Quote from: estar;1081294Only in the sense that it is an account of connected events.

Or do you think that chess players set out to create a narrative work?

That the fundamental question that needs to be answered, what is the intention of the group for this activity.

Well... intention is important to creating a story, but is it necessary. I'm not convinced, but I could be, that it is. The reason being that, no, the Chess players didn't set out to create a story, but sometimes they do anyway.

QuoteIf it is to compete or cooperate using a rules of game to beat some victory conditions then it is a wargame.

If it is to pretend to be character interacting with a setting with their actions adjudicated by a human referee using the rules of a game then it is tabletop roleplaying.

If it is to collaborative on creating a fictional narrative by using the rules of a game then it is a story game.

I'm not seeing the difference yet between RPG and Storygame on this definition. I see from one you could reasonably derive that Storygames are a subset of RPGs, as you can work to create a fictional narrative within the rules of a game with a human referee (or set of referees, or shifting referee, or something else... is this a point of distinction, perhaps?) and meet both criteria. But that still makes storygames a type of RPG, and still means D&D can be a storygame, as can any OSR.

Your definition of Wargame, I can certainly see where that gives you a clean break between RPGs and Wargames (unless someone wants to provide a counterexample. I can't think of any off the top of my head.)

QuoteIt can be confusing because the same set of rules can be used for all three activities. Generally the differences in focus leads to different elements of the rules being emphasized or additional mechanics added.

Keep in mind that the only recognizable major difference between Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign and the other detailed wargame campaigns being run at the time was Dave didn't say no when the players wanted to ignore the overall scenario to pursue their own goal. Which specifically was not dealing with the attack on Castle Blackmoor by the Egg of Coot in favor of exploring dungeons.

OK... so we're basically in agreement? I think we are, from what I'm reading, but then I'm still confused as to why there's any issue with there being a distinction between an RPG and the subset of Storygames. It seems to be a distinction that lacks a meaningful difference.

Quote from: Tanin Wulf;1081298Well... intention is important to creating a story, but is it necessary. I'm not convinced, but I could be, that it is. The reason being that, no, the Chess players didn't set out to create a story, but sometimes they do anyway.

Everything we do as a human being is story in the sense of an account of events ordered in time. But that not the kind of story story games are about. Storygames are intended to creative fictional narratives collaboratively by using the rules of a game. There chess in contrast is a type of wargame where the point is to defeat your opponent by achieving the game's victory condition, checkmat  

Quote from: Tanin Wulf;1081298OK... so we're basically in agreement? I think we are, from what I'm reading, but then I'm still confused as to why there's any issue with there being a distinction between an RPG and the subset of Storygames. It seems to be a distinction that lacks a meaningful difference.

It is the difference between

"Hey why do you and I play a warrior and I play a wizard and we go the holodeck* and adventure in Lieber's City of Lankhmar.

"Hey why do you and I sit down in front of the computer and type out a story about a warrior and wizard adventuring in Lieber's City of Lanhkmar together."

In the first we pretend to be characters having adventures in some setting.

In the second we are authors crafting a story using the tools at hand. In my example a computer, in storygames the rules of a game.

In the former, you will not be able to do anything that your character can't do.

In the latter, we both can by authorial fiat introduce, alter, or delete setting elements, narrative event, and characters. With storygames is this process is structured by the rules of a game. Rather than just us bouncing ideas back and forth.

Hope this clarifies things,

*As is turned out pen, paper, dice and the procedure pioneered by Dave Arneson is good enough to create a pen & paper virtual reality and doesn't require a piece of fictional technology.

Well! Thank you for responding in the manner you did, estar!

Quote from: estar;1081314Everything we do as a human being is story in the sense of an account of events ordered in time. But that not the kind of story story games are about. Storygames are intended to creative fictional narratives collaboratively by using the rules of a game. There chess in contrast is a type of wargame where the point is to defeat your opponent by achieving the game's victory condition, checkmat(e)

OK, but what I mean is that a duel between two chess grand masters has a story, and each move tells a story, and that story is more than just an ordered series of time. It's a history and set of movements. It's a guile and a wit. It's a choice and counter choice that was made with reasoned analysis based on a historical and practical narrative of past-prologue that set the stage for that game. There is a story there.

