Hm, I have to admit I hadn't expected quite so much agreement.

Other than PTA, can you think of any rpgs that you think are a positive aid to developing story skills?  I can't, though there may well still be some.

I would say that I think most story-games are nothing of the kind and people are largely kidding themselves, most of them are (whatever Pundit thinks) fairly traditional rpgs which have tinkered at the edges a bit in terms of authorial power.

PTA to me is one of the first true story-games.  Dogs, to take a popular example, is to me ultimately not as different to DnD as it is similar to it.  That's not a criticism of Dogs, but to me it's plainly on the rpg side rather than the story supportive side.

Actually, I think Dogs trains the GM really well ... the whole town creation system gives you a very good mindset for how to establish a situation that is rife with tension, and then how to explode that tension in any of a number of entertaining ways.

Amber teaches you that fictional power is a function of personality, even when that flies in the face of logic.  That's a damn fine lesson for some styles of fiction.

And, to toot my own horn, I think that Capes does a damn fine job of teaching you how to make the "what" of events subordinate to the "why," which I think is another lesson that can be helpful.

If you look at a game and say "Would this exact method, reproduced with me sitting at a word processor, create a good story?" then your pool of candidates is pretty small.  If you say "Does this game train me in skills which can be useful to writing and understanding fiction?" then the pool gets larger, quickly.

Hm.  I think that character development is an important story skill -- being able to make a set of qualities on paper seem like a real person with motivations and logic to their actions.  This is something that many RPGs are good at training.  

I also think that having a deep, consistent background is a useful story skill, at least for some class of stories.  Tolkien, for example, was a master at this.  This is again something that many RPGs are good at.  

RPGs will usually teach nothing much about dramatic structure or pacing -- but those aren't the whole of storytelling.  There are a great many works, especially in television and mainstream film, which are terrible at having logical characters or consistent background.  Characters suddenly turn and do things for no good reason to advance the plot; plot holes you can drive a truck through abound, etc.  I think some of these writers could use a little role-playing cross-training.

Was typing quickly earlier so wasn't clear

Quote from: blakkieI've seen odd coincidences in games. Quite a number in fact.  

I mean the whole story hinging on a coincidence that you would have to force in a game.  For example, Jim overhearing something through the events while in the bathroom.  That's fine for a story but I prefer games where the rest of the plot doesn't hinge on one action or getting any one piece of into - I prefer more than one possible path.

Quote from: blakkieAlso characters dieing moves the plot forward.  

Should have said deaths in opening scene/act moves things forward.  I prefer not to kill PCs at the very start.  Death does change things - but a story might depend on a death, I would hate to plan on killing a particular PC on a particular session.  

In a good game, you also want all PCs to have something to do.  They shouldn't do something critical at the end of the first act and then not be heard from until the final scene.

I guess, the big difference for me, is that a writer/director can sit down with a strong vision of exactly how things are going to pan out, sometimes even working backwards from the cool ending.  That makes a very unsatisfactory, railroaded game where player actions have no effect on the results.  I think a game should be more akin to interactive storytelling where everyone has ideas that they want to pursue but no one is sure where it's going to end up.

There are things from storytelling that I find helpful, especially editing for pacing.  In old school gaming, you might spend half a session moving around on the map, stopping for directions, and have a couple of random encounters before getting to the temple.  In a more cinematic approach you might cut from the players deciding that the temple is the key to "After three weeks of travelling along the route handdrawn on the map that Hazul's cousin gave you, you arrive at the temple."  It keeps players focused on the plot more instead of them trying to remember what happened a few sessions ago that made the temple so important.

I also fudge rules a bit in the interest of what would be a cool story.  One time, I had a bad guy who was doomed.  I fudged his hp so he lived long enough to teleport a short distance to his tomb.  It wasn't intended to have him get away, just change the scene of the final battle.

QuoteThat's fine for a story but I prefer games where the rest of the plot doesn't hinge on one action or getting any one piece of into - I prefer more than one possible path.

Some of the best authors will tell you that every story developes like that. You create the characters and put them into situations. If you've done it right they drive it forward. That's not much different from a group sitting around the table. The primary difference comes in there being multiple authors, which complicates things but also multiplies your possibilities exponentially.

Here's what I think:

RPG gaming is more like oral storytelling than screen writing or novel authoring.

While RPGing might not *teach* anky skills, it is certainly a forum where oral storytelling skills can be practiced, observed, and learned/refined:

• It teaches a handful of applicable skills -- mainly around characterization (drawing a character through diction, behavior, description, etc.)
• It might also teach some skills around drawing a mood or whatever (the same skills one might use to tell scary stories around the camp fire).
• Games can also be a forum to practice comedic story telling and timing and so on (largely by speaking for NPCs)

There's probably some skills that might translate to writing, but very few and almost nothing reliable.

Cheers,
-E.

I see RPGs as a medium that benefits from storytelling skills.  I grew up in a culture that values oral history, spent most of my childhood telling and retelling the same stories with my dad until I'd learned the million little things that make a good story (variation, reading the crowd, playing with tone and diction, etc.)

I can say that those skills I learned as a little kid have made me a better GM, compensating for the numerous weaknesses I have in the medium of RPGs.  What I can't say is that my experience as a GM has informed my storytelling.

While both are intensely social experiences that rely on group dynamics, improvisation and timing, the differences between the versatility of the two are such that A improves B while B doesn't improve A.

Quote from: fonkaygarryWhat I can't say is that my experience as a GM has informed my storytelling.

In your case, it might be due to which you learned first of levels of experience - the highly trained skill can inform then new skill more than vice versa.

If were to take two people with zero oral storytelling experience and one of them had been a gm for a decade, they would probably have an edge in reading the crowd and improvising.