Quote from: Ghostmaker on April 19, 2021, 08:33:12 AM
The question is: are you having fun?

If yes, who cares?

Complaining about wrongfun is for socjus pansies.

Good point, except most of us aren't doing that, we're arguing that RPGs aren't built to, good at or used to tell a story while sitting at the table at game day.

In the things that were happening as they happened because story is not tied to past.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 19, 2021, 12:10:45 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on April 19, 2021, 08:33:12 AM
The question is: are you having fun?

If yes, who cares?

Complaining about wrongfun is for socjus pansies.

Good point, except most of us aren't doing that, we're arguing that RPGs aren't built to, good at or used to tell a story while sitting at the table at game day.

Short form: I disagree.

Long form: There's more than one way to tell a story. I suspect what a lot of people here object to is less the story aspect, and more the attempts to screw with the GM-player dynamic as well as the tendency for random chance to throw things for a loop. 'Oh noez, we can't have this rely on Joe making his Diplomacy check, that's not -narrative-' or somesuch.

Which I totally sympathize with, for what it's worth. The point of the game is that random chance enters the fray. Granted, you allow the players (as GM) to 'load the dice' a bit with their sheet bonuses as well as roleplaying well (remember, the big 'R' in RPG?). And it makes for great tales to tell later on.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 19, 2021, 11:38:42 AM
This is why I avoid using the word Story to describe RPGs. I prefer the term Scenario.
A story has a preset path and usually only one author. (Multiple authors are possible, but doesn't typically change the nature of storytelling)
We are not playing out a story of a character attempting to slay a dragon. We are participaing in a scenario where the resolution of the scenario is open ended enough so that slaying the dragon isn't necessarily it.

You can use whichever word you prefer. I would point out though that in the part of my post you quoted, I also used the word "scenario" and was using the two words interchangeably. Among the various dictionary definitions, "the plot of a dramatic work" is one that applicable to both words. So if you're drawing a distinction between the two words, you simply aren't talking about the same thing I'm talking about.

QuoteThe potential open ended nature of a scenario, and the input of a group of player characters, is what differentiates an RPG from a story, and trying to hammer such scenario driven play into a story telling hole is how we get linear adventures with "rail roading" GM tactics.

And so here it is.

If I say to a player, "Hey, I'm running AD&D tonight. Are you in?" and he replies with, "Well, what's the story?" I don't think he's implying that the game is not open-ended in nature. Nor that the game will be indifferent to the input of the group. Nor that anything is going to be hammered into anything (unless I tell him it's a story about hammering). Nor that it's going to be linear. Nor that he will be railroaded. I think he's just trying to get a rough idea of what we'll be doing to help him decide if he's interested in joining or not.

If I've run the game in such a way that all the players had a great time, there's a good chance a few of them might say, "Hey, great story, man!" And I don't think they're implying that the game was not open-ended in nature. Nor that their input didn't make a difference. Nor that I had to hammer everything to fit the story. Nor that it felt linear. Nor that they felt railroaded. In fact, if they had felt any of those things had been the case, they probably wouldn't be raving about it.

The point being, people use the word "story" all the time in the context of RPGs without any implication of it being pre-determined or linear. So I'm not seeing a whole lot of justification for pivoting to such a definition now to make the case that "story" somehow just doesn't mesh with RPGs. This is precisely what I was getting at in my first post and this thread. That a lot of the distinctions are baked into the definitions themselves, and those definitions aren't necessarily representative of how the terms are really used. And so the discussions wind up being little more than verbal diarrhea brought on by dicking around with definitions.

And then on top of that, that none of the self-ascribed "storygamers" I've spoken with would agree that what they're doing is railroady in nature. In fact, wasn't that Ron Edwards' whole beef to begin with? That he felt railroaded a lot? And I can understand why. Because railroaded epic campaigns were all the rave in the 90's. It was never my cup of tea, either, but you have to acknowledge that it was the traditional RPG that was most guilty of that particular sin. And maybe party of why that was so common was because those dolts also made the mistake of parsing "story" as a linear thing. So when they heard players rave about how awesome the story was in a campaign they enjoyed, the well-meaning DM accepted that as feedback and tried to give players what they wanted. Often with bad results. Well, if it was a mistake for an individual DM to assume a story must be linear, it's definitely a mistake to assume for purposes of this discussion that stories imply linearity.