That's what I'm getting at: there absolutely can be a story inherent in every game of chess in that regard. It might be a very simple story of two newbies learning to play together, but it is there. Are we in agreement on that or no? (If not, that's totally OK, I'm not saying my way is absolutely right, just that this is how I'm approaching it and perhaps in defining terms we'll figure out if and why we're not in agreement.)

QuoteIt is the difference between

"Hey why do you and I play a warrior and I play a wizard and we go the holodeck* and adventure in Lieber's City of Lankhmar.

"Hey why do you and I sit down in front of the computer and type out a story about a warrior and wizard adventuring in Lieber's City of Lanhkmar together."

In the first we pretend to be characters having adventures in some setting.

In the second we are authors crafting a story using the tools at hand. In my example a computer, in storygames the rules of a game.

In the former, you will not be able to do anything that your character can't do.

In the latter, we both can by authorial fiat introduce, alter, or delete setting elements, narrative event, and characters. With storygames is this process is structured by the rules of a game. Rather than just us bouncing ideas back and forth.

Hope this clarifies things,

*As is turned out pen, paper, dice and the procedure pioneered by Dave Arneson is good enough to create a pen & paper virtual reality and doesn't require a piece of fictional technology.

OK. So that is helpful, but it seems to me that there's an excluded middle in that setup. If those are just two ends of a spectrum, then cool! Absolutely agree. But for those to be hard and fast categories seems to miss aspects of both of those categories.

For example, my D&D games tend to have an ordered story. They're not sandboxes. Players step in with a knowledge of what the general theme is going to be and we go forward together. Characters live and die by the dice and the rules of the system. I don't pull punches. If a story has to be massively rewritten because of some bad dice rolls, so be it! However, we are, fundamentally, crafting a story with the tools at hand about a warrior and a wizard adventuring in Lieber's City of Lanhkmar together.

Now, on the other hand, you did cover pretty well where storygames start approaching the first category: there's a structure in place so it's not just authorial fiat. There's a way things are supposed to be done. There's a limit and you can push up against the limits. For example: Anima Prime is very player-driven and GM-driven to create backstories, elements of the setting, and other activities. Characters cannot die in it without approval of both GM and the player of that character. However, characters absolutely can and do fail and sometimes you have to ask yourself, "So the plot now went this direction, what should we do?" and the dice might not agree with where you wanted to go originally. So it's an exercise in how to use the game to tell the story and how to change the story because of what happened in the game.

I'd say, on the whole, Anima Prime falls far more heavily on the Storygame side... but it is still an RPG. It still has you, fundamentally, playing a character with a neutral referee who is running things. That referee maintains ultimate control, except in one regard set by the rules: death. Death is always plot driven in that game. Loss is not. And I would liken that restriction to AC in D&D. A DM could just eliminate AC and go with a different rule because the DM has ultimate authority, but that would be changing the fundamental nature of the game. It is, if you will, beyond the ultimate authority of the DM to do that without the players in that case. (Consent of the players can be as simple as continuing to play, however.)

Contrast that with authors crafting a story in the sense of sitting down at a table and writing out a whole story.

So I still come back to a point where it seems, to me, there's a distinction between traditional TTRPGS and Storygames, but it's a parent-child or super-and-subset relationship, not a categorical difference like, say TTRPGs to Chess.

Quote from: Tanin Wulf;1081351Well! Thank you for responding in the manner you did, estar!



OK, but what I mean is that a duel between two chess grand masters has a story, and each move tells a story, and that story is more than just an ordered series of time. It's a history and set of movements. It's a guile and a wit. It's a choice and counter choice that was made with reasoned analysis based on a historical and practical narrative of past-prologue that set the stage for that game. There is a story there.

That's what I'm getting at: there absolutely can be a story inherent in every game of chess in that regard. It might be a very simple story of two newbies learning to play together, but it is there. Are we in agreement on that or no? (If not, that's totally OK, I'm not saying my way is absolutely right, just that this is how I'm approaching it and perhaps in defining terms we'll figure out if and why we're not in agreement.)



