As this thread seems determined to be hijacked by people wanting to put things into terms of provably failed "theories", and therefore Storygaming, I'm moving it to the other-games forum.

And for the record, when the GM is running a game, he immerses in the world itself.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;468321Never in pursuit of "story".  Yes, to set up adventures, but that's utterly different.  You are not trying to "create a story" by setting up villains who begin to operate at set times where PCs may or may not get involved with them; not if you aren't investing on a certain result, even the result of the PCs following up on it in the first place. You're just providing venue for adventure, which in RPGs is almost always part of the emulation process.

RPGPundit

I just think its a thin difference. I've played in story games where the GM railed us with every trick in the book (hopeless cause, limited information, hated by the world, super powerful DMPC ally, only one good course of action - which is obvious, time dragging adventures such as spending whole games buying equipment and talking to commoners).

On the other hand, I know I'm basically coming up with a story when I put an adventure together. Sure, the players can skip one, BUT they almost certainly won't. If the party is X+2 powerful and I make the badguy only X-1 strong, I know they are going to win. Then I know what they can do with the winnings, so to speak. Sense I wrote up all the NPCs, I know what they are going to do to and its probably something interesting that I made them for in the first place, with this in mind.

The fact that you write the encounters and the NPCs, presumably for players that are more predicable than random, you are still writing a story. I respect that you aren't attaching yourself to the outcome, but the transition to it being an intentional story is pretty narrow.

Not stalking you CW.

But having come over from Pundit's thread on Subway vs. Sandbox, I'd say you're making a boatload of unwarranted assumptions about how other people play & GM.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;468350Not stalking you CW.

But having come over from Pundit's thread on Subway vs. Sandbox, I'd say you're making a boatload of unwarranted assumptions about how other people play & GM.

Probably.

Quote from: Cranewings;468336The fact that you write the encounters and the NPCs, presumably for players that are more predicable than random, you are still writing a story. I respect that you aren't attaching yourself to the outcome, but the transition to it being an intentional story is pretty narrow.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;468350But having come over from Pundit's thread on Subway vs. Sandbox, I'd say you're making a boatload of unwarranted assumptions about how other people play & GM.

I don't really think of how I set up adventure material as really that much like writing a story. For example, when I am running a game, I often sketch out an area that has a couple different NPCs with differing/competing agendas, several of whom might be interested in working with the PCs, and usually I don't really even have that much of an idea which if any of them the PCs might take an interest in. So its not just the outcome that isn't attached, really it's most everything but the background before the PCs show up. For me most of the fun of running the game is seeing the unpredictable things the PCs might do.

Quote from: Cranewings;468336I just think its a thin difference. I've played in story games where the GM railed us with every trick in the book (hopeless cause, limited information, hated by the world, super powerful DMPC ally, only one good course of action - which is obvious, time dragging adventures such as spending whole games buying equipment and talking to commoners).

On the other hand, I know I'm basically coming up with a story when I put an adventure together. Sure, the players can skip one, BUT they almost certainly won't. If the party is X+2 powerful and I make the badguy only X-1 strong, I know they are going to win. Then I know what they can do with the winnings, so to speak. Sense I wrote up all the NPCs, I know what they are going to do to and its probably something interesting that I made them for in the first place, with this in mind.

The fact that you write the encounters and the NPCs, presumably for players that are more predicable than random, you are still writing a story. I respect that you aren't attaching yourself to the outcome, but the transition to it being an intentional story is pretty narrow.

I think you have to note the difference between "storytelling games", which are the games where the GM basically is the "author" of a story and removes choice from the players (or where, in the case of WW games, the editorial metaplot is author), and the gaming that amounts to basically "railroading"; and on the other hand, Storygaming, which is the intentional and collaborative effort between players and GMs (though usually with players being the protagonists of the effort and the GM's power being severely curtailed) to "collaboratively" create a story.

The former is just really bad regular Roleplaying. The latter is non-roleplaying.