I think back in the day the storygamers had a point, even if they later degenerated into toxicity. If a game is trying to evoke a specific feeling, then it helps to design rules that support that.

To use World of Darkness as an example, again, the humanity mechanic feels like it's punishing players for playing normally. To the point where across a half-dozen editions there are a ton of mechanics designed specifically to provide exceptions to that. "You get schizophrenia for stealing a candy bar!" "My path of enlightenment compels me to blowup a bus full of nuns!" The mechanic has clearly failed at what it was intended for.

So somebody designed a new game with a completely different take on the same concept: Whistlepunk Games' Feed. This game presents a vampirism/humanity mechanic that works like a lightside/darkside mechanic. Both options have benefits and drawbacks, and losing humanity never feels like a punishment for normal behavior. Since the mechanic gives you vampire superpowers for losing humanity, it may even feel like a reward.

What do you think?

Quote from: Lunamancer on April 19, 2021, 03:32:40 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 19, 2021, 11:38:42 AM
This is why I avoid using the word Story to describe RPGs. I prefer the term Scenario.
A story has a preset path and usually only one author. (Multiple authors are possible, but doesn't typically change the nature of storytelling)
We are not playing out a story of a character attempting to slay a dragon. We are participaing in a scenario where the resolution of the scenario is open ended enough so that slaying the dragon isn't necessarily it.

You can use whichever word you prefer. I would point out though that in the part of my post you quoted, I also used the word "scenario" and was using the two words interchangeably. Among the various dictionary definitions, "the plot of a dramatic work" is one that applicable to both words. So if you're drawing a distinction between the two words, you simply aren't talking about the same thing I'm talking about.

Yes, and I think the distinction between the two words is important, and in the context of RPGs, are not interchangeable. A story typically implies a set narrative, a scenario implies a setup with an open ended potential for resolution(s).

Quote

QuoteThe potential open ended nature of a scenario, and the input of a group of player characters, is what differentiates an RPG from a story, and trying to hammer such scenario driven play into a story telling hole is how we get linear adventures with "rail roading" GM tactics.

And so here it is.

If I say to a player, "Hey, I'm running AD&D tonight. Are you in?" and he replies with, "Well, what's the story?" I don't think he's implying that the game is not open-ended in nature. Nor that the game will be indifferent to the input of the group. Nor that anything is going to be hammered into anything (unless I tell him it's a story about hammering). Nor that it's going to be linear. Nor that he will be railroaded. I think he's just trying to get a rough idea of what we'll be doing to help him decide if he's interested in joining or not.

I've never had a player ask me "what's the story". If they did, I'd assume they meant "what's the scenario?" I'm not that anal retentive. I'm making the distinction in this thread because I'm discussing the difference and it's relevance to RPGs versus story games.

QuoteIf I've run the game in such a way that all the players had a great time, there's a good chance a few of them might say, "Hey, great story, man!" And I don't think they're implying that the game was not open-ended in nature. Nor that their input didn't make a difference. Nor that I had to hammer everything to fit the story. Nor that it felt linear. Nor that they felt railroaded. In fact, if they had felt any of those things had been the case, they probably wouldn't be raving about it.

The point being, people use the word "story" all the time in the context of RPGs without any implication of it being pre-determined or linear. So I'm not seeing a whole lot of justification for pivoting to such a definition now to make the case that "story" somehow just doesn't mesh with RPGs. This is precisely what I was getting at in my first post and this thread. That a lot of the distinctions are baked into the definitions themselves, and those definitions aren't necessarily representative of how the terms are really used. And so the discussions wind up being little more than verbal diarrhea brought on by dicking around with definitions.

And then on top of that, that none of the self-ascribed "storygamers" I've spoken with would agree that what they're doing is railroady in nature. In fact, wasn't that Ron Edwards' whole beef to begin with? That he felt railroaded a lot? And I can understand why. Because railroaded epic campaigns were all the rave in the 90's. It was never my cup of tea, either, but you have to acknowledge that it was the traditional RPG that was most guilty of that particular sin. And maybe party of why that was so common was because those dolts also made the mistake of parsing "story" as a linear thing. So when they heard players rave about how awesome the story was in a campaign they enjoyed, the well-meaning DM accepted that as feedback and tried to give players what they wanted. Often with bad results. Well, if it was a mistake for an individual DM to assume a story must be linear, it's definitely a mistake to assume for purposes of this discussion that stories imply linearity.