OK. So that is helpful, but it seems to me that there's an excluded middle in that setup. If those are just two ends of a spectrum, then cool! Absolutely agree. But for those to be hard and fast categories seems to miss aspects of both of those categories.

For example, my D&D games tend to have an ordered story. They're not sandboxes. Players step in with a knowledge of what the general theme is going to be and we go forward together. Characters live and die by the dice and the rules of the system. I don't pull punches. If a story has to be massively rewritten because of some bad dice rolls, so be it! However, we are, fundamentally, crafting a story with the tools at hand about a warrior and a wizard adventuring in Lieber's City of Lanhkmar together.

Now, on the other hand, you did cover pretty well where storygames start approaching the first category: there's a structure in place so it's not just authorial fiat. There's a way things are supposed to be done. There's a limit and you can push up against the limits. For example: Anima Prime is very player-driven and GM-driven to create backstories, elements of the setting, and other activities. Characters cannot die in it without approval of both GM and the player of that character. However, characters absolutely can and do fail and sometimes you have to ask yourself, "So the plot now went this direction, what should we do?" and the dice might not agree with where you wanted to go originally. So it's an exercise in how to use the game to tell the story and how to change the story because of what happened in the game.

I'd say, on the whole, Anima Prime falls far more heavily on the Storygame side... but it is still an RPG. It still has you, fundamentally, playing a character with a neutral referee who is running things. That referee maintains ultimate control, except in one regard set by the rules: death. Death is always plot driven in that game. Loss is not. And I would liken that restriction to AC in D&D. A DM could just eliminate AC and go with a different rule because the DM has ultimate authority, but that would be changing the fundamental nature of the game. It is, if you will, beyond the ultimate authority of the DM to do that without the players in that case. (Consent of the players can be as simple as continuing to play, however.)

Contrast that with authors crafting a story in the sense of sitting down at a table and writing out a whole story.

So I still come back to a point where it seems, to me, there's a distinction between traditional TTRPGS and Storygames, but it's a parent-child or super-and-subset relationship, not a categorical difference like, say TTRPGs to Chess.

Is Anima Prime at all like the original Anima? I've never run it, but when I played in a campaign, it felt deeply crunchy, not particularly story gamey (though I might not have been exposed to aspects of the system since I was just a player). But the amount of crunch made me think that story wasn't as much the focus as emulating anime combat and characters.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1081355Is Anima Prime at all like the original Anima? I've never run it, but when I played in a campaign, it felt deeply crunchy, not particularly story gamey (though I might not have been exposed to aspects of the system since I was just a player). But the amount of crunch made me think that story wasn't as much the focus as emulating anime combat and characters.

By original to you mean Anima: Beyond Fantasy? If so, they're actually not related. Which was weird.

Anima Prime is a D6 based system that has Exalted 3rd edition's combat engine, except Anima Prime developed it over a year before Exalted 3rd came up with a strangely similar system and its implementation is... well... just better (no obtuse language and problems with multiple sides in a combat causing a lot of Initiative tracking-none of that, but the Withering/Decisive type mechanic is there, better done, and makes a lot more sense). Far less crunchy to accomplish a lot more with a lot less confusion.

Anima and Anima Prime are very, very different systems. Anima Beyond Fantasy is definitely a fun, high crunch system. Anima Prime has a state goal of meeting wuxia style anime and Avatar the Last Airbender style stuff. Anima Prime is also a fun, high energy system that's low-to-moderate crunch.

Quote from: Tanin Wulf;1081351OK, but what I mean is that a duel between two chess grand masters has a story, and each move tells a story, and that story is more than just an ordered series of time. It's a history and set of movements. It's a guile and a wit. It's a choice and counter choice that was made with reasoned analysis based on a historical and practical narrative of past-prologue that set the stage for that game. There is a story there.

Still only a story that is an account of connected events. Chess strategy is based on a understanding of openings, defenses, relative values of various positions in the middle game, and end game. It not a narrative but a description. There can be a story about the two human participants but not about the game they play.


OK. So that is helpful, but it seems to me that there's an excluded middle in that setup. If those are just two ends of a spectrum, then cool! Absolutely agree. But for those to be hard and fast categories seems to miss aspects of both of those categories.

