Okay, I'm listening.  I'd be willing to help craft a workable definition.

I'm a big proponent of "TALK FIRST."  But if you're both using the same word but different meanings in your head, it doesn't help.

Do we have to start with making a definition for RPG?  That's a serious question.  And how does an RPG differ from a low level skirmish wargame?  There were PLENTY of wargames where you played one figure long before the first Braunstein.  My suggestion for a possible difference between a skirmish wargame and an RPG is that in an RPG you can do things besides fight battles.

Quote from: CRKrueger;914817Well, we kind of have two different axes of definition.  One based on mechanics, one based on player motivation or goal.  Does Storygame lie at the intersection of these axes?

For Example - A Storygame is a game the primary purpose of which is to create a collaborative story and that contains OOC gaming mechanics designed to determine under what conditions and restrictions and to what extent, the player may create the story.

I don't think so.  I think we should stick to the mechanical definitions and leave player goals and other subjective pillow fluff out.  I am not sure here why you have had a change of heart.  Anyway, I think we need to start looking at concrete examples of specific rules that "seem" story gamey and maybe we can uncover the common elements.  I've been meaning to do exactly that, but it's just a very busy phase in real life at the moment.

Part of the problem, I think, is something I alluded to earlier in the discussion.  While OOC mechanics are pretty clearly storygame mechanics (though I think we need some specific examples to show it), I don't think the original definition is quite broad enough because some mechanics that feel storygamey are IC, but redefine the role of the GM rather than the player.  DungeonWorld does this, 2d20 does it (sort of) and FATE can do it.

Here is an example from up thread:

QuoteSpout Lore
When you consult your accumulated knowledge about something, roll+Int. ✴On a 10+, the GM will tell you something interesting and useful about the subject relevant to your situation. ✴On a 7–9, the GM will only tell you something interesting—it's on you to make it useful. The GM might ask you "How do you know this?" Tell them the truth, now.

I think this is an example of a story game mechanic that is still IC from a players perspective (or can be), but it tells the GM that he must, when the player decides to "Spout Lore," define some element of the game that was perhaps neither "interesting or useful." If for example, said character examines a rusty old sword he took off an enemy and decides to "spout lore" about it, then the GM needs to say something "interesting and useful" about it, even if it is nothing but an old rusty sword.  He doesn't have the option to say (according to the rule) that it is neither interesting nor useful or that it's nothing but a rusty old blade.  

With this rule, the PC is defining the world by forcing the GM to act in certain way and define the world when and where the player wants it defined, even though the player is still IC while doing so.  He is in effect saying "this sword is important to our game - tell me how."  The player is still IC because he is acting out his character's defined abilities within the milieu. It is the GM's role that is compromised.  It is an IC/storygame mechanic... I think.  

Of course when we get to the last line of the rule - "The GM might ask you "How do you know this?" Tell them the truth, now" - It is saying that the GM has permission to, and perhaps should, ask the player to don the GM hat and make up some OoC stuff about how his character would know this stuff.  This specific portion of this specific rule is more straight-forward player OoC, though it is at GM discretion to allow it.

I am getting way ahead of myself because I think we should start by analyzing "hero points," and their many incarnations, as well as other common "story mechanics" before we jump into trickier rules.  But I thought it important to mention, somewhat concretely, that player OoC mechanics are not the only storygame, non-RPG (for lack of a better term) mechanics.  They can also come from rules that allow players to force the GM into action (or inaction) that modifies the campaign world in ways he never intended.  The rules that invite players to invade a GM's zone of control (ZOC), whether IC or OoC, are storygame mechanics - I would argue.

Thus I think we are on the right track by sticking to mechanics in defining games.  We just haven't arrived at the whole solution.

Of course I need to continually emphasize that I am not passing judgement on such rules as good or badwrongfun, just showing how they are different.

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OK this post is getting long...

I'll try to get the ball rolling with examining mechanics. So let's look at "hero points," and some of the ways that they are used in modern games.

Re-roll or auto successes (when character fails a skill or some ability)
Bonus to roll (Like FATE aspects, or SW bennies - mechanically I think these are very similar to re-rolls)
Reduce damage (when a character takes damage)
Left for dead (when the dice say the character is dead but the player doesn't like it)
Narrative point (when the player can make up some minor detail about the world)

I am sure there are others.

The Narrative point is pretty straight forward OOC. A Character in a bar fight spends a point and the player says "the barkeep keeps a shotgun behind the bar.  I'm going to grab it."  The player is OoC, donning the GM hat, and altering the GM's domain - the imaginary campaign world.  

