Quote from: Exploderwizard on July 22, 2023, 09:37:05 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on July 22, 2023, 07:13:49 AM

As opposed to: "You can't do that ever, because you don't have the right class and multi/dual classing isn't a thing (B/X) or you don't meet the racial or ability score requirements (AD&D)"?

Also, how often are actions being gated behind a feat even a thing? I know 3.X fucked up by making certain common combat options Feats, which is moronic. But that's a 3.X exclusive not found in any other game I'm aware of (other games only gate actual special abilities behind Feats/Advantages, if at all, which players shouldn't bitch that they don't have, and if they do, they'll bitch about not having class-specific stuff as well). And how often does this come up in actual play?

Plus B/X doesn't even have many of those combat options that I recall anyway and you have zero guarantee that the DM would allow or even know how to handle whatever it is you want to do. So it's not like handing it off to the DM isn't a magic cure all.

Only? I won't even go into 4E, that would be too easy. Lets look at 5E. Feats are indeed an optional rule so I won't use those. Generallly you want the new player to start off with the simplist class to play, which in classic D&D is the fighter. In 5E the closest model of that is the champion achetype. Now lets contrast that with a player who may already be playing a fighter of the battle master archetype, a more complex fighter with both short rest and long rest abilities to manage. I am not going to spell out the example of play but it would be similar to 3.X

Now, regarding B/X or OD&D when using a pre-gen (which is our assumption here) there is no issue of qualifying. The already created character takes care of that. B/X and OD&D have as many combat options as the player can think of. The chance of success depends on what they want to do. This example assumes a new player joining a group with an experienced DM who knows how to run the game in both classic and newer D&D examples.

I'm not sure how this refutes my point. If anything it reinforces it, since I brought up exclusive class abilities as a counterpoint to characters not having certain feats. In either case you end up with characters not able to do certain stuff cuz they lack either the feats or class abilities. Now you're bringing up how 5e has subclasses with different abilities. That's what I was saying.

Class complexity is a different set of claims I'm not really disputing. But Feats or Classes gating certain abilities does not mean that pregens don't work (to the extend that they do). That just means that some players may want to do stuff their pregen or even their own characters might not be able to do, which is normal in TTRPGs.

QuoteB/X and OD&D have as many combat options as the player can think of.

And so do players in (almost) every other system (except 3.x since it stupidly gates certain combat options behind Feats, which is why I brought it up), if you're going by the notion that the DM can/has to make up how those options work for them to show up in the game. B/X and OD&D is not unique to DMs technically being able to make things up. You can do that in every game.

QuoteI like the classic game because you are engaging the setting and circumstances when deciding what to do, not a menu on a character sheet. In WOTC versions players barely take notice of the setting and just choose a menu option.

This is a player/GM issue, not a system issue. You can engage with the setting and circumstances and decide what to do in just about every TTRPG there is. Having more defined abilities does not prevent that, though, that still relies on player/GM creativity.

Quote from: S'mon on July 18, 2023, 02:42:50 AM
Outside of actual Storygaming, I don't think I've ever seen RPG players go into author stance "to make a better story". The idea that this is ubiquitous I find highly questionable at best. IME players are either thinking in actor stance/immersed in character, or in pawn stance/how best to win the game. Ideally and most commonly a mix of both, thinking in character about how to achieve the character's objectives.

I never said anything about going into author stance.

Quote from: estar on July 18, 2023, 10:02:48 AM
Telling a story about a white water rafting trip is not the same as doing a white water trip. Likewise using a game to tell a story about a dungeon adventuring is not the same as using a game to do a dungeon adventure.

I choose "doing interesting things" to highlight the difference between storygames and tabletop RPGs. If you can't distinguish between telling and doing then there is little point to this debate.

Let's see how this tests.

Boring? Check. I've seen this exact patronizing analogy more times than I care to count.
Robotic? Check. Pre-canned response that has nothing to do with anything here.
Wrong? Check. I've never said anything about white water rafting nor anything analogous to that.

If you can't distinguish between what I'm actually saying and what you need me to be saying in order to make your point, there's no point in you responding. You really shouldn't be replying to anyone without the ability to accurately infer meaning.

As for debate? What debate? My point of saying "story" is treated as a dirty word is that it's next to impossible to find any meaningful or honest discussion about it. When raising the word "story" specifically in the context of roleplaying games results in you reflexively making it about story games, that only verifies my point. In order for there to be any debate to speak of, you first have to say something that actually challenges the point.

QuoteHow about we stick to the dictionary definition instead of whatever jargon meaning you are attributing the use of story, fiction, and narrative? 

Boring? Check. Avoiding the topic by making it about the dictionary.
Robotic? Check. Definition diarrhea is an argument with a universal adapter.
Wrong? Check. If you consult several major dictionaries, each of them is going to have multiple definitions for story, and collectively a dozen or more. And yet somehow you've managed to come up with just one.

