Quote from: Arminius;982398For 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.

As is the idea the wicked storygamers are out to take over the hobby, kick in people's doors and burn their sandbox campaign notes. That's just paranoid. Most gamers are, at most, curious what others are do it.

As far anyone claiming there's an inquisition or conspiracy against storygames... who has? The claim that persecution is going has been made but I haven't seen that but people saying that storygames, differing playstyles, etc  get crappy, overly hostile reactions on this site.

Most others I've been the war is over if anyone there knew about it in the first place. The attitude towards not only storygames but differences in playstyle of practically sort around here sucks.  That's what I've been saying not making claims of persecution.

Quote from: Lunamancer;982404"Monks dying in a siege somewhere" is one of the ideas I have warming up in the bullpen.

That is a situation. Setting up a campaign around a specific situation to see what happens is not a campaign focused on the participant collaborating on creating a story (i.e. a story game).

If however the referee had a particular outcome in mind for "monks dying in a siege". It still not a storygame but the referee is railroading the campaign. If however the group decided to collaborate to create a narrative about monks dying in a seige by using the mechanics of a wargame (the mechanics behind all RPGs). Then they are playing story game. Finally if the group decides to divide into multiple factions each player playing an individual character with the focus on winning by defeating one's opponents along with a referee to handle rulings and the setting then they are playing a wargame campaign. All four situation can occur with the same damn set of rules. What makes something X is what the campaign focuses not the mechanics.

Quote from: Nexus;982405As is the idea the wicked storygamers are out to take over the hobby, kick in people's doors and burn their sandbox campaign notes.

I agree that it's an unlikely conspiracy theory, and I'll own that Omega, at least, has said some things in this thread that are echoes of that idea.

On the other hand...

QuoteAs far anyone claiming there's an inquisition or conspiracy against storygames... who has?

Quote from: Dumarest;982391I think I missed the post explaining why anyone gives a hoot how another table plays its games. Can someone post a link?

(Maybe I misunderstood the intent here, but I took it as assuming that people really do care in a busybody way.)

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

And there you have it. Not the first time, by a long shot.

Now, Pundit's famous for claiming that "the Swine" have a goal of subverting the hobby, so I don't mean to sweep that under the rug, either.

However, for me, the issues are:

• Annoying proselytism
• Tiresome, over-blown claims
• A long history of disputatiousness based on fallacies, including...
• ...assuming all game[r]s are storygame[r]s at heart
• ...denying, pathologizing, or actively obscuring the concept of "immersion" (the cognitive sense of 1st-person, in-character point of view)
• ...claiming that OOC mechanics ("director stance" & to an extent "author stance") only affect "immersion" due to unfamiliarity
• ...special pleading on issues such as the effect of GM contrivance on immersion
• ...claiming that mechanics such as "daily powers" are intelligible to PCs in the same manner as they are to players
• ...claiming that analytical abstractions ("immersion", "dissociation", distinctions between game types) are a form of hate speech

To me these aren't tools of subversion, but they make me want to cut short discussions where these sorts of argument appear, since they tend to derail and obscure conversations that are actually useful for 1st-person POV game-play.

Quote from: estar;982413That is a situation. Setting up a campaign around a specific situation to see what happens is not a campaign focused on the participant collaborating on creating a story (i.e. a story game).

If however the referee had a particular outcome in mind for "monks dying in a siege". It still not a storygame but the referee is railroading the campaign. If however the group decided to collaborate to create a narrative about monks dying in a seige by using the mechanics of a wargame (the mechanics behind all RPGs). Then they are playing story game. Finally if the group decides to divide into multiple factions each player playing an individual character with the focus on winning by defeating one's opponents along with a referee to handle rulings and the setting then they are playing a wargame campaign. All four situation can occur with the same damn set of rules. What makes something X is what the campaign focuses not the mechanics.

I think you need to quote the post in its entirety. I stated a very specific purpose I had in mind with that scenario, and it wasn't a story at all. It actually isn't any of the things you list either. There's no campaign set up around it, the scenario itself is isolated. There's no particular outcome in mind--for my purposes, if I knew the exact outcome, I would have no need to run the scenario. There is no railroad. A narrative is bound to emerge from it, but in this case the narrative isn't the purpose of the thing.

As for the wargame? Again, I don't know how many people would be playing it yet. If I have plenty of players, I'll have players on each side. If not, just one side, though I haven't even decided which yet. In any event, though, if individual characters aren't trying to "win" (whatever "winning" means to that character) we may as well just flush the whole thing down the toilet as far as I'm concerned. It isn't role-play if characters aren't doing their damnedest to achieve their "win" or the closest thing to it in the situation. The story is shit if the characters don't resemble real people in that regard. The game is shit if there's no striving.

The one and only purpose I have in mind in running this scenario is to find out where the bodies lie, what if any secret treasure is discovered, what's left behind, broken weapons, loose arrows, that way when I do make this location (not situation; location) actually connect to a campaign, the place will provide an immersive environment that was the result of an "organic process." Nothing about the location ultimately attached to the campaign in and of itself is a story. It's simply part of the world. But could serve as the backdrop for a story. That story has not yet been created, and that story has absolutely zero to do with my post you quoted. It was never held up as en example of a story game.

Quote from: Arminius;982422I agree that it's an unlikely conspiracy theory, and I'll own that Omega, at least, has said some things in this thread that are echoes of that idea.

On the other hand...



 (Maybe I misunderstood the intent here, but I took it as assuming that people really do care in a busybody way.)