Quote from: Tanin Wulf;1081351For example, my D&D games tend to have an ordered story. They're not sandboxes. Players step in with a knowledge of what the general theme is going to be and we go forward together. Characters live and die by the dice and the rules of the system. I don't pull punches. If a story has to be massively rewritten because of some bad dice rolls, so be it! However, we are, fundamentally, crafting a story with the tools at hand about a warrior and a wizard adventuring in Lieber's City of Lanhkmar together.

It about focus. Storygames have a metagame to force the outcome of sessions to fit a narrative structures. One that manipulated by the participant as themselves not as their character. Traditional tabletop roleplaying game do not consider anything other than does the action make sense in terms of the setting and what the character is capable of doing. If so what are the odds of success or it is an automatic success or failure.

Where things get muddled is that not all metagame mechanics are equal. If we are just talking about luck points that benefit a roll then it likely the focus isn't going to be creating a story. If if something like Blades of the Dark when each session has a specific structure as to how it plays out then it safe to say that focus shifted to collaborative storytelling.

The figure out whether something is metagaming or not you need to ask "Am I using this as a player or am I doing this as my character?" Which is why altering a setting using the ability of an Amberite is not metagaming and it is when you spend a fate point to create an advantage in Fate. Because in the setting Amber some have the ability to alter reality itself. While Fate it is a game mechanic meant to be used as the player to influence the narrative of the game. And is not an ability of the character the player is playing.

Quote from: Tanin Wulf;1081351Now, on the other hand, you did cover pretty well where storygames start approaching the first category: there's a structure in place so it's not just authorial fiat. There's a way things are supposed to be done. There's a limit and you can push up against the limits. For example: Anima Prime is very player-driven and GM-driven to create backstories, elements of the setting, and other activities. Characters cannot die in it without approval of both GM and the player of that character. However, characters absolutely can and do fail and sometimes you have to ask yourself, "So the plot now went this direction, what should we do?" and the dice might not agree with where you wanted to go originally. So it's an exercise in how to use the game to tell the story and how to change the story because of what happened in the game.

I'd say, on the whole, Anima Prime falls far more heavily on the Storygame side... but it is still an RPG. It still has you, fundamentally, playing a character with a neutral referee who is running things. That referee maintains ultimate control, except in one regard set by the rules: death. Death is always plot driven in that game. Loss is not. And I would liken that restriction to AC in D&D. A DM could just eliminate AC and go with a different rule because the DM has ultimate authority, but that would be changing the fundamental nature of the game. It is, if you will, beyond the ultimate authority of the DM to do that without the players in that case. (Consent of the players can be as simple as continuing to play, however.)

I know you may disagree about the following. After discussing the genesis of tabletop roleplaying games for a long time, I felt I finally hit on the simplistic and most accurate description of what made Dave Arneson's Blackmoor. He said yes when players started to ignore the scenario in favor of dungeon exploration instead of saying no you need to focus on figuring out how to defeat the Egg of Coot. Now there were a lot of elements that Dave and his immediate predecessor had to develop to make that yes meaningful enough to give birth to a new hobby. But that the key element that pushed Blackmoor over into being the first tabletop roleplaying campaign rather than being a very sophiscated wargaming campaign.

Likewise with storygame versus traditional tabletop roleplaying games. If things other than the reality of the setting and the capabilities of the character are used to determined the outcome of an action then it metagaming and the focus has shifted to collaborative storytelling rather than pretending to be a character having adventures in a setting.

Now where many get hung up with this is there is a feeling that if you adopt the above for traditional tabletop roleplaying that there always only one outcome for anything the players describe as their character. That not true, the life of even a fictional setting is complex and nuanced enough so that there are often many plausible outcomes of something that being attempted. It is the job of the referee to pick the one that the most interesting based on what ones know about the group they are playing with.

The heart of the difference between wargames and tabletop roleplaying is wargames have victory conditions and tabletop roleplaying doesn't. In SJ Games Melee or Wizard your goal is to kill all the other combatants. Into the Labyrinth your goal is to pretend to be a character exploring a fantasy world. In the Labyrinth goes into a lot of detail about building underground labyrinths but also supports just about anything characters do in an a fantasy world. A In the Labyrinth campaign where characters never bother to explore a labyrinth can be easily run.