So what you're describing above was basically a Railroading-GM.  He may have read too much Vampire or whatever.  He either needs some help to get better or a kick in the fucking head, depending on who you talk to.
The other thing would be where players are trying to create a story; in which case they are just plain in the wrong hobby.  RPGs will never satisfy them, because that's not what regular RPGs are meant to do.  You'd be about as successful if you tried to live your own life as a novel or something.  The second you come head-to-head with the reality of the WORLD, the story part falls apart, and the great idea you had for a guy who would have fucked his own mother but then been redeemed over time when he saves an orphan boy who hasn't shown up yet but that you hope to introduce somehow all goes to shit when a kobold kills you with its dagger in the second combat of the game. So much for "story", fuck you, the end.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;468383The second you come head-to-head with the reality of the WORLD, the story part falls apart, and the great idea you had for a guy who would have fucked his own mother but then been redeemed over time when he saves an orphan boy who hasn't shown up yet but that you hope to introduce somehow all goes to shit when a kobold kills you with its dagger in the second combat of the game. So much for "story", fuck you, the end.

RPGPundit

Jesus Christ.

Quote from: Cole;468358I don't really think of how I set up adventure material as really that much like writing a story. For example, when I am running a game, I often sketch out an area that has a couple different NPCs with differing/competing agendas, several of whom might be interested in working with the PCs, and usually I don't really even have that much of an idea which if any of them the PCs might take an interest in. So its not just the outcome that isn't attached, really it's most everything but the background before the PCs show up. For me most of the fun of running the game is seeing the unpredictable things the PCs might do.

I suppose I just have an extremely hard time writing up an environment and characters without predicting how it will all pan out. The fact that I can usually guess how players will respond to it just adds to it. I hear ya though.

Quote from: Cranewings;468336I just think its a thin difference. I've played in story games where the GM railed us with every trick in the book (hopeless cause, limited information, hated by the world, super powerful DMPC ally, only one good course of action - which is obvious, time dragging adventures such as spending whole games buying equipment and talking to commoners).

On the other hand, I know I'm basically coming up with a story when I put an adventure together. Sure, the players can skip one, BUT they almost certainly won't. If the party is X+2 powerful and I make the badguy only X-1 strong, I know they are going to win. Then I know what they can do with the winnings, so to speak. Sense I wrote up all the NPCs, I know what they are going to do to and its probably something interesting that I made them for in the first place, with this in mind.

The fact that you write the encounters and the NPCs, presumably for players that are more predicable than random, you are still writing a story. I respect that you aren't attaching yourself to the outcome, but the transition to it being an intentional story is pretty narrow.

This post and the ones which precede it lead me to make what I think is an important point for clarity of discussion here.

I'm fairly sure I've never, or at least almost never, approached the GMing of an RPG consciously thinking "how can I make this a great story". But on the other hand I HAVE approached it consciously thinking "how can I (whilst avoiding railroading) turn this into (something which is likely, depending on what the PCs do, to result in) a dramatic, exciting, mysterious adventure for the players full of intrigue, suspense, poignant dilemmas, fear and horror which the players experience immersively", or things along those lines.

Does the fact that I didn't think of it as setting up a good "story" mean that I was doing anything essentially different to what I would have been doing if I had thought of it as setting up a good "story"?

It seems like an important difference of mindset, but I can't see a practical distinction, from the GM's point of view. I mean, a GM could want to set things up to be what he might think of as a good "story" while at the same time wanting the players to be fully immersed (and thinking that without immersion it's pointless).

Now, Pundit seems to be defining storygaming as:-

Quote from: RPGPundit;468383...the intentional and collaborative effort between players and GMs (though usually with players being the protagonists of the effort and the GM's power being severely curtailed) to "collaboratively" create a story ...

I think you have to be very careful about defining "storygaming" in those terms.

The question to Pundit really is:-

... is it storygaming if there is an intentional and collaborative effort between players and GMs to "collaboratively" ensure that the adventure takes an interesting and pleasing course - even if nobody consciously thinks that they are creating a story?

For my own part, I can't see that the fact that nobody consciously thinks of it as a story is relevant to the true essence of what people are doing. I also don't think that "collaboratively" is the key concept here. I think that a game is generally or often named after what the players do. If what the players do is in substance consciously and deliberately push the adventure to take an interesting and pleasing course, they are doing exactly the same thing as storygamers. That's not to say that they're not also roleplaying immersively either at exactly the same time, or more or less at the same time. (Although if they are ONLY making their decisions from an immersed, in-character point of view, they are then more or less by definition not "consciously and deliberately" pushing the adventure in any direction at all.)

