Quote from: Drohem;458669Seriously, dude, you just look like a stupid clown doing this.

Well, it's not as if threads about "storygames" here aren't basically like a clown car rolling up and disgorging it's contents in the center ring of three ring circus.

Seanchai

Quote from: estar;458877Live action roleplaying and Theater share many techniques. Props, make-up, set setup, directing actors (the people that play non-player characters). But despite the similarities live-action roleplaying is not theater. The reason because it is a game, a sport, and the group of independent characters with their own goals played by the players.  

The closest thing is improvised Theater where the actors are riffing of each other to create entertainment for themselves or an audience. There are rules that the actors may follow to allow some level of coordination, but the absence of the sport and independent players make improve theater its own thing.  A good improv group would have to make many changes to run a live-action event and vice-versa.

The same thing with Story Game versus tabletop roleplaying games.

Each share a many similar techniques but are ultimately are different things because of what they are focused. You mentioned characters and interesting situations are present in RPGs and Stories. And you are correct, but story have a third element is that is a predefined plot.

I didn't ever say that story gaming was just like writing a story, that didn't happen. You are making it up and arguing against something nobody in the world ever said.  

All I said was that story gaming is an approach to gaming that players select, and that if players choose to use a RPG, the division of labor between characters and setting is extremely natural and very powerful for the creation of story.

QuoteThis important element of story is no present in RPGs because the characters played by players are independent actors. The only obligation the player has in-game is to use the mechanics of the rules to interact with the setting as devised by the referee.

Nobody ever said story gaming was an obligation? My definition says it's a choice of a player (this can include the GM).  In fact this statement argues more against the definition of story gaming as being something applied to game products (you are obliged to play the game in this way!), which I agree is a definition that wastes everyone's time and effort.

QuoteThe player(s) may very well not be interested in recovering the Sword of Wayland, but instead be interested in running a successful mushroom farm.

Sure, player interest is very important in RPGs!

QuoteBack in the 80s when RPGs, like James Bond 007, mentioned story it is because everything is new so the designers latched on useful terms from other artistic areas. The big change in the 80s was the realization that fun and interesting RPGs could be constructed around specific themes or scenarios like James Bond 007.

The point I was making was that it isn't like a story approach is so completely alien to RPGs that it was invented in 2001 on the Forge First Thoughts forum.  Look at Toon, look at Paranoia, look at Ravenloft, look at Vampire, look at Al-Qadim.  These are all games that have explicitly supported a story approach. Not exclusively, of course, but they did support it! And lots of people have talked about story in RPGs throughout the years - letters columns in Dragon, Usenet, Internet fora, and so on.  What you're saying is basically "no, all those people for all those 30-odd years, they have made a terrible mistake and should never have played any of those games that have brought them so much enjoyment and satisfaction."

QuoteMy experience with RPGs and games in general tells me that Story Games are fun for many gamers, but RPG mechanics are a poor fit. There are better ways of creating a game based around collaborative story-telling than with RPGs mechanics.

Everyone has different tastes! My wife really likes a story approach, but she absolutely hates making decisions outside the head of her character. She says, look, good dramatic decisions in books, movies, etc., are made based on the views, values, and drives of a character, their internal reality. If I can't form that internal reality and stay there, I can't always make the best, i.e. most accurate to the character, decisions.  So a what-you-call "story game" in which we collaborate more directly (like Primetime Adventures), she hates and does not feel that it supports her desire to approach an RPG with an aim for making a good story. For her, "you say what your character says and does" is the most powerful story game mechanic possible.

Now, you would no doubt punch her in the face and scream, "because you like story, you MUST stay away from RPGs", but I assure you, she would murder you and nobody in the entire world would miss you.

QuoteAs I said above Dogs in the Vineyard would be a campaign module in another RPG. It is marketed as a story game but doesn't make it a story game.

I don't know anything about marketing! But I'm glad we agree that not all play of Dogs in the Vineyard need be story gaming.

QuoteSome of these games are like Dogs in the Vineyard which are nothing more than specialized RPGs that would be an adventure or a campaign in a more general purpose RPG. Other, like Universalis, have meta-mechanics that cause the same issues that the D&D 4e in that they distract the player from playing their character as if they were in a setting by forcing them to think about the game as a game.

Damn, you gave up your "story with an ending" definition, just as I predicted. Oh well, it might have been interesting.

Quote from: One Horse Town;458850You'll have to do better than that.

I already have! Story gaming is an approach players take to gaming. It means gaming that aims at story.