In Blades in the Dark the goal is to collaboratively create a story about a caper or heist in a dark noir setting using the narrative structure of the Score. You could ignore the structure of the Score and build a traditional tabletop roleplaying campaign out of it but a lot of the mechanics resolve around being used at the proper time during the Score. Unlike Dave Arneson and Blackmoor, a Blades in the Dark referee would be hard put to say yes to the players ignoring the Score's narrative. In some storygame I encountered the narrative structure is so ridge and the mechanics so abstract that to me it feel more like a wargame with rigid victory conditions than collaboratively creating a story.

Quote from: Tanin Wulf;1081351So I still come back to a point where it seems, to me, there's a distinction between traditional TTRPGS and Storygames, but it's a parent-child or super-and-subset relationship, not a categorical difference like, say TTRPGs to Chess.

Maybe this will help. It not the best presentation but the following is a video me running an adventure I call Decits of the Russet Lord using a variant of OD&D. Keep in mind I have no idea how this will turn out for Brendan, Adam and the rest of the group. I setup a situation and throw the players in the middle of it. I cause the character to react based on their personalities and motivations as if they were dealing with what players do or don't do as their character.

[video=youtube;z4rj5YsBqc8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4rj5YsBqc8[/youtube]

I ran a LARP event in early 2000s similar to above and there because of the limitations of live action, I couldn't be as free form. Certain encounters had to happen at certain times to the fact I have to physically transport props and people around. So I structured those encounters into a narrative that I knew that the players would likely follow and like. And had contingencies in case the outcome of an encounter turned out very different than expected.  If I had the manpower and logistic but I would ran like the video but reality dictated otherwise.

In general in boffer LARPS, friday night was the opening action that established the premise of the weekend. Late Friday to mid Saturday afternoon a series of parallel encounter and adventures would be run that fed the players information about the premise. Around 4 to 5 Saturday afternoon, the first climatic action would be conducted establishing urgency. Then from then until around 8 pm Saturday afternoon a series of encounter or adventures would be run that reinforce the urgency of the moment. Finally Saturday evening was the final climax where everything went down and was resolved. A short denouncement would often occur afterwards setting resolving loose ends and setting things up for the next event.

Your staff got to eat, sleep, and rest hence the somewhat rigid structure. It was fun and the immersion of live action very addictive. But no where near as flexible as tabletop roleplaying. All of this is a result of shifting the focus to roleplaying with the action being resolved by the rules of a sport (which the rules of a boffer larp boils down to).

The same with shifting the focus to collabrative storytelling. Now you have to think as a player what best fits the narrative we are trying to create rather than what I would do in this situation as my character. IN short you have to metagame. And often how much you can metagame it limited by the mechanics of the storygame. Like LARPS it can be addicting and fun but it not the same thing as tabletop roleplaying. Just as playing towards a victory condition in wargaming is not the same thing as tabletop roleplaying. And like wargaming where the game involves playing individuals and a campaign (like running a ludus of gladiators), it can be hard to figure out where one ends and the other begins.

When you run a pre-published adventure, your RPG session usually has a goal. "Stop Queen Euphoria" in Shadowrun isn't really any different from "Take Hill 419" in a wargame. The real difference to me seems the shift away from leading armies or units to running a single person, in particular a person with a distinct personality, as pioneered in those Braunstein wargames and later developed into its own game form.

As for storygames, I think what has been said earlier in the thread still holds: it's one aspect of role-playing (story-telling) taken to an extreme. If you take another aspect, say gamism, to an extreme, you get RPG campaigns in which the players only care about getting the loot and XPs and all characterization or focus on story is ditched. If you take simulationism to the extreme, you might get systems that are highly realistic but not very playable due to sheer complexity. And I suppose you could take improv acting in role-playing to its extremes too - forgetting about rules and about the scenario's on-going story and just enjoying to act in character with each other.

Quote from: Tanin Wulf;1081287Everything tells a story. The question is whether or not you are listening.

No. No it does not. A rock from space is not telling any story at all. It is a rock from space.

