I expect it kinda came a little bit from people noticing they were playing a role, maybe sorta looking at things a bit from the one man unit point of view?

Quote from: CRKrueger;913803Wow, more than one driveby, must have been a rough couple of weeks.  Swing by the "Behind the Curtain" thread, I'm sure you can give yourself a couple more chuckles on your way out.

I've been chuckling all through this threads of yours.

The sophistry you desperately cling to hilariously delicious to partake of.

Quote from: Sommerjon;913979I've been chuckling all through this threads of yours.

The sophistry you desperately cling to hilariously delicious to partake of.

Yeah, yeah, we all know the only thing you find hilarious here are your own shits'n'giggles troll posts.

See you next time.

Quote from: CRKrueger;914002Yeah, yeah, we all know the only thing you find hilarious here are your own shits'n'giggles troll posts.

See you next time.

What the fuck have you established in 135 posts?

Nothing.

You ignore or justify the Non-Roleplaying (OOC) Game Mechanics of the game(s) you busted your cherry on.

That is why it's fucking hilarious.

Seems somewhat interesting to me to look at what we mean by the terms we use to describe games, and to develop the taxonomy, so that we can develop how we think about the games and understand better what we do/like and don't do/like more accurately. It may reduce the number of raging forum exchanges where people are mainly getting hung up on disagreement on terms they haven't thought through.

Much more interesting to me than weird juvenile sexual put-down metaphors.

Quote from: Skarg;914042Much more interesting to me than weird juvenile sexual put-down metaphors.

You can fucking say that again.

Quote from: Skarg;914042Seems somewhat interesting to me to look at what we mean by the terms we use to describe games, and to develop the taxonomy, so that we can develop how we think about the games and understand better what we do/like and don't do/like more accurately. It may reduce the number of raging forum exchanges where people are mainly getting hung up on disagreement on terms they haven't thought through.

Much more interesting to me than weird juvenile sexual put-down metaphors.

Sommerjon pops in every 2-6 weeks, finds threads to driveby and stir the shit in, giggling and sneering all the while, then goes on hiatus, rinse repeat.  Ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

So if you were looking for an honest discussion where someone brought up a list of mechanics present in early roleplaying games that they thought was actually OOC in an attempt to challenge the notion that the earliest RPGs didn't have OOC mechanics - it won't be from Sommerjon.  He more than has the capability, just not the interest.  That's not why he's here.

Quote from: CRKrueger;914071Sommerjon pops in every 2-6 weeks, finds threads to driveby and stir the shit in, giggling and sneering all the while, then goes on hiatus, rinse repeat.  Ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

So if you were looking for an honest discussion where someone brought up a list of mechanics present in early roleplaying games that they thought was actually OOC in an attempt to challenge the notion that the earliest RPGs didn't have OOC mechanics - it won't be from Sommerjon.  He more than has the capability, just not the interest.  That's not why he's here.

So the question seems relevant even though it came from an adolescent troll.  Are there any OoC mechanics in the original game or 1st ed?

...:confused:

I can't think of any. Certainly nothing that is core to play.  Maybe some spell? Attracting followers at name level? No, not really. Something in the DMG?  There's a shit ton of rules and sub-systems in 1e and I'm coming up empty. Anybody?

Quote from: Skarg;913676If there is a stretch or even an entire session of "just role-playing" of social interactions in a campaign that is using RPG rules, but no one thinks to roll any dice for anything, I would say it is still an RPG. The players (I would assume) are still playing in the context of the campaign and their characters and the situation therein. Even if no one does anything that requires a roll, the situation still frames what happens and what makes sense and what doesn't, and it COULD switch to something that involves rolls and game mechanics at any time, as soon as someone decides to take an action that involves rules and rolls.

Yeah, I see what you are saying.  The more I consider it, I think the problem with this scenario within the context of our discussion is that we are talking about how a group chooses to play, not what the game does mechanically.  So if a game's mechanics do X, but a group chooses to ignore the mechanics, then we can't exactly use that anecdotal deviation of play style as evidence for defining the game.  It's just a play style choice that the game allows for.  I am scratching my head a bit, but I don't think it has anything to do with our mechanical definitions, and neither does it contradict the argument that games can or should be defined by their mechanics. I think?

QuoteSimilarly, I think an all-combat session is still an RPG and still "role-playing" as long as there are characters in the game who are acting as if they were people in that situation. In fact, that's one of my main interests. How do the characters handle dangerous high-stakes situations? I only think it's not role-playing when the players aren't relating to the situation and making decisions as the in-game people, but rather just as players with pieces and OOC thinking.

