then along came the cultists and all that went straight to hell and then started tunnelling down from there. Now they were preaching that the DM was bad and must be chained and shackled, if not totally done away with. Rules were increasingly preached as bad and wrong, except for the ones that turned the DM into little more than a vend bot. And so on ad nausium.
Real story gaming, rather than some lunatics hallucinations, is perfectly fine and has been a part of D&D from probably the get-go in various small ways. World-in-Motion gameplay being a good example of how they can mesh perfectly together. TSR experimented with some formats along the way with this or that module even. Early Dragonlance for example had elements of this with things like timed events that were a variation on world-in-motion and other story gaming tools.
Hilariously enough the one RPG that extolled itself as a storytelling game, was really just a bog standard RPG that focused alot on social Role-playing and various courtly intrigues. Stuff that had been around long before White Wolf.
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?
Not trying to be a jerk, but if you ask ten people to define something in their own words, you'll get ten different answers. Then, inevitable, someone's criteria gets raked because it touches on some gaming system that fits the criteria but not the wider definition. Like what's already happened in this thread.
The only question that should matter is: Is the game fun to play?
Who really cares what defines something as "story game" or "RPG" or any other arbitrary title you want to give to sitting around a table with friends and playing make-believe? The point of the hobby is about having fun, even if the ruleset *is* objectively lazy or oversimplified.
Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?
Not trying to be a jerk, but if you ask ten people to define something in their own words, you'll get ten different answers. Then, inevitable, someone's criteria gets raked because it touches on some gaming system that fits the criteria but not the wider definition. Like what's already happened in this thread.
The only question that should matter is: Is the game fun to play?
Who really cares what defines something as "story game" or "RPG" or any other arbitrary title you want to give to sitting around a table with friends and playing make-believe? The point of the hobby is about having fun, even if the ruleset *is* objectively lazy or oversimplified.
I do. Because as a GM, you're in the position of trying to craft a fun experience. Which leads to the question, "What is fun?".
Story gaming for me is generally co-op, weird concepts like writing letters, or GMless games, etc.
I don't see them as actual roleplaying games but as some weird off-shoot. That I wouldn't touch with asbestos gloves. But each to their own of course.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on October 16, 2022, 06:26:17 AM
I do. Because as a GM, you're in the position of trying to craft a fun experience. Which leads to the question, "What is fun?".
It's a greenish liquid that comes in small vials. And all you have to do is pour some into your game. We often either forget to use it or use it too sparingly. Until a much wiser GM comes along and tells us the one thing we never would have thought to do. Add more of it to the game.
Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?
Not trying to be a jerk, but if you ask ten people to define something in their own words, you'll get ten different answers. Then, inevitable, someone's criteria gets raked because it touches on some gaming system that fits the criteria but not the wider definition. Like what's already happened in this thread.
The only question that should matter is: Is the game fun to play?
Who really cares what defines something as "story game" or "RPG" or any other arbitrary title you want to give to sitting around a table with friends and playing make-believe? The point of the hobby is about having fun, even if the ruleset *is* objectively lazy or oversimplified.
This so much. We've had fun with a game many would call a "story game".
But then, I inadvertently once used the term "story game" when trying to explain what an RPG is. And it kinda makes sense. Not sure why some use the term for games with greater player influence on the setting.
Would WEG Star Wars be prototypical story gaming with the force point mechanic?
Quote from: Trond on October 16, 2022, 09:58:44 AM
This so much. We've had fun with a game many would call a "story game".
But then, I inadvertently once used the term "story game" when trying to explain what an RPG is. And it kinda makes sense. Not sure why some use the term for games with greater player influence on the setting.
Because you almost have to.
There's a dirty little secret, but it's really a universal truth. You can tell someone what to do, or you can tell them what you want done. You don't get to have both. Because the first challenge you hit, where the results the method produces does not match the results you want, you do have to decide which it's going to be. Are you going to stay the course no matter the outcome? Or are you going to abandon the method and do whatever you have to to get the result.
Since games are more or less a set of rules for play, there's a strong tendency (by which I mean is almost exclusively the case) that they provide methods. But not the outcome. Take chess, for example. I could play it as a means of keeping my mind sharp. Or I might play it because I believe it teaches greater lessons about strategy. Or I could play as a way of staying connected with an old friend who also enjoys the game. Or I could even play competitively. What the aim or goal or purpose of playing the game is up to me.
Now do the same with RPGs. Some people use it for socializing. Some to play as a character different than themselves. Some to play a character like themselves but in a different time and far away place. Some just like coming up with backstories. Some like world building. Some just want to kill things and take their stuff. And you know what? Some people use it as a means of making stories.
If you to say the aim of the game is collaborative creation of these stories, there's more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak. I would make a strong case that AD&D helps facilitate better stories than most of the games ostensibly designed to do so. So if you want to say this type of game is something different from games like AD&D, the difference has to be in the method. And not anything involving the aim. Not, "Well, these games are for creating stories, and D&D is for simulating a fantasy world." It would be news to a lot of people playing D&D a long, long time that it actually isn't good for making stories and it's only for creating some kind of virtual reality.
Quote from: Wisithir on October 15, 2022, 10:35:42 PM
They are story-game elements but they do not break GM fiat or the narrate-declare-adjudicate cycle.
Ah, yes, GM Fiat... that mythical construct of GM as absolute arbiter of the campaign to whom all players must bow down or leave that only truly exists in those rare places with enough players desperate enough for games that a GM can actually get a full table while running exactly what they wish.
Conversely, my experience is that GM's who don't work with the players when setting up the campaign and at least partially cater to their desires and go along with a consensus of player desire is quickly a GM without players and only dreams of a campaign while GM's more willing to be flexible have no problems filling seats at their tables.
What I see time after time when people drop a narrative metacurrency token down, even if the GM technically has final say, in practice they're really only judging whether or not the narrative addition of the player (and how important the addition is to that player) is disruptive enough to the enjoyment of the rest of the table to be worth refusing it lest they lose a player over it they won't easily be able to replace.
This is why, personally, I only run games where any metacurrency-like elements expressly do NOT have any "affect narrative" uses, just game mechanical ones like extra actions or re-rolls or fueling specific powers/actions. But if you do run one where metacurrency can affect narrative elements, then it's in a GM's interest to either learn the "Yes, but..." and similar techniques of managing such abilities or just outright state such uses are 100% off the table at the start of the campaign if they don't want to have generally unhappy players.
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?
A campaign where the focus is on the group collaborating on creating the narrative of a story using the rules of a game. As opposed to tabletop roleplaying where the focus on the players interacting with a setting as their characters with their actions adjudicated by a human referee often using the rules of a game as an aide to make this easier.
Because it is a matter of focus not system, this leads to endless debates over "what is a storygame". You could easily have the exact same debate over whether a campaign is about wargaming or tabletop roleplaying. Which is also about what is focused on.
In general a defining characteristic of storygame is metagame mechanics that the participants are expected to use to further the narrative of the story being created. The mechanics are metagaming because they represent things that the participants can do, not what their characters can do.
This opposed to mechanics for tabletop roleplaying which focus on what the player can do AS their characters. There are however aides that are metagaming mechanics. Some to help the referee manage the setting while the campaign unfolds. Others to help players to help describe what happens to their characters between adventures.
In RPGs players and the referee may have plans, but they are like plans we make in real life. There is no guarantee that events will unfold in accordance to these plans. In constrast in storygames, there is a overall narrative structure that is being fleshed out by using the game.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 16, 2022, 10:36:31 AM
If you to say the aim of the game is collaborative creation of these stories, there's more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak. I would make a strong case that AD&D helps facilitate better stories than most of the games ostensibly designed to do so. So if you want to say this type of game is something different from games like AD&D, the difference has to be in the method. And not anything involving the aim. Not, "Well, these games are for creating stories, and D&D is for simulating a fantasy world." It would be news to a lot of people playing D&D a long, long time that it actually isn't good for making stories and it's only for creating some kind of virtual reality.
Eh, well, broadly speaking there are two kinds of stories: 1) The 3-act structure and 2) Rambling shaggy-dog stories.
Some games are designed to elicit stories in 3-act structure. Let's call them story games. They provide incentives to generate introduction, confrontation, and resolution. Sometimes this advice enters into non-story game territory, such as advice that every scene (or every room of a dungeon) in a traditional RPG should pose a narrative question to the characters or that we should track torches with usage dice.
Some games are great at generating rambling "stories" that would make terrible movies. This kind of story only makes narrative sense to the players. Perhaps the story is honed over time in player memory. A long sandbox/dungeon crawl is remembered as a tighter more coherent story (the messy bits and loose ends being forgotten). You see this when players reminiscence about previous events in a traditional campaign. "Remember when we investigated the missing cattle, found this suspicious old guy, discovered he was a werewolf, and slayed him?" Yeah, okay, but what about the two-session distraction at the inn and the unnecessary detour into the abandoned quarry that only served to get so-and-so killed? Those scenes get left on the cutting room floor.
Comparing games/rules to decide a "better story" only makes sense if we know what a story is and how it's told. Story game are designed and intended to tell a story at the table with a minimum extraneous matter. Listening to someone re-tell a story-game story could actually be tolerable. Listening to a traditional RPG player re-tell a campaign would be mind-numbingly dull unless it's culled down to the essentials.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on October 16, 2022, 06:26:17 AM
Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?
I do. Because as a GM, you're in the position of trying to craft a fun experience. Which leads to the question, "What is fun?".
Fun is a subjective experience, not something narrowly defined by a title. I'm not particularly fond of romcom films, finding the tropes to be largely trite and predictable, but there were a few that I actually enjoyed. Ultimately, it's just unhelpful to list something as "X" and expect it to include a lot of what other things labled "X" include. Much more helpful to evaluate each individual thing by its own merits.
You can already see the biases taking form in the comments above, with claims of a "lazy" ruleset seemingly being used to claim the entire subgenre is not enjoyable, as if simplified mechanics are somehow automatically a bad thing. It's flawed thinking that smacks of Intersectionality: using superficial parameters to lump things together and pass broad judgments upon them. The flaw of Intersectionality is that it arbitrarily decides when to stop counting characteristics. Brought to it's logical conclusion, Intersectionality will ultimately arrive at the individual. Lables are merely a means to collate traits and form things into groups, but they are still arbitrary as they necessarily exclude any traits that don't make the list.
I cannot define what is fun for anybody but myself. Listing off traits such as simplified mechanics, a metacurrency function, and a player-driven narrative explains nothing about how a system actually plays. I can imagine how that particular collection of traits could both be either fun or utterly tedious based on my preferences and experiences. Don't get me wrong, lables have their uses, but they don't do much to explain anything beyond broad classifications. Beverages can be broken down into juices, sodas, beers, etc., but that doesn't describe how anything actually tastes.
Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?
What I give a shit about is being offered to play in a ttrpg and come to find out they are playing a story game. Story games are great for those who enjoy them, but story games seem to demand recognition as a ttrpg when clearly they are not. And the foundations of story games are built on the premise that until they came along ttrpg's were fundamentally broken and bad game design when in fact it the other way around. ttrpg's have a depth to them bordering on fine art which many casual players will ever reach while story games are people sitting around talking out their ass and really, no one wants people talking breathlessly for minutes at a time. As a ttrpg'er I expect there to be a flow of action and uncertainty, that the world I am playing in has mulled over before hand by the GM and there is a "there" there. Doing something with intent results in better quality than playing to find out what happens. So to me story games are a casual affair with no investment by anyone at the table where well crafted living game worlds lifts everyone at the table into worlds one would not otherwise have lived. ttrpg's challange you to use the most fascinating thing about the human mind, imagination, while story games are purely a social happening much like going out to dinner with friends.
Quote from: the crypt keeper on October 16, 2022, 01:55:06 PM
Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?
What I give a shit about is being offered to play in a ttrpg and come to find out they are playing a story game. Story games are great for those who enjoy them, but story games seem to demand recognition as a ttrpg when clearly they are not. And the foundations of story games are built on the premise that until they came along ttrpg's were fundamentally broken and bad game design when in fact it the other way around.
Really? That was the founding principle? Or was it just born out of a desire for less-comprehensive rules to better cater the goal and play-style of the game?
Quotettrpg's have a depth to them bordering on fine art which many casual players will ever reach while story games are people sitting around talking out their ass and really, no one wants people talking breathlessly for minutes at a time.
Except that
"story games are great for those who enjoy them."QuoteAs a ttrpg'er I expect there to be a flow of action and uncertainty, that the world I am playing in has [been] mulled over before hand by the GM and there is a "there" there. Doing something with intent results in better quality than playing to find out what happens. So to me story games are a casual affair with no investment by anyone at the table where well crafted living game worlds lifts everyone at the table into worlds one would not otherwise have lived. ttrpg's challange you to use the most fascinating thing about the human mind, imagination, while story games are purely a social happening much like going out to dinner with friends.
You edited off the part of my post that was most salient, and by doing so I think you sorely missed the point. Even casual "social happenings" where people are talking out the asses can be a fun experience. Are you saying you don't like going out to dinner with friends? Because the fact you equate that to story games, which you denounce with such derision, is very curious. Maybe your point is that when you want a traditional rpg experience, you don't want a story game. Fine. When I want a beer, I don't want someone giving me a glass of warm milk. I get it. These are different experiences with different expectations of gameplay. But then to go off on tirade about how one is supposedly better than another is just weird. I mean... thanks for your opinion, I guess, but nothing you said is even remotely related to the point I was making.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 16, 2022, 11:44:58 AM
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 16, 2022, 10:36:31 AM
If you to say the aim of the game is collaborative creation of these stories, there's more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak. I would make a strong case that AD&D helps facilitate better stories than most of the games ostensibly designed to do so. So if you want to say this type of game is something different from games like AD&D, the difference has to be in the method. And not anything involving the aim. Not, "Well, these games are for creating stories, and D&D is for simulating a fantasy world." It would be news to a lot of people playing D&D a long, long time that it actually isn't good for making stories and it's only for creating some kind of virtual reality.
Eh, well, broadly speaking there are two kinds of stories: 1) The 3-act structure and 2) Rambling shaggy-dog stories.
Some games are designed to elicit stories in 3-act structure. Let's call them story games. They provide incentives to generate introduction, confrontation, and resolution. Sometimes this advice enters into non-story game territory, such as advice that every scene (or every room of a dungeon) in a traditional RPG should pose a narrative question to the characters or that we should track torches with usage dice.
Some games are great at generating rambling "stories" that would make terrible movies. This kind of story only makes narrative sense to the players. Perhaps the story is honed over time in player memory. A long sandbox/dungeon crawl is remembered as a tighter more coherent story (the messy bits and loose ends being forgotten). You see this when players reminiscence about previous events in a traditional campaign. "Remember when we investigated the missing cattle, found this suspicious old guy, discovered he was a werewolf, and slayed him?" Yeah, okay, but what about the two-session distraction at the inn and the unnecessary detour into the abandoned quarry that only served to get so-and-so killed? Those scenes get left on the cutting room floor.
Comparing games/rules to decide a "better story" only makes sense if we know what a story is and how it's told. Story game are designed and intended to tell a story at the table with a minimum extraneous matter. Listening to someone re-tell a story-game story could actually be tolerable. Listening to a traditional RPG player re-tell a campaign would be mind-numbingly dull unless it's culled down to the essentials.
I think this is a really good way of approaching this question, because there are really two distinct kinds of story games and this puts a solid distinction between them. Really, I only consider Three Act games to be true Story Games because a story is supposed to have a beginning, middle, end, protagonists, and antagonists. If you don't have a set answer for the entire duration of your campaign, you don't have a story. You have a sandbox. I'm not going to say that's not fun, but it is something completely different.
Really?
A thread about what a storygame is and no one quotes the guy that literally invented the genre?
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html
Ron Edwards on the White Wolf "Storyteller" system: ("Narrativist play = "Storytelling" play.)
Quote from: Shit Ron Edwards said: on October 15, 2022, 12:01:58 AM
The so-called Storyteller rules-set is not especially, nor even partly, facilitative toward Narrativist play. Furthermore, I have observed only a decided minority of White Wolf play that can be called Narrativist, usually involving considerable rules-Drift.
Proof a broken watch can tell time twice a day.
The wikipedia entry does a decent job of describing what a storytelling game is fairly well:
Quote from: From Right-wing Wikipedia said: on October 15, 2022, 12:01:58 AM
...A storytelling game is a game where multiple players collaborate on telling a spontaneous story. Usually, each player takes care of one or more characters in the developing story. Some games in the tradition of role-playing games require one participant to take the roles of the various supporting characters, as well as introducing non-character forces (for example, a flood), but other systems dispense with this figure and distribute this function among all players.
i.e. The ability to manipulate the reality of the game setting is more evenly distributed among the participants in order to create a compelling "narrative" or story. This is in contrast to actual Roleplaying games where the players only have agency over their characters, and the GM runs the virtual game world.
This is all quite straightforward to anyone that was paying attention when the forge started to do their thing.
Of course WotC is busy doing the same "RPG's are Storytelling games" marketing BS that White Wolf did - muddying the waters for those that lack access to a dictionary, or the reading comprehension to understand the actual meaning of "Story".
The wikipedia entry was edited by storygamers as were a few RPG entries to better fit their 'narrative' as of last time I checked. They lie and to this day still try to lie about what is and isnt a story game.
As said. Normal story gamings been around from the get-go really.
This cult story gaming fakery cropped up about a decade+ ago. Round the same time SJWs were starting the 2010 wave. And use the same tactics and selling points as they do.
Want to talk about story gaming mechanics and play styles? Fine.
Want to extoll your cult's agenda and how you are going to 'save' me from the evil DM? Get lost.
