Alexander Kalinowski, I think we agree then? Yes, the other Storygames listed allow players to control the story or world outside their characters (at least for those with player characters, some don't even have them). And the author stance games usually have "OOC" rules instances as you say, yes.

About the "hybrids", most of them have nar bits like collaborative world building, or OOC rules or some sort of story-control currencies, etc. but those are usually not as determinant to the game experience as the more narrativist RPGs make them. Pendragon Is a good example I think: it has lots of narrativist bits and pieces (virtue traits, passions, the glory loop) but the importance of those in the gameplay will depend on the group preference. It's not enforced like your usual narrativist game.

Makes sense?

Quote from: Itachi;1077367Godfather Punk, the most narrativist/emulative/non-trad thing Amber has is the initial "Atribute auction", but it goes out the way as soon the game starts. So I would say Traditional. But I could see one saying Hybrid too, depending on how much you value the "Atribute Auction" and it's impact on the whole experience.

Makes sense?

P.S: I just read Amber and never played, so take that with a grain of salt.

Maybe? I also only started to read the game 20 years ago, and the lack of dice and hard rules (as I remember) and players getting to create or populate the world, made me think it was SG.

I'll have to dig it up one of these days and give it another go.

..and it looks like I broke the forum database

*Sigh* and I thought I broke the database.

Quote from: Itachi;1077373Makes sense?

Pretty much! Personally, I don't distinguish between storygames and narrative RPGs but I don't object to the delineation either and if that became commonly accepted, I'd adopt it.

Good to know a decade or so after all the screaming and going to the mattresses over me suggesting terms like Narrative RPG and Traditional RPG, narrative peeps feel safe enough now to finally admit the truth, that there is a difference.

Quote from: Itachi;1077358Storygames: Director stance predominance.
Fiasco, A Quiet Year, Polaris, My Life with Master, Shock: Social Science Fiction, Microscope, etc.

Narrativist RPGs: Author + Actor stances predominance.
Fate, Sorcerer, Apocalypse World (and derivatives like Dungeon World), Smallville (and derivatives like Marvel Heroic), Burning Wheel (and derivatives like Mouse Guard), Lady Blackbird, Don't Rest Your Head, Dogs in the Vineyard, Chuubo, Nobilis, Hillfolk, etc. (World of Dew for me)

Traditional RPGs: Actor stance predominance.
Vampire, D&D/OSR, Runequest (and derivatives like Call of Cthulhu), Traveller, Shadowrun, WFRP, etc.

Hybrid RPGs: Some mix of the above two.
The One Ring, Kult: Divinity Lost, Beyond the Wall, Mutant Year Zero (and derivatives like Tales from the Loop), FFG Star Wars, Tenra Bansho Zero, Blades in the Dark, Pendragon, etc.

(that's my personal take anyway )

I bolded the ones I've played. Your structure works for me, albeit I've never been a fan of any of these artificial boundaries. While I do acknowledge that they offer significantly different gaming experiences, and some of these have appealed more than others, it's usually a reflection of the genre and the people around the table, rather the core mechanics. Same with boardgames, all sorts of variety out there, but the environment is more important to me than what's written on the box.

As an aside, TwoBats just posted this short article encouraging people to try out One Page RPGs. The guy is absolutely right, all the ones I am familiar with are awesome, really promoting roleplaying ahead of mechanics or pre-set world-building. He also refers to "Single System Jail Syndrome". Now he is mostly talking about (not) bringing your Vampire DMing brain to your D&D game, but I do think there are benefits in exposure to these other mechanical systems, there's all sorts of cool stuff that can be stolen and shoe-horned into your home game.

I thought the simple definition was if you as a player take care of:
a) your PC. Making the coherent decisions that a character would do in that world
b) the Story. You take care of the PC but also what can trouble him and what difficulties he must overcome during this story. You, as a Player, sometimes shoot your PC in the leg in order to move the story forward (by gaining some special points, or just because it's funny)

Like the difference between wargames and tabletop roleplaying, the difference is with story games is one of focus.

Wargames, where the focus is on the participants playing collaboratively or competitively to achieve some type of defined victory condition.
Tabletop roleplaying, where the focus is on the participants pretending to be a character in a setting with their actions adjudicated by a referee.
Storygames, where the focus is on the participants are collaboratively creating a narrative using the mechanics of a game as a structure.

If the work in question doesn't have a human referee, doesn't focus on achieving a victory conditions, talks about narratives, characterization and other traditional plot elements. Then likely it is a story game.
If a work in question is full of defined procedure to be used in one or more scenarios with a defined end and meant to be played with the rules applied equally to all then likely it is a wargame.
If a work in question is about making a character, and talks about the things that character can do within a setting and relies on a human referee to determine the success, failure, and factors of a character
action then it is likely a tabletop roleplaying game.

Hybrids abound which confuses the issue. For example Dogs in the Vineyards focus on a narrow situation and talks a lot of about how characters and NPCs could act and the moral issues they may face and so on. It features collabrative setting building. But it is mostly uses the structure of a tabletop roleplaying game.

This is actually best illustrated by the different between Melee/Wizard and The Fantasy Trip along with Mechwarrior / Battletech. You can't use the mechanics for either to determine whether what being run is a wargame campaign or a tabletop roleplaying. You have to look at what the campaign focuses on.

Irregardless of the rules if a campaign focuses on the participants collaboratively creating a narrative by using the rules of a game. Then it is a storygame campaign.