But the other uses of hero points are less clear. I'll take a stab at analyzing hero point's used for re-rolls:

A hero point used as a re-roll can be IC and do nothing to usurp the GM's ZOC.  If the character is defined as "lucky," then the re-roll is part of his character.  It's IC. Or if he is defined as a "brilliant swordsman" and he re-rolls his sword attack with a hero point, then he hasn't broken character or invaded GM ZOC.  As far as I can see, such examples are legit RPG mechanics.  Furthermore, if all PCs get "hero points" for re-rolls because the GM has defined the genre/game as "heroic" "cinematic" or "epic" then that still seems pretty kosher.  The points represent something that exists in the shared world that heroes have power over.

 If however, the game is defined by the GM as normal or human powered game, and players have bennies to spend on whatever they want, we start to creep into the range of OoC play and ZOC invasion, and the game gets a little schizophrenic. For example, a character who is defined as a poor swordsman, but who blows all his hero points swinging a blade thus winning important duels that he probably shouldn't have, then he is perhaps stretching IC credibility and the GMs control over the world, perhaps forcing him to explain something that doesn't make sense in his world, or modify his initial vision to fit the events that the character has altered by mechanical means.

The above is not a very methodical analysis (I'm tired and a little drunk), but it is at least pretty clear that hero points used for re-rolls can be non-invasive, IC, RPG mechanics if they are allowed within the definitions of the characters and gaming world. They can also lean heavily towards storygame if the player has a great deal of say in how they are used and if they are not tied specifically to some aspect of the character or the world/genre.  It will likely take more than hero point re-rolls to redefine a game as a storygame, but the analysis would be more useful if it was done in the context of a specific rule from a specific game.

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Anyway, I think we are on track by looking at mechanics as the means of defining games.  We just need to get into the nitty-gritty of specific analysis if we are going to make any real headway.

I don't think it's the type of effect, but why those effects get applied, that make the difference.

In a trad RPG, you could have:

Re-roll or auto successes (to represent especially unlikely things, or redundancy, or overwhelming odds, or trivial things)
Bonus to roll (for in-game-world reasons - your Star Wars example is a grey area, if using The Force is a thing)
Reduce damage (for armor, due to countermeasures, and other in-game-world reasons)
Left for dead (when it's not obvious to characters if someone is dead or just not moving/fighting)
Narrative point (when things are outside scope of play, such as PC backgrounds or most GM world/adventure creation)

So it seems to me it's not the type of element, but the way the players are causing things to happen with no explanation in-game-world, just because they want to, it seems cool, or out of a desire to intentionally cause some type of story. All of which can happen in trad RPGs, but the focus is on play that doesn't do that. In story games, the focus, or sometimes even ALL of the "play" is for the purpose of making a story how you want, with little or sometimes no "interference" from the established game world situation, rules for how things do or don't work, logic, etc.

Quote from: thuha123;915498Let's see, if it triggers the Outraged Anti-Outrage Brigade Brigade then it's probably a Storygame

You made an account for that?

Back from the sea and catching up.

Quote from: CRKrueger;914817Well, we kind of have two different axes of definition.  One based on mechanics, one based on player motivation or goal.  Does Storygame lie at the intersection of these axes?

For Example - A Storygame is a game the primary purpose of which is to create a collaborative story and that contains OOC gaming mechanics designed to determine under what conditions and restrictions and to what extent, the player may create the story.

So, we are back to the "goal" component being significant? I think we achieved something then.

We have these two axes, ok. Let us describe the two options possible when the goal of the game is to purposefully create a collaborative story.

a. Game the primary purpose of which is to create a story of the kind the players would like to tell, and which contains OOC gaming mechanics for this purpose. This is a Storygame, we all agree, although maybe not all storygames fall into this category.

b. Game the primary purpose of which is to create a story of the kind the players would like to tell, and which contains only IC gaming mechanics for this purpose.

Now, does anyone have a good example of b) ?

I never understood the idea of aiming for a game as a story to be retold later. Do people really play games with this goal?

I am concerned about the DIRECT EXPERIENCE of gameplay, not some hypothetical retelling. But I still want a game to function effectively on a narrative level.

So, for instance, chess is a game that is fine, obviously, on a gameplay level, but if you go into it expecting to experience a compelling tale of warring armies, you're likely to be disappointed.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;916754So, we are back to the "goal" component being significant? I think we achieved something then.