Quote from: the crypt keeper on October 16, 2022, 01:55:06 PM
Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?
What I give a shit about is being offered to play in a ttrpg and come to find out they are playing a story game. Story games are great for those who enjoy them, but story games seem to demand recognition as a ttrpg when clearly they are not.
Part of the problem is that the story gamer cultists invariably take things to the extreme. Ever pushing to remove more and more rules until you are not story gaming. You are just story telling. Which they will claim is a really real RPG.
The normal folk into normal story gaming are nothing like this and get unfortunately lumped in with the fruitcakes.
Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 01:52:14 PM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on October 16, 2022, 06:26:17 AM
Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?
I do. Because as a GM, you're in the position of trying to craft a fun experience. Which leads to the question, "What is fun?".
Fun is a subjective experience, not something narrowly defined by a title.
I somewhat disagree. While it's a subjective experience, there are trends that show that many fun experiences are experienced by groups of people. Say, watching professional sports. I don't care to watch it, but there's a huge audience for it, and I feel safe in saying that a lot of people find watching professional sports fun.
Here's an easy one. Combat in RPGs is fun. I'm quite sure everybody here can find exceptions, or situations where combat was not fun. But that it's a common feature of lots RPGs, and a lot of effort has been put towards elaborating on that aspect of the game, and there's lots of examples of fun combat, I feel comfortable saying that combat in RPGs is fun.
QuoteI'm not particularly fond of romcom films, finding the tropes to be largely trite and predictable, but there were a few that I actually enjoyed. Ultimately, it's just unhelpful to list something as "X" and expect it to include a lot of what other things labled "X" include. Much more helpful to evaluate each individual thing by its own merits.
I don't find that helpful at all. You wind up with a huge list of individual things to sort though, which can easily become unwieldy.
QuoteYou can already see the biases taking form in the comments above, with claims of a "lazy" ruleset seemingly being used to claim the entire subgenre is not enjoyable, as if simplified mechanics are somehow automatically a bad thing. It's flawed thinking that smacks of Intersectionality: using superficial parameters to lump things together and pass broad judgments upon them. The flaw of Intersectionality is that it arbitrarily decides when to stop counting characteristics. Brought to it's logical conclusion, Intersectionality will ultimately arrive at the individual. Lables are merely a means to collate traits and form things into groups, but they are still arbitrary as they necessarily exclude any traits that don't make the list.
I cannot define what is fun for anybody but myself. Listing off traits such as simplified mechanics, a metacurrency function, and a player-driven narrative explains nothing about how a system actually plays. I can imagine how that particular collection of traits could both be either fun or utterly tedious based on my preferences and experiences. Don't get me wrong, lables have their uses, but they don't do much to explain anything beyond broad classifications. Beverages can be broken down into juices, sodas, beers, etc., but that doesn't describe how anything actually tastes.
What if I break down beverages by taste? Sweet, sour, tangy, savory, etc. You use classifications and labels to sort by a desired attribute.
I've gotten a lot of mileage out of trying to break down "fun", so I can more easily get to having fun playing RPGs. Many words have been typed and rules crafted to try to get at that fun. It's not a wiffly, ephemeral concept. It's one you can consider, and I think many GMs do, when putting together a game or scenario or at the table.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 16, 2022, 11:44:58 AM
Eh, well, broadly speaking there are two kinds of stories: 1) The 3-act structure and 2) Rambling shaggy-dog stories.
Some games are designed to elicit stories in 3-act structure. Let's call them story games.
"
But, as all DM's know, the rewards are great — an endless challenge to the imagination and intellect, an enjoyable pastime to fill many hours with fantastic and often unpredictable happenings, and an opportunity to watch a story unfold and a grand idea to grow and flourish."
The foreword to the DMG makes clear that eliciting stories is certainly among the things the game was designed for. Do you really think "rambling shaggy-dog stories" is something that would be listed as an example of the rewards being great?
As I said, these games pretty much have to be differentiated by method. You can debate how well AD&D 1E achieves the aim, but it is an aim that is most certainly on the table according to the foreword.
QuoteThey provide incentives to generate introduction, confrontation, and resolution. Sometimes this advice enters into non-story game territory, such as advice that every scene (or every room of a dungeon) in a traditional RPG should pose a narrative question to the characters or that we should track torches with usage dice.
This all falls under method. Although as someone who runs a "traditional RPG" and who believes that we're getting stories out of it, those latter two bits of advice made me throw up in my mouth a little.
I think a good dungeon crawl shouldn't be overly-packed. It needs room to breathe. Two storytelling purposes for empty rooms and corridors is they build suspense and it makes the audience (the players) genuinely curious about what's behind the next corner. And by the way, I didn't pick that up in a film class or some drunken old fart literature professor. I noticed it when playing through Appendix A. The content of the game led me to making better narrative choices.
As for tracking torches, this is one I learned from watching movies. If it's important to the story, it can't just come out of nowhere. That comes off as contrived at best, just plain confusing at worst. If torches are important, it needs to be established up front that we have torches. If torches running out is important, it needs to be established how many. Some action movie fans actually do count number of rounds fired and will criticize the movie if the reloads don't make sense. And you bet your ass players are going to do that if things are not going their way. And of course, the famous "Do you feel lucky, punk?" scene absolutely depends on getting this right. A person who normally doesn't count will count now. If it's a movie, some people will re-watch the scene to count. You can't do that in an RPG, but you can check your scratch sheet.
My point is not so much to rag on these ideas, though to me they are most certainly awful. The point it this has everything to do with taste and nothing to do with eliciting a better story. Some story-oriented players want to know how many torches and how many bullets. Some hack-n-slash players don't want to be bothered tracking that stuff.
QuoteSome games are great at generating rambling "stories" that would make terrible movies.
Just as a point of order, some books make terrible movies. That doesn't make them rambling stories. It just means each medium has their own strengths and weaknesses. In books, it's easier to cue the reader in on what characters are thinking. RPGs have a few natural advantages in storytelling that would be lost or would have to be adapted to make it into a movie. Like I mentioned above, about having to establish that we have torches. In movies, you need to see the torches, or at least have some dialogue referencing the torches. In an RPG, you don't have to make a show of it, because it's established simply be being on the character sheet.
QuoteThis kind of story only makes narrative sense to the players. Perhaps the story is honed over time in player memory. A long sandbox/dungeon crawl is remembered as a tighter more coherent story (the messy bits and loose ends being forgotten). You see this when players reminiscence about previous events in a traditional campaign. "Remember when we investigated the missing cattle, found this suspicious old guy, discovered he was a werewolf, and slayed him?" Yeah, okay, but what about the two-session distraction at the inn and the unnecessary detour into the abandoned quarry that only served to get so-and-so killed? Those scenes get left on the cutting room floor.
I think you're taking a particular experience, either real or imagined, and taking it as a given its universal. First, it's long overdue that I address the fact that, there's nothing especially challenging about creating a 3-act story. The reason it works is because it's consistent with how humans understand the reality around them. They are rather ubiquitous. They frequently happen naturally and without any conscious effort. When people tell jokes, they're generally telling small 3-act stories without even realizing it. I'm pretty sure every adventure I've ever ran has begun with an introduction, has led to a conflict, and has ended in some resolution. Not always ones the players wanted, but a resolution nonetheless.
Sandboxes seem to me to make for especially good, tight stories. It's precisely because the things the PCs do has to be things PCs really want to do, not what they're nudged into doing. And that means there's always an identifiable motive running throughout the escapade. The motive tends to keep the action on point. Through the motives, the elements of that part of the sandbox have a meaningful link to the players. Even if players get lost, if they have leads to follow up on in a meaningful way and if the sandbox itself is interesting, the sequence of events will be plenty exciting and logically connect to one another.
Although most DMs I've played with run tight stories, or at least tighter ones than mind, and would be inclined to prevent two-session distractions from happening.
QuoteComparing games/rules to decide a "better story" only makes sense if we know what a story is and how it's told. Story game are designed and intended to tell a story at the table with a minimum extraneous matter. Listening to someone re-tell a story-game story could actually be tolerable. Listening to a traditional RPG player re-tell a campaign would be mind-numbingly dull unless it's culled down to the essentials.
All of which is speculative on your part and without evidence. I say it's the exact opposite. I like Mythic a lot. But at the end of the day, I find random tables that give me the narrative meaning of the element and leave it to me to bring the specific details, as in Mythic, to be less useful than rolling on the Dungeon Dressing tables in the back of the 1E DMG, having them give me the specific details, and then leave it to me to figure out the narrative meaning within the context.
In other words, I'd rather be told "The bag contains a McMuffin" rather than "The bag contains the MacGuffin." But I imagine it's possible for someone else it might be just the opposite. It's highly subjective which methods work for which gamer, and less of an objective link between method and aim or outcome.
Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?
Me.
There's nothing inherently wrong with either type of game, but they're different, with different methods of play, different strengths and weaknesses, different ways of playing, and different techniques to make them work well. If we're going to chat about games here, it's pretty important that we know what type of game we're talking about, as things that apply to one type won't apply to the other.
And some folks don't care for the one or the other. It's useful to know what type of game you're looking at upfront so you don't put time and effort into something you're not going to be interested in.
One can play a game of checkers on a chess board using chess pieces, but that does not make the game of checkers into chess. As such, being told that the game will be played using some combination of chess pieces and a chess board does not tell me anything about the game itself. If a game, whether one being played, or the rules of one, are not what I am looking for, I would like to know so as early as possible to avoid wasting everyone's time. Thus, labeling things clearly instead of obfuscating the contents is actually helpful.
I take a pen and paper roleplaying game to be a case of assuming the role of a character in a scenario and deciding how the character responds to the situation, declaring such either in character or narrating the character's response, having the outcome adjudicated by the GM, and the resulting set of circumstance narrated. This gameplay can be free roaming open world choose your own mission, or have an underlying 3 act structure with some missions being forced by circumstances while still being free to approach the problem in any appropriate manner. In either case, the story is a summary of the actions taken, not what is being played, but one has more prompts to have that summary become a satisfying story.
Alternatively, there is a game of taking turns, and with various levels of mechanical guidance, telling stories about pretend elves and trying to weave those player ramblings into an overall narrative. There is no making decisions and seeing how they turn out, as instead it is a matter of the player declaring how the characters decision played out based on mechanical guidance. The is no asking the GM what is on that dark corner, because if it has not been decided already, the player gets to decide what, mechanic permitting, the character finds there.
This line of thinking leaves me with with a sandbox or plot/story/narrative/guided roleplaying game and a story game.
To me its either some flavor of "would you like to tell the group what your pretend elf did" or "my pretend elf wants to... how does it turn out?" Games that mix the two will fundamentally have an rpg phase and a story-game phase, but the tow cannot occur simultaneously as they are mutually exclusive.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 16, 2022, 09:20:01 PM
--lots of stuff--
I wasn't arguing with you. I much prefer traditional RPGs and it's important to recognize that the kinds of stories that
emerge from traditional RPGs are different from the accepted structures that are common in movies and plays. Not only to avoid unnecessary arguments with an overloaded word like "story" but also to understand the people at the table and what they want.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on October 16, 2022, 06:48:12 PM
I somewhat disagree. While it's a subjective experience, there are trends that show that many fun experiences are experienced by groups of people. Say, watching professional sports. I don't care to watch it, but there's a huge audience for it, and I feel safe in saying that a lot of people find watching professional sports fun.
Here's an easy one. Combat in RPGs is fun. I'm quite sure everybody here can find exceptions, or situations where combat was not fun. But that it's a common feature of lots RPGs, and a lot of effort has been put towards elaborating on that aspect of the game, and there's lots of examples of fun combat, I feel comfortable saying that combat in RPGs is fun.
Sure. I never said that "subjective" couldn't stem from popularity. But the fact that some people don't care about sports at all still means that those who ARE having fun are experiencing something subjective. Combat can be fun. It can also be boring or tedious. Sometimes, a fun combat can become tedious if it drags on long enough (i.e., the fun to be had has been exhausted and the player is ready to move onto something else).
I guess I'm just not sure which part of the sentence you disagree with. That fun is not something that can be narrowly defined? Because that must be true if you agree fun is subjective.
Quote
I don't find that helpful at all. You wind up with a huge list of individual things to sort though, which can easily become unwieldy.
...
What if I break down beverages by taste? Sweet, sour, tangy, savory, etc. You use classifications and labels to sort by a desired attribute.
Yes!
You don't need a huge list to describe something, just a list of its desired attributes.
QuoteI've gotten a lot of mileage out of trying to break down "fun", so I can more easily get to having fun playing RPGs. Many words have been typed and rules crafted to try to get at that fun. It's not a wiffly, ephemeral concept. It's one you can consider, and I think many GMs do, when putting together a game or scenario or at the table.
I don't disagree with this statement. I agree that words and rules can help players to create fun, but a mechanic, in and of itself, is neutral. Implemented one way, it can create fun; implemented another can kill fun.
Quote from: Mishihari on October 16, 2022, 09:26:25 PM
Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?
Me.
There's nothing inherently wrong with either type of game, but they're different, with different methods of play, different strengths and weaknesses, different ways of playing, and different techniques to make them work well. If we're going to chat about games here, it's pretty important that we know what type of game we're talking about, as things that apply to one type won't apply to the other.
And some folks don't care for the one or the other. It's useful to know what type of game you're looking at upfront so you don't put time and effort into something you're not going to be interested in.
Yeah, I've pretty much said all of this already. You aren't refuting anything I've said. You've only taken one snippet of my post out of context and responded to that.
Try this...
Question: What is Story Gaming
in your opinion?
Counter question: Who gives a shit?
The first few responses to this thread couldn't even agree with each other, so how helpful are those opinions really? That was the extent of my post. This isn't even a hill I'm willing to die on; I just figured I'd clear the air before someone else decides they want to try to read my mind instead of read what I wrote.
Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 10:14:00 PM
Quote from: Mishihari on October 16, 2022, 09:26:25 PM
Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?
Me.
There's nothing inherently wrong with either type of game, but they're different, with different methods of play, different strengths and weaknesses, different ways of playing, and different techniques to make them work well. If we're going to chat about games here, it's pretty important that we know what type of game we're talking about, as things that apply to one type won't apply to the other.
And some folks don't care for the one or the other. It's useful to know what type of game you're looking at upfront so you don't put time and effort into something you're not going to be interested in.
Yeah, I've pretty much said all of this already. You aren't refuting anything I've said. You've only taken one snippet of my post out of context and responded to that.
Try this...
Question: What is Story Gaming in your opinion?
Counter question: Who gives a shit?
The first few responses to this thread couldn't even agree with each other, so how helpful are those opinions really? That was the extent of my post. This isn't even a hill I'm willing to die on; I just figured I'd clear the air before someone else decides they want to try to read my mind instead of read what I wrote.
Huh. Not actually sure what you're talking about. You asked a question, which I answered. The very clear point of your post was that the difference between rpgs and storygames is unimportant. I gave the reasons why I disagreed with this. I'm not sure what you imagined you said, but based on others' responses, everyone else understood your post exactly the same way I did.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 16, 2022, 09:51:28 PM
I wasn't arguing with you. I much prefer traditional RPGs and it's important to recognize that the kinds of stories that emerge from traditional RPGs are different from the accepted structures that are common in movies and plays.
Gamers have been using D&D for exactly this for a long, long time. They were doing it before the words "story game" got strung together. They were doing it before The Forge, Ron Edwards, and before the Storyteller system that kicked his puppy. They were doing it before the web browser. Before RPG theory was being pondered by people who didn't even understand regular game theory. It goes back even further than Dragonlance. They were doing it long enough prior to 1979 that it got mentioned in the DMG's foreword.
If you don't know how to get those results out of AD&D, that's fine. But that doesn't mean others haven't been doing it this entire time.
QuoteNot only to avoid unnecessary arguments with an overloaded word like "story" but also to understand the people at the table and what they want.
The actual gamers who show up at the game table don't have trouble understanding the word "story." And it's their meaning of story I'm deferring to. When the average gamer gets done with a session of traditional AD&D and says, "Wow, that was a great story," or when the average gamer is asked what they like about RPGs and says, "It's all about the story," they mean it in the same sense of the other stories they are familiar with, from what they see in movies and plays and comic books and fantasy novels.
If you want to understand what the people at the table want, it helps to speaking their language and understanding their perspective. Understand that, yes, they do call D&D a story, and yes, they do mean story like in the movies. No. They're not confused about it. They don't think story is a confusing word.
I agree with most of what has been said in this thread.
For me a storygame is where players co-op as the GM or there are no GM's or the story is what is most important and player actions and rules come second (if at all).
Not interested in those type of games. A couple examples to me of what I would classify as a story game is: Fate, games that use the Powered by the Apocolypse system and even games like Amber Dicessless and Lords of Olympus.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 17, 2022, 12:54:39 AM
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 16, 2022, 09:51:28 PM
I wasn't arguing with you. I much prefer traditional RPGs and it's important to recognize that the kinds of stories that emerge from traditional RPGs are different from the accepted structures that are common in movies and plays.
Gamers have been using D&D for exactly this for a long, long time. They were doing it before the words "story game" got strung together. They were doing it before The Forge, Ron Edwards, and before the Storyteller system that kicked his puppy. They were doing it before the web browser. Before RPG theory was being pondered by people who didn't even understand regular game theory. It goes back even further than Dragonlance. They were doing it long enough prior to 1979 that it got mentioned in the DMG's foreword.
If you don't know how to get those results out of AD&D, that's fine. But that doesn't mean others haven't been doing it this entire time.
QuoteNot only to avoid unnecessary arguments with an overloaded word like "story" but also to understand the people at the table and what they want.