Again this is the main problem many have with storygamers. You want to redefine terms to literally mean "everything on earth" at which point the term becomes less than meaningless. It is now utterly useless.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1081368When you run a pre-published adventure, your RPG session usually has a goal. "Stop Queen Euphoria" in Shadowrun isn't really any different from "Take Hill 419" in a wargame. The real difference to me seems the shift away from leading armies or units to running a single person, in particular a person with a distinct personality, as pioneered in those Braunstein wargames and later developed into its own game form.

Except the players as their character have the option to say fuck stopping Queen Euphoria and do something different. A tabletop roleplaying referee is not being realistic if they expect their players to stay on track just because they bought or created a adventure with a specific goal in mind.

Unlike a wargame where the whole exercise rides on everybody competing (or cooperating in some cases) with each other to achieve a set of victory conditions. Finally if a campaign using tabletop roleplaying rules is nothing more than a bunch of scenarios with victory conditions. Say like organized play, then it little different than a sophisticated wargame campaign. In fact many storygame edge into the wargame territory because their focus is so narrow and oriented towards a particular kind of outcome.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1081368As for storygames, I think what has been said earlier in the thread still holds: it's one aspect of role-playing (story-telling) taken to an extreme.

Roleplaying is not storytelling, it is what you decide to do as your character within the setting of the campaign. For some this means acting as version of themselves with a change of name and the abilities of their character. For others it mean adopting a different personality, motivations, and doing "funny voices".

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1081368If you take another aspect, say gamism, to an extreme, you get RPG campaigns in which the players only care about getting the loot and XPs and all characterization or focus on story is ditched.

It called greed and ambition and a common set of real world motivations for how a person acts. As for characterization, they are roleplaying as if they are there as the character. Just in a way you disapprove of.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1081368If you take simulationism to the extreme, you might get systems that are highly realistic but not very playable due to sheer complexity.

That is a metagame issues resulting from how a referee or a group decides to adjudicates things. It is a matter of a taste. I enjoy GURPS with all the options, many of my friends who are hobbyists do not. Neither one of us is right nor neither one of us is wrong.

I know people who made Chivalry & Sorcery, Dragonquest, Universe, and Space Opera work. Most I know think those RPGs are over ally complicated and almost unreadable for they are trying to do.  

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1081368And I suppose you could take improv acting in role-playing to its extremes too - forgetting about rules and about the scenario's on-going story and just enjoying to act in character with each other.

Sounds like how it supposed to work to me. The only thing that can't be ignored is the setting of the campaign as that defines how the reality works.

Quote from: Omega;1081386No. No it does not. A rock from space is not telling any story at all. It is a rock from space.

Again this is the main problem many have with storygamers. You want to redefine terms to literally mean "everything on earth" at which point the term becomes less than meaningless. It is now utterly useless.

Story is merely a narration of changes of state. Literary stories are merely particularly interesting and/or insightful stories, often dramatized aka skillfully exaggerated. A big part of the job of a sports journalist, for example, is literally re-telling the story of a football match (changes of state) from his perspective.

As to rocks from space, I am pretty sure we can find many news articles about rocks from space, usually involving a story involving that rock form space. So, yes, pretty much everything involving change tells a story.

What's note-worthy is that when we look at the genres we most commonly find in RPGs, that they usually involved dramatized fiction - a special type of story.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1081390Story is merely a narration of changes of state. Literary stories are merely particularly interesting and/or insightful stories, often dramatized aka skillfully exaggerated. A big part of the job of a sports journalist, for example, is literally re-telling the story of a football match (changes of state) from his perspective.

I don't know that changes of state=story. That can also describe historical narratives (in the sense of the part of history where the historian strings together a description of the events). It isn't story in the sense people usually mean when they talk about story in RPGs. The whole point of talking about story in an RPG, is usually so the game can be more than just a sequence of events or changes of state. So I think, like I said before, a lot of the problem in these discussions arises when people try to win a playstyle argument by controlling the language and undermining the language of their opponents. You see this when people equivocate on the multiple meanings of story (i.e. going from 'stuff that happened' to 'literary stories' in order to argue that RPGs should or should not be about the latter).