We have these two axes, ok. Let us describe the two options possible when the goal of the game is to purposefully create a collaborative story.

a. Game the primary purpose of which is to create a story of the kind the players would like to tell, and which contains OOC gaming mechanics for this purpose. This is a Storygame, we all agree, although maybe not all storygames fall into this category.

b. Game the primary purpose of which is to create a story of the kind the players would like to tell, and which contains only IC gaming mechanics for this purpose.
Now, does anyone have a good example of b) ?

Well, don't know if it's a valid charge, but isn't that essentially the charge that Ron Edwards leveled at the Storyteller System?  That the supposed stated purpose of the game was to tell stories of personal horror, but that there were no mechanics designed for this purpose?

Even though I have come around to the idea of goals being valid, we run right into a sticky wicket where a game does not identify as a Storygame, yet contains OOC mechanics the purpose of which obviously grant narrative control over the setting or the characters even though the goal is ostensibly "roleplaying".  Which is where the fuzziness of goals comes in, as many people's definition of "roleplaying" is to "roleplay" at least partially from the 3rd person, telling a story about their character, at least as much as they roleplay from the POV of the character.  Thus their actual goal is not their stated goal.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;916754b. Game the primary purpose of which is to create a story of the kind the players would like to tell, and which contains only IC gaming mechanics for this purpose.

Now, does anyone have a good example of b) ?

I don't know if that is a good example, but I've seen that done by people using an ordinary RPG where they choose to ignore the rules, change the setting or difficulty level on the fly, and over ride die rolls in quest of "a better story."

Quote from: Manzanaro;916768I never understood the idea of aiming for a game as a story to be retold later. Do people really play games with this goal?

"To be retold later" is a detail that you added. We did not include it in the definition. Even in a Story Now! game, the emphasis is on living the story as it is told, not in obtaining a good transcript that you can archive later. "Playing for the story" only means that what you are experiencing must revolve around a theme, not random events. It does not imply you will re-elaborate later. On the contrary, Ron Edwards calls this "Story After" and considers it un-fun. I hope the point is clearer now.

Quote from: CRKrueger;916775Well, don't know if it's a valid charge, but isn't that essentially the charge that Ron Edwards leveled at the Storyteller System?  That the supposed stated purpose of the game was to tell stories of personal horror, but that there were no mechanics designed for this purpose?

Quote from: Bren;916785I don't know if that is a good example, but I've seen that done by people using an ordinary RPG where they choose to ignore the rules, change the setting or difficulty level on the fly, and over ride die rolls in quest of "a better story."

Both these examples imply the absence of mechanics, not the presence of in-character mechanics only. The goal is there, but there is nothing but the players' desires to support its achievement. I would not call this "game mechanics".

Quote from: RosenMcStern;916923Both these examples imply the absence of mechanics, not the presence of in-character mechanics only. The goal is there, but there is nothing but the players' desires to support its achievement. I would not call this "game mechanics".

Good point.

Then restrict the choice of games to a genre based game where the IC rules support mimicking a genre, but all the ones that I am aware of have some more-or-less out of character mechanics like Hero Points. The original Mayfair Games James Bond 007 would be an example.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;916754Back from the sea and catching up.

Glad the deep ones didn't get you.

Quoteb. Game the primary purpose of which is to create a story of the kind the players would like to tell, and which contains only IC gaming mechanics for this purpose.

Now, does anyone have a good example of b) ?

I am still not convinced that the goal of the group is a valid component of evaluating what a game does as written. It seems pretty clear to me that these two axes are on very different planes of existence.  I am open and trying to learn how people are arriving at this conclusion.

To answer your question, I'll throw out Pendragon as an IC game for which the primary purpose of some mechanics is to reinforce "the type of story the players would like to tell." An argument could be made that the personality and passion mechanics are OoC, but my instinct from play experience says they are not. A difference is perhaps that the "type of story," in Pendragon, is already determined by the game.  The players must buy into that type of story from the get go.

Quote from: Bren;916943Then restrict the choice of games to a genre based game where the IC rules support mimicking a genre, but all the ones that I am aware of have some more-or-less out of character mechanics like Hero Points. The original Mayfair Games James Bond 007 would be an example.

Quote from: Madprofessor;916950To answer your question, I'll throw out Pendragon as an IC game for which the primary purpose of some mechanics is to reinforce "the type of story the players would like to tell." An argument could be made that the personality and passion mechanics are OoC, but my instinct from play experience says they are not. A difference is perhaps that the "type of story," in Pendragon, is already determined by the game.  The players must buy into that type of story from the get go.

