Quote from: Peregrin;456538It's also pretty impractical to try to psychoanalyze players as to whether they're really "role-playing" in their games, because by your definition people could be "not role-playing" in a D&D game and no one would ever know.

I don't look at it as something like you feel deep down in your heart that you are a wizard or warrior, just that you the player treat the imaginary world as if it had an independent existence and that your interaction with that imaginary world is done via the imaginary character that is a part of that world.

Whereas in a story game you interact with the imaginary construct of the world as a narrative device. The difference may be a subtle one, but I think it tends to create large changes in the process of play, and some players are going to enjoy one more than the other. Now I think of it as more of a continuum between traditional RPG and storygame - Burning Wheel for example I think of as a mostly traditional RPG with a few story-game elements (which I personally find jarring.)

Sorry, Kreuger.  I meant to say "campaign".

QuoteThere are many games out there which have base assumptions that you spend a significant deal of time out of IC-POV in order to narrate the story, whatever. Those are Storygames, not Role-playing Games. There are a lot of games that share a zone in the middle between the two, but there is a clear difference.

I'm not saying there isn't a difference, I'm saying since most of them share the grey area in between, I don't think some ultimate dividing line is necessary or practical.  I think a game should state what it's about, clearly, and then let the buyer decide whether they want to purchase the game or not.  The label "story-game" is murky as it is.

Quote from: ColeWhereas in a story game you interact with the imaginary construct of the world as a narrative device.

Not necessarily.  You can play to your character and never have to treat them as a narrative device, and it could still be a story-game.

Quote from: Peregrin;456556Not necessarily.  You can play to your character and never have to treat them as a narrative device, and it could still be a story-game.

Well, I am admittedly not familiar with every story-game, but it's something I have seen and associate with the ones I am familiar with. Now I do think of, for example, how stakes are set between two characters in conflict in DitV as treating the game world as a narrative device, though, as it involves the players shaping the events in the game world directly as players toward a set end. The character isn't setting these explicit stakes in the game world; only the player is. That's not something I enjoy.

Quote from: Benoist;456553Why some people just cannot acknowledge the difference between these two ways of playing a game (and all shades in-between), I do not know. Is it sheer ignorance, that they've never experienced IC role playing, or is it that their gaming evolved in such a way that they've completely forgotten what it's like, or a rhetorically-motivated response, that if they ever acknowledge this distinction, then OMG that means that some people might actually be justified to have game preferences favoring one approach over the other? Or a combination of these things? I wonder.

I actually like Justin's distinctions. I get what he's saying, and I can see why disassociated mechanics could bug people. But one of the things I like about it is that he is willing to admit that there are a lot of gray areas. "Storygames" developed out of role-playing games, and are played so similarly at the table that the distinction can seem fairly trivial. It makes sense to distinguish games in order to help sort out preferences of RPGs, but it's pretty shaky ground upon which to start building an ideology and start saying, "Okay, these are RPGs, and those are not, so stop saying that they are." Y'know?

When you stop hypothesizing, and you start pointing fingers at actual games and asking whether or not this or that one is or isn't an RPG, as Justin says, it gets very fuzzy. He points to Dread as pure storygame, because the resolution mechanic is disassociated, but everything else in the game plays like an RPG. The players role-play characters in a world described by the GM--that is the explicit activity of the game. How is that not a RPG?

Peregrin already pointed out that the difference between "role-playing" and "story-gaming" at the table can be invisible.

Quote from: PeregrinIt's also pretty impractical to try to psychoanalyze players as to whether they're really "role-playing" in their games, because by your definition people could be "not role-playing" in a D&D game and no one would ever know.

CRKreuger accepted this was true, but was dismissive about it. But I think there's a lot of weight to that invisibility. If you're arguing about demanding a distinction between two-styles of play that is invisible at the table, then I have a hard time giving very much credence to an insistence that these are two dramatically different styles of play.

Quote from: two_fishes;456581I actually like Justin's distinctions. I get what he's saying, and I can see why disassociated mechanics could bug people. But one of the things I like about it is that he is willing to admit that there are a lot of gray areas. "Storygames" developed out of role-playing games, and are played so similarly at the table that the distinction can seem fairly trivial. It makes sense to distinguish games in order to help sort out preferences of RPGs, but it's pretty shaky ground upon which to start building an ideology and start saying, "Okay, these are RPGs, and those are not, so stop saying that they are." Y'know?