The actual gamers who show up at the game table don't have trouble understanding the word "story." And it's their meaning of story I'm deferring to. When the average gamer gets done with a session of traditional AD&D and says, "Wow, that was a great story," or when the average gamer is asked what they like about RPGs and says, "It's all about the story," they mean it in the same sense of the other stories they are familiar with, from what they see in movies and plays and comic books and fantasy novels.
If you want to understand what the people at the table want, it helps to speaking their language and understanding their perspective. Understand that, yes, they do call D&D a story, and yes, they do mean story like in the movies. No. They're not confused about it. They don't think story is a confusing word.
What are you on about, man? You're making this personal for some bizarre reason.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 17, 2022, 09:18:28 AM
What are you on about, man? You're making this personal for some bizarre reason.
I haven't. Why are you taking personally the simple fact that one of the reasons people play traditional RPGs is to make movie-like stories and have been doing it for a long, long time?
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 17, 2022, 10:03:20 AM
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 17, 2022, 09:18:28 AM
What are you on about, man? You're making this personal for some bizarre reason.
I haven't. Why are you taking personally the simple fact that one of the reasons people play traditional RPGs is to make movie-like stories and have been doing it for a long, long time?
I don't take facts personally. You're being an arrogant twat:
"If you don't know how to get those results out of AD&D, that's fine."
Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 03:25:02 PM
Quote from: the crypt keeper on October 16, 2022, 01:55:06 PM
What I give a shit about is being offered to play in a ttrpg and come to find out they are playing a story game. Story games are great for those who enjoy them, but story games seem to demand recognition as a ttrpg when clearly they are not. And the foundations of story games are built on the premise that until they came along ttrpg's were fundamentally broken and bad game design when in fact it the other way around.
Really? That was the founding principle? Or was it just born out of a desire for less-comprehensive rules to better cater the goal and play-style of the game?
Most game styles has a subset of fans who consider their games to be the
One True Way, and that all other games are fundamentally broken. Since starting in online RPG discussion in 1991 or so, I encountered lots of One-True-Wayers for their games many years before The Forge and the Story Games forum. There are people who are fans of traditional RPGs who shit on various non-traditional styles, and fans of non-traditional games who shit on traditional RPGs like D&D. But most people don't give a damn about such flamewars and are happy to play different styles of games, whether traditional RPG, diceless like the Amber Diceless RPG, rotating GM like Ars Magica, storytelling like Fiasco, etc.
Also, there was a genre of story games years before The Forge - like Once Upon a Time (1993), Theatrix (1995), along with John Tynes' Puppetland (1997) and other games. The Forge didn't start the genre - it just gave a central place for designers to meet and discuss.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 17, 2022, 10:32:18 AM
I don't take facts personally. You're being an arrogant twat:
"If you don't know how to get those results out of AD&D, that's fine."
I acknowledging the fact that different people have different experiences, and your response is to say I'm being an arrogant twat? But you don't take facts personally?
When you make universal claims about peoples experiences, you're confessing those are your experiences. You volunteered it. I have no problem that you see things that way. I'm not going to argue your experience. I literally think that's fine. I've given you nothing to pick a fight about, and yet you have.
Quote from: Mishihari on October 16, 2022, 11:26:44 PM
Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 10:14:00 PM
Quote from: Mishihari on October 16, 2022, 09:26:25 PM
Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?
Me.
There's nothing inherently wrong with either type of game, but they're different, with different methods of play, different strengths and weaknesses, different ways of playing, and different techniques to make them work well. If we're going to chat about games here, it's pretty important that we know what type of game we're talking about, as things that apply to one type won't apply to the other.
And some folks don't care for the one or the other. It's useful to know what type of game you're looking at upfront so you don't put time and effort into something you're not going to be interested in.
Yeah, I've pretty much said all of this already. You aren't refuting anything I've said. You've only taken one snippet of my post out of context and responded to that.
Try this...
Question: What is Story Gaming in your opinion?
Counter question: Who gives a shit?
The first few responses to this thread couldn't even agree with each other, so how helpful are those opinions really? That was the extent of my post. This isn't even a hill I'm willing to die on; I just figured I'd clear the air before someone else decides they want to try to read my mind instead of read what I wrote.
Huh. Not actually sure what you're talking about. You asked a question, which I answered. The very clear point of your post was that the difference between rpgs and storygames is unimportant. I gave the reasons why I disagreed with this. I'm not sure what you imagined you said, but based on others' responses, everyone else understood your post exactly the same way I did.
I think he is just a crazy person, like a bad example of Zak, kind of crazy.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 16, 2022, 10:36:31 AM
Quote from: Trond on October 16, 2022, 09:58:44 AM
This so much. We've had fun with a game many would call a "story game".
But then, I inadvertently once used the term "story game" when trying to explain what an RPG is. And it kinda makes sense. Not sure why some use the term for games with greater player influence on the setting.
Because you almost have to.
There's a dirty little secret, but it's really a universal truth. You can tell someone what to do, or you can tell them what you want done. You don't get to have both. Because the first challenge you hit, where the results the method produces does not match the results you want, you do have to decide which it's going to be. Are you going to stay the course no matter the outcome? Or are you going to abandon the method and do whatever you have to to get the result.
Since games are more or less a set of rules for play, there's a strong tendency (by which I mean is almost exclusively the case) that they provide methods. But not the outcome. Take chess, for example. I could play it as a means of keeping my mind sharp. Or I might play it because I believe it teaches greater lessons about strategy. Or I could play as a way of staying connected with an old friend who also enjoys the game. Or I could even play competitively. What the aim or goal or purpose of playing the game is up to me.
Now do the same with RPGs. Some people use it for socializing. Some to play as a character different than themselves. Some to play a character like themselves but in a different time and far away place. Some just like coming up with backstories. Some like world building. Some just want to kill things and take their stuff. And you know what? Some people use it as a means of making stories.
If you to say the aim of the game is collaborative creation of these stories, there's more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak. I would make a strong case that AD&D helps facilitate better stories than most of the games ostensibly designed to do so. So if you want to say this type of game is something different from games like AD&D, the difference has to be in the method. And not anything involving the aim. Not, "Well, these games are for creating stories, and D&D is for simulating a fantasy world." It would be news to a lot of people playing D&D a long, long time that it actually isn't good for making stories and it's only for creating some kind of virtual reality.
Not sure if I get it. Are you giving an answer to "Not sure why some use the term for games with greater player influence on the setting"? Or are you saying why we have to use the term "story game" for any RPG?
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 17, 2022, 12:57:02 PM
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 17, 2022, 10:32:18 AM
I don't take facts personally. You're being an arrogant twat:
"If you don't know how to get those results out of AD&D, that's fine."
I acknowledging the fact that different people have different experiences, and your response is to say I'm being an arrogant twat? But you don't take facts personally?
When you make universal claims about peoples experiences, you're confessing those are your experiences. You volunteered it. I have no problem that you see things that way. I'm not going to argue your experience. I literally think that's fine. I've given you nothing to pick a fight about, and yet you have.
Perhaps you don't realize that you pose questions and make statements that presume agreement with a premise, i.e,. do you still beat your wife?
Do you have experience with Microscope, The Quiet Year, Fiasco, or other "RPGs" that commonly fall into the story game category? (RPGs in quotes because these games are marketed as RPGs but many people here would not consider them RPGs.)
Quote from: Trond on October 17, 2022, 03:06:28 PM
Not sure if I get it. Are you giving an answer to "Not sure why some use the term for games with greater player influence on the setting"? Or are you saying why we have to use the term "story game" for any RPG?
Answering the first question. My answer is because games are almost always differentiated according to their rules, and that story games are no exception. What it's used for is ultimately going to be up to the people playing it, and that's going to muddy the waters.
And that's not to say there isn't a lot of cross pollination in terms of methods. I think a lot of people would be shocked at how many newer ideas were lurking hidden in the 1E DMG all along.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 17, 2022, 06:00:08 PM
Perhaps you don't realize that you pose questions and make statements that presume agreement with a premise, i.e,. do you still beat your wife?
Sure. For example, if I'm going to take the time to give a thoughtful and detailed response to something, I'm presuming I'm dealing with people who are literate enough to read my responses and honest enough to respond in good faith. And sometimes I'm disappointed to find I was in error. It's not even because I think I'm necessarily correct on that presumption. It's more because the presumption of good faith is necessary for meaningful dialog.
But on the other hand, I would never presume that just because I can cite a cliched example of an intentionally loaded question that therefore I can just accuse people all willy nilly of inadvertently asking loaded questions without pointing to a single example of them doing so. Because that would be an example of responding in bad faith.
QuoteDo you have experience with Microscope, The Quiet Year, Fiasco, or other "RPGs" that commonly fall into the story game category?
Why, yes. Yes I do.
Quote(RPGs in quotes because these games are marketed as RPGs but many people here would not consider them RPGs.)
Next phase new wave dance craze, anyways it's still rock and roll to me.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 16, 2022, 11:44:58 AM
Eh, well, broadly speaking there are two kinds of stories: 1) The 3-act structure and 2) Rambling shaggy-dog stories.
Some games are designed to elicit stories in 3-act structure. Let's call them story games. They provide incentives to generate introduction, confrontation, and resolution. Sometimes this advice enters into non-story game territory, such as advice that every scene (or every room of a dungeon) in a traditional RPG should pose a narrative question to the characters or that we should track torches with usage dice.
Some games are great at generating rambling "stories" that would make terrible movies. This kind of story only makes narrative sense to the players.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 17, 2022, 06:00:08 PM
Do you have experience with Microscope, The Quiet Year, Fiasco, or other "RPGs" that commonly fall into the story game category? (RPGs in quotes because these games are marketed as RPGs but many people here would not consider them RPGs.)
Hi, rytrasmi.
Your implied claim here is that Microscope, The Quiet Year, and Fiasco produce stories in the 3-act structure, but that is the opposite of my experience. As I've played them, all of those games produce rambling shaggy-dog stories that have very little structure. Microscope doesn't have anything resembling a storyline, since characters are only invented on the spot for rare cards. It produces a timeline that is closer to a setting document than a story. The Quiet Year produces a map and disjointed projects and events. Fiasco is cinematic so there are at least characters going through a plot, but because players are alternating scenes with no pre-planning, it makes extremely messy plots that don't have any structure.
Conversely, some traditional RPG adventures come much closer to three-act structure by the design of the adventure elements. Many published modules are designed with a setup in the town, a twist in the middle of the dungeon, and then a final climactic boss fight. There is deliberate escalation, twist, and further escalation that intentionally resembles the 3-act structure. And even outside of published modules, there are some GMs who design adventures this way. When I would run cinematic genre RPGs like Star Wars D6 or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I'd often have such a structure.
Many other traditional RPGs get even more explicit. Adventures in games like White Wolf's Storyteller or West End's Torg have sections explicitly labelled "Acts" and "Scenes" within those.
There is a definite divide between traditional RPGs and the storytelling game category (Microscope/The Quiet Year/Fiasco) based on whether players can only control their characters, or if players can control wider story elements. But giving players greater power over elements doesn't make things more into the 3-act structure.
And there are also a lot of other games that aren't close to Microscope - but are still widely considered story games like Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard, or Good Society.
Quote from: Mishihari on October 16, 2022, 11:26:44 PM
Huh. Not actually sure what you're talking about. You asked a question, which I answered. The very clear point of your post was that the difference between rpgs and storygames is unimportant. I gave the reasons why I disagreed with this. I'm not sure what you imagined you said, but based on others' responses, everyone else understood your post exactly the same way I did.
Not quite. My point was that generalizations were unhelpful. I never said that individual games couldn't be distinguished from others based on their mechanics or gameplay. In other words, your disagreement was with a premise I never made. The actual question was largely retortical, intended as a prelude to my statement. Not really intended to be answered literally. If that was unclear from my post, that's probably my fault, but it doesn't mean I said something I didn't.
Quote from: the crypt keeper on October 17, 2022, 01:57:05 PM
I think he is just a crazy person, like a bad example of Zak, kind of crazy.
Nice! So we can include Ad Hominem to the list of logical fallacies you use, along with Special Pleading, No-True-Scotsman, and Tu Quoque from your previous post. If you don't like a certain style of game, fine, don't play them. But that doesn't mean there is anything objectively wrong or bad about them. They're just different. I just don't think slapping a lable, with all the baggage it contains, onto a game because it shares one or two traits with other games is all that helpful. It only serves to poison the well.
Quote from: Effete on October 17, 2022, 08:28:13 PM
If you don't like a certain style of game, fine, don't play them. But that doesn't mean there is anything objectively wrong or bad about them. They're just different. I just don't think slapping a lable, with all the baggage it contains, onto a game because it shares one or two traits with other games is all that helpful. It only serves to poison the well.
If Game Type A works poorly for Playstyle Type B, and Game Type B works poorly for Playstyle Type A, then a label indicating This Type A Game contains 3 Type B elements is useful information. However, labeling it one or the other when it is a mix of the two, is not helpful.
I postulate that Fiasco is not a roleplaying game, and should not be directly grouped with a a roleplaying game like AD&D anymore than AD&D should be grouped with a miniatures wargame like wh40k. Yes, they are all games, but that does not help me pick the one I am looking to play.
Perhaps the the real distinction is RPG/Story-RPG vs Non-RPG/Whatever. A soda is a soda, but if I am craving a cola, a lemon-lime fizzy drink will not do, and I expect the container to tell me what is inside it.
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?
Story game RPGs are just as bad as board game RPGs.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 17, 2022, 06:55:49 PM
Quote from: Trond on October 17, 2022, 03:06:28 PM
Not sure if I get it. Are you giving an answer to "Not sure why some use the term for games with greater player influence on the setting"? Or are you saying why we have to use the term "story game" for any RPG?
Answering the first question. My answer is because games are almost always differentiated according to their rules, and that story games are no exception. What it's used for is ultimately going to be up to the people playing it, and that's going to muddy the waters.
So....."it's just a name"?
Quote from: jhkim on October 17, 2022, 08:09:47 PM
Hi, rytrasmi.
Your implied claim here is that Microscope, The Quiet Year, and Fiasco produce stories in the 3-act structure, but that is the opposite of my experience. As I've played them, all of those games produce rambling shaggy-dog stories that have very little structure. Microscope doesn't have anything resembling a storyline, since characters are only invented on the spot for rare cards. It produces a timeline that is closer to a setting document than a story. The Quiet Year produces a map and disjointed projects and events. Fiasco is cinematic so there are at least characters going through a plot, but because players are alternating scenes with no pre-planning, it makes extremely messy plots that don't have any structure.
Conversely, some traditional RPG adventures come much closer to three-act structure by the design of the adventure elements. Many published modules are designed with a setup in the town, a twist in the middle of the dungeon, and then a final climactic boss fight. There is deliberate escalation, twist, and further escalation that intentionally resembles the 3-act structure. And even outside of published modules, there are some GMs who design adventures this way. When I would run cinematic genre RPGs like Star Wars D6 or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I'd often have such a structure.
Many other traditional RPGs get even more explicit. Adventures in games like White Wolf's Storyteller or West End's Torg have sections explicitly labelled "Acts" and "Scenes" within those.
There is a definite divide between traditional RPGs and the storytelling game category (Microscope/The Quiet Year/Fiasco) based on whether players can only control their characters, or if players can control wider story elements. But giving players greater power over elements doesn't make things more into the 3-act structure.
And there are also a lot of other games that aren't close to Microscope - but are still widely considered story games like Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard, or Good Society.
You make some good points and it's useful to have more data points in the games you mention.
Microscope scenes, in my view, aims for the 3-act structure. There's a background/intro and the posing of a narrative question, then role play which normally includes some conflict, then the question is answered and the scene is stopped. It felt to me that the author was aiming for that sort of structure. Events and periods felt like fractal layers above scenes. As for The Quiet Year, the seasonal structure and the different events that could occur felt like a loose adherence to this structure, though I only played that one once.
And I fully agree that many modules are build with a narrative structure in mind, more railroady modules definitely.
As for players able to control things outside their character, yes I agree that's a common quality of story games.
Do these rules exist or are they imposed by adventure modules in more stimulative games? Yes. You can play AD&D with a strong story structure. Want to play a traditional dungeon crawl in Microscope? That would be much more difficult.
Quote from: Trond on October 18, 2022, 10:31:49 AM
So....."it's just a name"?
I do get the impression the designers generally presume their system will be used to create stories. And I do find assuming the outcome to be misguided. But insofar as their rules and methods do play with or address narrative elements and structure as such, the name is still fitting.
Just as a quick example, Mythic has a random events table, just like all good, true, red-blooded tabletop pencil & dice games do. But it gives me things like "PC-negative", "PC-positive", "Neutral event", and we're supposed to figure out what that means in terms of tangible details. Whereas AD&D's tables generate me the tangible details--a specific person or creature, type of terrain, weather, etc--and from that we'll figure out whether it's good, bad, or neutral for the PC.
So the rules and methods of the two games are addressing different things for sure. I just think it's an error to say, "Well, these games create stories, and those games create simulations." I think different people with the same aim may just find it easier to work one way over the other.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 17, 2022, 06:55:49 PM
Sure. For example, if I'm going to take the time to give a thoughtful and detailed response to something, I'm presuming I'm dealing with people who are literate enough to read my responses and honest enough to respond in good faith. And sometimes I'm disappointed to find I was in error. It's not even because I think I'm necessarily correct on that presumption. It's more because the presumption of good faith is necessary for meaningful dialog.
But on the other hand, I would never presume that just because I can cite a cliched example of an intentionally loaded question that therefore I can just accuse people all willy nilly of inadvertently asking loaded questions without pointing to a single example of them doing so. Because that would be an example of responding in bad faith.
