Quote from: JDCorley;458770I think that's why he used the word "reshaped"?

We can "reshape" a turd into a gold ring the same way. It's a pretty foolish thing to claim that it's especially efficient to start with a turd, though.

Phillip just borrowed Game Daddy's reading glasses for a minute that's all. He'll be back to normal momentarily.

No. If "reshape X" means "get rid of what makes it X", in order to replace it with Y, and we already have had Y for about 4 decades, what the fuck are we supposed to "steal from" some self-absorbed "theorist's" pile of navel lint?

Wool?

Wool-gathering is probably not all those boys are up to. The sheep are mighty skittish.

Also, if a game has a "say no" option, then its rule is obviously not "say yes or roll the dice".

Do you really want to discuss Dogs in the Vineyard and "say yes or roll the dice" or are you just being rhetorical?

I mean, I could explain why it's a good idea in the context of that game, and boulet gives some ideas of directions you could take it in other contexts?  The game isn't theoretical, it's real, so I don't know what the "theorist" thing is about? "say yes or roll the dice" is just GM advice, like any other GM advice in any other RPG book, suited for that game but not necessarily for all the others in the world?

Certainly if you already know everything in gaming there's never any need to read any gaming material ever again, but if you don't know everything, or if you have been told something one way but didn't quite get it, or if you're a noob and you're still learning to play, there's nothing wrong with expressing an old idea in a new way, or fitting an old idea into a new context.

Right?

Edit to reply to your edit: Um...wait, are you complaining about a part of a game you haven't read?  I mean, wow, I don't complain about Rolemaster. It may suck or it may be great, but I haven't read it, soooo.

Quote from: Phillip;458748When the rest of us refer to "RPGs without a story", we mean real RPGs as they have really been played over the past 40 years. When we say that they exist without a story, you need to accept that as established and make sure that any definition of "a story" is not denying that existence.

Otherwise, you have just gone down the rabbit hole right out of the conversation.

Well said. It's not an RPG though. There's no roleplaying involved. It's a game, just not an RPG. And it's certainly not a storygame either.

When you mean real RPGs as they have been played over the past 40 years, your talking about roleplaying games... Which have stories (Even pathetic ones were the players don't do much except die), and drama, and conflict.

Anything else you happen to be referring to is more akin to a bad or poorly executed LARP.

Quote from: GameDaddy;458786Well said. It's not an RPG though. There's no roleplaying involved. It's a game, just not an RPG. And it's certainly not a storygame either.

When you mean real RPGs as they have been played over the past 40 years, your talking about roleplaying games... Which have stories (Even pathetic ones were the players don't do much except die), and drama, and conflict.

Anything else you happen to be referring to is more akin to a bad or poorly executed LARP.

You are just determined to be completely out of touch with reality, eh?

There are real phenomena, and your plan of trying to convince everyone that they don't really exist -- on the evidence that you perversely insist on twisting a word to mean something that is obviously not what we mean -- is just not going to work.

And this is why I don't think that anything useful can come from metaphysics.

Still no reply to 184?

No rebuttal of 283?

Weak sauce.

Oops, duplicate post.

As for the first one, I don't know much about Apocalypse World and haven't ever read it, so can't really comment on it?  

As for 283, well, here it is:

Quote from: One Horse Town;458414Odd how some storygame authors have spent years creating dividing lines in the hobby in order to make themselves sound different to the mainstream (and been fucking insulting about it, to boot) and this is perfectly fine to their fans, yet when someone else has the timerity to discuss a different dividing line to these self-styled auteurs, some of the fans of said authors cry bloody murder.

I strongly agree! Here I am proposing a wise, precise definition of story gaming and people are yelling about it!  It's sad, isn't it?

Of course what-you-call storygame authors are not alone in creating dividing lines in the hobby. Gygax said I and all those who house-ruled were ruining D&D, Kevin Siembada was going to sue everyone, Rein-Bjork-Hagen said I was a filthy roll-player, Ron Edwards said I had brain damage, pretty much everyone in this hobby hates absolutely everyone forever for no reason.  It sells books!

