So, recently I've had occasion to play a couple of out-and-out storygames and a freeform but otherwise traditional/immersive roleplaying game.

What I've taken away from the experience is that there's something unsatisfying about the storygames beyond simply the lack of immersion. In fact, the storygames have their immersive moments, and although those are interrupted, that was also the case with the freeform traditional/immersive game, simply because my character's actions took me out of the game for long periods of time, so I was twiddling my thumbs. Yet the freeform traditional/immersive game had a certain atmospheric magic which the other two games completely lacked, and I don't think that was just because of the musical accompaniment. Don't get me wrong, the storygames weren't terrible. They were quite enjoyable. Maybe I should say mildly enjoyable. But also a bit meh - they weren't gripping, enthralling, deeply engaging. They were OK, fine even, but no better than fine. The one which had a single fixed scenario I wouldn't play again, but I would play a similar game in a couple of years' time maybe, and the other game I would play again in a couple of years' time maybe - but not before then. I have too many better alternatives available to me.

Also, the storygames categorically did not produce a better "narrative" than the freeform traditional/immersive roleplaying game. On the contrary, although the latter only really dealt with a journey and a battle, it seems patently obvious to me that it would have made for a far better film or storybook. The action in the trad game was all tied up together, made sense, was dramatic and had a satisfying outcome, and could have been the subject-matter of a short action film. Of the two storygames, the open-ended one produced a messy story with lots of loose ends, and the single-scenario game was unconvincing and undramatic in terms of the narrative it produced.

So anyway this all set me thinking. What is it I found unsatisfying about the storygames but enjoyed in the freeform traditional/immersive roleplaying game? It can't have been just the immersion, because there was immersion, but interrupted immersion, more or less equally in the three games (maybe a bit less in the open-ended storygame).

I think partly it's that in the storygames you could make more or less whatever you wanted happen as quickly as you wanted, so the satisfaction in the game seemed... superficial. It was all just too easy.

I think this has something to do with pacing, and maybe with delayed gratification and attention spans.

It's not just about story versus character.

In the field of novel-writing, there are novelists who incorporate frequent lengthy, florid, descriptive, almost rambling passages into their novels, giving a slow build-up of atmosphere, maybe tension but definitely atmosphere. There are other novelists who eschew that sort of pretention for a punchier style. Yet, both are stories, which are inherently and totally an exercise in literature, entertainment, storytelling and novel-writing.

Many storygamers will decry efforts to build a detailed world background into a game, or even efforts to build detailed characters prior to play. They prefer to make things up as they go along, whatever fits the story. And when you think about it, even a heavily numerical character sheet is just a detailed description of various aspects and traits of the character concerned, which could be done less efficiently without numbers. Storygamers often hate detailed character sheets. But a comprehensive description of the character could be an important part of a story, and the story is more compelling if it has that kind of integrity and internal consistency which comes from having certain things conceived in advance - such as a detailed character concept. If storytelling is done by committee, then it certainly helps if that character concept is crystallised in a "character sheet" or similar so that the character concept portrayed in the story makes sense.

All this leads me to wonder - on the only forum where it won't necessarily become an ugly flame-fest so to wonder - whether some of the people who associate themselves with storygames do so not because they are more attached to a good story/narrative than the rest of us, but because they can't hack delayed gratification. (The reason this might draw flames is partly because the ability to delay gratification is a component of emotional intelligence...) Me, I like the gratification of dramatic events to be delayed somewhat, so that it feels meaningful. Storygamers on the whole often seem to want to skip the main course and go straight to desert, if you see what I mean.