I do think that stories imply linearity. A typical film or book has a definite, linear structure, and by it's nature a set story. There are no players interacting with it. IMO linear, railroady adventures came about due to trying to shoehorn an RPG scenario into a story shaped hole, and suffered for it. They were popular, but I think that's where the phenomenon of people buying RPG as literature and not as gaming material came about. And it makes sense. As adventures got more focused on telling a story.
The wrinkle is that there is a DM, who can take a railroad adventure off the rails if they so choose. I can take the most railroady scenario as a starting point, and open it up to be more like a scenario. It puts more work on the DM's shoulders to improvise, but many GMs have a lot of experience with that.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on April 19, 2021, 01:35:01 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 19, 2021, 12:10:45 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on April 19, 2021, 08:33:12 AM
The question is: are you having fun?

If yes, who cares?

Complaining about wrongfun is for socjus pansies.

Good point, except most of us aren't doing that, we're arguing that RPGs aren't built to, good at or used to tell a story while sitting at the table at game day.

Short form: I disagree.

Long form: There's more than one way to tell a story. I suspect what a lot of people here object to is less the story aspect, and more the attempts to screw with the GM-player dynamic as well as the tendency for random chance to throw things for a loop. 'Oh noez, we can't have this rely on Joe making his Diplomacy check, that's not -narrative-' or somesuch.

Which I totally sympathize with, for what it's worth. The point of the game is that random chance enters the fray. Granted, you allow the players (as GM) to 'load the dice' a bit with their sheet bonuses as well as roleplaying well (remember, the big 'R' in RPG?). And it makes for great tales to tell later on.

If there's not a set plot, with set beats and a set ending, you're not telling a story. At the table.

You're having and adventure in a virtual world and you might or not tell a story afterwards about said adventure.

Point is you don't sit at the table to tell a story, the story comes after the fact if you decide to tell someone about your session/campaign.

Yes, randomness is important but the be all of RPGs.

Storygames are for sitting at a table to tell a story while you're on the table, that's why they have mechanics like narrative control, and other stuff to tell a story while at the table.

RPGs don't have those.

Quote from: Lunamancer on April 19, 2021, 10:34:16 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 18, 2021, 10:55:54 PM
How exactly is the RPG telling a story?

How isn't it?

A story is something that is told to a group, while an RPG is a collaborative experience.

They're radically different. That's why porting elements from fixed storytelling media to RPGs is fraught.

To the OP: "story games" usually refers to a cluster of games starting around 2000 that have mechanics that diverge a lot from traditional RPGs like D&D and GURPS. The precursors were the "New Style" games of Hogshead Games in the 1990s like Baron Munchausen, Puppetland, and Pantheon. This was followed by a group of games promoted by The Forge (www.indie-rpgs.com), including Sorcerer, Burning Wheel, and Dogs in the Vineyard. The Forge faded in the mid-2000s, and the games that followed included Fiasco and Apocalypse World, and the numerous Apocalypse World derived games. I'd say that the Fate system is often also considered a story game, though it is borderline with traditional games -- and it didn't develop on The Forge or successor sites.

I joined this forum in 2006 - and it was much less political, but RPGPundit still ranted against these sort of games - as well as against some more traditional games like Blue Rose (originally published as the True20 system). At the time, he was using the True20 mechanics rather than anything old-school, but still had a historical bent to his games.

A lot of the sniping is One-True-Wayism, in my opinion. There have been story game advocates like Ron Edwards who looked down on traditional RPGs, but there have also always been people who pushed their game as superior, and others as inferior.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 19, 2021, 04:12:09 PM
I do think that stories imply linearity. A typical film or book has a definite, linear structure, and by it's nature a set story. There are no players interacting with it. IMO linear, railroady adventures came about due to trying to shoehorn an RPG scenario into a story shaped hole, and suffered for it. They were popular, but I think that's where the phenomenon of people buying RPG as literature and not as gaming material came about. And it makes sense. As adventures got more focused on telling a story.
The wrinkle is that there is a DM, who can take a railroad adventure off the rails if they so choose. I can take the most railroady scenario as a starting point, and open it up to be more like a scenario. It puts more work on the DM's shoulders to improvise, but many GMs have a lot of experience with that.