Oh, very clever: a subtle insult that is plausibly deniable. "Oh, I didn't mean you, I was speaking generally." Perhaps I am illiterate or perhaps you face challenges in expressing your thoughts in an organized and concise manner.
Your opinion appears to be there's no such thing as story gaming because AD&D and the DMG already covered that ground ages ago. This despite the fact that a lot of people do think there is such as separate beast called story gaming. Kids these days and their newfangled terminology for the same old thing! I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, just trying to synthesize something succinct from your posts. What is "story gaming" in your opinion?
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 17, 2022, 06:55:49 PM
QuoteDo you have experience with Microscope, The Quiet Year, Fiasco, or other "RPGs" that commonly fall into the story game category?
Why, yes. Yes I do.
I asked because I did not gather that from your posts. My unfortunate illiteracy again!
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 18, 2022, 12:31:26 PM
Oh, very clever: a subtle insult that is plausibly deniable. "Oh, I didn't mean you, I was speaking generally." Perhaps I am illiterate or perhaps you face challenges in expressing your thoughts in an organized and concise manner.
Whatever floats your boat.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 18, 2022, 12:31:26 PMYour opinion appears to be there's no such thing as story gaming because AD&D and the DMG already covered that ground ages ago.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 18, 2022, 11:59:51 AM
Mythic has a random events table. . . it gives me things like "PC-negative", "PC-positive", "Neutral event". . . AD&D's tables generate me the tangible details--a specific person or creature, type of terrain, weather, etc [. . .]
So the rules and methods of the two games are addressing different things for sure.
Note the time stamps. Just 32 minutes before your post, I am pointing out the differences, even contrasting with AD&D by name to something you claim I'm saying there's no such thing as. All my posts on this thread have been saying basically the same thing. Story games are differentiated from RPGs by their methods. But this one you didn't even have to go looking for. This is why I can't take you seriously. This is the kind of nonsense that arises when you're not discussing in good faith.
QuoteThis despite the fact that a lot of people do think there is such as separate beast called story gaming. Kids these days and their newfangled terminology for the same old thing!
Even though I'm not saying anything like that at all, it's at least conceivable that a lot of people could be wrong about something. But there's no way you can attribute to me a position that I'm actively arguing against. What you're accusing me of thinking is far less absurd than what you actually think.
QuoteI'm not trying to put words in your mouth,
Actually, that's exactly what you're doing.
Quotejust trying to synthesize something succinct from your posts.
No. You're not. You cut out the entire posts twice in a row and replied with something non-responsive, and have been trying to feign being insulted ever since.
QuoteWhat is "story gaming" in your opinion?
It's all upthread. Tell you what. Stop posting for a minimum of 24 hours. Go back and re-read this entire thread. Read all my posts twice. Three times if you have to. If I see you post anything within 24 hours, I'm going to assume you didn't take the time and do that, and I'm going to continue to not take you seriously.
QuoteI asked because I did not gather that from your posts. My unfortunate illiteracy again!
32 minutes, dude. 32 minutes before this shit post of yours I cited a specific example from a specific game showing specifically what's different. Have you done that?
You said I was not able to elicit story with AD&D. It's very subtle and I thought I was reading too much into that comment. So I went back and reread your posts, concluded you were making it personal, and told you this. Your response: "Why are you taking fact X personally?" That is the very definition of a loaded question. You claim to never have asked loaded questions and that you've been discussing the topic in good faith this whole time. Okay, sure, yes, on page 4 you finally make a specific point about a game that is not D&D responding to someone else and make a big fuss over a time stamp.
And now you present an ultimatum! I'm not to be taken seriously unless I meditate on your musings for 24 hours. I did call you arrogant, so I suppose that fits.
Lunamancer, despite all the above, I read this site, yes including your (long) posts, to learn things and learn from the experiences of others. I don't know 10% of what there is to know, and I am wrong more often than I'm right. So I apologize to you for making you flip out or whatever, and will try to give you the benefit of the doubt in the future.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 18, 2022, 04:05:33 PM
You said I was not able to elicit story with AD&D. It's very subtle and I thought I was reading too much into that comment. So I went back and reread your posts, concluded you were making it personal, and told you this. Your response: "Why are you taking fact X personally?" That is the very definition of a loaded question. You claim to never have asked loaded questions and that you've been discussing the topic in good faith this whole time. Okay, sure, yes, on page 4 you finally make a specific point about a game that is not D&D responding to someone else and make a big fuss over a time stamp.
And now you present an ultimatum! I'm not to be taken seriously unless I meditate on your musings for 24 hours. I did call you arrogant, so I suppose that fits.
...
This has all already been gone over on an earlier thread:
https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/telling-a-story-versus-presenting-a-situation/150/
As many are unwilling accept the actual dictionary definition of the word 'story' when making or defending their claims - any kind of productive discussion is impossible.
Quote from: Jaeger on October 18, 2022, 05:25:04 PM
This has all already been gone over on an earlier thread:
https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/telling-a-story-versus-presenting-a-situation/150/
As many are unwilling accept the actual dictionary definition of the word 'story' when making or defending their claims - any kind of productive discussion is impossible.
Oh yeah, I remember that. That's the one where you immediately rejected a dictionary definition, then clung to the one cherry picked definition that backed your position while rejecting the vast majority of dictionary definitions. And wherein I rejected zero dictionary definitions, but opted for a more disciplined and less self-serving choice for my own usage; one that was in the dictionary but also fit the context of the discussion and fit common usage.
Yeah. When you reject the majority of dictionary definitions and then run victory laps as if you're the dictionary guy, that's a good example of discussion in bad faith. And yeah, you're right. We have already been there and done that, and arguing in bad faith does render any kind of discussion impossible.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 18, 2022, 08:30:58 PM
Quote from: Jaeger on October 18, 2022, 05:25:04 PM
This has all already been gone over on an earlier thread:
https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/telling-a-story-versus-presenting-a-situation/150/
As many are unwilling accept the actual dictionary definition of the word 'story' when making or defending their claims - any kind of productive discussion is impossible.
Oh yeah, I remember that. That's the one where you immediately rejected a dictionary definition, then clung to the one cherry picked definition that backed your position while rejecting the vast majority of dictionary definitions. And wherein I rejected zero dictionary definitions, but opted for a more disciplined and less self-serving choice for my own usage; one that was in the dictionary but also fit the context of the discussion and fit common usage.
Yeah. When you reject the majority of dictionary definitions and then run victory laps as if you're the dictionary guy, that's a good example of discussion in bad faith. And yeah, you're right. We have already been there and done that, and arguing in bad faith does render any kind of discussion impossible.
You're doubling down on your lack of reading comprehension, as this objection was addressed in my reply to Wrath of God which geeky bugle quoted in the top of the link.
So yes, when you are perpetually arguing in bad faith it does render any kind of discussion impossible.
It's a slow week though, so If anyone wants some action; I'll make this easy... Pick whatever suits your fancy:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/story
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/story
https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/literature-english/american-literature/story#:~:text=sto%C2%B7ry1%20%2F%20%CB%88st%C3%B4r%C4%93%2F,to%20tell%20you%20a%20story.
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/story#:~:text=a%20description%20of%20events%20and,in%20order%20to%20entertain%20people
Quote from: GhostNinja on October 17, 2022, 09:07:23 AM
I agree with most of what has been said in this thread.
For me a storygame is where players co-op as the GM or there are no GM's or the story is what is most important and player actions and rules come second (if at all).
Not interested in those type of games. A couple examples to me of what I would classify as a story game is: Fate, games that use the Powered by the Apocolypse system and even games like Amber Dicessless and Lords of Olympus.
As noted earlier there was a time when this was not the case and when story game meant something different than what it has been subverted into.
What we have now as 'story games' sometimes barely is a game at all. As said. They invariably keep pushing for removal of rules. Usually under the battlecry of "Muh Immershun!" ad nausium.
Cut away the cultist rhetoric and the usual (ill)logic traps they like to play as a "Gotcha! Neener neener you were playing a 'story game' all along!" gag and you get back to something that is a viable tool that is been a part of D&D from the beginning.
Quote from: jhkim on October 17, 2022, 08:09:47 PM
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 16, 2022, 11:44:58 AM
Eh, well, broadly speaking there are two kinds of stories: 1) The 3-act structure and 2) Rambling shaggy-dog stories.
Some games are designed to elicit stories in 3-act structure. Let's call them story games. They provide incentives to generate introduction, confrontation, and resolution. Sometimes this advice enters into non-story game territory, such as advice that every scene (or every room of a dungeon) in a traditional RPG should pose a narrative question to the characters or that we should track torches with usage dice.
Some games are great at generating rambling "stories" that would make terrible movies. This kind of story only makes narrative sense to the players.
Quote from: rytrasmi on October 17, 2022, 06:00:08 PM
Do you have experience with Microscope, The Quiet Year, Fiasco, or other "RPGs" that commonly fall into the story game category? (RPGs in quotes because these games are marketed as RPGs but many people here would not consider them RPGs.)
Hi, rytrasmi.
Your implied claim here is that Microscope, The Quiet Year, and Fiasco produce stories in the 3-act structure, but that is the opposite of my experience. As I've played them, all of those games produce rambling shaggy-dog stories that have very little structure. Microscope doesn't have anything resembling a storyline, since characters are only invented on the spot for rare cards. It produces a timeline that is closer to a setting document than a story. The Quiet Year produces a map and disjointed projects and events. Fiasco is cinematic so there are at least characters going through a plot, but because players are alternating scenes with no pre-planning, it makes extremely messy plots that don't have any structure.
Conversely, some traditional RPG adventures come much closer to three-act structure by the design of the adventure elements. Many published modules are designed with a setup in the town, a twist in the middle of the dungeon, and then a final climactic boss fight. There is deliberate escalation, twist, and further escalation that intentionally resembles the 3-act structure. And even outside of published modules, there are some GMs who design adventures this way. When I would run cinematic genre RPGs like Star Wars D6 or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I'd often have such a structure.
Many other traditional RPGs get even more explicit. Adventures in games like White Wolf's Storyteller or West End's Torg have sections explicitly labelled "Acts" and "Scenes" within those.
There is a definite divide between traditional RPGs and the storytelling game category (Microscope/The Quiet Year/Fiasco) based on whether players can only control their characters, or if players can control wider story elements. But giving players greater power over elements doesn't make things more into the 3-act structure.
And there are also a lot of other games that aren't close to Microscope - but are still widely considered story games like Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard, or Good Society.
Jhkim has it fairly right here. Most modules have a certain pacing. Not all mind you. But quite a few have an AB and C more or less going on. A few a little too much.
I think the problem with some so-called story games is that they sometimes feel much more like story telling. With the hated rules cut out so much they might as well not be there. Universalis spends hundreds of pages saying "Make stuff up!" and "Spend your vote if you dont like what someone made up!" Theres no game there and its essentially story telling by committee.
The ones that work for me are the ones that give clear prompts as to how to form the next action.
"Is the door locked?"
No - But
And interpret that how you want based on the action setting and all that. So you could read that as "The door is unlocked. But it rusty hinges are stuck and will need a little shoving to get open."
Mythic gives added twists on a percentile system as another example and those twists have some defined parameters if one wants them. Such as the character steps into a room, you check for anything out of the ordinary and get something like "remote action" and maybe read that as elsewhere a trap just armed itself, or the front door you got through just closed and locked. and so on.
They take a certain mindset to enjoy I think and there are players that are just never going to be able to make use of such systems, or can with one like Mythic, but not with say FU.
Quote from: Jaeger on October 18, 2022, 10:52:32 PM
You're doubling down on your lack of reading comprehension,
I must have missed when I singled down. But good to note right up front that this is your first go to.
Quoteas this objection was addressed in my reply to Wrath of God which geeky bugle quoted in the top of the link.
Yeah. That's precisely what I was responding to. Meaning that's not exactly an open and shut case to refute me.
QuoteSo yes, when you are perpetually arguing in bad faith
Name once. "Bad faith" doesn't mean "things you don't agree with."
Quote
it does render any kind of discussion impossible.
It's a slow week though, so If anyone wants some action; I'll make this easy...
Yeah, because having to back up what you say is so beneath you.
QuotePick whatever suits your fancy:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/story
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/story
https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/literature-english/american-literature/story#:~:text=sto%C2%B7ry1%20%2F%20%CB%88st%C3%B4r%C4%93%2F,to%20tell%20you%20a%20story.
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/story#:~:text=a%20description%20of%20events%20and,in%20order%20to%20entertain%20people
All of the above. If you actually stand by these sources, we have no qualm. The definition I used in that thread is the same one I used now is the same one I've been using for years is the same one that I think players mean when they request more story in the campaign is the same one you find as the "in daily use" meaning listed in the Oxford Literary Dictionary--a source a little better suited for the finer points than a standard dictionary--and that same definition in one paraphrased form or another can be found in all those sources you linked. And it's very similar to the definition you yourself cited over an that thread.
The problem is you got all obsessive over the word "description" and you asserted Wrath of God was hanging his hat on that word--I didn't see him doing any such thing. He raised the definition replying to someone who said the story needs to have a beginning, middle, and end. Whether you use the word "description" "account" "recount" "telling" "recital" or any of the other words you'll find used in the definition of story that you and I and Wrath of God and all these great sources agree to, there's nothing explicitly stating "beginning, middle, and end." So Wrath of God's point on that stands.
The two contentious issues in that thread were beginning, middle, and end, and whether or not you have stories in real time. None of these common use definitions speak to either of those issues. Recount can be interpreted as having connotations that the event had to have already happened, but some of the other words used in its stead in the various concurring definitions have no such connotations. Even if Wrath of God was badly misreading "description," it was immaterial to the point to which he posted the definition in response. Nor the thread in general.
The common use definition of story is very broad. It's more a matter of it being a good story. And there I'm in favor of whatever works.
Greetings!
Well, in my Thandor campaign world, I have run numerous campaigns through the years with different player groups. Generally, I organize a sandbox for the players to roam around in. For the most part, the Players get involved and do their thing. From this multi-faceted involvement, a story emerges. I tend to have a loosely-defined theme for a specific region, under which are several detailed story frameworks, with guiding plot-points, character goals, motivations, strategies and tactics. These various story frameworks have different levels of detail, with various elements of random-rolls thrown into the mix. Depending upon the Players involvement and actions, such produces results and consequences within these story frameworks.
Beyond such elements to provide some degree of structure for campaigns set within various geographical regions of Thandor, each particular Adventuring party has a sort of "Group Story" comprised loosely of the various adventures and struggles encountered by the party. Drilling down, each individual Player Character has their own personal, ongoing story, formed of their own actions, goals and motivations, interwoven with a set of different NPC's. The individual stories often intersect with other members of the Adventuring Group, naturally, though many tangents do not connect directly or involve other members of the Adventuring Group at all.
As the DM, I push pieces across the "Chess Board" and see what develops. I don't control or foreordain any particular result. The consequences of any number of stories reflects what the Player Characters do--or do not do.
*Shrugs* I prefer a huge, sandbox environment, with a lightly structured story framework to provide plot points, guidance, and a sense of direction. The precise details, outcomes and conclusions vary greatly.
The whole "Story Game" narrative format though, getting rid of rules, giving all kinds of narrative "agency" to the Players, and so on, I think is BS. The Players control the behavior and actions of their own Characters. I, the DM, control everything else.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 19, 2022, 09:58:54 PM
...
Yeah, because having to back up what you say is so beneath you.
I do. I haven't seen anything so far that actually refutes the points made.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 19, 2022, 09:58:54 PM
The problem is you got all obsessive over the word "description" and you asserted Wrath of God was hanging his hat on that word--I didn't see him doing any such thing.
I zeroed in on that word because in the post of his I was responding to he used his interpretation of description to support this nonsense:
Quote from: Wrath of God on November 20, 2021, 07:26:10 AM
...
If player is playing big heist then generally speaking he needs to describe fictional actions of his character. And that itself, real live time is already a story.
Game = whole event. Story = whatever is happening in fictional world game generates including GM descriptions, players declaration of actions, results of random rolls declared by GM or players. ...
Describing the fictional actions of your character during play is not a story.
Story is emergent from gameplay; not what you are doing while playing the game.
It doesn't matter if you use Account, Report, or Description; in the definition of Story, the result is the same. As explained in my post in the previous thread.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 19, 2022, 09:58:54 PM
All of the above. If you actually stand by these sources, we have no qualm. ....
I do - so it seems we have no issue then.
Quote from: Jaeger on October 20, 2022, 06:09:11 PM
I zeroed in on that word because in the post of his I was responding to he used his interpretation of description to support this nonsense:
Quote from: Wrath of God on November 20, 2021, 07:26:10 AM
...
If player is playing big heist then generally speaking he needs to describe fictional actions of his character. And that itself, real live time is already a story.
Game = whole event. Story = whatever is happening in fictional world game generates including GM descriptions, players declaration of actions, results of random rolls declared by GM or players. ...
Describing the fictional actions of your character during play is not a story.
Story is emergent from gameplay; not what you are doing while playing the game.
It doesn't matter if you use Account, Report, or Description; in the definition of Story, the result is the same. As explained in my post in the previous thread.
Okay. Fair enough. I still don't think describe was the operative word.
The questions I would raise (in response to Wrath of God) are:
1) The definition said description of event; does that make description of action kosher?
2) Isn't there an important distinction between description and declaration in this context?
3) Where does Game = whole event come from?
And then the questions I would have for your comments are:
4) What part of describing the fictional actions of your character are you objecting to equating to story? Is it a matter of description vs declaration, action vs event, or both?
5) Where does "Story is emergent from gameplay" come from? It's not in the definition of story we've all agreed to.