[Edited to add:- I was reading Ron Edwards' "System Matters" essay again yesterday after a storygamer acquaintance of mine linked to it on another forum. RE talks about how "narrativists" might complain of a game getting "bogged down" in detail. I wonder whether that's a bit of a giveaway that the dividing line here is not necessarily between storygamers and immersionists, but between delayed gratification and "faster-paced" games which to me for instance may seem to be designed for breakneck-speed. I noticed that RE suggests that "simulationist" games almost have to use detailed rules systems, whereas it seems to me that an immersive/trad RPG can function perfectly well as a freeform game or near-freeform (e.g. Gnomemurdered 2e), so RE may be barking up the wrong tree (surprise!). See, someone genuinely interested only in narrative not in immersion might well still want a very detailed game-world and characters pre-conceived so as to engender narrative consistency, as long as it doesn't straitjacket their precious narrative too much I suppose. The question would then be - narrative straitjackets aside - one of pacing, rather than one of story versus character.]
 
Do I have a point, or is this just another instance of ridiculous partisanship and ugly tribalism?

I'm open to either alternative.

Quote from: Omnifray;489153Many storygamers will decry efforts to build a detailed world background into a game, or even efforts to build detailed characters prior to play. They prefer to make things up as they go along, whatever fits the story. And when you think about it, even a heavily numerical character sheet is just a detailed description of various aspects and traits of the character concerned, which could be done less efficiently without numbers. Storygamers often hate detailed character sheets. But a comprehensive description of the character could be an important part of a story, and the story is more compelling if it has that kind of integrity and internal consistency which comes from having certain things conceived in advance - such as a detailed character concept. If storytelling is done by committee, then it certainly helps if that character concept is crystallised in a "character sheet" or similar so that the character concept portrayed in the story makes sense.

That's something I really liked about Dread (The RPG with questionnaires and jenga); the questionnaire made you think in the way your character would, which is really more important for playing them than knowing exactly how many dots they've got in each skill. It forces you to play the character, rather than the sheet; if you don't, you won't be able to immerse yourself in the game, and you won't get a good game out of it.

Basically, a great character concept can stand on it's own, and be playable in pretty much any system, and is more important for immersive play than a detailed character sheet.

QuoteAll this leads me to wonder - on the only forum where it won't necessarily become an ugly flame-fest so to wonder - whether some of the people who associate themselves with storygames do so not because they are more attached to a good story/narrative than the rest of us, but because they can't hack delayed gratification. (The reason this might draw flames is partly because the ability to delay gratification is a component of emotional intelligence...) Me, I like the gratification of dramatic events to be delayed somewhat, so that it feels meaningful. Storygamers on the whole often seem to want to skip the main course and go straight to desert, if you see what I mean.

See, that is an aspect to it, but it's not always necessarily undesirable; there's a place in the hobby for both short-form and long-form games, and they provide different experiences for different audiences at different times. While the "story is created during play" and "story is what happened" groups might differ on a lot of points, they'd both agree that a story needs a starting point, a middle, and a point that could be an ending, and that's something that short-form games can offer for, say, a one-off or con game; long-form games can offer that too, of course, but in a different way (Long-form games tend to have more involved mechanics, which might not be easily digestible for such things as a con game).

And that's okay! It really, really is. It's a question of "different, and appealing to different players in different situations" than "better or worse".

(Neckraping etc. is really a different issue; that's an issue of player base, rather than game mechanics, usually.)

QuoteDo I have a point, or is this just another instance of ridiculous partisanship and ugly tribalism?

Since when has a discussion of RPG theory ever turned into anything else?

Quote from: Omnifray;489153Many storygamers will decry efforts to build a detailed world background into a game, or even efforts to build detailed characters prior to play. They prefer to make things up as they go along, whatever fits the story. And when you think about it, even a heavily numerical character sheet is just a detailed description of various aspects and traits of the character concerned, which could be done less efficiently without numbers. Storygamers often hate detailed character sheets. But a comprehensive description of the character could be an important part of a story, and the story is more compelling if it has that kind of integrity and internal consistency which comes from having certain things conceived in advance - such as a detailed character concept. If storytelling is done by committee, then it certainly helps if that character concept is crystallised in a "character sheet" or similar so that the character concept portrayed in the story makes sense.

