Quote from: Crimhthan;981333Story Games are IMO not role-playing, they are acting, not that there is anything wrong with acting as you act out your predetermined role to reach the pre-determined conclusion. If you enjoy that, then go have fun.  I really do not have a problem with anyone playing anything they want to. I just think it is a shame that 99% of the rpg world has no idea the rich tapestry that a real old school living campaign game provides.

Like Itachi, I'm confused about what story games you're picturing here.

I've been running a weekly semi-sandbox D&D5 game for a while, but I also regularly play games like Fiasco, Microscope, The Play's the Thing, and others. None of what I think of as story games have a predetermined conclusion.

Quote from: Simlasa;981340Some Call of Cthulhu modules pop to mind.

Being a 'railroad' was never my issue with storygames, unless by 'railroad' people mean being pushed to foreground narrative concerns over PC interests... which is something I've experienced in 'trad' games as well (usually by GMs rather than rules).

I think especially of the trend in modules set by Shadowrun and made even more explicit in Deadlands and Torg, where the module has a predefined storyline and is even broken into explicit acts and/or scenes.

However, there is a long history of linear modules. Some but not all of the old tournament modules for D&D were linear. The Dragonlance modules started having linear storylines that coordinated with the novels, which was continued with later Ravenloft modules (even though the original Ravenloft & Ravenloft II modules were non-linear).

Quote from: Skarg;9813081) Seems to me that who a PC is and what their abilities are, including their equipment and the situation, also matter. And in storygames, there are also instructions to care about the story quality, story concepts, whose narrative turn it is, and other things that are neither the PC nor the situation determine what happens next. When they take into account who the PC is or what the situation (supposedly) is, it tends to be from a perspective of what makes a good story the other story-conscious elements.

And that's what I find annoying when it starts to creep into a trad game, because I want things to happen for in-universe reasons, with no interference from "story" or "genre" notions. And I complain about it on the Interwebs because it seems to have already creeped into a lot of RPGs, the people who like it don't seem to get that/why it annoys some people, and I feel like if people don't keep complaining, it'll spread faster.

2) From the perspective I just mentioned, worrying about what to do with prisoners, civilians, and orc babies, can actually be interesting too. Who the PCs are, what their morality is, and whether they butcher children or not, etc, is a real practical thing in the game universe, and exists in trad RPGs, and can be interesting and challenging. You can decide to handwave it in one direction or another, but how would that be about narrative or storygaming? Seems to me I'd tend to call that "scope". Like, some wargames might decide to have counters and rules for prisoners and your own wounded and what you do with them, while others would either try to factor the effectiveness-reduction from such situations into the combat results tables abstractly (or pretend it doesn't exist).

You did touch on the storygaming difference though. In a trad game, prisoners might matter because they exist and do things, take time/energy and make noise however you deal with them, there are people who might come to despise you if you butcher them (including some of your friends/allies/patrons), and many other possible in-game-universe situations. The storygaming difference is the part where the GM/players make choices and cause things to exist and happen for reasons of theme or story (and a story game might also ignore prisoners if it's not interesting from a story-perspective - a lot of action fiction seems to do this, either ignoring what happens to fallen bodies, or making it highly important depending on what the author wants to happen next).

I don't think you're having badwrongfun but there are allot of people on this site with very different tastes from my own but I think yours are some of the most distant along one axis so I find them fascinating.

Virtually any module for any game will be linear or "railroaded" to some extent because otherwise the possible range of actions becomes too large to describe.  Dave Arneson used to call this "One True Way vs Tree of Life" design.

Quote from: trechriron;981316Once again for posterity... Most of us are not saying Story Games are bad. We don't prefer them. The vitriol comes from "the war" where sides were drawn and people tried to hijack the hobby and misled people about what Story Games are. Now that we clearly know what they are, it's no big deal. It's not about the games. It WAS about shitty people being shitty. These days more reasonable people have prevailed. Instead of fighting over what REAL ROLEPLAYING is, we can all make and play the games we want. We can even hang out at the same conventions and play each others' games (if we're so inclined)!

Well said and it explains how a newbie stumbling blindly into the thick of it could be attacked as one of the deserved shitty. Makes a lot of sense.

Look no further than the modules published for the popular FFG Star Wars game for this same sort of linear approach. I dont take issue with it, Ive used these sort of adventures (or versions of them) on and off for years and yep...sometimes had to pack the group on the ole choo-choo now and then to reach the climax but then there were plenty of games the contrary. Theres room for both I believe. I never saw it as a problem to bounce back and forth. As far as StoryGames go - again they can be a lot of fun, and so can a more realistic immersive RP - just a different experience. I call them both Roleplaying by the way because... well the players are playing a role no matter how you look at it. But then again I RP solo sometimes too, and have caught quite a bit of crap about that as well!

Story Game vs. Traditional RPG.