My comments for each of these questions would be as follows.
1) On first blush, the difference between an action and an event seems to be one of scale. While it's not explicit by the definition of story that the description of a single action can also be a story, it's also not explicitly excluded. The answer cannot just be assumed by definition.
I've got a whole separate issue here. I probably raised it at some point in the previous thread. It has nothing to do with the changing or warping or assuming the definition of story. It has more to do with the technical science of conscious action. Conscious action is goal-oriented. It is formally defined as the utilization of scarce means to achieve ends. Hence, conscious action is motivated. It must begin from a state of dissatisfaction with the initial state with an aim of achieving a preferable state.
And that means the anatomy of an action itself fits the narrative structure. It has a beginning--the initial state of dissatisfaction, a middle--the utilization of means with the aim of achieving the ends, and an end--the resultant state of the action. And so actions are stories not because that's the definition of story. But because it's the nature of actions. It's baked into the technical (not dictionary) definition of action.
I'm fine using the technical definition of action while using the casual definition of story. My reason for this is the only point I see to even discussing any of this is, at the end of the day, I want to run a better game. So the only definition of story that matters is the ones the players mean when that word appears in part of their feedback. But if I'm going to go back an analyze a game or a session to see what can be approved, I need a more technical definition of action for my analysis.
2) To me, the term declaration in the context of declaring a character's actions in an RPG is what I would call in the "Mother, may I?" phase. You can declare, "My bunnyman monk scoops up the field mice and bops them on the head." But it's not part of the story until I rule on it, which will likely involve some dice rolls. It should be taken to mean "Bunnyman attempts to scoop up the field mice." If I say, "Okay, make a scoop check," and the dice roll is good, "You successfully scoop up the field mice; as they are held and helpless, you don't need to roll to bop them on the head." The complete action is a composite of the player's declaration and my ruling. The declaration by itself is not even a complete action, much less a story. And neither is my ruling. But combined, they are.
3, 4) No comment. I'm just seeking clarity there.
5) This is one of the key hotly contended topics. If story can only ever happen after the fact, if story can only ever emerge from gameplay, not happen in real time, then what does that say about the theory of "Story Now" vs "Story Later"? Is "story now" complete bunk because you just can't have story in real time? And if not, why isn't it also permissible to have story now via different method and mechanics? Isn't there some baked-in assumption without evidence that when I run a sandbox it must look a lot like your experiences playing and/or running sandboxes?
On the flip side of it, I would argue of course stories can happen in real time. Because they are experienced in real time. The entire narrative structure rests upon this fact. A climax wouldn't be a climax if people didn't experience a heightened level of excitement at that point. A level of excitement they don't feel during the rest of the story. The story technically actually does not need to have an end to elicit that feeling. Imagine you're watching a movie and just as you reach the climax, the power goes out. Now imagine the story was actually written that way.
I'm not saying it wouldn't feel extremely unsatisfying without a resolution. Just pointing out you can feel the climax even if the ending isn't written. So why can't the ending be determined at the tail end of the climax? Why can't a story be created in real time? If the audience isn't feeling heightened excitement during the climax without the ending, they're not going to feel it with the ending either. And then your problem isn't whether or not the story has an ending. The bigger problem is it has no climax. That's how the insistence it can't happen in real time unravels the whole structure.
I would define a "story game" as any game whose principal purpose is the creation of a narrative structure in real-time with the game.
Role-playing games, in this definition, create a story via memoir, a narrative crafted from the events after the fact.
The big dividing factor is "does the game work to ensure every activity in the game advances the narrative instead of allowing any action that would be part of a character's life regardless of its presence in the narrative". In a story game, everything should be something a writer telling the story in a novel would include in a novel. In a roleplaying game, the pieces of life the novelist would leave out are just as valid as game activities.
I would say initially the relationship between story games and RPGs is the same as early RPGs and wargaming. The former is an offshoot of the latter. RPGs have long had their own identity and culture separate from, but still adjacent to, wargaming. I do not think story games have successfully crossed that divide.
Quote from: PulpHerb on October 21, 2022, 05:53:12 PM
I would define a "story game" as any game whose principal purpose is the creation of a narrative structure in real-time with the game.
Role-playing games, in this definition, create a story via memoir, a narrative crafted from the events after the fact.
Is "principal" the operative word here?
Obviously if I'm here saying that RPGs
do create stories in
realtime, that suggests at the very least that the way
I run my RPGs creates stories in realtime. And as I quoted earlier from the 1E DMG Foreword, at least one of the aims of the game was to watch a story unfold. So I am creating narrative structures. And I'm using a set of rules where that is an explicit purpose.
I wouldn't call it principal. But I also wouldn't necessarily call any of my other purposes principal. My biggest beef with RPG theory has always been this idea of splitting things into different styles or creative agendas or what have you, and that these things are assumed to be in conflict, so if you want to maximize the one thing you like the most, you have to cut back on a lot of other stuff. I always thought that was total bunk.
For myself, I view it more like a recipe. These things work best when brought together. There's room to tweak if you like a little more or a little less flour, sugar, egg, etc in your cake, according to taste. But if you like more egg, and cut everything else out to go all in on egg, it's not a cake anymore. It's scrambled eggs.
And maybe that's the point. Maybe some people are sick of cake and just want eggs. That's fine. But that doesn't mean you go back and re-define my cake into being just powdered white stuff. Just because story games are all egg doesn't make RPGs eggless. Just because story games have realtime narratives doesn't mean that RPGs don't. Players in an RPG unquestionably feel climactic moments as they're happening--it's not an experience only appreciated in a re-telling after the fact.
QuoteThe big dividing factor is "does the game work to ensure every activity in the game advances the narrative instead of allowing any action that would be part of a character's life regardless of its presence in the narrative". In a story game, everything should be something a writer telling the story in a novel would include in a novel. In a roleplaying game, the pieces of life the novelist would leave out are just as valid as game activities.
When I was 13, I made a new friend in middle school. It was the first time I made a friend who already had played D&D. Up to that point, the only people I ever had to play with are the people who I got into gaming and taught how to play. He told me a story about the game he played in, where one of the PCs stepped behind a tree to take a piss, and a hand popped up from the ground and grabbed his dick. That was the only time anyone I met face to face ever had a story about playing in an RPG where you played out going to the bathroom.
If RPGs really are or ever have been about playing out parts of a character's life as first and foremost, even when those moments are not narratively interesting, why don't we have more tales going around about going to the bathroom in-character? Should there be a to hit roll to get it in the bowl? If the stream splits, do we use the same modifiers as two-weapon fighting?
This is not the stuff of RPGs at all. People give me funny looks just because I require the monthly disease checks per the 1E DMG. Skipping over the mundane details has long been the tradition of RPGs. We pick and choose only those moments that are important to play out. Important to what or to whom? That's up to the GM. Important to the narrative is certainly always a candidate. Yeah, you probably also want to play out anything that could result in a PC's death or dismemberment. But it's hard to imagine an example something like that happening to a main character in a story not also being of narrative interest.
QuoteI would say initially the relationship between story games and RPGs is the same as early RPGs and wargaming. The former is an offshoot of the latter. RPGs have long had their own identity and culture separate from, but still adjacent to, wargaming. I do not think story games have successfully crossed that divide.
I do wonder if wargaming ever got retroactively redefined to give these newfangled RPGs a wide berth to avoid swilling.
If a game is called a story game because it allows players to narrate their actions through their characters than name an rpg that doesn't do this?
That is the very core of what playing roleplaying games is all about. Whether or not some RPGs offer players narrative-meta-fictional-world-game tools to alter the world or not on a meta level is irrelevant. All TRPGs are player driven narrative focused socially focused with game rules games.
How you play and narrate your actions in D&D is no different than how you do it playing Dungeon World. GM describes situation, players respond via narrative description, GM responds, and back and forth you go. Sometimes you need to roll dice, the dice roll leads to consequences of action which then leads to further narrative flavoring by the players and GM. Repeat until game ends.
Sometimes players will then tell stories of their adventures after the game is over. That's about 98% of how all TRPGs function.
The others that are labeled RPGs, like Microscope or Fiasco, I don't think are RPGs.
Right. The disconnect is when the storygamers want to either remove the DM, and/or remove the Game, or even the Role Play part of RPG.
Quote from: RebelSky on October 22, 2022, 01:04:39 AM
The others that are labeled RPGs, like Microscope or Fiasco, I don't think are RPGs.
Microscope at best is collaborative world building. Normally it's just a GM tool to world build. People who call it a "Game" always make me wonder if they consider a presentation to be a game
Never played Fiasco though, so can't comment on it.
Quote from: PulpHerb on October 21, 2022, 05:53:12 PM
I would define a "story game" as any game whose principal purpose is the creation of a narrative structure in real-time with the game.
Role-playing games, in this definition, create a story via memoir, a narrative crafted from the events after the fact.
This right here is my problem. With this whole 'logic' if you could even call it what people who enjoy "story" or "narrative" games have. The Storyteller System by White Wolf, the "OG" Storygame as some people would call it has back and forths with GM's where actions and events within the game generate the game while it occurs. Just like in every single edition of D&D, where a character interacting with the world generates the story as the GM and the Player uses the rules to mediate the situation. Just like in Apocalypse World where a Player makes a prompt using the rules and then rolls if the rules call for it and the GM mediates what's happened. All of this happens in real time. You are not writing down the events and then after the game session vomiting out what happens. That's called basing your book off of a really cool TTRPG game you played once.
Take for example a "Tactical Sci-Fi Horror Game" I ran for a group of friends for a good 50 sessions. Near the middle of our campaign the players were having a good ol'fashion "train fight", things where looking dicy so a player who had been lugging around some breaching charges since nearly the start of the campaign decided to use them in the middle of the fight. The rules allow for it, and so the player tosses them, makes a roll for damage since these charges have a little rule saying "Do not require setup to use" meaning, the player just needs to roll damage. The "train" explodes and has a wreck, it nearly kills everyone and it completely changed how the story was going seconds prior to the player being like "Fuck it, I use a bomb"
If that's not "making a story in real-time with the game" then your "definition" is hogwash. As in a "Storygame" the player does the exact same thing, maybe they don't need to roll damage, but they still "State their action" and the GM still "Mediates what happens". Almost like, TTRPGs are collective story telling or something and always have been or something.
I'm not into pure storygames like Microscope or Fiasco, but I LOVE games that mesh it with trad or old-school sensibilities. Stuff like LANCER, Blades in the Dark, The Sprawl, Beyond the Wall, Shinobigami, Trophy Dark, Brindlewood Bay, Forbidden Lands, etc. and I'm glad this is a trend these days.
I see it happening in boardgames too, where you had clear "ameritrash" and "eurofag" genres before but now most games are meshing the two, resulting in novel and interesting stuff like say, Gloomhaven or Scythe or Blood Rage.
Quote from: PulpHerb on October 21, 2022, 05:53:12 PM
I would define a "story game" as any game whose principal purpose is the creation of a narrative structure in real-time with the game.
Role-playing games, in this definition, create a story via memoir, a narrative crafted from the events after the fact.
The big dividing factor is "does the game work to ensure every activity in the game advances the narrative instead of allowing any action that would be part of a character's life regardless of its presence in the narrative". In a story game, everything should be something a writer telling the story in a novel would include in a novel. In a roleplaying game, the pieces of life the novelist would leave out are just as valid as game activities.
This is the same distinction that I disagreed with rytrasmi over previously:
https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/what-is-story-gaming-in-your-opinion/msg1233136/#msg1233136
The problem is that story games that are GMless or have strong player input tend to create sequences that are even more rambling and unstructured than many traditional RPGs. I brought up examples of Microscope, The Quiet Year, and Fiasco - but this is broadly true across a lot of others that call themselves story games. With collaborative mechanics, there's a lot more messy stuff where a player introduces a new character or plot thread, but then it doesn't get worked into the rest of the session.
Traditional RPGs tend to have a GM who prepares an adventure, that has a beginning hook, a middle conflict, and a final resolution. The GM further will often direct things to skip over stuff that isn't relevant to the adventure. We don't play out round by round when a PC is going to the bathroom, for example - but we might if they are getting ambushed in the bathroom by cultists waiting for them there.
When there is no prepared main adventure - or if the players can interject to change what the main story is about - then things don't get more structured like a novel. They get even more messy like a pile of notes that needs to be further edited to get to a novel.
Quote from: jhkim on October 22, 2022, 04:31:10 PM
This is the same distinction that I disagreed with rytrasmi over previously:
https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/what-is-story-gaming-in-your-opinion/msg1233136/#msg1233136
The problem is that story games that are GMless or have strong player input tend to create sequences that are even more rambling and unstructured than many traditional RPGs. I brought up examples of Microscope, The Quiet Year, and Fiasco - but this is broadly true across a lot of others that call themselves story games. With collaborative mechanics, there's a lot more messy stuff where a player introduces a new character or plot thread, but then it doesn't get worked into the rest of the session.
Traditional RPGs tend to have a GM who prepares an adventure, that has a beginning hook, a middle conflict, and a final resolution. The GM further will often direct things to skip over stuff that isn't relevant to the adventure. We don't play out round by round when a PC is going to the bathroom, for example - but we might if they are getting ambushed in the bathroom by cultists waiting for them there.
When there is no prepared main adventure - or if the players can interject to change what the main story is about - then things don't get more structured like a novel. They get even more messy like a pile of notes that needs to be further edited to get to a novel.
I agree, and this is why I mentioned the misnomer earlier. I have played Houses of the Blooded and a few other "story games". Such games are often much more random and unpredictable. Railroading a pre-generated story, if that is your sort of thing, is much easier with old-fashioned rules, although "sandboxes" are of course also very possible.
Could the distinction comedown to players declaring intention and the rules or GM resolving the outcome thus making the story happen versus players describing the outcome and telling a story after being given the authority to?
;) Did someone make the comparison of "story gaming" to Family Guy's "Hickadoola"? Because I think that answer is funny on how nebulous the meaning shifts have been over time.
No dice, no real GM/DM, that's what I think of "story gaming"
My own definition is based on remarks by Pundit and Angry GM on story games: a story game is one in which the goal of telling a story takes precedence over the goal of playing a character, especially if this is incentivized by game mechanics such as the ability to alter events through metagame mechanics instead of through character abilities* or to gain benefits like XP in exchange for accepting or inviting problems.
The cash value of the distinction is that story gaming leads to a misalignment between the motivations of players and those of their characters. Of course those motivations will never be identical since the player is not actually the character and is aware of the game mechanics and so forth, but as a rule, in a role-playing game the player wants for the character what the character wants for itself, and does not want things contradictory to those goals. In story games, the player wants to help tell a good story even at the character's expense.
* I would say whether action/luck/willpower points are such a mechanic depends on metaphysics of the game: for example, if "luck" is to be thought of as a real thing that can "used up" then I'd say it's part of the character's abilities, albeit one they aren't necessarily consciously aware of using.
Quote from: Wisithir on October 22, 2022, 11:39:46 PM
Could the distinction comedown to players declaring intention and the rules or GM resolving the outcome thus making the story happen versus players describing the outcome and telling a story after being given the authority to?
Generally in an RPG, the players declare an action. Declaring an intention is optional, but often a good idea since intent will be assumed if not declared. For example, you might declare your character is attacking the dragon with your sword, I'm going to assume the intent is to slay unless you specifically declare it's only to subdue.
Yes, often some combination of GM, rules, and dice will then resolve that action. But that's not always the case in an RPG. There are plenty of things in an RPG a player can just do without a "Mother, may I," and these can vary from one RPG to the next. You're usually allowed to speak in character without having to make any kind of check, for instance.
Perhaps that's why the term "role-play" is sometimes also used by gamers to specifically mean "speaking in character." It's the most common and reliable playground where you can just play your character unfettered by the rules.
Perhaps it's also why even in combat gamers tend to gravitate more towards the language of "I attack the dragon with my sword," stating the action while the intent is unspoken, rather than "I attempt to slay the dragon by slashing at it with my sword." You don't need permission to attack. If it's your turn, you're entitled to it. You only need the GM's say so on whether you hit and whether that hit kills.
In either case, the player is role-playing. And in fact the player is also narrating, but doing so only with in the confines of where that has unilateral authority. Some RPGs can give players more unilateral authority than others. But unless you're playing solo, any game, even a story game, has to place limits on where any player has sole discretion, because of course there are other players at the table.
So I'm not so convinced the distinction can be tied strictly to the quantity of narrative control. In an RPG, it's just that the narrative control is highly correlated to the playing of the character. Even with the so-called "meta-game" mechanics and currency, in the RPG, these are generally used by the player to benefit or enhance the abilities of their own character.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 20, 2022, 11:00:08 PM
I'm fine using the technical definition of action while using the casual definition of story. ....
What is that? Define your terms.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 20, 2022, 11:00:08 PM
5) This is one of the key hotly contended topics. If story can only ever happen after the fact, if story can only ever emerge from gameplay, not happen in real time, then what does that say about the theory of "Story Now" vs "Story Later"? Is "story now" complete bunk ...
Yes.
This is entirely bunkum:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html
Straight-up fake pseudo-intellectual wankery.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 20, 2022, 11:00:08 PM
On the flip side of it, I would argue of course stories can happen in real time. Because they are experienced in real time. The entire narrative structure rests upon this fact. A climax wouldn't be a climax if people didn't experience a heightened level of excitement at that point. A level of excitement they don't feel during the rest of the story. The story technically actually does not need to have an end to elicit that feeling. Imagine you're watching a movie and just as you reach the climax, the power goes out. Now imagine the story was actually written that way.