When you stop hypothesizing, and you start pointing fingers at actual games and asking whether or not this or that one is or isn't an RPG, as Justin says, it gets very fuzzy. He points to Dread as pure storygame, because the resolution mechanic is disassociated, but everything else in the game plays like an RPG. The players role-play characters in a world described by the GM--that is the explicit activity of the game. How is that not a RPG?

Peregrin already pointed out that the difference between "role-playing" and "story-gaming" at the table can be invisible.

You must have missed the "all shades in between" in my post you quoted.

As for ideologies, it pretty much amounted for me to say I do not enjoy certain types of changes made to games I like. I did not mind at all whatever game anyone chose to be playing. I did mind when a game I like was changed into something I did not like.

Now, I don't give much of a shit anymore, because I got the games I like. WotC can make an eurogame or storygame or a pay-wall online MMO out of D&D for all I care. The same goes for pretty much any other role playing game I know and like.

Just don't expect me to say I enjoy playing something I find boring to tears.

Quote from: two_fishes;456581I actually like Justin's distinctions. I get what he's saying, and I can see why disassociated mechanics could bug people. But one of the things I like about it is that he is willing to admit that there are a lot of gray areas. "Storygames" developed out of role-playing games, and are played so similarly at the table that the distinction can seem fairly trivial. It makes sense to distinguish games in order to help sort out preferences of RPGs, but it's pretty shaky ground upon which to start building an ideology and start saying, "Okay, these are RPGs, and those are not, so stop saying that they are." Y'know?

When you stop hypothesizing, and you start pointing fingers at actual games and asking whether or not this or that one is or isn't an RPG, as Justin says, it gets very fuzzy. He points to Dread as pure storygame, because the resolution mechanic is disassociated, but everything else in the game plays like an RPG. The players role-play characters in a world described by the GM--that is the explicit activity of the game. How is that not a RPG?

Peregrin already pointed out that the difference between "role-playing" and "story-gaming" at the table can be invisible.

You must have missed the "all shades in between" in my post you quoted.

As for ideologies, it pretty much amounted for me to say I do not enjoy certain types of changes made to games I like. I did not mind at all whatever game anyone chose to be playing. I did mind when a game I like was changed into something I did not like.

Now, I don't give much of a shit anymore, because I got the games I like. WotC can make an eurogame or storygame or a pay-wall online MMO out of D&D for all I care. The same goes for pretty much any other role playing game I know and like.

Just don't expect me to say I enjoy playing something I find boring to tears. I'd enjoy any number of games, including computer RPGs and First Person Shooters, before I'd end up playing a story game.

Quote from: Elfdart;456507For me it's a matter of realizing that the DM or the packaged scenario are so wedded to their storyline that it doesn't matter what my PC does. In fact, if it's already predetermined that x, y and z will happen no matter what, it doesn't matter if I show up to play at all-or if anyone else does either!

That's railroading. Completely different thing.

The mechanics of storytelling games often make pre-planning storylines difficult if not impossible (since the mechanics are explicitly about determining which player will control the next chunk of story). And that's assuming there's a GM at all.

Quote from: Peregrin;456556Not necessarily.  You can play to your character and never have to treat them as a narrative device, and it could still be a story-game.

Hmm... I'd be interested in seeing an example of a story game in which I would never be required to make a decision which isn't made as if I were the character.

Quote from: two_fishes;456581"Storygames" developed out of role-playing games, and are played so similarly at the table that the distinction can seem fairly trivial.

I don't know if it's (a) because I have a high appreciation of the roleplaying experience; (b) because I tend to play more "extreme" storytelling games; or (c) because of my semi-unique background of writer, actor, improv coach, and RPG aficionado, but I consider the distinction to be large and significant.

The skills I use and the mindset I'm in when I'm playing a storytelling game are very different from the skills I use and mindset I'm in when I'm playing a roleplaying game.

(This is probably less true when I'm sitting in the GM-type role. Although even there the prep work for effectively GMing an RPG is radically different from the prep work for effectively GMing a storytelling game, IMO.)

QuoteHe points to Dread as pure storygame, because the resolution mechanic is disassociated, but everything else in the game plays like an RPG. The players role-play characters in a world described by the GM--that is the explicit activity of the game. How is that not a RPG?

For pretty much all the reasons that I stated.

More generally, I think trying to define RPGs by the gross trapping of the table arrangement isn't particularly useful. It creates a definition which is both too large and too narrow.

Quote from: Benoist;456615Now, I don't give much of a shit anymore, because I got the games I like. WotC can make an eurogame or storygame or a pay-wall online MMO out of D&D for all I care. The same goes for pretty much any other role playing game I know and like.

