You did say something about them doing it for vanity rather than because they enjoy it.

Quote from: Arminius;982265You did say something about them doing it for vanity rather than because they enjoy it.

What I said was that for some Instagramers the picture had become more important than the meal, and as such I would call that activity "photography" rather than "dining". I don't judge which of those activities to be superior, or in vain.

I did use the phrase "status symbol" in the next paragraph, but did not intend it in the context of anyone's motivation, rather my intent was to describe what the end result of storygaming might look like to the adventure-gamer. My apologies for any confusion there.

It was clearly a slam and a slam against their character, you also managed to imply it had to do with being millenials (these 'kids' and their instagram) so you worked in the trifecta of old man whining. To claim otherwise now is disingenuous.

Quote from: -E.;982222You're exactly right.

He had these weird, idiosyncratic ideas about how RPGs should be designed and so when he saw people who built on the foundation of the most popular RPG of all time, instead of his ideas, he had his heart broken.

It was strange. And -- for people building games -- terrible advice. As we've seen (both recently and at the time) there is a place in RPGing, both artistically and commercially for both "D&D done right" and games that use D&D as a baseline even if they're trying to "do" something else (whatever that means). While he's over there having his heart broken there are innumerable riffs on D&D and people love them.

He was a font of bad advice for game developers, because he couldn't see past his own advocacy -- one of the worst failed-detours of RPG evolution.

Cheers,
-E.

A very odd interpretation but you clearly hold personal animus against him.

I think the interpretation is broadly correct. RE wanted games designed "coherently", and any game with potential to be used according to his idea of "narrativism" was defective if it didn't fully live up to that vision, or subsequently deviated from it. (E.g. his criticism of Heroquest 1e vs Hero Wars.) RE expressed happiness at the thought of video games pulling people out of the tabletop hobby so that they'd no longer exert influence on the culture.

Later, I think he admitted that Forge-style gaming wasn't going to take the world by storm, and still later he tried to take credit for the OSR, but by that time nobody was paying much attention. Instead, his original theories keep churning up naive true believers like the one cited earlier in the thread.

I've really enjoyed this thread. I've chatted with Ron and he's always been personally nice to me. I think his Sorcerer RPG and supplements are terrific, but his GNS ideas are kind of weird.

The biggest surprise to me is that most people here have a completely different idea of what StoryGames are than I do. Here, most of you consider any game that is structured and kind of railroady to be a storygame. I had always considered games to be more story-gamey if they:

1. focused on themes that would be normally considered not gamable/geek oriented (you're maids, your monks dying in a siege somewhere);
2. were not designed or used for long term campaigns;
3. moved narrative control of things outside player characters to from the GM to the players or "table consensus"

Turns out my definition is idiosyncratic! You guys are the consensus.

However, I'm not sure that structured games are as terrible as you say. It's my impression that the vast majority of our hobby is doing just that (buying those Pathfinder campaigns, D&D campaigns, or plot point things) and using that. They probably have a lot of fun, and having run that stuff, my players had lots of fun.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;982362I've really enjoyed this thread. I've chatted with Ron and he's always been personally nice to me. I think his Sorcerer RPG and supplements are terrific, but his GNS ideas are kind of weird.

The biggest surprise to me is that most people here have a completely different idea of what StoryGames are than I do. Here, most of you consider any game that is structured and kind of railroady to be a storygame. I had always considered games to be more story-gamey if they:

1. focused on themes that would be normally considered not gamable/geek oriented (you're maids, your monks dying in a siege somewhere);
2. were not designed or used for long term campaigns;
3. moved narrative control of things outside player characters to from the GM to the players or "table consensus"

Turns out my definition is idiosyncratic! You guys are the consensus.

The consensus here, maybe but IME, your description is pretty widely held.

Yea, it's kind of weird because many games I'd consider Storygames aren't from the "storygames are planned story" feeling, since they're crazy random stuff since the player's have so much narrative control.

What about Prince Valiant, the Story-Telling Game?

Get out the long knives!

"Storygames are railroads" is idiotic, the two terms are practically antonyms.
"Storygames vs. roleplaying games" is also not really much of anything.

The real rancor these days is about roleplaying games that add in increasing amounts of OOC mechanics, usually to grant some form of narrative control, especially in long-standing IPs that historically were supported by systems without a large degree of OOC mechanics.  In addition to OOC metagame point economies or narrative control mechanics, games like Warhammer 3rd, FFG Star Wars and 2d20 also have "funky dice", in 2 of the 3 cases the dice symbols there to provide narrative results baked in.

So, OOC mechanics that used to be something easily curtailed or excised (like Fate, Luck, or Karma Point usage) instead become the foundation of the system unable to avoid without major rewriting of the system.

If a system forces me to make an OOC choice (which by definition is Not-Roleplaying) every time my character acts, isn't it really a bit of a misnomer to call it a roleplaying game, at least without some adjective or qualifier?  If not, then aren't we making the definition of RPG so broad as to be meaningless.

It doesn't help that pick any two games, one with not a single OOC mehchanic, and one chock full of them, you'll always have people claim there's absolutely no difference between the two.

The idea that story games are preplotted isn't really dominant here.

I think I missed the post explaining why anyone gives a hoot how another table plays its games. Can someone post a link?

Quote from: PencilBoy99;982380Yea, it's kind of weird because many games I'd consider Storygames aren't from the "storygames are planned story" feeling, since they're crazy random stuff since the player's have so much narrative control.

Any game or playstyle tha isn't wide open sandbox run in a "Let the dice fall where they may" style tends to get labeled "Story game" and/or the person a "storygamer" on this site. The general definition is tighter, IME.

For the most part, nobody does care. The idea that hostility to storygame approaches/mechanics/theories is an inquisition whose aim is to force people to play a certain way is a shameless canard.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;9823621. focused on themes that would be normally considered not gamable/geek oriented (you're maids, your monks dying in a siege somewhere);

"Monks dying in a siege somewhere" is one of the ideas I have warming up in the bullpen.

It's a good example of how difficult it is to untangle what sort of game this is because with that scenario, story is the last thing I have on my mind. I actually envision that scenario to be pure hack-n-slay. Maybe even a competitive wargame if I can get enough players to play both sides. The reason I want to play it out is because one of the adventure locales I have in mind for my main campaign is the old monastery where said siege took place, and I want the design to be, I guess, organic in a way. So I actually want to play out the siege so I know where all the skeletons should be placed, and which hidden treasures, if any, were found and which were stolen. Arrows, broken weapons, odd supplies. Maybe certain areas of it are torched. Maybe a stone wall was taken down. All for the sake of making this locale as immersive an environment as possible.

Ultimately, there probably will be a story put to this locale-based adventure. At this point, I have no idea what it is, and I won't until I've had a chance to play a few things out.