And no having a referee doesn't make a campaign a collaborative effort. A tabletop roleplaying is a special positions that among other things has superior knowledge of the circumstances of the setting.  You can't collaborative on a narrative on a equal footing if one individual has superior knowledge of what going on. Hence the trend of story games to minimize or eliminate the role of the referee. It is simply not needed and detrimental to collaborative storytelling.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1077332Anything Pundit doesn't like.  That's it.  Don't believe anything else.  The list isn't consistent or even makes sense.

I actually hope that Pundit will chime in.  This isn't an anti Pundit thread.  I have always been a D&D / Pathfinder / OSR only fan.  I was almost unaware of everything else; except I was aware that Vampire was d10 based, and you were able to roll more d10s as you advanced.  I've recently grown fond of the Dungeon World 2d6 mechanic, via Drunkens n Dragons.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1077370Here's why I don't think that works: people have been playing CoC as leading their little lambs to the slaughter for a long time. And their playstyle was a mix between the two. And I have in many different situations and many different games witnessed role-players to do the suboptimal or even the outlandish just because it seemed fun at the moment - fun story. Isolated events within what you call a RPG - but still serves to underline the following: people can play in a manner you call storygame with about any ruleset. (Is gonzo play a storygame or an RPG?) So maybe it could be used to classify playstyles but I don't know if it's helpful for classifying rulesets.

Thanks for bringing that up.

Yes, I agree that it's primarily a playstyle distinction and that many (most? all?) "traditional" RPGs can be played in a storygaming mode.  Some storygames can also be played as "pure" RPGs, although I doubt that they're a majority, since a lot of them have story-based mechanics embedded too deeply to easily avoid them.  And, in any of these "dual-style" games, it's generally possible for you to be playing them in one style while the person sitting beside you is, at the same moment, playing in the other style, or even playing it as a wargame (tip of the hat to estar for bringing that third style into the discussion).

But, even when a game is one which can be played in your choice of style, the rules usually lean in one direction or another, so I think it's fair to describe the game itself on that basis.  You can play Battletech as a storygame, but the rules are primarily focused on wargaming (the core Battletech rules) or roleplaying (MechWarrior), so I would describe those as a wargame and an RPG respectively.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1077370I am only familiar with Fiasco. Question: do all of the others have mechanics that give the players agency over more than their character's intent? Because any agency over more than that gives limited (additional) control over story.

The only game on that list that I'm familiar with is Microscope, which is primarily a history-building game.  You have a timeline and go around the table with each player either creating Eras in the timeline, adding Events to an Era, or defining key Scenes within an Event.  When a player adds a Scene, they can choose to either narrate it or to allow the group to determine the outcome by roleplaying the Scene.  This is the only time that you play a character in a Microscope session and, even then, you have broad control over other elements and minor characters within the Scene - roleplaying a Scene is basically freeform with the only hard rule being that each player chooses one character as their "primary" character in that Scene (you can also play minor characters if you choose to) and that no other player can affect your primary character without your consent.

So Microscope is pretty much a pure storygame (at least as I use the term) with little or no (in-character) roleplaying content.

Quote from: Razor 007;1077459I actually hope that Pundit will chime in.  This isn't an anti Pundit thread.  I have always been a D&D / Pathfinder / OSR only fan.  I was almost unaware of everything else; except I was aware that Vampire was d10 based, and you were able to roll more d10s as you advanced.  I've recently grown fond of the Dungeon World 2d6 mechanic, via Drunkens n Dragons.

What part of my statement is anti-Pundit?  He loves his own games, claims to be this 'OSR' guru and promotes them and absolutely adores Amber.

The latter is the key part, Amber IS a 'storygame' based off his definition, but because he thinks the so-called game is the best thing in the world, it's not.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1077501What part of my statement is anti-Pundit?  He loves his own games, claims to be this 'OSR' guru and promotes them and absolutely adores Amber.

The latter is the key part, Amber IS a 'storygame' based off his definition, but because he thinks the so-called game is the best thing in the world, it's not.

Oh, I wasn't criticizing you.  I was just stating my motives.

I call then Storyteller games and Traditional games.

Traditional RPGs are like D&D. You have a GM/DM who is in full control and the players do things in the GMs world.

Storyteller games or modern RPGs focus on crafting the story, the GM isn't as much in full control, but that's not essential. What makes a Storyteller game is a player making decisions either about their characters or for their character purely to make a better story not just because they are immersed in their character. FATE is the big standout here and PbtA has similar things said about it.


RPGs can have elements of both. For example Savage Worlds is pretty traditional, but a GM could take the bennies/hindrance ideas and run it like a Storyteller system.

Quote from: Godfather Punk;1077366Where can you put 'Amber Diceless' on that scale?

On the scale Itachi provided? I'd put Amber pretty hard in the Storygames side, but a much older and more nascent expression of it. (And I love Amber.)

Quote from: Tanin Wulf;1078029On the scale Itachi provided? I'd put Amber pretty hard in the Storygames side, but a much older and more nascent expression of it. (And I love Amber.)

Can you elaborate on that? Never played Amber but by reading it I get the impression it's actual play is fairly traditional but with some narrativist gimmicks (like the attribute auction): no OOC features, no enforcement of genre, structuring of campaign fully on GM's shoulders, full GM fiat/no player empowerment, etc.

Also, it's take on "story" reads more like the traditional, late 80s take as seen in Vampire and Dragonlance (aka GM takes players through his pre-made story) than the emergent/collaborative take as seen in the Forge.