Anyway the important point I want to make is:-

... if Pundit wants to use the term "storygame" in a manner which is meaningful, he has to be careful to define storygaming in terms of its real substance and essence, and not in terms simply of what the participants in a consciously self-aware and analytical way think they are doing (as in are they thinking consciously that they are creating a story), nor in terms of success of outcome (e.g. collaboration, rather than merely attempting to collaborate), and certainly not in terms of absence of something (roleplaying or immersion).

Only once you have a definition of storygaming which goes to the root of what storygamers are actually doing and enjoying (or claiming to enjoy, if Pundit would rather see it that way), only then can you ask how storygaming and immersive roleplay compare, conflict or possibly might exist in combination. I will offer my definition:- playing a game which has as its subject-matter fictional events of a three-dimensional nature with a view to consciously influencing the shape, course, direction and pace of those events; "three-dimensional" is intended to exclude what are essentially wargames which could be said to be "two-dimensional"; "consciously" is an important adverb because you wouldn't generally apply it to what immersive roleplayers do when they are adopting their character's behaviours and only instinctually and subconsciously controlling the flow of the game - only through the natural-seeming actions of their characters which they choose by instinct and subconsciously, not by conscious design.

Also, I think that Cranewings and Pundit are liable to be at loggerheads, and Pundit may even end up calling me Swine again, because of what boil down to semantic, definitional, terminological differences. That's not to say that there aren't substantive differences, but they might get trumped by semantics.

As an aside, I find it ironic that a thread which started as a smug and slightly twattish boast about immersive roleplaying gamers having more memorable experiences of RPGs than other gamers has now been moved to "Other Games". I mean, I try to post a post which essentially (though in a more measured and reasonable way than Pundit would aspire to) supports Pundit's world-view of immersion being the key to fun - and because it doesn't have QUITE Pundit's foaming-at-the-mouth zeal, it ends up being classified as a storygames thread. Fascinating.

No, its because from the very start it read as a subversive attempt to wedge-in storygaming and Theory Swine bullshit.

Just like now you keep trying to play semantic games to suggest that there can be some kind of common ground between immersion and storygaming.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;468451...

Just like now you keep trying to play semantic games to suggest that there can be some kind of common ground between immersion and storygaming.

...

I'm sorry, but I really think there can.

Frankly, after quite some time hanging around on these forums, I don't understand why there can't be.

I mean, I played Montsegur 1244 (just the once, in 2009). It's a hardcore storygame. We used direct speech for a lot of the dialogue, roleplaying it almost as if it were LARP (two of us were also LARPers), and I felt the same kind of immersion that I feel in roleplaying games. True, it was interrupted and broken up when I had to take on the role of mini-GM, which I found somewhat jarring; also true, the "facilitator", who is a proper storygamer, was trying to get me to give "punchier" narrations (not sure if that meant less use of direct speech).

Was this an example of perfect compatibility between immersion and storygaming? No. For me, it was an example of tension between them. But that tension could only arise in the first place because there was some element of immersion, quite a bit actually, despite it being probably pretty much the most hardcore storygame on the market. I mean, it's divided into pre-set episodes with more or less pre-set conclusions, and it's more or less entirely about so-called narrativism; there's no single GM - everyone gets a turn at being a mini-GM; everyone plays multiple characters; it's all about the dilemma of whether to die for your beliefs and even the answer to that is kind of pre-set.

I would definitely agree that trying to combine full-on immersive roleplay with full-on storygaming presents a special challenge. I'm not absolutely sure it can be done. My own priority is full-on immersive roleplay.

I also, to reiterate, have no personal attachment whatsoever to the notion of "collaboratively creating a story", I more or less never think of myself as being involved in "creating a story" and as a player at least my primary interest is in immersive roleplay and I prefer it when nearly every decision I make can be based more or less entirely on what my character would naturally want to do, or better still when nearly every decision feels as if it's my character's.

But is it insane to suggest that there is some inherent overlap between immersion and storygaming, despite all the much-hyped tension between them? Or that there might be some way of combining both to some extent without completely ruining either of them? I don't see why.

