Quote from: Exploderwizard;715730Yet you still felt the need to post.

What else is there to do on a forum? But no "felt"/"need" are not words I associate with therpgsite

Quote from: tristramevans;715740what else is there to do on a forum? But no "felt"/"need" are not words i associate with therpgsite

i post because i can.  Bwahhahahaha!!!!  :d

Honestly the thing that ultimately made me give up on LoA was the stunts and other crunchy complication...if anything I wanted a more purely "narrative" game. But I did also get the impression of hemming and hawing about "you can totally create the setting as a player but you're totally playing your character." So Rob's comment makes sense.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;715749i post because i can.  Bwahhahahaha!!!!  :d

Pretty much. And because Im an OCD geek.

Quote from: Arminius;715975Honestly the thing that ultimately made me give up on LoA was the stunts and other crunchy complication...if anything I wanted a more purely "narrative" game. But I did also get the impression of hemming and hawing about "you can totally create the setting as a player but you're totally playing your character." So Rob's comment makes sense.

LoA is kind of an offshoot of Fate.  It's not an Evil Hat product, and it's not on the list of the things that the Evil Hat folks excitedly go "yes!  These guys get it!" about.

I'm not sure that I'd use it as something I'd base an opinion of Fate in general on.

What may be an interesting discussion is why some people in this thread are getting very different experiences out of the game than others are - what they're doing differently, what expectations they're going in with, etc.

Holy evaporating OP, batman!

Robiswrong: that may be, but I'd already bought and sold SotC. Thematically, LoA is the only FATE game that was likely to bring me into the fold, and aside from going stunt-crazy, it suffers the general problem of FATE, so it seems, of being a turgid brick.

Anyway, we are drifting.

"Third person" can mean various things, not all of which have anything to do with storygames. Wargaming, for instance, is pretty much an antithesis of storygaming.

What irritates an "immersive" player when someone else does it will depend on the player in question. What's pretty sure to be resented is trying to force that player herself to conform to some "storygame" requirement. Some people just are not good matches for some games, the same as in the huge field of other kinds of games. When I get together with friends, we play games we all happen to enjoy.

Quote from: double8infinity8;715415So, 1st-person vs. 3rd-person is tangential, but in-character vs. out-of-character decision making is relevant?

Yes, if you distinguish those as different things.

OOC decision making can be a subcategory of "third person," too, and speaking of a character's actions using third-person grammar a tangential other subcategory; it's just a question of agreeing on semantics so we can carry on our conversation about this subject.

OOC is, however, the key distinction here of an STG from an RPG. In an STG, the player's "role" is that of an author playing a game: "Playing Bob Howard instead of playing Conan," is a pithy way of putting it.

Quote from: double8infinity8;715343My limited experience with storygames (Burning Wheel games, and Sorceror pretty much as far as I know) - is that everything I can do as a Player must come from something that my Character can do.

I'm able to add details to the game world as a player, because my character knows stuff about where he lives, for instance. I'm able to call forth an NPC, because my character knows a bunch of people from a certain demographic.

Do you have such magical powers in real life? I for one don't. Either Hank Jones is sitting at the bus stop reading the unexpurgated edition of Stranger in a Strange Land, or he's not. I can't draw on a stock of pixy-dust points to conjure him if he happens instead to be at Sears buying a lawn mower.

On the other hand, if my character happens to be a Prince of Amber, or Zeus, or a mighty Wizard, then such a warping of the world might be perfectly in character.

For instance, I consider Joss points in Dangerous Journeys to be an in-character application of supernatural powers in a world in which every person of a status corresponding to that of (in game terms) a Heroic Persona has recourse to such powers. It's no more OOC than a professional magician's employment of Heka.

Quote from: double8infinity8;715248Hey all!

I'm new here - coming over from rpg.net - of course often the first thing one does before registering/posting in a new forum is to spend a bit of time scouting out the place, getting a first impression of the culture and whatnot.

So - it appears that there is a Thing with regards to the whole "storytelling" vs "roleplaying" games here.

I hesitate to say something along the lines of "I come in peace" or "I am not trolling" - because that's the first thing any troll is going to say, right?  Anyhow, please regard this post a pure curiousity regarding your perspective.

So, as far as I've been able to make out, at least one significant reason for putting "story-games" into the big bucket of 'other games' (card games, dice games, video games, board games... and.... storygame rpgs) is that a major differentiator  in your opinion seems to be one of 'immersion'.  By all means, please correct me if I'm way off.

I come from a background of "traditional rpgs" and I've always had two major preferences:

#1:  historically, I've always had huge bias for 'simulationist'/'physics-based' mechanics/rules engines.

#2: historically, and currently, I've always had huge bias for 3rd-person perspective when describing my character's actions.


Now, I know that it is entirely possible to play traditional simulationist rpg's in 3rd-person perspective, and that by doing so, the game doesn't suddenly somehow become a "story-game". I say that I know this, because that has been my experience.

Looking at some of the debates here surrounding the whole "storygame" vs. "roleplaying game" categorization, it seems that a major element of "storygames" is that they entail a level of Out of Character perspective.  

3rd-person descriptions similarly entail a level of Out of Character perspective.

Thus would you say that a table of people playing AD&D 1st edition or Twilight 2000 entirely in 3rd-person, have crossed a line into "storygame" territory?

Or is this nuance of 3rd-person RP vs. 1st-person RP not really relevant in any real significant way to the nuance of "story-gaming" vs. "roleplay gaming"?


Cheers, and thanks!

Yeah, right.  :rolleyes:

If you start addressing your character in second person and referring to yourself in third, it might be time for professional help.

Then again, it might simply be pretentious ...