Quote from: JDCorley;458797I strongly agree! Here I am proposing a wise, precise definition of story gaming and people are yelling about it!  It's sad, isn't it?

Sum up your wise, precise definition in one or two sentences.

Quote from: Phillip;458768

QuoteI think "say yes or roll the dice

You are confused. That's "Say yes AND DON'T roll dice"...

Uh... That's the whole point of the concept. Either you say yes (and don't roll the dice) or you roll the dice.

The point is that if somebody wants to do something there is always the chance that it will happen: That chance defaults to 100% and should never be 0%. It creates a permissive gaming environment.

Although, as you say, the concept didn't originate with story games.

Quote from: boulet;458767What I like about Jason's position is that it advocates people to check games even if they're not expected to promote their favorite game style. DitV is supposed to promote story gaming? Sure, why not, but that doesn't mean one can't steal mechanics and ideas from it.

Within the last week I have pulled ideas from Arkham Horror, Avatar, and The Lord of the Rings for use in roleplaying games.

That doesn't mean they're roleplaying games. They're still a boardgame, a film, and a novel. And we don't need to call them something else in order to draw inspiration from them.

Quote from: JDCorley;458557I strongly disagree. What you are saying is that this might be a reasonable postmortem for a game:

"The play of this game created a great story. The players were really focused on making the story good by making the characters vivid and taking decisive action in response to the situations they found themselves in. The GM made the story good by making the world interesting and by responding to the players' interests, resolving conflicts between player interests and altogether everyone enriched the narrative.  The game supported this by dividing the labor between players and GMs, providing mechanics to provide surprising results, and assisting everyone in staying on the same page and keeping the course. But this is not a story game. Under no circumstances must this play, in which everyone was focused on creating a story, and which indeed did produce a story satisfying to them, be labeled with the word 'story'. We must under no circumstances permit the word 'story' to be attached to this game.  In fact, the successful creation of story makes me suspect that this cannot be a 'story game'."

Sorry, but I don't think that's a good way of defining the situation.

This football game created a great story. The players were really focused on making the story good by setting high stakes and taking decisive action in response to the situations they found themselves in. The QB made the story good by calling interesting plays and responding to the defense's antagonism. The game supported this by dividing the labor between offense and defense, providing rules to provide surprising reulsts, and assisting everyone in staying on the same page and keeping the course. Buy this is not a story game. Under no circumstances must this play, in which everyone was focused on creating a story, and which indeed did produce a story satisfying to them, be labeled with the word 'story'. We must under no circumstances permit the word 'story' to be attached to this game. In fact, the successful creation of story makes me suspect that this cannot be a 'story game'.

...

Sorry, buddy. Once you've expanded the definition of "story game" so far that it applies to American football, you've got a worthless fucking definition. Even if lots of people talk about the great stories created by the games played on the gridiron, it doesn't mean that football is a story game.

Quote from: Géza Echs;458701If your argument (as I understand it) is that there is this equivalence between RPGs and lived experience such that their relationship to narrative is the same, I would first wonder about what, in your eyes, is the meaningful distinction between how we treat events in RPGs and how we treat events in lived experience

One is real. The other isn't.

You are attempting to conflate the concept of "fictional" with the action of "creating a story". But stories don't need to be fictional and roleplaying games open up a realm in which fictional actions can be taken outside the act of story creation.

If I tell you a story about going fishing last week, it doesn't follow that I was engaged in narrative creation while fishing. Similarly, if I tell you a story about the events in a pure roleplaying game I played last week, it doesn't follow that I was engaged in narrative creation while roleplaying. (Although I might have been, it's not inherent to the game.)

If I'm playing a storytelling game, OTOH, I am engaged in narrative creation while playing the game. It's inherent in the playing of the game.

As I said when I got here, "story games" are games played aiming at story.

Five word definition. It's an approach to games, like "competitive games", "cooperative games", "casual games", "serious games", etc.