If you care to explain (1) exactly what it is that you identify as the true core essence of storygaming and (2) exactly why you say that that kind of gaming is not only going to disrupt but in fact destroy immersion whenever it rears its, in your view, ugly head, then please go ahead.

I appreciate the argument that gaming focused on creating a good "story" inherently detracts from the immersion of those players who are focusing on creating a good "story". I would even say that generally speaking (and for me personally, in my own experience) that argument tends to be correct (though there might well be some players for whom that is not true). What I don't understand is why the fact that Player A is focusing on creating a good "story" should have any intrinsic effect on Player B's immersion in character at all, provided of course that Player A keeps his character's actions believable, is subtle about what he's doing and doesn't for example sit there saying "hey guys I think I could spend my bennies on getting this and that plot-event to happen which would then create an interesting dilemma and make for a great story so tell you what instead of doing what my character would naturally and believably do I'm going to have him stab his lover in a fit of pique instead on some imaginary pretext because that will make a far better story aren't I cool!" or "hey Mr. GM do you mind if I just narrate a magic sword into existence we can pretend I had it all along seeing as this monster needs a +2 weapon to hit it and if we don't kill it we'll end up in prison which would make the game less interesting because it would mean we can't see the princess's reaction when we save her".

And I just can't believe that you honestly think my intention or agenda here is anything other than rigorous analytical engagement with the subject-matter. I mean the notion that someone who enjoys immersive roleplay, who wants more people to roleplay immersively, who wants to show them how and encourage them, that that person (me) would be trying to use disingenuous arguments to get people to somehow believe that roleplaying games are or should be about the players consciously creating a good story, and to do so with a view to destroying immersion... just makes me wonder where your marbles are. I suspect you don't know.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;468271To bring the conversation back around, I don't think it's terribly difficult to accommodate "first-person players" alongside "pawn players" in a traditional RPG. You do have to leave out the players who demand "director stance" narrative control, unless that's just a per-player option. I.e., the immersives can eschew narrative control and just look at the "directors" collectively as co-GMs, and the "directors'" characters as NPCs.

Where you have problems is where anyone brings to the table a mistaken expectation of how the GM will make decisions. (This could be broadened to cases where there are many GMs, but I'll stick to the normal model for simplicity.) A pawn player who gets a kick out of doing stuff with their character "because it'll be interesting to see what happens" is no problem, but if they expect the GM to give them a bonus for their (self-assessed) "cool move", they'll be disappointed if the GM just plays it straight and lets the dice fall as they may. "That was really cool how you spat in the governor's face and he had you impaled!" might not be what those players are looking for.

To bring the thread back on track, does anyone substantially disagree with this or feel that more needs to be said about these sorts of things?

Personally I think there is room in the world for assistant GMs who are not fully co-GMs and whose characters are in some sense PCs.

In fact in the V:tR MET-LARP game I play there are numerous GMs and assistant GMs of various kinds and they all play PCs (though the actual GMs don't generally play PCs during the sessions which they are actually GMing... but I've seen them GM the odd "scene" while they were playing a PC).

Quote from: Benoist;467592PS: Sorry. Frustrated with all the shit going on with the move, boxing up stuff and all. -Ben

You moving to someplace else in Canada, or back to Europe?

P.S. Being older, I really hate moving. These days, if for some reason, I have to relocate... I'm inclined to just buy a new place to live, and decorate it as if it were new. I'm pretty sure I could fit the gaming stuff I would want to bring with me onto one rather tall pallet, but wouldn't have trouble building two pallets for the game collection. Everything else would stay, and this could always be a place I return to from time-to-time.

Quote from: Omnifray;468475Personally I think there is room in the world for assistant GMs who are not fully co-GMs and whose characters are in some sense PCs.

Quoteprovided of course that Player A keeps his character's actions believable, is subtle about what he's doing

This is really key. In order to support immersion in a standard/traditional setup, it's pretty common to point out the players shouldn't have "out of character" stances thrust on them. But the other thing that's needed is the GM shouldn't do stuff that's obviously "for the sake of the story" or "for the sake of a good game". In a setup with any kind of co-GMs, the co-GMs need to recognize that this same responsibility comes with their GMing role.