That's something I really liked about Dread (The RPG with questionnaires and jenga); the questionnaire made you think in the way your character would, which is really more important for playing them than knowing exactly how many dots they've got in each skill. It forces you to play the character, rather than the sheet; if you don't, you won't be able to immerse yourself in the game, and you won't get a good game out of it.

Basically, a great character concept can stand on it's own, and be playable in pretty much any system, and is more important for immersive play than a detailed character sheet.

QuoteAll this leads me to wonder - on the only forum where it won't necessarily become an ugly flame-fest so to wonder - whether some of the people who associate themselves with storygames do so not because they are more attached to a good story/narrative than the rest of us, but because they can't hack delayed gratification. (The reason this might draw flames is partly because the ability to delay gratification is a component of emotional intelligence...) Me, I like the gratification of dramatic events to be delayed somewhat, so that it feels meaningful. Storygamers on the whole often seem to want to skip the main course and go straight to desert, if you see what I mean.

See, that is an aspect to it, but it's not always necessarily undesirable; there's a place in the hobby for both short-form and long-form games, and they provide different experiences for different audiences at different times. While the "story is created during play" and "story is what happened" groups might differ on a lot of points, they'd both agree that a story needs a starting point, a middle, and a point that could be an ending, and that's something that short-form games can offer for, say, a one-off or con game; long-form games can offer that too, of course, but in a different way (Long-form games tend to have more involved mechanics, which might not be easily digestible for such things as a con game).

And that's okay! It really, really is. It's a question of "different, and appealing to different players in different situations" than "better or worse".

(Neckraping etc. is really a different issue; that's an issue of player base, rather than game mechanics, usually.)

QuoteDo I have a point, or is this just another instance of ridiculous partisanship and ugly tribalism?

Since when has a discussion of RPG theory ever turned into anything else?

So, Ladybird, were you at the same Con as me quite recently? By what other name are you known to me if at all? Have we been conversing recently on another board?

Quote from: Ladybird;489168...
there's a place in the hobby for both short-form and long-form games, ...

And that's okay! It really, really is. It's a question of "different, and appealing to different players in different situations" than "better or worse".

I'm not disagreeing with these two sentiments. No, the point of my post is simply to try to analyse what exactly it is which appeals to certain gamers about certain types of games. And I can't help speculating that a big part of the draw of some kinds of storygames for their most fanatical players is simply that they need immediate gratification. For instance one well-known storygamer has explained on another forum within the past few years that although he enjoys Burning Wheel, the warm-up time is simply too long for him and he gets frustrated explaining the game to newbies. I think maybe he has a frustration with delayed gratification per se. [I'm not sure but there's an outside chance you might be the same guy...]

Quote from: Ladybird;489168...Since when has a discussion of RPG theory ever turned into anything else?

Sometimes it merely turns into pretentious intellectual self-satisfaction in the German sense... which is arguably less divisive and less offensive... it also has the function of providing an immediate ego-trip for the supposed luminaries, thus a quick and easy fix for narcissistic supply?

So which storygames exactly did you play. They are not all alike. In fact, there is quite a lot of variation among them.

I can see where you're coming from though. Many storygames feature very fast play.

Quote from: Omnifray;489180So, Ladybird, were you at the same Con as me quite recently? By what other name are you known to me if at all? Have we been conversing recently on another board?

Which would that be? I recognise your username from RPG.net, but I've only been to one con and the Student Nationals this year, and I don't recognise your real name. We probably haven't actually met before.

So, hi!

QuoteI'm not disagreeing with these two sentiments. No, the point of my post is simply to try to analyse what exactly it is which appeals to certain gamers about certain types of games. And I can't help speculating that a big part of the draw of some kinds of storygames for their most fanatical players is simply that they need immediate gratification. For instance one well-known storygamer has explained on another forum within the past few years that although he enjoys Burning Wheel, the warm-up time is simply too long for him and he gets frustrated explaining the game to newbies. I think maybe he has a frustration with delayed gratification per se. [I'm not sure but there's an outside chance you might be the same guy...]

I've never played Burning Wheel or any of it's derivatives. I nearly bought Mouse Guard once, though.