I'm not saying it wouldn't feel extremely unsatisfying without a resolution. Just pointing out you can feel the climax even if the ending isn't written. So why can't the ending be determined at the tail end of the climax? Why can't a story be created in real time? If the audience isn't feeling heightened excitement during the climax without the ending, they're not going to feel it with the ending either. And then your problem isn't whether or not the story has an ending. The bigger problem is it has no climax. That's how the insistence it can't happen in real time unravels the whole structure.
Emotional feelings are proof of nothing. And have no place in this discussion.
Our ability to empathize and feel emotions does not distinguish between the fictional and real life.
I can read a story of something bad happening to a fictional character. A good writer will make me feel sympathy when reading the story. Someone I know can tell me about something bad that happened to them I can also feel sympathy for them. One is fake, the other is real life, and intellectually I know the difference. But my ability to empathize does not care. This is why you see people get really attached to fictional characters, and even get extremely upset if an author kills off a fan favorite.
Or more accurately when referring to the experience of playing RPG's vs. reading a story:
I've felt nervous tension when fencing someone that I really wanted to win against. I can feel nervous tension when my PC is fighting an evil NPC and I really want to win. The
feeling is the same, but they are two entirely different activities.
Just like reading or telling a story are different activities than
playing an RPG.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 20, 2022, 11:00:08 PM
... What part of describing the fictional actions of your character are you objecting to equating to story?...
All of it. You are not telling a story, you are just telling the GM what you are doing. When I tell someone that I'm going out to the store, I'm not telling them a story about going out to the store. I'm just telling them what I'm going to do.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 20, 2022, 11:00:08 PM
1) On first blush, the difference between an action and an event seems to be one of scale. While it's not explicit by the definition of story that the description of a single action can also be a story, it's also not explicitly excluded. The answer cannot just be assumed by definition.
Yes, it is explicitly excluded. By definition.
According to the definitions we agreed to:
- an account of incidents or events:
- a description, either true or imagined, of a connected series of events:
- an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment:
- a description of events and people that the writer or speaker has invented in order to entertain people:See that word used in common in all the definitions: "events" - plural. Not singular.
RPG's are a game, and a necessary part of the game is describing the actions of your character.
When telling a story you do use description to fill in the narrative.
But every time you describe something you are not telling a story.
For example:
GM:
"The three Orcs attack Red-Lori with a furious charge!"Player1:
"Crap. I'm in the middle of casting the portal; Help!"Player2:
"Got this: I charge into them and use my multiple attacks to mow them down!"GM:
"Good roll dude. Your damage? ...Holy crap – you charged into them and chopped them up!"That is not a story. It is just the Players and GM talking back and forth to each other describing actions and results as they play the game.
This is how that Player-GM interaction can become a story:
Player3:
"Got my soda, what did I miss?"Player2:
"The orcs were charging Red-Lori as she was casting the portal to take us out of the dungeon. Grognak the Slayer lived up to his name by charging into them and cutting them down with his axe grognir in a series of furious downright blows!"
That is a story. A short one. But Jack and Jill wasn't exactly an involved tale either.
In the first part, no matter what verbal color you add to punch things up - you are not telling a story! You are merely describing your PC's actions in the moment.
In the second part you see all the different actions made by the GM and the Players of what they did being put together, and told in a single cohesive narrative;
creating a story.
That is how descriptions of PC's actions become a story, and how story is emergent from gameplay.
As a general note, I don't think the people on The Forge or the Story Games Forum ever got a good definitional line between traditional RPGs and story games either, and there was frequent disagreement. I had a lot of arguments over there as well.
Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on October 24, 2022, 11:41:05 AM
The cash value of the distinction is that story gaming leads to a misalignment between the motivations of players and those of their characters. Of course those motivations will never be identical since the player is not actually the character and is aware of the game mechanics and so forth, but as a rule, in a role-playing game the player wants for the character what the character wants for itself, and does not want things contradictory to those goals. In story games, the player wants to help tell a good story even at the character's expense.
In practice, many traditional RPG players are mostly trying to get into and engage with an exciting and interesting adventure -- rather than deeply immersing into character. Such players act to see where the adventure will lead, and what the interesting encounters are -- and don't give a second thought to severe discomfort, mortal danger, deprivation, and other hardship. If given a choice between a boring option that gets the character safety and fulfillment and an exciting but dangerous adventure, they'll choose the adventure.
Going for the more interesting option to play through is much the same with story gamers.
There are often different mechanics at work, but I think player motivation is often very similar. There is a subset of deeply immersive players who will choose in-character options that are boring to play out -- but it's just a fraction.
Quote from: Jaeger on October 24, 2022, 07:03:53 PM
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 20, 2022, 11:00:08 PM
If story can only ever happen after the fact, if story can only ever emerge from gameplay, not happen in real time, then what does that say about the theory of "Story Now" vs "Story Later"? Is "story now" complete bunk ...
This is entirely bunkum:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html
Straight-up fake pseudo-intellectual wankery.
I'm with Jaeger here. The "Story Now" definition is hopelessly muddled, and is layered with lots of terminology which just hides that there's no clear definitions in the first place.
Quote from: Jaeger on October 24, 2022, 07:03:53 PM
For example:
GM: "The three Orcs attack Red-Lori with a furious charge!"
Player1: "Crap. I'm in the middle of casting the portal; Help!"
Player2: "Got this: I charge into them and use my multiple attacks to mow them down!"
GM: "Good roll dude. Your damage? ...Holy crap – you charged into them and chopped them up!"
That is not a story. It is just the Players and GM talking back and forth to each other describing actions and results as they play the game.
This is how that Player-GM interaction can become a story:
Player3: "Got my soda, what did I miss?"
Player2: "The orcs were charging Red-Lori as she was casting the portal to take us out of the dungeon. Grognak the Slayer lived up to his name by charging into them and cutting them down with his axe grognir in a series of furious downright blows!"
That is a story. A short one. But Jack and Jill wasn't exactly an involved tale either.
I see this -- but I don't think this illustrates a distinction from story games. In nearly all story games, there's messy back-and-forth of "What is your plot card draw?" and "How does that option work?" and so forth -- that would later be condensed into a more coherent summary.
Quote from: Jaeger on October 24, 2022, 07:03:53 PM
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 20, 2022, 11:00:08 PM
I'm fine using the technical definition of action while using the casual definition of story. ....
What is that? Define your terms.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 20, 2022, 11:00:08 PM
5) This is one of the key hotly contended topics. If story can only ever happen after the fact, if story can only ever emerge from gameplay, not happen in real time, then what does that say about the theory of "Story Now" vs "Story Later"? Is "story now" complete bunk ...
Yes.
This is entirely bunkum:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html
Straight-up fake pseudo-intellectual wankery.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 20, 2022, 11:00:08 PM
On the flip side of it, I would argue of course stories can happen in real time. Because they are experienced in real time. The entire narrative structure rests upon this fact. A climax wouldn't be a climax if people didn't experience a heightened level of excitement at that point. A level of excitement they don't feel during the rest of the story. The story technically actually does not need to have an end to elicit that feeling. Imagine you're watching a movie and just as you reach the climax, the power goes out. Now imagine the story was actually written that way.
I'm not saying it wouldn't feel extremely unsatisfying without a resolution. Just pointing out you can feel the climax even if the ending isn't written. So why can't the ending be determined at the tail end of the climax? Why can't a story be created in real time? If the audience isn't feeling heightened excitement during the climax without the ending, they're not going to feel it with the ending either. And then your problem isn't whether or not the story has an ending. The bigger problem is it has no climax. That's how the insistence it can't happen in real time unravels the whole structure.
Emotional feelings are proof of nothing. And have no place in this discussion.
Our ability to empathize and feel emotions does not distinguish between the fictional and real life.
I can read a story of something bad happening to a fictional character. A good writer will make me feel sympathy when reading the story. Someone I know can tell me about something bad that happened to them I can also feel sympathy for them. One is fake, the other is real life, and intellectually I know the difference. But my ability to empathize does not care. This is why you see people get really attached to fictional characters, and even get extremely upset if an author kills off a fan favorite.
Or more accurately when referring to the experience of playing RPG's vs. reading a story:
I've felt nervous tension when fencing someone that I really wanted to win against. I can feel nervous tension when my PC is fighting an evil NPC and I really want to win. The feeling is the same, but they are two entirely different activities.
Just like reading or telling a story are different activities than playing an RPG.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 20, 2022, 11:00:08 PM
... What part of describing the fictional actions of your character are you objecting to equating to story?...
All of it. You are not telling a story, you are just telling the GM what you are doing. When I tell someone that I'm going out to the store, I'm not telling them a story about going out to the store. I'm just telling them what I'm going to do.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 20, 2022, 11:00:08 PM
1) On first blush, the difference between an action and an event seems to be one of scale. While it's not explicit by the definition of story that the description of a single action can also be a story, it's also not explicitly excluded. The answer cannot just be assumed by definition.
Yes, it is explicitly excluded. By definition.
According to the definitions we agreed to:
- an account of incidents or events:
- a description, either true or imagined, of a connected series of events:
- an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment:
- a description of events and people that the writer or speaker has invented in order to entertain people:
See that word used in common in all the definitions: "events" - plural. Not singular.
RPG's are a game, and a necessary part of the game is describing the actions of your character.
When telling a story you do use description to fill in the narrative.
But every time you describe something you are not telling a story.
For example:
GM: "The three Orcs attack Red-Lori with a furious charge!"
Player1: "Crap. I'm in the middle of casting the portal; Help!"
Player2: "Got this: I charge into them and use my multiple attacks to mow them down!"
GM: "Good roll dude. Your damage? ...Holy crap – you charged into them and chopped them up!"
That is not a story. It is just the Players and GM talking back and forth to each other describing actions and results as they play the game.
This is how that Player-GM interaction can become a story:
Player3: "Got my soda, what did I miss?"
Player2: "The orcs were charging Red-Lori as she was casting the portal to take us out of the dungeon. Grognak the Slayer lived up to his name by charging into them and cutting them down with his axe grognir in a series of furious downright blows!"
That is a story. A short one. But Jack and Jill wasn't exactly an involved tale either.
In the first part, no matter what verbal color you add to punch things up - you are not telling a story! You are merely describing your PC's actions in the moment.
In the second part you see all the different actions made by the GM and the Players of what they did being put together, and told in a single cohesive narrative; creating a story.
That is how descriptions of PC's actions become a story, and how story is emergent from gameplay.
Greetings!
Excellent, Jaeger!
That all makes perfect sense to me. Why do these other people have such a difficulty comprehending this?
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: jhkim on October 24, 2022, 08:26:41 PM
...
I see this -- but I don't think this illustrates a distinction from story games. ...
That example is my argument that when you play RPG's you are not are not "Telling stories" in real-time.
As to the difference between RPG's and "story games"...
Quote from: jhkim on October 24, 2022, 08:26:41 PM
...In nearly all story games, there's messy back-and-forth of "What is your plot card draw?" and "How does that option work?" and so forth -- that would later be condensed into a more coherent summary.
I agree.
RPG's as created and handed down to us by Saints Arneson and Gygax have the players with sole agency over their PC's, and the GM with agency over the NPC's etc, in the virtual game world.
Forgeist "storygames" think that that divide makes for shit storytelling, and most every storygame I played sought to more "equally" share the agency over the game world and 'narrative' of play among the players, eliminating the need for a GM.
I've played my share of story games when they were the new hotness, and Endgame in Oakland actually stocked them on the shelves.
They are messy. They say RPG's are incoherent because the back and forth between players and GM's is too messy and inconsistent to be vehicles for "real storytelling"... But the "real storytelling games" have a different but equally messy back and forth trying to unite several different people's ideas of what the overall "narrative" should be. They're not actually very good at what they were trying to do.
What a lot of forgeites didn't get was that RPG's work so well for so many; precisely because they are
not storytelling vehicles..
The whole idea of "story games" in the larger RPG hobby was always a solution to a non-existent problem.
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 24, 2022, 01:20:41 PM
Perhaps that's why the term "role-play" is sometimes also used by gamers to specifically mean "speaking in character." It's the most common and reliable playground where you can just play your character unfettered by the rules.
...
In either case, the player is role-playing. And in fact the player is also narrating, but doing so only with in the confines of where that has unilateral authority. Some RPGs can give players more unilateral authority than others. But unless you're playing solo, any game, even a story game, has to place limits on where any player has sole discretion, because of course there are other players at the table.
I think we are using different definitions of role-playing. I subscribe to the following:
Quote from: https://theangrygm.com/memo-to-the-players-2/
Action, Not Acting
No. Role-playing isn't portraying a character. It's not speaking in character. It's not pretending to be someone else. It's not sharing an awesome character with the world. It's not psychoanalyzing a character. Role-playing is entirely about making choices and taking action.
Between You and Your Character
Role-playing has nothing to do with anyone else. You're not putting on a show. It's entirely about building a relationship with your character. Your character in a role-playing game is like your favorite character in a Netflix series. The longer you spend with the character and the more you learn about them, the more you care.
Role-playing is about experiencing a story through your favorite character's eyes. Experiencing a story about your favorite character from the inside. But the relationship still needs time to develop and room to grow. And it has to catch you by surprise sometimes. Just like your favorite characters do. Surprises test and strengthen relationships.
Thus, to me, a story-game makes a game of telling a story, while the story of an RPG is experienced through the character by making decisions for the character, not about the character or the surrounding cast and world.
For example, Spider Dude is fighting Doctor Tentacles. Deciding I want reduce the adversary's effectiveness; blind him by throwing spider goo in his eyes, would be role-playing. Conversely, getting a "Yes, but" on a defeat adversary test and being asked to describe to the group how Spider Dude prevailed while ruining his social life in the process is story-gaming no matter how much I might play act in the process.
Quote from: Jaeger on October 24, 2022, 10:57:43 PM
What a lot of forgeites didn't get was that RPG's work so well for so many; precisely because they are not storytelling vehicles..
The whole idea of "story games" in the larger RPG hobby was always a solution to a non-existent problem.
One doesn't have to consider traditional RPGs to be a
problem in order to enjoy other games such as wargames or story games.
There was a significant subset of The Forge who disliked traditional RPGs, including a co-founder -- but every style of gaming has at least some subset of One-True-Way designers and fans.
Quote from: Wisithir on October 25, 2022, 12:15:28 AM
Quote from: Lunamancer on October 24, 2022, 01:20:41 PM
Perhaps that's why the term "role-play" is sometimes also used by gamers to specifically mean "speaking in character." It's the most common and reliable playground where you can just play your character unfettered by the rules.
...
In either case, the player is role-playing. And in fact the player is also narrating, but doing so only with in the confines of where that has unilateral authority. Some RPGs can give players more unilateral authority than others. But unless you're playing solo, any game, even a story game, has to place limits on where any player has sole discretion, because of course there are other players at the table.
I think we are using different definitions of role-playing. I subscribe to the following:
Quote from: https://theangrygm.com/memo-to-the-players-2/
Action, Not Acting
No. Role-playing isn't portraying a character. It's not speaking in character. It's not pretending to be someone else. It's not sharing an awesome character with the world. It's not psychoanalyzing a character. Role-playing is entirely about making choices and taking action.
Between You and Your Character
Role-playing has nothing to do with anyone else. You're not putting on a show. It's entirely about building a relationship with your character. Your character in a role-playing game is like your favorite character in a Netflix series. The longer you spend with the character and the more you learn about them, the more you care.
Role-playing is about experiencing a story through your favorite character's eyes. Experiencing a story about your favorite character from the inside. But the relationship still needs time to develop and room to grow. And it has to catch you by surprise sometimes. Just like your favorite characters do. Surprises test and strengthen relationships.
Thus, to me, a story-game makes a game of telling a story, while the story of an RPG is experienced through the character by making decisions for the character, not about the character or the surrounding cast and world.
For example, Spider Dude is fighting Doctor Tentacles. Deciding I want reduce the adversary's effectiveness; blind him by throwing spider goo in his eyes, would be role-playing. Conversely, getting a "Yes, but" on a defeat adversary test and being asked to describe to the group how Spider Dude prevailed while ruining his social life in the process is story-gaming no matter how much I might play act in the process.
So roleplaying is not about....playing a role? ;)
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?
Two kinds of story games:
1) The players talk out of character about what a scene should be about and how the characters will act/feel about it in order to make a story.
2) The players sit at the table and do nothing while the DM tells them about all the awesome things their characters do in his story. Once in a while, players are asked to roll dice.
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.
I think some of the difficulty in defining "story gaming" comes form it being a two axis problem. Sandbox vs planned arc with end point and roleplaying vs storytelling, complicated by storytelling leaning on the sandbox side of the other axis due to a deliberate lack of planned path.
Quote from: tenbones on February 09, 2023, 10:45:01 AM
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.
This is what I was pointing out before but got shouted down in the usual deluge of denials and lies on both sides.
Bog standard TTRPGing has rules and story. Not the fucked up notion of story that storygamers concocted. But STORY you fucking morons. You know. The adventure you go on and the chronicle of the things you do? No? Of course not.
Missing the larger point is an understatement.
But problem is story gaming stopped having any semblance of sane meaning with the advent of storygamers who eventually push to get rid of the game part and its just storytelling. And they just have to fuck that up beyond all recognition too. Because of course they do. "Watching paint dry is storytelling!" "The meteor sitting on your desk tells a story!"
Then you have the cult of the sub-moron who do the same with with RPG and Role Playing. "Playing a board game is an RPG!" "Reading a book is Role Playing!"
Ad Jesus Wept Nausium.
Quote from: Wisithir on February 10, 2023, 11:10:31 PM
I think some of the difficulty in defining "story gaming" comes form it being a two axis problem. Sandbox vs planned arc with end point and roleplaying vs storytelling, complicated by storytelling leaning on the sandbox side of the other axis due to a deliberate lack of planned path.