Not what you just said.

Check out the rest of the thread, I explain it pretty thoroughly.

You're welcome!

Quote from: JDCorley;458892It means gaming that aims at story.

Yeah and Shoot-em ups are games that aim at shooting things up.  Is the shoot-em up just a playstyle? Do you deny that there are shoot-em up products?

Quote from: estar;458877but story have a third element is that is a predefined plot.

So improvised narratives (how many authors write), automatic writing experiments (as in the surrealists), and round-robin narrative construction (like the Lovecraft circle's "Challenge from Beyond") aren't stories because they don't have a predefined plot?

Quote from: One Horse Town;458910Yeah and Shoot-em ups are games that aim at shooting things up.  Is the shoot-em up just a playstyle? Do you deny that there are shoot-em up products?

It depends, and no.

"Story game" is a phrase more like "competitive game" than it is like "science fiction game".  It describes an approach to a game instead of a product classification.  

I would say "shoot em up" is "just a playstyle" for games like World of Warcraft and to a lesser degree Grand Theft Auto 4, where there are many different playstyles and lots of things to do.

But many games constrain inputs to where you can only approach the game one way? In that case the approach and the product are pretty synonymous. This especially happens in single player games where you are only interacting with a dead, static product. RPGs don't really fall into that category. Normally there are a wide variety of supported playstyles in RPGs.

Quote from: jhkim;458835I don't think that all the games labelled "story games" are focused on creating a good story.  Once Upon A Time, for example, while it does create a fairy tale, doesn't concentrate on trying to make a good, well-structured one.  The fun of that game isn't in writing a good story - it is in interacting with the other players and riffing off each others' ideas and coming up with some kind of story that touches on the cards you have.

The brief description of Once Upon a Time does not at all put me in mind of the "story games" at issue here. Those are all evolutions either directly from RPGs or from other games derived from RPGs, which is why the distinction is both so significant and so contentious.

Once Upon a Time looks to me like a descendant of card game Dark Cults by Kenneth Rahman (better known for Divine Right), published in 1983. I greatly enjoyed playing that back in the 1980s, and never met anyone who considered it a "role playing game".

I don't know whether a player in OUaT is in any sense playing a character within the story. In DC, opposing teams play the forces of Life and Death, which are very plainly Authors of the little mortal tale in their hands.

A card game can also be a "storytelling game", but that does not necessarily put it in the same conceptual territory as the "story games" rubbing shoulders with "traditional RPGs".

An RPG can certainly use cards -- Lace and Steel comes to mind -- but then the cards, like all "mechanics", are merely tools at hand to be used or not as they are fit or not to the needs of adjudicating the role-playing game.

A card game, on the other hand, cannot well be played without the cards. I think one could play DC (or maybe OUaT) without the "story", although to my mind most of the fun would be missing. Any "role playing" that may be present in OUaT looks to me more like a third-order property, perhaps less definitive of the game than it is of many a wargame.

Eric Goldberg's Tales of the Arabian Nights (West End Games 1985) was a game I bought and loved. It had a specific "storytelling" mode, in which players could earn extra points by improvising very brief stories on which the group voted. Otherwise, it was in essence a multi-player combination of a board game with a "paragraph game" or "programmed adventure" somewhat along the lines of the solitaire scenarios for Tunnels & Trolls. (Wargamers may think for instance of Moseby's Raiders or Ambush!.)

This is very much a board game, with both role-playing and story-telling elements added in. This is certainly a rather subjective apportionment, a matter of "look and feel". However, that look and feel seems to be key to appeal in the "mainstream market" beyond the "geek ghetto" of RPGs and story games.

Another standout in the "paragraph game" vein was Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective (Sleuth Publications, 1981). The presentation delivered even more of a "role playing" experience, in my view, than the aforementioned T&T scenarios and their ilk.

Those and "pick your path" books were most significantly distinguished from "full" RPGs such as D&D by the constraints on options necessary without the services of a Game Master.

The "schematic system" of FGU's Flash Gordon and the Warriors of Mongo (1977) had, IIRC, players teamed up to defeat Ming. It was thus a sort of multi-player cooperative GM-less role-playing strategy abstract board game -- a hybrid that as far as I can tell did not catch on at all well.

I suspect the level of abstraction in FGatWoM was just too great to appeal to either simulation gamers or role-players, and the structure offered too little general game interest. However wide interest in the Flash Gordon brand may have been at the time, the game I think failed to convey the excitement associated with the character's adventures.