True.  Combat, even extended combat, can easily be either IC or OoC. So again, that is not a determining factor in what the game is.  The question is whether the game rules asks or forces the player to make decision that the character could not, or determine in-game widgets or aspects of the world that are not the character - at least in defining the boundaries between RPG and storygame.  The boundaries between wargame (or board game) and RPGs are perhaps beyond the scope of this conversation.

Quote from: Sommerjon;914016You ignore or justify the Non-Roleplaying (OOC) Game Mechanics of the game(s) you busted your cherry on.

That is why it's fucking hilarious.

Quote from: Madprofessor;914167So the question seems relevant even though it came from an adolescent troll.  Are there any OoC mechanics in the original game or 1st ed?

...:confused:

I can't think of any. Certainly nothing that is core to play.  Maybe some spell? Attracting followers at name level? No, not really. Something in the DMG?  There's a shit ton of rules and sub-systems in 1e and I'm coming up empty. Anybody?

And lookey there, just 4 posts before a dipshit makes the claim.

Roleplay:  to act out the role of
Game: a physical or mental activity or contest that has rules and that people do for pleasure
It's that simple. If you take it further you are looking for exclusionary language.
Cuz we all know we are not all lumped into one box where we all play pretend, no, no, no.  You can't be associated with them over there, omg no.  That is why there are oodles of little boxes inside the big box of play pretend

Quote from: Sommerjon;914266And lookey there, just 4 posts before a dipshit makes the claim.

Roleplay:  to act out the role of
Game: a physical or mental activity or contest that has rules and that people do for pleasure
It's that simple. If you take it further you are looking for exclusionary language.
Cuz we all know we are not all lumped into one box where we all play pretend, no, no, no.  You can't be associated with them over there, omg no.  That is why there are oodles of little boxes inside the big box of play pretend

First of all, YOU made a claim - that the original game included OoC mechanics.  That is a claim, and you either cannot back it up because you have no evidence, or you will not back it up because you're really just a troll whose only purpose is to attack people and attempt to destroy and derail their conversations.

Second, I did not make a claim.  I rephrased your claim as a question because I was giving you the benefit of the doubt despite your idiotic language, and because I wanted to give people (including you) a chance to make a reasonable evidence based response to your claim.

Third, nobody is "excluding" anybody.  Chess is not the same as rugby. Yet, they are both games.  It is helpful to everyone that we have different words for these different games (or else our rugby fields might be littered with the corpses of unsuspecting chess players who showed up to the "game").  By defining, we are giving people greater power to communicate accurately, understand and choose.  It is an effort to reduce conflict, not increase it.

Fourth, if your not a troll and I have misjudged you, you have the power to prove it by acting like a decent human being.

Quote from: Madprofessor;914172Yeah, I see what you are saying.  The more I consider it, I think the problem with this scenario within the context of our discussion is that we are talking about how a group chooses to play, not what the game does mechanically.  So if a game's mechanics do X, but a group chooses to ignore the mechanics, then we can't exactly use that anecdotal deviation of play style as evidence for defining the game.  It's just a play style choice that the game allows for.  I am scratching my head a bit, but I don't think it has anything to do with our mechanical definitions, and neither does it contradict the argument that games can or should be defined by their mechanics. I think?...

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at without an example or two. I think there are several possible issues to look at, and some of them are a bit grey. Examples:

* Some games emphasize the intent as being about the story, and the game mechanics are a simple system for choosing who gets to narrate what happens, and to what degree, and who else can defy that narration, but the actual situation and how plausible the narrations are actually has almost no impact on cause & effect. I'm thinking of Microscope and my little knowledge of Mage: The Ascension.
- I'd call Microscope a story game (which I actually think is interesting but if it's an RPG, I'd say it's an RPG where the players are basically all GM's in the world creation stage, and that it can be an interesting way to come up with settings for non-story RPGs).
- I'd call Mage: The Ascension (barely) an RPG, but one with story-game-like abstract mechanics. For my tastes, it's interesting as an idea but strikes me as meh and probably very unlikely to be anything I'd like unless run by a genius GM whose style I appreciated (which seems unlikely, given my preference for logical details and mechanics).

* In a session of a trad RPG with just social role-playing going on for a while, players may decide to ignore using the rules for many things that do have rules that could be used, either because it seems pointless or tedious (e.g. supplies, shopping, equipment maintenance, training, encumbrance, even some minor fighting), isn't interesting to the players... However if anything gets proposed that really doesn't make sense if played out, it probably won't be allowed IF the players/GM notice.
- I'd call this non-story RPG with players who are apathetic about some things and so are ignoring various details.