I think this is a bit of a false trail, honestly. D&D4 has a lot of dissociated mechanics, but very few if any of them are narrative control mechanics. If the designers were trying to make D&D4 more of a storytelling game they did a piss-poor job of it.

Quote from: two_fishes;456581But I think there's a lot of weight to that invisibility. If you're arguing about demanding a distinction between two-styles of play that is invisible at the table, then I have a hard time giving very much credence to an insistence that these are two dramatically different styles of play.

It's not invisible at the table, it can be invisible at the table.  In other words, I can be playing a traditional rpg with not a narrative element in sight, and not really care one bit about my character's POV.  If I was at a table of heavy role-players it would probably stand out, but at most tables not many people would notice, as Peregrin said.

However, take a game in which the default mode of play is to specifically engage in non-IC mechanical decisions as a central type of play and that's a different game altogether.

If I'm playing an RPG I can play it like a RPG or I can play it like a Wargame or I can play it like I'm directing a movie in my head, coming up with interesting things to challenge the Protagonist.

If I'm playing a Storygame, I can't just play it like an RPG, I have to leave IC-POV in order to play the game, therefore it is not an RPG, it's a Storygame, or a Narrative RPG, depending on how much focus there is on roleplay.

As I said earlier, there is a zone where games share elements, it's not really a Berlin Wall of Gaming, but you can tell the difference between the two types of game.

If you're adding Narrative elements to a game, you're basically saying, I want to do more then just roleplay, I want to have actual game rules outside my character's POV to facilitate storytelling.  

If you're adding Tactical Mechanics to a game, you're basically saying, I want to do more then just roleplay, I want to have actual game rules outside my character's POV to facilitate tactical miniatures play.

When you add those elements in, but still focus on role-playing, you have a Tactical RPG or a Narrative RPG.

When those elements eclipse the role-playing element, you have something else.

Quote from: CRKrueger;456276Where is the line?

Well first, it's not a line, it's more of a zone, with some clearly on one side or the other and some to different degrees in the middle.

If the mechanics of the game function primarily as a "physics engine" to determine the outcome of character actions, and the primary mode of play is to pretend you are a character in a fictional world, it's a roleplaying game.

If the mechanics of the game include metagame elements to define things in terms of story, theme, plot, and deal with concepts such as narrative control, which requires characters to spend time playing the metagame as well as the actual role-playing, it's a storygame.

This is pretty close.

For me, if the game includes player characters and the play of that game includes doing things from outside the perspective of the PC then you are wading into story game territory.

In other words if the game includes ways for me as a player to "affect the narrative" beyond what my character is capable of doing in the game world it is a story game.

DominikSchwager's suddenly gone quiet about incursions...

Quote from: CRKrueger;456655If I'm playing a Storygame, I can't just play it like an RPG, I have to leave IC-POV in order to play the game, therefore it is not an RPG, it's a Storygame, or a Narrative RPG, depending on how much focus there is on roleplay.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;456758This is pretty close.

For me, if the game includes player characters and the play of that game includes doing things from outside the perspective of the PC then you are wading into story game territory.

Here's where I want to get into specifics and ask which games do this. Because the great majority of games lumped into the Storygames category don't. Sorcerer certainly doesn't. Dogs in the Vinyard can be played without leaving an IC-POV--stakes setting can be set entirely from an IC-POV, amounting to the GM asking the player, "What do you (the character) want to get out of this?" Dread is played from an IC-POV--the resolution mechanic is disassociated, but the player never has to leave the IC-POV to play. I'd have to double-check, but I don't think that uber-storygame, My Life With Master ever demands that the player leave an IC-POV if they don't wish to.

It's easy to talk about hypotheticals, and say potentially this is or that is not an RPG, but when you get down to talking about actual games, the number of games that are actual out-and-out "storygames" by this criteria are very few. I would say, only the really radical games qualify: Universalis, maybe, Capes, stuff like that.

Quote from: One Horse Town;456764DominikSchwager's suddenly gone quiet about incursions...

Dominik is sufficient to address me. And I am quiet because I usually only read, not because of some agenda of mine and because I still don't see the need to lead a defence. I am pretty sure those new gentlemen won't bite and/or disappear on their own volition after some time.

However I have something to say about the original topic.
For me a game isn't either a storygame or a roleplaying game. Primarily I classify all games in which you sit down with friends and play pretend as roleplaying games. Roleplaying games as a category then has a lot of subcategories, like diceless or gamemasterless or wargamey or storygame. Because in the end the differences to the base model, i.e. sit around and play pretend, isn't sufficiently different to warrant making a whole new category.