It is more that storygaming as a term no longer has any meaning. Just like alot of other terms now. Steampunk? Thats another one warped out of shape.
And storygaming can and will lean far far away from sandbox and firmly into planned path or flat out railroading.
Roleplaying: Emerging story you tell AFTER the events, there's no plot.
Storygaming: Bullshit term invented by morons who think themselves Auteurs.
Quote from: Brad on February 10, 2023, 10:06:51 PM
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.
That speech by Sam, was most excellent.
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?
In broader terms I consider both story gaming and role-play gaming synonymous. In specific terms, storygaming is the stuff/ideas that came from the Forge. Which honestly, I also consider the same activity as roleplaying, only in different flavor, one that emphasizes more personal drama and shared narratives over action and task simulations.
In addition to mechanics, I think you have to consider intent.
In RPGs, you participate in an event/adventure. A "story" happens by accident. Like, I could tell you the "story" of how I got my job (it would bore you to tears), but my intent in getting a job is not creating a story. You participate by roleplaying, by definition.
In story games, the story is actually the goal. There is nothing wrong with storygames, I've played them as a child as I've played them with children. You do not even need an specific character; maybe each player tells a part of the story.
Now, there are many hybrid games/situations. When you ask a player to write about his PCs heritage, maybe with some GM input, this is not roleplaying, but story gaming. OSR focuses on roleplaying, which is why there little backstory, but there are many RPGs that are not like that (RPing is still the MAIN activity but there are storygaming moments/mechanics/etc.).
Another example: when you ask the PC "the monster is reduced to 0 HP, how do you kill it?" it is a story gaming moment. There is nothing wrong with that and sometimes can help you with immersion by forcing you to picture the scene, despite not being strictly roleplaying (as the PC wouldn't be able to choose specifically after he knows that the monster is slain, while every other hit was just "I attack"). I'll admit this is an edge case.
How you kill the monster would also be a roleplaying element, as you're following through on the victory according to the character's attitude towards that monster (including how the monster might be spared instead.)
A character's heritage/backstory in this way is also not storygaming, it's a guideline to roleplay that character. If you're an orphan from a village attacked by orcs, you might not think twice about killing a prone 0 HP orc. Unless you also stick with your NG alignment (another rp-guideline), and realize that the orc you were about to execute had nothing to do with the attack on your lost village (varying on however it is orcs are handled in your adventuring world).
I think there might be another mix up in terminology, its possible that they hear "emergent story" and get riled up about an apparent oxymoron ("It's in the dictionary that stories always have start-rise-end patterns that can also give a moral so you're using the word wrong and if you don't like that then you can go speak a different language!") Once you have an entertaining sequence of events that emerges from routine play, it's more accurate to call that record keeping than story telling; lore keeping would sound better for fantasy adventuring.
So then, you're creating a log book, a journal, a history, a diary of events in sequence, even a list of minutes, but none of that is a story if you can keep it all strictly to the economics of your gold and the notches on your scabbard of foes slain (with the odd bragging right), and nothing else. It's still a fictional log book/journal/history/diary of course, as it's not real (that much is understood, no?), and you still get talk of the glorious tales that you want out of it, but none of that is ultimately a *story.* Especially because of the tendency to refuse the slightest whiff of planning (and with that, I don't see why the GM doesn't roll randomly for terrain and climate in every hex, as drawing a map at all as preparation in the first place should be called out as railroading. In fact, roll randomly for dungeon rooms as the characters go deeper into the dungeon, never before hand, literally build the wizard's tower as you play, with each and every opened door. "Hang on guys, I know that you just walked through 5 broom closets and 7 alleyways, but I have to consult up to twelve tables and draw out the placing before we can continue.")
Maybe this sounds like splitting hairs to you, but I reckon that you'd like that bit of shrieking to stop, as headache meds can get expensive.
If the game allows you to control something in addition to your PC, it might be a story game.
Also, they suck.
You may only wildly cast spells, and illusions are now banned.
"Everything is storytelling! You're just too dumb to admit that the swine are right and that PbtA is the bestest game evaaaaaar!"
When I go fishing I'm not trying to tell a story about fishing, one MIGHT emerge if something interesting/fun happens or not. So, after enough fishing trips I might have several fising stories to tell.
I still didn't went trying to tell a story, I went to fish.
When the Roman soldiers went to the Gauls, they weren't trying to tell a story, neither were the centurions, the generals or the roman emperor, and yet stories were told on both sides AFTER the fact.
When we roleplay we're not telling a story, we're making HISTORY, our PCs, the NPCs and even ourselves MIGHT tell stories of our PCs exploits. We still weren't telling a story while playing (Unless you're dumb and think EVERYTHING is telling a story).
We've hashed out this same discussion before, it's useless because the would be Auteurs don't understand logic or words.
The more that I read about the problems with PbtA, the more that I realize that I've been trolled by the one guy I've come across promoting it.
PbtA had a novelty allure in the meanwhile to now, but it's never been something I've put on a pedestal.
You just assume that, because I mentioned it whatsoever, and I ask questions about what can be appropriated from it.
It's such a niche within a niche within a niche that I never had any expectations of ever playing it, not least because I've had too much other far more serious bullshit to deal with than your precious nerd cred.
Forget leftism for five minutes, set aside our God given right to say the "gamer words" on the internet or to whinge about the real problems with feminism: Your sanctimonious domineering is probably what drove them that direction and there's no convincing the almighty that is yourself otherwise, because you are never in fact wrong and don't ever in fact make mistakes.
It's one thing to stop using their words, its another to give them the wiggle room they need to recruit more gamers that shouldn't even be there.
Its that fucking simple.
If your goal is to get me to cancel myself because you're so shit at asking basic clarifications of someone's intent, you shouldn't be wondering how the screaming swine herds get fed.
And if you're that fucking tired of PbtA discussion, write a FAQ.
Or, keep wallowing in this asinine debate again and again and again, as you seem to be just as happy in a different colour of mud.
Because you doing any actual work is not your fucking responsibility, even though you know absolutely more than anybody else.
You're not telling a fucking story, because its plain as day by what you say you want (what economists call "revealed preference.")
I don't fucking like story games, or I'd be in their lame and stunted feel-good boards coping for their virtue simps.
Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 11, 2023, 11:14:11 AM
When we roleplay we're not telling a story, we're making HISTORY, our PCs, the NPCs and even ourselves MIGHT tell stories of our PCs exploits. We still weren't telling a story while playing (Unless you're dumb and think EVERYTHING is telling a story).
What was so confusing about what I've just posted that you need to say exactly what I just said?
I guess you don't glean any history from journals and diaries! Sorry guys! My autism clearly makes me fully retarded, or I would have known that! I would have said "history books" instead of a few specific instances of "history books" that are most congruous with the very concept of roleplay! DEEEEERRRRPPP!
Clearly, my autism is substandard to your own though. Such a champion. Very grand. So kingly.
Basic incel shit to the T. The purest cranky fuckery.
Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 11, 2023, 11:45:31 AM
The more that I read about the problems with PbtA, the more that I realize that I've been trolled by the one guy I've come across promoting it.
PbtA had a novelty allure in the meanwhile to now, but it's never been something I've put on a pedestal.
You just assume that, because I mentioned it whatsoever, and I ask questions about what can be appropriated from it.
It's such a niche within a niche within a niche that I never had any expectations of ever playing it, not least because I've had too much other far more serious bullshit to deal with than your precious nerd cred.
Forget leftism for five minutes, set aside our God given right to say the "gamer words" on the internet or to whinge about the real problems with feminism: Your sanctimonious domineering is probably what drove them that direction and there's no convincing the almighty that is yourself otherwise, because you are never in fact wrong and don't ever in fact make mistakes.
It's one thing to stop using their words, its another to give them the wiggle room they need to recruit more gamers that shouldn't even be there.
Its that fucking simple.
If your goal is to get me to cancel myself because you're so shit at asking basic clarifications of someone's intent, you shouldn't be wondering how the screaming swine herds get fed.
And if you're that fucking tired of PbtA discussion, write a FAQ.
Or, keep wallowing in this asinine debate again and again and again, as you seem to be just as happy in a different colour of mud.
Because you doing any actual work is not your fucking responsibility, even though you know absolutely more than anybody else.
You're not telling a fucking story, because its plain as day by what you say you want (what economists call "revealed preference.")
I don't fucking like story games, or I'd be in their lame and stunted feel-good boards coping for their virtue simps.
Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 11, 2023, 11:14:11 AM
When we roleplay we're not telling a story, we're making HISTORY, our PCs, the NPCs and even ourselves MIGHT tell stories of our PCs exploits. We still weren't telling a story while playing (Unless you're dumb and think EVERYTHING is telling a story).
What was so confusing about what I've just posted that you need to say exactly what I just said?
I guess you don't glean any history from journals and diaries! Sorry guys! My autism clearly makes me fully retarded, or I would have known that! I would have said "history books" instead of a few specific instances of "history books" that are most congruous with the very concept of roleplay! DEEEEERRRRPPP!
Clearly, my autism is substandard to your own though. Such a champion. Very grand. So kingly.
Basic incel shit to the T. The purest cranky fuckery.
First of Champ I AM AUTISTIC, got a problem with that?
Next, you swear you're not enamored with storytelling games but then you write spiels about how drawing a map or preparing the campaign/encounter in advance in any way is railroading.
Then you Reeeeeeeeeeeee about how we calling things what they are and not bending the knee to their BS is what caused them to turn to their shitty games. Guess you need a history lesson, no, it wasn't like that these guys HATE TTRPGs, they especially hate D&D, tried to make it into a storygame, then one of them realized it wasn't working and wrote about it. Guess we should just have rolled over, shown our bellies so they didn't go and create shit like PbtA.
To top it all Incel? Really? But you're totally not an SJW right? FYI I'm about to celebrate 25 years of marital bliss and have a son.
So, no, none of your points lands, you're just another plant trying to convince us we should cede just a little bit of linguistic terrain so they can stop hating our guts. Not gonna happen princess, the swine (and you if you're really not one of them and are just dumber than a bag of rocks) can go pound sand.
Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 11, 2023, 12:34:56 PM
First of Champ I AM AUTISTIC, got a problem with that?
That would be very hypocritical of me, wouldn't it?
Quote
Next, you swear you're not enamored with storytelling games but then you write spiels about how drawing a map or preparing the campaign/encounter in advance in any way is railroading.
You've called everything I've suggested under the sun to be railroading, so I can't take your opinions seriously, so you get the lampoon.
Quote
Then you Reeeeeeeeeeeee about how we calling things what they are and not bending the knee to their BS is what caused them to turn to their shitty games. Guess you need a history lesson, no, it wasn't like that these guys HATE TTRPGs, they especially hate D&D, tried to make it into a storygame, then one of them realized it wasn't working and wrote about it. Guess we should just have rolled over, shown our bellies so they didn't go and create shit like PbtA.
Gee golly wilkers, what even IS a thread history? Its not like you picked this fight to start with.
I asked:
"Hey, what if the players need to address how the undead didn't collapse after the first necromancer? Maybe there is a second?"
You:
"REEEEEEEEEEEE THE UNDEAD ARE SPAWNED FROM NAUGHTY CATHOLICS JIZZING IN SOCKS AND YOUR RAILROADING!"
Do I have to specify every fucking time where any suggestion would work and where it wouldn't so that you can calm you rage boner?
Do your flailing surgey tits obscure your imaginative third eye?
Quote
So, no, none of your points lands, you're just another plant trying to convince us we should cede just a little bit of linguistic terrain so they can stop hating our guts. Not gonna happen princess, the swine (and you if you're really not one of them and are just dumber than a bag of rocks) can go pound sand.
Yes, I totally said that we should call everything story games, and that is not remotely a delusional take.
I do envy your capacity for literacy, I enjoy nothing less than to be such a brain dead boomer who burned his brain out at Woodstock as you.
But, since you've consented to my word as binding law on all of these matters, and to reward you as the grateful pleb that you are, I hereby proclaim the validity of all meta-currency mechanics as the only viable method of any roleplaying games, which must be doled out as faster than an American dollar in Zimbabwe and counted out to the quarter-penny; and also that you must do the hokey-pokey before declaring any character actions and the rhyme must be spoken in Pig Latin Esperanto!
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.
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 (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer) (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 (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer) (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
It's just occurred to me that what the storygamers really want to market on would fit better into a boardgame.
The way they are trying to approximate their products to roleplaying games with a boardgame design philosophy has me smelling sulphur.
From farts--I wouldn't grant them grandiose visions of a paradise lost.
Wrath of God, here are some parts of Vampire: the Masquerade 2nd Edition text that, in my view, may incentivise GMs to adopt a more pre-scripted/linear/railroading style of play. There are more parts, but I think these suffice as an example. Emphasis mine for the important parts:
Quote- Chapter Six, Chonicle, Pg 66:
"This chapter describes how to establish and develop a Vampire chronicle. It serves the same function for the Storyteller and the chronicle that the previous chapter does for the player and the character. It not only describes how to design a chronicle, but includes advice on how to keep the level of player interest high throughout its course. The process of designing stories as well as chronicles is explained in detail, and examples are provided. This chapter provides you with the tools to create a compelling and complete Vampire chronicle, not only at its genesis, but at all stages of its development."
Quote- Creating a chronicle: "a plan of the progression of the chronicle should be constructed, to detail where you want to take it and where you must start".
Quote- Scheme, pg 68. "Finally, you need to create a plan for how you want the chronicle to progress. Where should the stories take the characters, and how will the chronicle eventually end (if ever)? The initial plan is a blueprint for creating not only the beginning of a good chronicle, but the entire thing. This scheme details where you want the chronicle to go and what you want the characters to be doing. More than likely, the chronicle will end up very differently than what you intended. Indeed, if it does end up exactly as you thought it would, it might mean you aren't allowing the characters enough free will. The scheme is intended to be a guide to help you understand what you want the chronicle to be - it's a means of forcing yourself to make it dynamic, with changes in tempo, mood and content. It should have a beginning, a middle and an end, and should progress relentlessly towards a resolution. Always try to stage a great ending to the chronicle. Never let it slowly decline into an obscure death. Will the chronicle end with the death of the characters as part of a heroic sacrifice, or will one of them manage to become mortal once again?.
A chronicle shares many of the same characteristics that a series of movies or novels does, only it can be even longer and broader in scope. It can last for many years (player years) because it is based upon the lives of vampires, who are immortal. Thus, it is possible for a single chronicle to cover several hundred years in time, particularly if you begin it at some point in the past. However, if you set the chronicle in the present, it is likely that your chronicle will take place over years or decades, not centuries. After all, Gehenna is fast approaching, and there is not much time left.
- - -
Of course, together with those parts it also says things like "...the ideal chronicle shouldn't end exactly as you plan, as the PCs have free will and their actions may change it", etc. which implies some wiggle room should left in place for the players to deviate from the central plot here and there. But I think it's not absurd to conclude that advice as a whole may have taught a generation of storyteller GMs whose playstyle formed around pre-scripted stories, complete with concepts like rhythm, twists, climax, etc. all prepped in advance like the author of a book or movie would do. The same way, a lot of players were introducted to RPGs through this style and so are okay in going for a ride through those stories. And again, while it's not my particular preference, I acknowledge there's nothing inherently wrong with the style (horror and mystery gaming make good use of it, for example).
The important point to make here, I think, is how this style deviates from the old-school gaming that preceded it, best represented by the triumvirate OD&D-Traveller-Runequest where the GM was seen more as an impartial arbiter, letting the dice fall where it may and not really caring about things like tempo or climax. Also, how it inspired a strong reaction from the groups that would come to birth the storygaming/Forge movement, also in opposition to it.
"story gaming".
Well, doesn't every game tell a story for the most part?
I mean, if you're talking about a bunch of people sitting around, flapping their gums, and coming up with what can be considered shitty fan fic...then sure that's "Story gaming" in a modern sense... I guess.
I never liked those types of games: Vampire: The Masquerade being the biggest culprit.
they seem soo...I dunno...like wanna-be shitty community theater.
IMO, they seemed to appeal to players who couldn't hack it playing real RPGs. Ya know, the kid who always pitched a fit when he couldn't get his way for his character, or lost it when his PC died, or some other narccissitic bullshit.
Never appealed to me.
Quote from: blackstone on February 14, 2023, 07:23:48 AM
"story gaming".
Well, doesn't every game tell a story for the most part?
Yes. Yes it does. I don't myself identify as a "storygamer" and I more naturally fit on the anti-storygamer side. But the level of denial out of a lot of the anti-storygamers, there is nothing kind I can say about it. It's off-putting to the extreme, certainly delusional, and gives a self-defeating bad look.
QuoteI mean, if you're talking about a bunch of people sitting around, flapping their gums, and coming up with what can be considered shitty fan fic...then sure that's "Story gaming" in a modern sense... I guess.
Yeah. I agree that the methods of story gamers tend not to produce what I would consider to be good stories. All the more reason I think a lot of the anti-storygamers are straight up stupid to be ceding the term "story" to a paradigm that does it badly.
QuoteI never liked those types of games: Vampire: The Masquerade being the biggest culprit.
Prepare to get told V:tM is not what is considered a storygame. It's a common mistake. I think the reason it's so common is because people aren't being honest in their terminology. There is a history in the tabletop world of the term "story" in particular being hijacked. Even more reason why I have nothing kind to say to the anti-storygamers who just cede that linguistic ground entirely. Let's insist words get used in a way that is obvious to people who aren't living in theory wank internet bubbles.
Quotethey seem soo...I dunno...like wanna-be shitty community theater.