I don't think it's ever an issue of "certain gamers", I think it's "certain gamers at certain times", and there's probably a number of factors:

* Players with less time to commit to long-form games, who want to skip the "early stages" that they may not enjoy as much. This is a factor of time pressure in life; lots of people tend to be very busy. These players may well look wistfully back at previous long-form games, but know they can't get enough free time again.
* Players who have already done the Hero's Journey routine in previous long-form games, and aren't interested in it any more. In this case, a "storygame" allows them to just skip past the uninteresting bits.
* Players bored of mechanical character gen. Short-form games tend to have simpler mechanical character generation, and get you a "complete" character faster; many traditional games can leave you with a character that isn't quite who you want to play, yet, so your first few bundles of XP are spent just fleshing out the character sheet.
* Players wanting to emulate genre works where the characters start out fully capable. For example, while it pretends to start you at "level 1", Commander Shepherd is already a major-league badass when you start Mass Effect, and it just goes up from there.
* Games based on a situation or genre work where long-form play doesn't make sense. Closer to the "situation" style of RPG (The Mountain Witch?).
* Detailed game worlds that can be demanding on the players. Frex, I loved playing Houses of the Blooded earlier this year, but eight weeks was too many to do in one go.
* Younger players looking at RPG's with the MMO "game begins at maximum level" mentality, who might see the lower levels as drudgery that gets in the way of their uberspells.
* Groups that run shorter campaigns. Frex, our game club tends to run six- or eight-week blocks of games, with things coming back if people liked them; that doesn't leave much time for "XP drip" systems (Systems that reward XP per session), and that campaign will tend to be only one or two "adventures" worth of content, so the system has to work and be enjoyable at barely-out-of-character-gen levels (Fast character gen helps too).

I'm curious now what you mean by "delayed gratification"; I don't think that there has ever been an RPG that explicitly stated "low-level characters shouldn't be fun to play", and a GM that isn't engaging and entertaining their players isn't doing their job correctly; low-level play can be fun, in the right system with the right group.

QuoteSometimes it merely turns into pretentious intellectual self-satisfaction in the German sense... which is arguably less divisive and less offensive... it also has the function of providing an immediate ego-trip for the supposed luminaries, thus a quick and easy fix for narcissistic supply?

Oh, you've got that right. The biggest things I learned from The Forge:

* Different players like different things
* Ron Edwards really likes hearing himself type

Quote from: 1of3;489186So which storygames exactly did you play. They are not all alike. In fact, there is quite a lot of variation among them.

I can see where you're coming from though. Many storygames feature very fast play.

Two years ago I played Montsegur 1244 at Indiecon 2009.

More recently I have played Fiasco and an unpublished storygame at Indiecon 2011. The unpublished game is about trying to win the affection of a particular lady at a posh ball.

That is probably the sum total of my hardcore storygaming experience and as I've said elsewhere, they weren't bad, but I've had much more gaming magic in immersive games, especially LARPs, but also tabletop.

What I will say is that the storygames were more fun than some of the terrible hack-and-slash trad games I've played with a heavy heart in recent years, by which I mostly mean games using D&D 3rd ed or derivatives thereof, though please, don't get me wrong, I am very conscious of the fact that you can run great games with D&D. I happen to be allergic to the mechanics of 3rd ed, though I quite like AD&D 1st edition and BECMI and I'm OK with 2nd edition.

Quote from: Ladybird;489246...

Indiecon. And I was at the Student Nationals a few years ago, but not this year.

Quote from: Ladybird;489246* Younger players looking at RPG's with the MMO "game begins at maximum level" mentality, who might see the lower levels as drudgery that gets in the way of their uberspells.

Scary thought.

Quote from: Ladybird;489246I'm curious now what you mean by "delayed gratification"; I don't think that there has ever been an RPG that explicitly stated "low-level characters shouldn't be fun to play", and a GM that isn't engaging and entertaining their players isn't doing their job correctly; low-level play can be fun, in the right system with the right group.