There's always a lot of confusion about what constitutes a Story Game or Traditional Game. I can't speak for everyone, but I think we have a pretty good handle on it here in the separation of the forums.

Traditional RPG: A game where the players take on roles and the GM/DM portrays the world/NPCs. Story falls out of play. The rules don't include or should not include ways to create/manipulate "the story". Many meta-game mechanics try to meld Story and Trad RPGs with plot points, etc. but if you can easily ignore those elements, many who prefer Trad RPGs can play the game without much fuss.

Story Game: A game where all participants are playing to create a story. Elements often focus on editing or manipulating the plot, inserting new ideas, interacting with the world outside the scope of the characters.

Railroads are an element of adventure design in Trad RPGs. Most Story Games are lighter on the rules, more free-form on the interaction (to get out of the way of story creation). Not all of course. Powered by the Apocalypse games for example, include some heavier procedure than most Story Games.  This is my opinion/observation, but Railroading is most often associated with adventures/modules where there is only one real choice.

Lol may I suggest we stop using the term "story-games"? Because at this point it's useless.

Quote from: Itachi;981360Lol may I suggest we stop using the term "story-games"? Because at this point it's useless.

I prefer the name "Collaborative Story telling game" but it doesn't roll off the tongue.

Quote from: Itachi;981360Lol may I suggest we stop using the term "story-games"? Because at this point it's useless.

That's ridiculous. It's used in ignorance by a few very, very old-school gamers (like Chrimhthan) but it's been common usage for years. The mistake that people make is confusing railroads (which--so I hear--were refined to the point of art by the Storyteller system) with story-games.

There seems practically to be a type of Internet Law at work, where any definition or attempt to refine concepts will eventually be declared meaningless by the very people who actively muddied the waters. Cf: immersion, sandbox, railroad. The list goes on, apparently.

Quote from: Skarg;981308worrying about what to do with prisoners, civilians, and orc babies, can actually be interesting too. Who the PCs are, what their morality is, and whether they butcher children or not, etc, is a real practical thing in the game universe, and exists in trad RPGs, and can be interesting and challenging.

Yes. It can be. It might be. But it doesn't have to be. And that's one way a traditional rpg differs from a storygame.

In a traditional game, the moral choices can be significant if the individual player wants them to be. In a storygame, the moral choices are significant whether the player wants them to be or not.

In a traditional game, the moral choices may be significant in their in-universe effects. For example, if you kill prisoners and a normally-merciful enemy knows that, then when you're a prisoner they won't be so merciful. But if the enemy doesn't know then they treat you mercifully.

A storygame will have your killing of prisoners have effects on you regardless of whether anyone else knows about it. And yes, the example of Call of Cthulhu is relevant, as the Sanity mechanic is the beginnings of a storygame. In AD&D1e or the like if you see something horrible you are free to decide it freaks you out, excites you, or you're indifferent to it - as you wish. In Cthulhu it's up to the dice, but see enough horrible shit and it will eventually make your character go mad.

Since Cthulhu's Sanity mechanic is the beginnings of a storygame, it's no surprise that so many of its modules are so railroady. And this makes sense, since the roots of the game are in the stories, where a character has some encounter with something horrible, they go mad, die, or manage to defeat it, or all three - and that's the end of the story, they don't go on to encounter some different horrible thing later. It's about playing a character in a CoC story. So naturally it has storygame elements, and developed them long before anyone thought to call it a storygame.

So this is another storygame/trad game difference: limited play. A traditional game like AD&D1e or Traveller has no limit to play. You can have many, many adventures, and halfway through an adventure abandon it and go and do something else. In a storygame, there's a story to go through, with or without a predetermined end, and that's that. There are no storygame hexcrawl sandboxes.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981350Virtually any module for any game will be linear or "railroaded" to some extent because otherwise the possible range of actions becomes too large to describe.  Dave Arneson used to call this "One True Way vs Tree of Life" design.

So you players opting to explore Castle Greyhawk was a railroad?

Quote from: Itachi;981360Lol may I suggest we stop using the term "story-games"? Because at this point it's useless.

No. It is not useless. I make all the rules and you must follow them because #reasons.

Quote from: Itachi;981360Lol may I suggest we stop using the term "story-games"? Because at this point it's useless.

How are you supposed to stigmatize Badwrongfun Gamers if you don't have a convenient box to put them in?

Quote from: Krimson;981393How are you supposed to stigmatize Badwrongfun Gamers if you don't have a convenient box to put them in?

"Use Disassociated mechanics? That's a day in the Box."

"Put Narrative or story elements ahead of virtual world simulation? That's a week in the Box."

"Refer genre or story goals as limitation of character options? Oh, Lawd, get comfortable, boy, y'all gon' be the Box for awhile, son."

Quote from: Omega;981386So you players opting to explore Castle Greyhawk was a railroad?

What is your native language?  Because I can't figure how you got there from here.