* The GM in a trad game may dictate outcomes because they think it's most fun if a certain outcome is forced, possibly because it will lead to a more interesting situation that WILL be gamed out. Lapsing in and out of story mode as a way to frame and arrive at interesting non-story game situations.
- I'd call this "between sessions" frame setting or downtime resolution by the GM, in order to game the interesting parts.  It's sort of story-game-like except the story-game part is used to get past the parts that don't seem interesting to game, to get to more interesting parts to game in a non-story way.

* Players saying they do things in a certain way and describing their results and follow-up, to make things move quickly or out of self-glorification or whatever. GM may or may not decide to stop them and require a roll or assess mechanical effects.
- This seems like story-game hiccup moments to me.

* Players saying things like "I jump on the giant serpent's neck and climb up from behind as it thrashes and stab out its eyes with my dagger!" and the GM deciding that sounds cool and requiring a roll but then letting it happen because Rule of Cool.
- I call this a story-game burp, and hate the part where the roll is generally unfairly allowed to work and not fail for various logical and mechanical reasons, and how it abandons the more sober/realistic approaches of other players.

Quote from: Madprofessor;914167I can't think of any. Certainly nothing that is core to play.  Maybe some spell? Attracting followers at name level? No, not really. Something in the DMG?  There's a shit ton of rules and sub-systems in 1e and I'm coming up empty. Anybody?

I don't remember anything either but it has been a long time since I played either of those systems.  Maybe someone could give five concrete examples of such rules?

I do think there is a difference between "ignoring the rules" and "the rules not being required". In earlier forms of D&D you could have characters talk and do all kinds of things that didn't call on "the rules" as we seem to be considering them here. That doesn't mean that you aren't playing D&D for the duration of in-character conversation or solving traps and puzzles purely through a verbal representation of actions taken.

I do think that some of this confusion is abated if you consider there to be a rule such that "what a player says is what happens in the game" and then figure out when this holds to be true. In a traditional game this boils down to: 1- always for the GM, 2- only within the sphere of a specific character or characters for players, and only if not contradicted by 1.

In a story game, I think that the rules of the game are not about what happens, but about who has the authority to say what happens. Story games don't concern themselves with "rules as physics". To the admittedly imprecise degree that they do, you are not dealing with a story game.

I think I could be more clear here if some of these things I am talking about had actual words for them. "Rules as physics" is not the best descriptive phrase. And talking about meta layers is never easy. What is the thing narrative rules are meta to? The game-world? Again not a very good phrase as it conveys very little about what is included within the hypothetical construct.

You start at the wrong end.

Instead of asking, “What’s a storygame”, ask “What’s a storygamer?”  It’s amazingly hard to single out storygamers at the gaming table, unless they come forward and tell you: “I am a storygamer.” Determining whether a game is a storygame or another kind of RPG is also inconclusive more often than not. Why is that?

“Storygamer” is NOT really about things done at the table or rules to do them buy. Sure, there are games that storygamers like. But not all of them would usually be called storygames, D&D4 comes to mind or recently Godbound, which claims to be OSR, while on the other hand Fate, despite its very abstract rules, is not that well regarded, as one might assume.

So what is it really? Storygaming is a school of discussing and conceptualizing RPGs. It’s not what you do, it’s how you talk about it. Much like the other outspoken school, the Old School Revolution, Storygamers have a narrative on how RPGs work.

I will now present that narrative.

An OSR player might say:

Before play, a GM invite players to his or her campaign. Rules will be used to determine events in the campaign world, as interpreted by the GM as rulings.

A storygamer might say:

Before play, players gather and decide upon a game to play. Rules will be used to structure the negotiation about events in the fiction. During play, the group might inadvertently drift the focus of the game or hack it outright.

So what is the difference? Really mostly the vocabulary. Of course, storygamers do not “know” what a GM is. There might be GMs in a certain game, but that is part of the rules of that particular game, nothing that exists “before”. But you wouldn’t realize that, when people sit down to play some D&D. Also note that neither narrative is objectively true. They are more like legal fictions.

So what’s a storygame then? A storygame is a game that talks like a storygamer.

For example the PbtA family of games is as storygame-y as they get, even though they do not really feature Fate points or things like that. But let’s have look at Dungeonworld:

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.

With this “move” the player uses a character ability to get an effect, namely the GM explaining something about the game world.

According to the OP and many other posters here, that isn’t a “storygame mechanic”. But that’s not the point. The language constantly references people at the table talking to one another. “The GM will tell…”, “The GM may ask…”, “Tell them…” That’s what makes a storygame.

And that’s why Fate doesn’t quite fit: It doesn’t provide many rules to actually structure your communication about the fiction. It doesn't tell you when to say what.