I don't mean delaying your gratification over the course of several sessions, not starting to enjoy the game until you hit 4th level for instance, as some players found with old school D&D (AD&D 1st ed, for instance). That, I think, is unreasonable; though personally I have at least nearly always enjoyed playing 1st level characters, though I did baulk at the idea of playing a low-level martial arts monk in a LARP, with very limited dexterity protection when other characters were walking around in duly phys-repped chainmail etc.

What I'm talking about when I mention delayed gratification is being willing to spend a few hours genning up a character and learning about the game background, and/or being given or yourself writing a multi-page backstory for your character. For me these things really enhance the game, probably equally if there's very little by way of system mechanics or stats to comprehend.

Watching how the pre-written (though still developing and malleable) personalities and complex pre-written backstories of the characters fit together (or don't fit together) and the interaction they can give rise to is a big part of the fun for me. Often a character's secrets can take many sessions to become completely public, or never become completely public over the course of a whole campaign. It's a delight to watch as ref, or experience as player. An unwillingness to engage in the process of building those secret backgrounds etc. prior to gameplay seems to me to cut off a superb kind of gaming enjoyment from the get-go. Watching the players trying to figure each other out can be hugely entertaining, and the most fun I've ever had from gaming has been at a LARP event where I was a player and went through exactly that kind of process, the cherry on the cake being the final denouement after my character was killed and we were all debriefed on the whole backplot.

OK, those games are very storygamey indeed. More hardcore than even I would enjoy and I'm quite partial towards storygames.

The issue of story-games moving "too quickly" has been talked about and I don't see it as any different than when a DM rushes through a game without properly building tension, or setting scenes, or whatever.  I've encountered this issue in trad games as well.  It's more of a group-level issue, IMO.

Second, not all story-games work this way.  Burning Wheel, for instance.  Dogs in the Vineyard has a fairly involved character creation process that lays out your character's past, and towns are planned ahead of time by the GM and then explored by the players.  Apocalypse World also relies a lot on character background interplay and the GM using them to build hooks and complications that build up over time.

Third, Ron Edwards himself has criticized some story-games for being too shallow or "automated", and not allowing for enough player-involvement in the process of adding to or responding to the fiction/game-world.  A lot of story-games that have come out, especially over the last few years, are hardly associated with anything the Forge did except for continuing to be the little oddball games with weird premises (just like a lot of indie video-games are weird).

Ultimately I think it's more useful to concentrate on why a specific game has failed for you than it is to try to attempt to use what are really artificial divides between games to analyze why, especially when story-games are extremely diverse in terms of ideas about design.

Quote from: Omnifray;489561What I'm talking about when I mention delayed gratification is being willing to spend a few hours genning up a character and learning about the game background, and/or being given or yourself writing a multi-page backstory for your character.

Allow me to provide a different point of view.

The things you're describing are all well and good if everyone involved in the game has tons of spare time and no important responsibilities.  That doesn't describe anyone I've gamed with for at least the last ten years.

In addition, we've all played in far too many campaigns where we've put the time and effort into character generation and backstory only to have the entire campaign last for less than the time spent on chargen, either due to conflicting schedules or poor GMing skills or bad assumption clash.

We've all learned that given our limited free time and the difficulty of synchronizing our schedules, time spent preparing to play is time that could be better spent actually playing.  That doesn't mean we have short attention spans, or are emotionally immature.  It means that given the choice of spending out-of-game time on pretending to be an elf all by ourselves, we'd rather spend it with our families, our friends, or attending to things like putting food in our mouths and roofs over our heads.

Quote from: Peregrin;491448...
Second, not all story-games work this way.  Burning Wheel, for instance.  Dogs in the Vineyard has a fairly involved character creation process that lays out your character's past, and towns are planned ahead of time by the GM and then explored by the players.  Apocalypse World also relies a lot on character background interplay and the GM using them to build hooks and complications that build up over time.