I agree about this. The funny thing to me is that "story games" are very much opposed to traditional railroaded modules. The games with the most railroaded modules are 1990s traditional RPGs, not story games. I think the key is here:

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 17, 2021, 06:02:19 PM

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll on April 17, 2021, 04:45:42 PM
Storygames have been around for decades. See DMs running campaigns. It's the same thing. Players want their DM to tell them stories about what their characters do.

I don't want a DM to tell me a story. I've got books and films for that. I want to participate in an adventure.
And that, dear friends, is the difference between telling a story, and playing in an RPG.

But the published works generally called "story games" aren't about the DM telling a story. Heck, a lot of story games are GMless - like Fiasco or The Quiet Year. Even among those that have a GM, the GM often has less control over the game than in a traditional RPG -- by giving more narrational power to players in some circumstances.

I think some people can validly complain "I don't like controlling things outside of my PCs actions" as a problem with many story games. But "I don't want a DM to tell me a story" doesn't fit.

Greetings!

I also think there is some meaningful distinctions to be made--in that a traditional RPG is a *game*. Such implies various dynamics of player agency, choices, conflict, and competition, whether between themselves, against NPC groups, or just the DM's world in a general sense. All of that is also spontaneous, and worked out somewhat session-by-session, and moment-by-moment. The RPG isn't "Scripted". Storygames, such as they are, work against these salient dynamics inherent to RPG's. The byproduct of such differences is why a "story" only gradually emerges in an RPG, as a process of the players participating. Prior to the players proceeding with whatever scenario, there is no real "story" there.

Storygames really are a Walmart-version of trying to make a novel--while claiming it is a "game".

RPG's are first and foremost, a game. Any "story"--which is part of RPG's--comes after the game session.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Why's the point of comparison always novels

Quote from: This Guy on April 19, 2021, 05:43:27 PM
Why's the point of comparison always novels

Literature was the primary influence on early D&D. AD&D is famous for it's Appendix N.

Yeah that's great but a heckof lot of storygames aren't trying to be Appendix N they're all into movies or comic books or some performance art shit. Guess if you think everybody's trying to tell stories Appendix N style because you are trapped in the OSR labyrinth you might miss that. Like I got my Fiasco copy here and it's fellating the Coen Brothers not Fritz Leiber.

But sure those are different media from RPGs and they tell stories different ways but it's like "That movie can't be telling a story, it's not a novel" is dumb, same way "That group of people playing a game where they tell a story can't be telling a story, it's a game not a novel" is also dumb.

Quote from: This Guy on April 19, 2021, 05:52:26 PM
Yeah that's great but a heckof lot of storygames aren't trying to be Appendix N they're all into movies or comic books or some performance art shit. Guess if you think everybody's trying to tell stories Appendix N style because you are trapped in the OSR labyrinth you might miss that. Like I got my Fiasco copy here and it's fellating the Coen Brothers not Fritz Leiber.

But sure those are different media from RPGs and they tell stories different ways but it's like "That movie can't be telling a story, it's not a novel" is dumb, same way "That group of people playing a game where they tell a story can't be telling a story, it's a game not a novel" is also dumb.

This troll can't be this idiotic. Yeah, novels are a different medium than theatre, movies, comic books and television, and yet they all ARE trying to tell a story, just like storygames.

While RPGs aren't.

Now go back to being ignored by the adults in the room.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 19, 2021, 06:00:06 PM

Quote from: This Guy on April 19, 2021, 05:52:26 PM
Yeah that's great but a heckof lot of storygames aren't trying to be Appendix N they're all into movies or comic books or some performance art shit. Guess if you think everybody's trying to tell stories Appendix N style because you are trapped in the OSR labyrinth you might miss that. Like I got my Fiasco copy here and it's fellating the Coen Brothers not Fritz Leiber.

But sure those are different media from RPGs and they tell stories different ways but it's like "That movie can't be telling a story, it's not a novel" is dumb, same way "That group of people playing a game where they tell a story can't be telling a story, it's a game not a novel" is also dumb.

This troll can't be this idiotic. Yeah, novels are a different medium than theatre, movies, comic books and television, and yet they all ARE trying to tell a story, just like storygames.

While RPGs aren't.

Now go back to being ignored by the adults in the room.

You're the one that clicks to open the "You have ignored this poster" box. Caveat whateverthefucktor.

And RPGs are trying to tell a story. They scream it at you, begging to be heard, begging for you to know the truth, but you fuckin waste it.