IMO, they seemed to appeal to players who couldn't hack it playing real RPGs. Ya know, the kid who always pitched a fit when he couldn't get his way for his character, or lost it when his PC died, or some other narccissitic bullshit.
Never appealed to me.
Maybe. Definitely true in some cases. I talked to a lot of the Storyteller system die-hards back in the day. A lot of them were my friends, and I did game with them. There is a degree that they couldn't hack it and being able to repeat the line of, "well, we care more about the story than the rules" was definitely a cope. I also care more about the story than the rules. But I still know the rules. I still run BtB games as a GM. I can still build highly effective characters and play strategically. And because I know what I'm doing, I run perfectly compelling AD&D adventures.
But it's also possible the converse is true. I can't remember ever playing a game of V:tM where we didn't go from this big intro about the importance of the masquerade, to street brawls with PCs hurling volkswagons within the first session. Starting with such powerful characters goes to most gamers heads. Maybe your average gamer just can't hack V:tM. Maybe the hardcore V:tM adherents were a different breed of gamer mature enough to not do that shit. I personally have never seen it. But I'm sure there are groups out there that made it work.
"story gaming" to me has the connotation of a game where nobody rolls any dice.
Quote from: Banjo Destructo on February 14, 2023, 09:13:26 AM
"story gaming" to me has the connotation of a game where nobody rolls any dice.
Except Amber isn't storygaming, and there aren't even any dice at all.
Quote from: Brad on February 14, 2023, 09:45:34 AM
Quote from: Banjo Destructo on February 14, 2023, 09:13:26 AM
"story gaming" to me has the connotation of a game where nobody rolls any dice.
Except Amber isn't storygaming, and there aren't even any dice at all.
This might be one of those "all pugs are dogs, but not all dogs are pugs" kind of things. I don't really know about amber, I also don't have as large of a library of games to pull from in my own personal reckoning/experience of storygames or other games.
When I first heard about V:tM, the premise sounded pretty cool.
...and then when it got to the game mechanics, or lack thereof, it's just...ugh.
rock-paper-scissors? REALLY?
LAME
Quote from: Banjo Destructo on February 14, 2023, 09:51:16 AM
This might be one of those "all pugs are dogs, but not all dogs are pugs" kind of things. I don't really know about amber, I also don't have as large of a library of games to pull from in my own personal reckoning/experience of storygames or other games.
Well, I think it's more about storygames being a particular play style rather than some specific mechanics/dice/whatever. Dungeon World is storygaming because it has a meta-mechanic that makes CHARACTERS able to control the game. I think this is a huge difference between something like Brownie Points in Ghostbusters...in GB, the player uses Brownie Points to add to die rolls or whatever, but the characters have no idea about this happening; it's basically a plus to a roll, like what you'd get from a magic sword in D&D. From what I can tell about DW, the PCs are actually pseudo-aware that they're changing the environment, which is just...not an RPG.
I haven't played anything WoD yet, but just considering what little I know of V:tM its main focus is supposed to be on social intrigue rather than martial prowess, while true to proper roleplaying. Vampires are a corrupted nobility a la Dracula, so I'd term it more like "honourgaming" than the wargaming of D&D. They need to write an advanced ruleset/supplement concerning rank, propriety, etiquette, et al, maybe implement a "sparring" system of cues and interjections, and also take a better look at punishments like exile, imprisonment, branding, and enslavement in relation to the coven.
Quote from: Brad on February 14, 2023, 10:18:43 AM
Well, I think it's more about storygames being a particular play style rather than some specific mechanics/dice/whatever. Dungeon World is storygaming because it has a meta-mechanic that makes CHARACTERS able to control the game. I think this is a huge difference between something like Brownie Points in Ghostbusters...in GB, the player uses Brownie Points to add to die rolls or whatever, but the characters have no idea about this happening; it's basically a plus to a roll, like what you'd get from a magic sword in D&D. From what I can tell about DW, the PCs are actually pseudo-aware that they're changing the environment, which is just...not an RPG.
If it's the characters doing it, doesn't that make it kosher RPG-wise?
Gary Gygax's Dangerous Journeys has a little bit of that. For example, it has a relatively low level Priestcraeft casting that allows the Priest to state a fact about the world and have it be true. It's fairly limited in scale and scope. And it's not the only reality-hack available to characters. And then there's Joss which is more a meta-mechanic with ties to the character. When you read the fine print, DJ has a lot of stuff that I think effectively bridges the RPG to what would later be termed storygames. But it's hardly the first example of an RPG having mechanisms by which Characters can exercise some control over the world. Anyone remember a game called D&D and a little something called "Wish"?
I mean, I'm not familiar with Dungeon World, so if I'm missing something vital, would you mind filling me in?
Quote from: Lunamancer on February 14, 2023, 10:38:38 AM
If it's the characters doing it, doesn't that make it kosher RPG-wise?
Gary Gygax's Dangerous Journeys has a little bit of that. For example, it has a relatively low level Priestcraeft casting that allows the Priest to state a fact about the world and have it be true. It's fairly limited in scale and scope. And it's not the only reality-hack available to characters. And then there's Joss which is more a meta-mechanic with ties to the character. When you read the fine print, DJ has a lot of stuff that I think effectively bridges the RPG to what would later be termed storygames. But it's hardly the first example of an RPG having mechanisms by which Characters can exercise some control over the world. Anyone remember a game called D&D and a little something called "Wish"?
I mean, I'm not familiar with Dungeon World, so if I'm missing something vital, would you mind filling me in?
Honestly I don't even know. I read the game and tried playing it once, all I got from it was there was waaaaaay too much time spent with meta-mechanics and little actual gaming. It was more a boardgame than an RPG, even while claiming it was narrative in nature. Contrast this with the Ghostbusters games I played when I was a kid. We were fucking up ghosts, and the GM was telling us about cracking skulls in the metaphysical sense. We were NOT talking about how to frame a particular sequence of events to achieve a goal, or whatever the fuck DW does.
As stated, I don't even know. I do know that DW sucks, and storygames are not RPGs and they suck.
Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 14, 2023, 10:35:42 AM
I haven't played anything WoD yet, but just considering what little I know of V:tM its main focus is supposed to be on social intrigue rather than martial prowess, while true to proper roleplaying.
I think that's a fair assessment. I've always pushed back on it being "proper roleplaying." I think the problem is, and you might appreciate this as someone who's attuned the monomyth, is that gamers are just about the furthest thing from heroes. Not that you're playing heroes in V:tM, but you are playing powerful beings. It takes a rare discipline to not let that go to your head. That's why we get Volkswagon dodgeball. Going through a hero's journey helps develop the mindset of playing characters that are of heroic proportions. And so I think that's one of the great unsung benefits of D&D's zero-to-hero motif.
Every now and then just for fun gamers might discuss and share who their dream group would be if they could have any famous person at their table. Almost everyone lists some fruity actor that has done fantasy or period films. I choose Mike Tyson. This is a dude who came from nothing, climbed to the top, then got thrown all the way down to the bottom, attempted a comeback and became something of a mockery, and now has come to terms with the parts of him that get out of control and how to keep that in check to get along in the world. I don't care if he's never acted, doesn't know fantasy tropes, or anything else. This dude knows the journey, and he could probably roleplay circles around the world's greatest actors when it comes to playing a heroic adventurer, or a vampire.
QuoteVampires are a corrupted nobility a la Dracula, so I'd term it more like "honourgaming" than the wargaming of D&D. They need to write an advanced ruleset/supplement concerning rank, propriety, etiquette, et al, maybe implement a "sparring" system of cues and interjections, and also take a better look at punishments like exile, imprisonment, branding, and enslavement in relation to the coven.
Well, V:tM does have social structures hashed out, and in terms of mechanics the game has "social skills." The tools are there. But like anything, it takes practice to get good at using them. It's a rare gamer who can show up day 1 and play the way a vampire needs to be played for the whole game to work as intended.
Quote from: Lunamancer on February 14, 2023, 11:23:52 AM
Every now and then just for fun gamers might discuss and share who their dream group would be if they could have any famous person at their table. Almost everyone lists some fruity actor that has done fantasy or period films. I choose Mike Tyson.
Did everyone at the table clap?
Quote from: Brad on February 14, 2023, 10:57:43 AM
Honestly I don't even know. I read the game and tried playing it once, all I got from it was there was waaaaaay too much time spent with meta-mechanics and little actual gaming. It was more a boardgame than an RPG, even while claiming it was narrative in nature. Contrast this with the Ghostbusters games I played when I was a kid. We were fucking up ghosts, and the GM was telling us about cracking skulls in the metaphysical sense. We were NOT talking about how to frame a particular sequence of events to achieve a goal, or whatever the fuck DW does.
As stated, I don't even know. I do know that DW sucks, and storygames are not RPGs and they suck.
This is a common sort of response I get whenever I start asking detailed questions about a storygame. Not a knock against you at all, by the way. It's a knock against these games.
I really don't think anyone is playing any of these games. I'm not even sure anyone's even reading them. And that's probably because you're exactly right. They suck.
You can scroll back a few pages on this thread. I forget who. At some point someone tried calling me out as not knowing anything about story games. That has happened in literally every thread on storygames I've ever been in. I fired back citing some actual game details. Not even anything earth-shattering. Pretty superficial stuff that anyone who's even browsed the manual could come out with. And that totally ended that accusation. It's almost as if the person that challenged me knows nothing at all about these games, but was playing the confidence game. And as soon as it became clear that I actually did know something it was like, oh shit, better back down before I get exposed.
I know if I had been on the other side of that argument, I would have responded with something like, well, that's just one storygame, here are a bunch of others and how they differ from that one you've read. That's the response I was expecting. But nope. That would require knowing how the game I cited worked along with a handful of others. These arguments are all fake.
I've noticed you often see people post things like "how DitV handles it" but don't actually describe how DitV handles it. Or even bother to spell out what DitV stands for. That's part of the con game. Be as obscure as possible--it keeps people from asking questions without sounding stupid. That's the way empty shells want it. D&D and V:tM have had enough success and popularity that they are easily identifiable by just those letters. BitD has not earned that. Even CoC is borderline, but that one I'm okay with because I don't think spelling Cthulhu should be a pre-requisite of joining in the conversation.
To be frank, I squealed so hard over the World of Dungeons print out that I hardly looked at the rules for DW. Seeing hack n' slash RAW a little later, I never figured that the moves did much more than the "fiction" of putting an axe into a hobgoblin, so I don't care for whatever may count as framing if that means every little thing is world shaking as the player's destiny in the game world.
I've got a lot of homework to do on this Forge stuff, I've completely missed all of it. If we were using Mark Rosewater's definitions of games, it'd be more fair to call storygames activities, though maybe a pure sandbox AD&D game is then a toy in that respect. AD&D is still a "toy" that can double as a game though. Perhaps that article should be required reading?
Quote from: Lunamancer on February 14, 2023, 11:23:52 AM
It takes a rare discipline to not let that go to your head. That's why we get Volkswagon dodgeball.
tbh that still sounds hilarious and epic, if ill fitting for the setting.
Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 14, 2023, 12:02:06 PM
To be frank, I squealed so hard over the World of Dungeons print out that I hardly looked at the rules for DW. Seeing hack n' slash RAW a little later, I never figured that the moves did much more than the "fiction" of putting an axe into a hobgoblin, so I don't care for whatever may count as framing if that means every little thing is world shaking as the player's destiny in the game world.
I would say Apocalypse World is a better introduction to PbtA than Dungeon World, as it's a lighter read and straight from the author that created the engine.
Notice though that PbtA is not a storygame, but more of a straight RPG with storygame sensibilities*. For actual storygames I recommend "Fiasco" or "My Life With Master".
*some people call them "narrative RPGs", which seems a fair label to me.
AW & BitD would be systems I'd browse for ideas, and I appreciate the recommendations, but I have no love for the sensibilities whatsoever.
Another thing I find most annoying from the Threefold FAQ which GNS was built on:
The concept of "inner drama." That's really turmoil, and its valid for a character to feel that--but the action of stories don't move forward from navel gazing. Take that samurai warrior: he's stunned about the circumstances of his son, but in real life you can just be flabbergasted, staring off into the distance for 30 seconds, and of course it's uncomfortable thing to see someone go through that in real life. Now imagine instead if in a samurai movie, we had 30 seconds of staring off with no music, or sound effects beyond his breathing or a light breeze, and there's no dub telling the audience his inner monologue. Just 30 seconds of face twitching, staring off frame, while the samurai momentarily forgets the flow of time around him to process these feelings. Those 30 seconds would bore the audience to death. Even at just 15 seconds, you're watching a pot boil, because of the nature of how time is perceived. And then maybe he attacks his enemy straight away, a rather patient villain who stood there staring at the samurai, for the exact same amount of time, off frame of the focus on the samurai's face twitching
About "inner drama" thing, I agree. But I think the concept can be implemented in a positive way that drives play forward, and not just navel gazing. Some examples I've seen are Pendragon (where the PCs' Virtues and Passions end up steering the adventures into conflicts about that stuff, making it personal), Blades in the Dark (where you Vices generate trouble between sessions that end up spilling into the missions proper), and Dogs in the Vineyard (that let's you "weaponize" old trauma). Personal drama must be actionable and conflict-generating, otherwise it's useless.
Edit: by the way, I remembered how the forge crowd called these: "Flags".
Bankuei has a good article about it here: https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/making-good-flags/
Well, Fiasco is something I'd give a chance later, as it's clearly not AD&D at all and doesn't try to accommodate that style. Fiasco is something I'd probably apply many of these story drivers from the other systems you've recommended.
RPG: "Player, what does your character do?"
Storygame: "Player its your turn tell the group about what your character did and what if anything is now a new fact in the world."
They're definitely not the type to gamble with their vanities...
Quote from: Wisithir on February 15, 2023, 12:38:07 AM
RPG: "Player, what does your character do?"
Storygame: "Player its your turn tell the group about what your character did and what if anything is now a new fact in the world."
Way to the lower the bar of the setting... ::)
QuoteRPG: "Player, what does your character do?"
Storygame: "Player its your turn tell the group about what your character did and what if anything is now a new fact in the world."
Sometimes probably. But like my experience with SG RPGs (never played pure SG) never had such elements.
Furthest we go was when DM in Warhammer hacked asked us to describe details of our hometown (we played as siblings returning home for father's heresy trial), how various NPCs looked and so on. But yeah it was kinda tiresome for me.
Quote from: tenbones on February 15, 2023, 10:27:11 AM
Quote from: Wisithir on February 15, 2023, 12:38:07 AM
RPG: "Player, what does your character do?"
Storygame: "Player its your turn tell the group about what your character did and what if anything is now a new fact in the world."
Way to lower the bar of the setting... ::)
I don't think setting is an important element in storygames. They tend to be explorations of
situations, not setting. Like how in Dogs in the Vineyard what's important is how the PCs face the dilemmas present in the town, and not really how that town fits in the geopolitical situation of the world around.
Quote from: Itachi on February 18, 2023, 05:41:08 PM
Quote from: tenbones on February 15, 2023, 10:27:11 AM
Quote from: Wisithir on February 15, 2023, 12:38:07 AM
RPG: "Player, what does your character do?"
Storygame: "Player its your turn tell the group about what your character did and what if anything is now a new fact in the world."
Way to lower the bar of the setting... ::)
I don't think setting is an important element in storygames. They tend to be explorations of situations, not setting. Like how in Dogs in the Vineyard what's important is how the PCs face the dilemmas present in the town, and not really how that town fits in the geopolitical situation of the world around.
Sure. That's why I don't run storygame-based systems. It's also why I think it requires less skill to run such systems because a good non-storygame run in sandbox mode should always have "situations" in play that are specific to the PC's both on an individual and party level. That friction and drama is what drives the game but based on the actions/inactions of the PC's.
This is precisely why I'm not a fan of BitD - it removes the potential play in lieu of the system by aggregating too much of the action into the workings of the system. It's not granular enough for me or my players to do much more expansive play for what I demand of my campaigns (which can expand *far* beyond the constraints and assumptions of BitD thematically).
Codifying play into the system renders the game more about "system-as-game" (and defacto less GM curation) than playing the actual game. Much like Monopoly (at the far end of the scale) pretends to be about pathological capitalism, but cartooned up in a family friendly game about rolling dice and moving around in a circle and playing musical chairs with bankruptcy.
I want more fidelity games which requires different demands of my mechanics.
Quote from: tenbones on February 22, 2023, 10:38:42 AMSure. That's why I don't run storygame-based systems. It's also why I think it requires less skill to run such systems because a good non-storygame run in sandbox mode should always have "situations" in play that are specific to the PC's both on an individual and party level. That friction and drama is what drives the game but based on the actions/inactions of the PC's.
Yes, I agree storygames usually require less skill from the GM, since part of his job is already built-in on the rules (which can be a bug or a feature depending on group preferences). Where I see the experience converging with old-school sandbox is in the creation of situations to challenge the characters, that emerged organically from their own choices and actions. Personally, this "character-driven" style is all I run these days, be with Beyond the Wall, Shadowrun, Dogs in the Vineyard or Blades in the Dark.
Not to dismiss more linear or scripted playstyles though. I'm sure they have their audience. It's just not my thing for a long time now.
QuoteThis is precisely why I'm not a fan of BitD - it removes the potential play in lieu of the system by aggregating too much of the action into the workings of the system. It's not granular enough for me or my players to do much more expansive play for what I demand of my campaigns (which can expand *far* beyond the constraints and assumptions of BitD thematically).
Fair. I agree it's laser-focused scope can be limiting sometimes, even for the fans. Luckly, there's a lot of variations out there that manage to be broader/less focused in premise and rule (like Scum and Villany for eg).