Also is it fair to call sports journalism writing a story? Wouldn't it be more precise to call it an 'account'. Also, not all sports journalism engages in telling sequences of events. A lot of it is analysis, which can be pretty far removed from story (history too has its analysis component).

Frankly I am fine with games having whatever people want in them. If folks want story. They should have it. If they want narrative mechanics, I am fine with that. The only time I find myself irked in these discussions is when people try to convince me to adopt their taste, or that all games should do X, with the kinds of arguments I described above.

Quote from: Omega;1081386No. No it does not. A rock from space is not telling any story at all. It is a rock from space.

Then I'm sorry you're not listening to what the space rock has to say.

QuoteAgain this is the main problem many have with storygamers. You want to redefine terms to literally mean "everything on earth" at which point the term becomes less than meaningless. It is now utterly useless.

Is it? What did I say that makes it "everything on earth?" Because it seems to me this is a strawman you set up that has nothing to do with what I said. I have been able to make and show categorical exclusions of what is and is not an RPG under the definitions I've put forward.

Quote from: estar;1081363(ester's long, well thought out response to me)

OK. That is good stuff and helps me see where the comparison is coming from. I don't see where the vitriol is coming from (not from you, you have been very helpful and I have not seen any overt anger, so thank you), but now I'm starting to get a clearer picture of the comparison. I particularly appreciate the LARP and Blades in the Dark comparisons. So thanks!

Quote from: estar;1081389Except the players as their character have the option to say fuck stopping Queen Euphoria and do something different. A tabletop roleplaying referee is not being realistic if they expect their players to stay on track just because they bought or created a adventure with a specific goal in mind.

Say that the players say that and the GM's response is, "Oh... well, this is actually all I had planned. Sorry guys! OK, nobody seems to like where this is going. So let's set this down and do something else, but I'm going to need time to set up a new game so next week I'll take input and we will come up with a new campaign to play."

Further, assuming it's a good gaming group, they're all OK with that and they all agree to go set up a new Wilderlands of High Fantasy game instead. This is the way they roll and they all have a great time together, so when a campaign just utterly fails... meh, try again with something else. Were they engaging in a storygame because the GM simply wasn't able to adapt and knew it? If so, then the definition of storygame seems to not rest with solely the game, but with the GM.

Or does that just fit under your last line of:

QuoteSounds like how it supposed to work to me. The only thing that can't be ignored is the setting of the campaign as that defines how the reality works.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1081394I don't know that changes of state=story. That can also describe historical narratives (in the sense of the part of history where the historian strings together a description of the events). It isn't story in the sense people usually mean when they talk about story in RPGs.

...it really should be though. History-as-pop-culture is a thing. A lot of what we view of history is a story we flat out made up from facts that kind of look like that if you squint at it just right. (But note that a lot is not, necessarily, the majority of history.)

QuoteThe whole point of talking about story in an RPG, is usually so the game can be more than just a sequence of events or changes of state. So I think, like I said before, a lot of the problem in these discussions arises when people try to win a playstyle argument by controlling the language and undermining the language of their opponents. You see this when people equivocate on the multiple meanings of story (i.e. going from 'stuff that happened' to 'literary stories' in order to argue that RPGs should or should not be about the latter).

Also is it fair to call sports journalism writing a story? Wouldn't it be more precise to call it an 'account'. Also, not all sports journalism engages in telling sequences of events. A lot of it is analysis, which can be pretty far removed from story (history too has its analysis component).

Frankly I am fine with games having whatever people want in them. If folks want story. They should have it. If they want narrative mechanics, I am fine with that. The only time I find myself irked in these discussions is when people try to convince me to adopt their taste, or that all games should do X, with the kinds of arguments I described above.

So you're not really bothered by the storygame/RPG schism that seems to be going on here? (Truth be told, I'm not either; just confused by the schism itself. I agree wholeheartedly with have whatever people want in their games and don't try to convince others to adopt your tastes. That's why I'm engaging in this conversation, the exclusion of storygames seems arbitrary to control someone else's play style and de-legitimize it. So I'm looking for the why. It seems to be engaging in behavior that this forum says it hates.)