This issue of constraint has dogged GDW's En Garde (1975), leading some people to consider it less than a full RPG. Its combination of formalisms for some things and no treatment of others seems to me remarkable chiefly for taking (apart from duels) less interest in minute by minute "process" than other RPGs.

I know from experience that players and GMs can improvise more details and other activities just as ably as with rules sets such as D&D and Traveller, but the "feel" of the rules book -- which is focused clearly on a strategic game of social climbing in Parisian society -- does somehow put me more in mind of (for want of a better phrase) an "ordinary simulation game" than is usual with RPG handbooks.

En Garde may be a prime example of the ferment in the pioneering days of RPGs, and a contrast that brings out more clearly the extent to which the form has since become stereotyped.

One might also look at Starships & Spacemen (FGU 1978) for rather a late entry that also may seem like even more of a carryover of concepts from earlier game forms than was Dungeons & Dragons.

On balance, it may be more accurate to say that different things were carried forward -- and that it was the selection in D&D (and, more tellingly, in the more widely distributed Basic and Advanced products) that came to be imitated and accepted as "the way to do an RPG".

I think that Arabian Nights, which I believe has recently been re-issued, and Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective attained wider market appeal than the "geek ghetto" by virtue of constraining the choices people have to make in the game. In neither of those games is there ever a moment where someone says "you can do whateeever you want".  That's a grand moment of freedom in RPGs, but it's also paralyzing for someone who doesn't have the right mindset or who doesn't have experience, or who doesn't improvise well or naturally.

This is why D&D has always been such a great gateway game. At every step of character creation - and even for much introductory play, there is a finite list of choices that you can choose from.  Pick a race from this list. Pick a class from this list. Roll these dice and arrange them by this procedure. Buy some equipment off this list.  You're in a hallway, to the left you can see it's soggy and mossy, to the right is dry and strange runes are on the walls.

Once you get people making choices from a list, it's an easier step to get them to start making up new choices.  "Can I do this?" As soon as they're asking that, the training wheels are off and they're roleplaying.

Could be a good topic.

Storygame:1) Any game where you have to convince someone that its really a Role Playing Game.

2) Any game that gives erections to bats or Vincent Baker.

Quote from: JDCorley;458891I didn't ever say that story gaming was just like writing a story, that didn't happen. You are making it up and arguing against something nobody in the world ever said.  

All I said was that story gaming is an approach to gaming that players select, and that if players choose to use a RPG, the division of labor between characters and setting is extremely natural and very powerful for the creation of story.

We are having a definition problem here based on what you say later in this reply. '

So it clear, I feel the use of meta-game mechanics in a tabletop RPG is a bad design decision.  For example a mechanic that allow players ability to add elements to the setting outside of what their characters can do.* Conversely mechanics that break immersion make for a poor design in an RPG. The example I use for this are 4e powers.

*As opposed talking with the referee elements that ought to be in the setting but weren't there because we are dealing with human being that can't think of everything at once. For example whether there is a vase in the room just searched, or there is a guard roster to be found in the watch captain's office.

The mechanics I dislike are those that force the addition or change. These mechanics require the player to think of issues outside of their characters would do.

Quote from: JDCorley;458891Nobody ever said story gaming was an obligation? My definition says it's a choice of a player (this can include the GM).  In fact this statement argues more against the definition of story gaming as being something applied to game products (you are obliged to play the game in this way!), which I agree is a definition that wastes everyone's time and effort.

That not what I said. A player in a regular roleplaying game doesn't have to think about the design of a setting or locale. All they have to be concerned about is what they see from their character's viewpoint. The mechanics I dislike are those that force you to look outside of your character's viewpoint, at the plot, setting, or situation. These mechanics are found in games that promote themselves as story games.

Quote from: JDCorley;458891The point I was making was that it isn't like a story approach is so completely alien to RPGs that it was invented in 2001 on the Forge First Thoughts forum.  Look at Toon, look at Paranoia, look at Ravenloft, look at Vampire, look at Al-Qadim.

I think we are having a definition issue here. All the settings you mention have a wealth of evocative background that fire the imagination of player in making  interesting characters for the setting. Toon, Paranoia, and Vampire build their game around the setting. Doing that doesn't make for a badly designed RPG. Great RPGs have been made with system that dovetail perfectly with their genre or setting.

However what I don't do is call these story games. Instead I describe as allowing highly immersive roleplaying. Although for Toon and Paranoia a lot of the fun come from laughing at ourselves for doing the silly things those games have us do. But that part of their appeal.