I would think of those games as narrativist roleplaying games - but they are not so storygamey that you can credibly say they're not roleplaying games. Hybrid RPG/storygames perhaps.

Quote from: Peregrin;491448Third, Ron Edwards himself has criticized some story-games for being too shallow or "automated", and not allowing for enough player-involvement in the process of adding to or responding to the fiction/game-world.

Link/quote? I'd have to see the original to know what he's getting at - your paraphrasing doesn't really give much away...

Quote from: Peregrin;491448Ultimately I think it's more useful to concentrate on why a specific game has failed for you than it is to try to attempt to use what are really artificial divides between games to analyze why, especially when story-games are extremely diverse in terms of ideas about design.

I'm not particularly concerned with certain games having "failed" for me. I'm more interested in what general differences of psychology (if any) there may be between the sorts of people who jump at the chance to play, say, Montsegur 1244 and the sorts of people who jump at the chance to play, say, AD&D 1st ed.

Quote from: daniel_ream;491454Allow me to provide a different point of view.

The things you're describing are all well and good if everyone involved in the game has tons of spare time and no important responsibilities.  That doesn't describe anyone I've gamed with for at least the last ten years.

In addition, we've all played in far too many campaigns where we've put the time and effort into character generation and backstory only to have the entire campaign last for less than the time spent on chargen, either due to conflicting schedules or poor GMing skills or bad assumption clash.

We've all learned that given our limited free time and the difficulty of synchronizing our schedules, time spent preparing to play is time that could be better spent actually playing.  That doesn't mean we have short attention spans, or are emotionally immature.  It means that given the choice of spending out-of-game time on pretending to be an elf all by ourselves, we'd rather spend it with our families, our friends, or attending to things like putting food in our mouths and roofs over our heads.

Of course there are gamers, many gamers, who fit this mould. But I don't think it accounts for the whole picture. If it did, it would likewise be the case that all gamers with plenty of time on their hands would prefer "trad" or at least slower-paced RPGs... that gamers who play storygames or faster-paces RPGs would aspire to having more free time so that they could play "trad" games or slower-paced RPGs again... nostalgic for the days when they had been able to do so in their youth...

... but some people actually prefer faster-paced RPGs / storygamers even if they have all the time in the world! Some people find CharGen productive of nothing but boredom or brainpain! It's not only out of necessity that they choose to pay ultra-simple RPGs with minimal prep, or storygames. It's often out of preference.

Does that preference reflect deeper psychological differences?

After all, a lot of roleplayers don't entirely fit the "ordinary" mould. If that's true then it must follow that if storygamers on the other hand do more closely fit the "ordinary" mould then they are psychologically different in some way to [immersive] roleplayers... and if they don't, there's no reason why their differences to the norm should be the same as [immersive] roleplayers'.

Quote from: Omnifray;491763I would think of those games as narrativist roleplaying games - but they are not so storygamey that you can credibly say they're not roleplaying games. Hybrid RPG/storygames perhaps.

Now, that would be awkward indeed. DitV, PtA, Sorcerer, those are seen as the great examples of storygames. Actually, that's why people will say that storygames are just RPGs after all.

Quote from: Omnifray;491763I'm not particularly concerned with certain games having "failed" for me. I'm more interested in what general differences of psychology (if any) there may be between the sorts of people who jump at the chance to play, say, Montsegur 1244 and the sorts of people who jump at the chance to play, say, AD&D 1st ed.

Dunno.  Personally I don't think it has anything to do with wanting instant gratification (or not).  A lot of trad games are escapist, and so whatever gratification people get out of them is what they bring to them, and not much more.

I'll have to dig to find the RE quote, as it was on the Forge's forums (which I don't frequent) and I don't think I bookmarked it.  Essentially what he was saying is that in a story-game, you can play and the game will take care of itself, insomuch as the game produces conflict and resolves them whether or not people are invested in their characters and the situations.  It replaces player-driven conflict with "automated" conflict.

Roll dice.  Figure out what happens based on dice.  Role-play merely to add color.  Next scene/conflict.