Bingo!

There are probably very few of these games. Maybe Pendragon is the only one, or one of a handful. Note also that 99% of Forge contributors recognize Pendragon as  "coherent design". KAP is "storygame friendly". Not a coincidence.

Also, the fact that the type of story is determined by the game is not a problem. It is quite normal for storygames: if you play KAP or DitV, you know beforehand what kind of story you will play. In other cases, such as Primetime Adventures, you do not.

So the presence of OOC mechanics is not coincident with the desire to build the game around a "story" (a "theme"). But almost so. The two axes are independent, but often related.

The only example we could find so far which builds around "story" or "theme" is a classic game that storygamers would call an ante litteram storygame.

I affirm that the possibility that the most precise definition of StoryGame is the one based solely on the "goal" is still on the table.

Rose, you say things like, "Game the primary purpose of which is to create a story of the kind the players would like to tell," whereas their liking to tell (retell) it doesn't enter my mind.

Nor do I believe that stories have to revolve around theme. I didn't believe it when my 6th grade English teacher said it, and I didn't believe it when Ron Edwards said it. In particular, I sure don't believe that a narrative, as opposed to a traditional "story" (which is not what even a story game is) needs to revolve around theme.

Then you start talking about "Story now" and all that crap?

If you are going to accept Edwards' thoughts as foundational, I can't see how you are going to do any more here than rehash his mistakes.

Manzanaro, I have exactly ZERO blind faith in Ron Edwards's theories. And exactly ZERO prejudice against them.

I do not take any part of the Forge theory as "foundational". However, I do not consider any of it "wrong by definition", either. It is a contribution to game theory like any other. And unfortunately there are not many other contributions hanging around, at the moment.

I have zero problem in discussing with you when you do not found your reasoning from "theme" and other parts of Egri's theory. In fact, I prefer other approaches to literary theory, too

However, if you demand that I share your personal opinion that "Story now" is "crap" and that anything that Edwards said is "fallacy by definition" that will "lead me to mistake", then we have nothing to debate, neither here nor anywhere else. Because I will be forced to consider that yours are not opionions, but prejudices. And it is not the same.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;916958There are probably very few of these games.

I disagree. As I mentioned 007 is an example as is the original WEG D6 Star Wars. I wouldn't be surprised if Ghost Busters was as well. These just don't appear to be the sort of games that (a) feature a literary theme as opposed to replicating a genre and/or (b) get played much by people who self identify as story gamers.

QuoteNote also that 99% of Forge contributors recognize Pendragon as  "coherent design". KAP is "storygame friendly". Not a coincidence.

But that begs the question of how relevant or useful the opinion of Forge contributors is to an attempt to categorize types of games. Given their previous inability to articulate a useful taxonomy evidence that their opinion is useful needs to first be provided.

QuoteAlso, the fact that the type of story is determined by the game is not a problem. It is quite normal for storygames: if you play KAP or DitV, you know beforehand what kind of story you will play. In other cases, such as Primetime Adventures, you do not.

Knowing the genre style is not the same as knowing the theme(s). Arthurian stories have a range of themes and even of genres. Arthurian stories influenced by the Chivalric Romances of the continent are very different (both in genre and often in theme) than are the stories influenced by Celtic Myths from the British Isles. Pendragon as a system allows for both styles of tale, but a single campaign may not.

QuoteSo the presence of OOC mechanics is not coincident with the desire to build the game around a "story" (a "theme"). But almost so. The two axes are independent, but often related.

What the example of games like Pendragon shows is that a desire to build a game around story is not always coincident with OOC mechanics. You flipped the two around. You'd need some examples of games with a significant presence of OOC mechanics that are unrelated to any desire to build the game around a story to make the claim you just made.

QuoteThe only example we could find so far which builds around "story" or "theme" is a classic game that storygamers would call an ante litteram storygame.

(1) Why does it matter what storygamers call stuff? (2) was the introduction of the phrase ante litteram really necessary? Because it seems designed to limit the audience for discussion not to open it.

QuoteI affirm that the possibility that the most precise definition of StoryGame is the one based solely on the "goal" is still on the table.

Whereas that still seems to be dependent on each individual table and campaign at that table, sometimes even a session, of a campaign, of that table. Answers to very specific and idiosyncratic questions are always going to be unique and in this case, often vague. For categorization of what is or isn't a storygame, "goal" still seems to be a useless diversion.