Quote from: JDCorley;458891Everyone has different tastes! My wife really likes a story approach, but she absolutely hates making decisions outside the head of her character.
....
Now, you would no doubt punch her in the face and scream, "because you like story, you MUST stay away from RPGs", but I assure you, she would murder you and nobody in the entire world would miss you.

From your description as a player your wife sounds much like how I play. I am most interested in what I call immersive roleplaying that requires staying in the head of the character I make. Again sounds like we are having a definition problems.

In addition when I referee I encourage immersion. My Majestic Wilderlands is about adapting Original D&D to the details of my setting. So players can play characters that feel like they are part of the setting, yet still use the OD&D rules. But I don't call it a story supplement, it is a setting that emphasis roleplaying in the Majestic Wilderlands. Which is why many of the options don't balance mechanically.  In MW the Paladin is a clear mechanical winner but there is a high cost in terms of what the player has to do roleplay a paladin.  The same for the Myrmidons of Set, and the Claws of Kalis.

In some respects we on the same page here.

Quote from: JDCorley;458891Damn, you gave up your "story with an ending" definition, just as I predicted. Oh well, it might have been interesting.

Because you mentioned Dogs in the Vineyard and not a game in which you are collaboratively writing a story. The collaboration in Dogs in the Vineyard related mostly to world building.

This is a common definition of Story.

QuoteStory is a common term for a recounting of a sequence of events, or for a statement regarding the facts pertinent to a situation in question . It is defined as a narrative or tale of real or fictitious events.

A story is a recounting of an events. So yes an RPG could be considered as a story telling game because it is great at generating a sequence of events which is what a story is.

But what I consider the difference between a Story game and an RPG is how those events are created.

That difference begin whether are these events being created because you are thinking as your character and interacting with a setting as your character. Or are you thinking as an author with an eye toward locales, plot, pacing, and  a multitude of characters. That is the esstential difference.

And RPGs make poor authoring tools, it is not what they are designed for. Because of the work done in the 90s, because of the work of euro-game designers there now a wealth of mechanics better suited as authoring tools for collaboratively creating stories than those of RPGs.

If for some reason you want a detailed breakdown of a character, or a blow by blow rendition of combat, or another complex task then RPGs have mechanics that can do that. But for most stories that overkill. But for roleplaying a character it works great.

Quote from: JDCorley;458922That's a grand moment of freedom in RPGs, but it's also paralyzing for someone who doesn't have the right mindset or who doesn't have experience, or who doesn't improvise well or naturally.

Yes I agree this is a big issues that RPGs need to overcome for their prospective audience.

Quote from: JDCorley;458922This is why D&D has always been such a great gateway game. At every step of character creation - and even for much introductory play, there is a finite list of choices that you can choose from.  

The character rules help but the default dungeon setting is more important. Not only for the players but for the referee who runs the game. It not too constrained but it not so expansive that it leave everybody lost as to what to do.

I am NOT saying that all D&D can do is run dungeons. Far from it, but the dungeon has always been a big part of the D&D game as presented in the core rules and the biggest factor in keeping it the #1 RPG.

To put another way is there any type of setting that easier to create and play than the dungeon maze for a novice?

Quote from: Phillip;458917The brief description of Once Upon a Time does not at all put me in mind of the "story games" at issue here. Those are all evolutions either directly from RPGs or from other games derived from RPGs, which is why the distinction is both so significant and so contentious.

I agree that games like "Once Upon a Time" are not mistaken for RPGs. The issue is that there is a small group of gamers in the hobby and industry who believe the future of RPGs is to become games where the player are authors collaboratively creating a story.

That the original idea that that a player roleplaying a character in a setting where their actions are adjudicated by a referee is broken and inferior to the new style of creative storytelling. My view is that this approach is just as flawed as D&D 4th edition emphasis on the game mechanics.

Right now the bigger problem is the emphasis on game mechanics, the RPGs that emphasis story telling are just a small niche in the larger hobby and industry. But that not to say that somebody like Ryan Dancey get hired to run Wizards and causes the company to lurch from one extreme to the other.

Quote from: estar;458927So it clear, I feel the use of meta-game mechanics in a tabletop RPG is a bad design decision.  For example a mechanic that allow players ability to add elements to the setting outside of what their characters can do.* Conversely mechanics that break immersion make for a poor design in an RPG. The example I use for this are 4e powers.