And there you have it. Not the first time, by a long shot.
.

That didn't read as a claim there's a conspiracy to me. But an accusation that "storygamer" is a convenient label (box) to slap people into, as a pejorative around here, an excuse to mock and dismiss them out of hand. Bad attitude doesn't imply conspiracy just a bad attitude. The generalizations thrown around about other play styles aren't exactly flattering either: coddling PCs, railroads, being somehow more immature or less manly if you don't got zero to hero, etc. Some of those getting slapped with title "storygamer" and thus caught up in smearing aren't even playing games most would have even think of as story games.

Quote from: Lunamancer;982423The one and only purpose I have in mind in running this scenario is to find out where the bodies lie, what if any secret treasure is discovered, what's left behind, broken weapons, loose arrows, that way when I do make this location (not situation; location) actually connect to a campaign, the place will provide an immersive environment that was the result of an "organic process." Nothing about the location ultimately attached to the campaign in and of itself is a story. It's simply part of the world. But could serve as the backdrop for a story. That story has not yet been created, and that story has absolutely zero to do with my post you quoted. It was never held up as en example of a story game.

Sorry I wasn't clear. What you described in my book is not a story game in anyway shape or form. That setting something as a specific situation doesn't make it some kind of collaborative story. Then I got carried away and expanded my thought to the more general case. That it is intent that make a campaign a roleplaying game, wargame, story game, a railroad, etc.

Quote from: CRKrueger;982388The 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.

Agreed.
I don't really care what other people are playing... until it impacts the games I like, I'm fine. But then I see the new version of Call of Cthulhu with more narrative elements shoveled in and I balk (and will not buy it, despite having bought the previous editions).
If someone wants a story-game version of CoC go make it (and people have), but don't change the existing game to chase that trend.
(I realize the changes to CoC are comparatively minor, but the new authors do seem to be pushing a more narrative approach).

Quote from: Simlasa;982441Agreed.
I don't really care what other people are playing... until it impacts the I like, I'm fine. But then I see the new version of Call of Cthulhu with more narrative elements shoveled in and I balk (and will not buy it, despite having bought the previous editions).
If someone wants a story-game version of CoC go make it (and people have), but don't change the existing game to chase that trend.
(I realize the changes to CoC are comparatively minor, but the new authors do seem to pushing a more narrative approach).

That might be the case, but it could just be that the writers were applying house rules to situations that arose in community discussion. It's difficult to completely place the influences.

I still found the changes to be heavy handed though, and the impact they may wanted to achieve could have been done through more nuanced and subtle adjustments. I thought the system developed in Delta Green was more to my tastes, even though they have rules for relationships and all that yada too.

My problem with Call of Cthulhu 7E was mainly that the rules were clunky - the adding of unnecessary extra stats (Build, Luck, etc), the whole/half/fifth presentation of skills, the convoluted combat and chases chapters, the funky bonus/penalty dice and the general emphasis of action over investigation which had been a marked aspect of previous editions. Even sound ideas like pushing a roll, were presented in such a verbose way that it made it seem like a complicated system. All of these things could have been done in a much more concise and streamlined way I felt. Still, it looked pretty though.

Quote from: estar;982433Sorry I wasn't clear. What you described in my book is not a story game in anyway shape or form. That setting something as a specific situation doesn't make it some kind of collaborative story. Then I got carried away and expanded my thought to the more general case. That it is intent that make a campaign a roleplaying game, wargame, story game, a railroad, etc.

Again, I wasn't describing anything there as a story game. In this case, I specifically have gone out of my way to cast story aside--oh, there'll still be one, there always is. It's just not a concern. It's a method for designing a set piece for future use in a completely separate campaign, nothing more.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;982445That might be the case, but it could just be that the writers were applying house rules to situations that arose in community discussion. It's difficult to completely place the influences.

It's less overt in the specific rules than it is in the GM advice... and from what I've read the original draft was more extreme, like with the luck mechanic.

Outside of luck points, which have been around since Ghostbusters and James Bond, what additions do you consider narrative in CoC 7e? I don't have much use for luck points in CoC but just ignore them and wouldn't consider them very heavy handed narrative OOC anyways.

Quote from: Voros;982512Outside of luck points, which have been around since Ghostbusters and James Bond, what additions do you consider narrative in CoC 7e? I don't have much use for luck points in CoC but just ignore them and wouldn't consider them very heavy handed narrative OOC anyways.

Perhaps ironically, I agree that given its themes and attempted mood a Luck points mechanics isn't fitting for CoC.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981398What is your native language?  Because I can't figure how you got there from here.

heh.

What Im saying is. "Why didnt you cry foul when Gary asked you if you wanted to explore Castle Greyhawk?" Theres no difference between that and asking the players of they want to go explore some module. The players commit to a course and may or may not see it to the end. They might say screw it and hie off to the forest to get laid by dryads.

Heck. OD&D came with the equivalent of a little two page module with that example dungeon.

Quote from: Voros;982512Outside of luck points, which have been around since Ghostbusters and James Bond, what additions do you consider narrative in CoC 7e? I don't have much use for luck points in CoC but just ignore them and wouldn't consider them very heavy handed narrative OOC anyways.

You mean Hero Points and Brownie Points! "Luck Points" are only for evil "storygames"!

Quote from: Voros;982290A very odd interpretation but you clearly hold personal animus against him.

Eh?

I don't know the man -- I just disagree with his ideas about RPGs. I can't disagree with him on game design without it being personal?

Cheers,
-E.