Anyway, after 9 pages of this I am more than ever convinced, that there isn't enough of a consensus about what is a storygame and if that is any different from a roleplaying game to give the moderators the task of deciding what's going to get discussed where. However I understand that membership makeup on this board makes another approach easily doable. Or in other words, people who play games that might or might not be classed as storygames are a minority here and therefore get treated like one.

Quote from: two_fishes;456781It's easy to talk about hypotheticals, and say potentially this is or that is not an RPG, but when you get down to talking about actual games, the number of games that are actual out-and-out "storygames" by this criteria are very few. I would say, only the really radical games qualify: Universalis, maybe, Capes, stuff like that.

I'm not that familiar with many of these indie games. Are there any game constructs/mechanics in these games that enable a player to affect the in-game environment in such a way that the character would be unable to recognize the manner in which such an effect is achieved?

For example when a wizard casts fireball, the player affects the game world and the character understands how this was accomplished.

If a game features plot tokens or some such mechanic and the player spends one to have a certain item be at hand does the character understand or even acknowledge what just happened?

Quote from: two_fishes;456781Here's where I want to get into specifics and ask which games do this. Because the great majority of games lumped into the Storygames category don't. Sorcerer certainly doesn't. Dogs in the Vinyard can be played without leaving an IC-POV--stakes setting can be set entirely from an IC-POV, amounting to the GM asking the player, "What do you (the character) want to get out of this?" Dread is played from an IC-POV--the resolution mechanic is disassociated, but the player never has to leave the IC-POV to play. I'd have to double-check, but I don't think that uber-storygame, My Life With Master ever demands that the player leave an IC-POV if they don't wish to.

It's easy to talk about hypotheticals, and say potentially this is or that is not an RPG, but when you get down to talking about actual games, the number of games that are actual out-and-out "storygames" by this criteria are very few. I would say, only the really radical games qualify: Universalis, maybe, Capes, stuff like that.

Well, again I think there is a continuum between trad RPG and storygame, but given that storygames could be said, putting aside the question of whether they are traditional rpgs, to derive from traditional RPGs, they derive from RPG along different paths - to use a biological metaphor you might call them a paraphyletic group.

But that said I want to say that I think that the setting of explicit stakes by a character does involve zooming out from that character's perspective. I draw a distinction between explicit stakes vs. apparent stakes.

Using a very simple D&D derived example, a guy is moving down a corridor in a manky old dungeon, and sees a door in the wall ahead of him; he tries to sneak by. I think there is a big difference in what is going on with the relationship between the player and the game world, whether it's


"I try to sneak past the door. If I succeed I'm like the wind; if I fail, the door will fly open as I pass and a troll will assault me."

vs.

"I try to sneak past the door. There is a heavy wet breathing sound coming behind it. I am at risk of alerting what's making that noise if I fail."


I think something like this moves out of a character perspective in more ways than one - two of those ways are, is it gives the player a predictive ability the character can only guess at, and it gives the player to instigate a tangential outcome in a way the character can't directly influence. If the explicit stakes are as above, the player can learn there is indeed a potential attacker behind the door through the stakes set, or the player can ensure that either he gets by OR the door opens without the character having a direct influence on the latter.

I myself don't really enjoy the issues like that that can derive from explicit stakes setting. Is that "IC-POV?" The idea behind this example derives from the chapter on "Failure" esp. "Two Directions" in Burning Wheel, which contains comparatively few narrative elements.

I agree with Cole above, great examples. I see a perfectly adequate amount of difference between the two types of games to make a distinction. To me, it is very simple. A RPG has as it's goal, mechanically, to play the role of a character with (as CRKrueger said) mechanics that largely are about modelling the physics and behavior of the imagined world. Story Games have largely, as their stated goal, the shared creation of a story with mechanics that support achieving that goal. As I've said before, there is nothing inherently wrong with either of these goals, or the various approaches used to accomplish them. As I've also said before, there's plenty of middle ground where games blend both types, just as 4e D&D and Battletech/Mechwarrior and TFT blend RPGing with tactical wargaming. I find making the distinction useful in both researching games I might be interested in and when talking about the types of games to other folks. There is nothing inherently wrong with distinguishing Story Games from RPGs in my eyes, folk's prejudices about them are their own, and are going to exist no matter what the types of games are called, so there's really no reason I can see to not make the distinction. I have not yet found a Story Game I like all that much, but I'll freely admit my experience is far from extensive, and I'm certainly willing to try playing just about anything at least once. I also freely admit that there are RPGs that IMO are wrongly lumped with Story Games, such as Freemarket which, in the context of it's setting, is a pretty dang awesome RPG IMO.