I've never understood this distinction, and I don't think it's really borne out.  All mechanics are abstracted to some degree, that's why they're mechanics.  And what breaks immersion for some ("FUCK, why do I have to stop to calculate THAC0, I just want to fight this guy!!") are perfectly fine for others.  (Not to mention that nobody really seems to be able to explain immersion in a way that others will agree with, I've heard people emphatically say that LARPers can never be immersed, when that's the only time I've ever felt it.)

Anyway, immersion is a secondary concern, it's unrelated to the topic.

QuoteThe mechanics I dislike are those that force the addition or change. These mechanics require the player to think of issues outside of their characters would do.

That's a good division of mechanics (though there are still edge cases, of course.) But not really a good division of approaches to games. As I pointed out, plenty of people enjoy a story approach while still preferring mechanics that put them in their character's skin.

QuoteI think we are having a definition issue here. All the settings you mention have a wealth of evocative background that fire the imagination of player in making  interesting characters for the setting. Toon, Paranoia, and Vampire build their game around the setting. Doing that doesn't make for a badly designed RPG. Great RPGs have been made with system that dovetail perfectly with their genre or setting.

No, my point was that these games (Toon has a setting?!) explicitly state that they support story approaches in their text.  Their existence shows that my definition of "story games" has been around for decades, and isn't something that I just made up.

QuoteHowever what I don't do is call these story games. Instead I describe as allowing highly immersive roleplaying. Although for Toon and Paranoia a lot of the fun come from laughing at ourselves for doing the silly things those games have us do. But that part of their appeal.

Whether you call them story games or not is irrelevant, since story gaming is an approach to a game.

QuoteFrom your description as a player your wife sounds much like how I play. I am most interested in what I call immersive roleplaying that requires staying in the head of the character I make. Again sounds like we are having a definition problems.

Nope, she's a story gamer through and through. Moreso than me, even!  I change up my approach and style depending on what I feel like doing. She really only likes games aimed at story and especially those that give her control over a character.

QuoteBecause you mentioned Dogs in the Vineyard and not a game in which you are collaboratively writing a story. The collaboration in Dogs in the Vineyard related mostly to world building.

Wait, didn't you just say that world building is a sign of story games, because it requires you to look outside your character?

I mean, I think this is a stupid definition, but it's yours, so why not cling to it a little more?

QuoteThat difference begin whether are these events being created because you are thinking as your character and interacting with a setting as your character.

Yes, this is one method of story gaming.

QuoteOr are you thinking as an author with an eye toward locales, plot, pacing, and  a multitude of characters. That is the esstential difference.

Nope, that can be story gaming too. No difference.

QuoteAnd RPGs make poor authoring tools, it is not what they are designed for.

Nobody has yet refuted my original statement, which is that because 1) character decisions in dramatic situations are two major building blocks of story, and because 2) normal ole RPGs put the former in the hands of one  player and give the latter to the GM, that therefore 3) story gaming is extremely well supported by regular RPGs.

This is not theoretical either, this is how story gaming has occurred for the last 30 years in RPGs.

I don't give a damn what a designer thinks, fuck the designer.  I don't care what they designed their game "for", I care what they actually wrote.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;458837I think this is an important point, so I'm going to highlight it. Defining STGs as the place where "good stories" happen is like defining RPGs as the place where "good roleplaying" happens.

Quality of output isn't really being guaranteed (or even necessarily desired) in either case.

The "high quality" issue seems to me to be primarily an interest of the Forge "narrativist" types. Their priority, I gather, is on what I would call "thematic" elements. It is, though, often hard for me to make any sense of the discourse of Forge folks and their followers.

That said, the desire not to have the relatively random quality of events that dice in RPGs -- like unknown variables in real life -- tend to produce is certainly very basic to the broader "story game" enterprise.

At the same time, the "GM railroad" approach to story is not satisfying as game. It's a subversion of the RPG, an underhanded undermining of it.

What I, at any rate, want from a "story game" is very clearly opposed to both of those -- a third way. This seems to me pretty simple, not too hard to understand, but perhaps it really is too hard for some people.

"Narrativists" (who don't have anything to do with narrative as regular folks know it, and to the degree they define themselves - I don't believe in the GNS level of GNS at all) are really concerned with a very specific definition of "theme", as concocted by a guy named Lajos Egri.

His most famous book is The Art Of Dramatic Writing. It's a good book, even has some good advice for creating dramatic scenes or playing characters dramatically that might be fruitfully adapted to gaming, but I never got half as excited over it as they did.  Certainly I didn't feel like throwing out other approaches to story in (and out of) games. I recommend checking it out if you like books about writing.