So let's not pretend you are sticking to the dictionary definition. You're choosing one definition that fits the definition you were already using, so if we're being real here, you are very much using your definitions. I can also find my definitions in the dictionary.

QuoteNarrative - a spoken or written account of connected events; a story.
Story - an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment. Or an account of past events in someone's life or in the evolution of something.
Fiction - literature in the form of prose that describes imaginary events and people.

If you mean something different than any of these then spell it out. It is something I try to do in my replies I would appreciate the same courtesy in return.

Sure.
Story is a set of events. Period. They don't even need to be events that are told. That's why sometimes you want to hear the other side of a story before making a judgment. We understand there is almost always more to a story than just what is told.
Narrative is the telling of a connected set of events. There can be more than one narrator.
Fiction is a general term for invented stories. It doesn't have to refer to literature, since literature often implies something written and sometimes the term literature implies something about the quality. The root word is "fictive," an adjective that refers to something imaginative or inventive.

And I'll add a couple more.
Narrative style refers to the means of telling the narrative. "Once upon a time, there was a fair princess..."--the sort of telling you typically see in a novel--is only one style. A screen play is another style in which a story can be told. And the actual play of RPGs is another--one very similar to a screen play, stage instructions and all.
Plot is the actual sequence of events the narrative is telling. It's a subset of the story, and the specific events as well as how they are arranged emphasize cause-and-effect relationships. This is an important one because when people have these ideas of rules for telling a good story, like Chekhov's Gun, we're talking about plot, not story. If you have a pistol in one scene, it should be fired in the next one. That goes directly to how scenes are selected and arranged to emphasize a cause and effect relationship.

And I think it's at the point of plot that where things will vary most from roleplaying games to storytelling. It's also the thing that is being toyed with when a story game uses a flashback mechanic. But as a subset of the word story, when I talk about engaging with the story, it should never be assumed or taken to imply anything at all about going into author stance to properly arrange a plot.

QuoteWhen something doesn't make sense in an account of connected events it is because it lacks any connection to previous events. Since I am not familiar with the jargon you use I can speak about your definition of narrative. Although if you spell it out I will be glad to comment on it.

If nothing else, I would expect that in a roleplaying game the current scene is connected to the previous one by the PCs themselves. That's the problem I was punctuating about story being treated as a dirty word, thrown into the "story game" bin, and no one talks story elements in the actual roleplaying game. Simply by following the PCs wherever they go gives you a connection between events. And to harken back on what I was mentioning about plot, the fact that the game has rules and mechanics establishes cause-and-effect. So in RPGs, you don't need to heed rules like Chekhov's Gun to establish cause and effect. That's precisely why players can and often do enjoy the story aspect of RPGs without the DM or anyone else having to force literary devices into the game.

QuoteAn account of imaginary events (story) can only happen after the events occur not during. You are trying to obfuscate the facts by using jargon. Spell out what you mean by story as just I did.

Yeah, see, this is bogus baggage that gets smuggled in. This insistence that a story can only be there after the fact is not implied even by the definitions you're using. This was a completely made up thing by RPG forum weirdos.

QuoteStory - an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment. Or an account of past events in someone's life or in the evolution of something.

It doesn't say here that an account has to be past event. In fact, the second sentence where it specifically says an account of past events, "past" would be redundant if this definition is assuming account as past tense.

Stories unfold in real time. This happens happens all the time. Even if you want to try to claim that your reading of your definitions preclude that, all that does is emphasize that your definitions are chosen as a cope. By all means, choose whatever words that make you comfortable. But you need to address the unfolding story in real time. If you define that away, you're only dodging the central issue, which again supports my original point about story being treated as a dirty word.

QuoteThe point of playing a storygame campaign is to create a story collaboratively. There is no mystery as to where the story will go only how it will be resolved. Blades in the Dark campaigns are explicitly designed to play out like a heist movie a well-known and well-understood trope. The same with other types of storygames It is fun but is a different type of fun then what tabletop roleplaying focuses on.

Well, my criticism of Blades in the Dark is that it tries to be a heist movie but comes of more like Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Maybe sometimes it works out the way it's supposed to. But the fundamental problem I see is that if you want to do something well, you date the process and marry the mission. It's not like Blades in the Dark is saying, "Let's tell a great heist movie story no matter what mechanics it takes to do it." It's saying "Let's tell the best heist movie story we can using these particular mechanics." And it's in the method where story games differ from roleplaying games. The difference is not in the "point" or purpose or goal or creative agendas of the games because all of that is taking a back seat to using a specific set of mechanics. This is why I said I don't think the story game crowd is actually serious about telling good stories.

QuoteTabletop roleplaying in contrast focuses on experiencing a setting. A dungeon, city, wilderness, being a four color superhero, travelling the starlanes,  and so on. Nobody in the group knows how things will unfold either broadly in terms of trope and genre, or specifically.

And that's precisely why it makes good stories. Players have a certain vested self-interest in their characters provides a certain logic and consistency to the choices the characters make. Mechanics provide cause-and-effect that the participant-audience understands. And when the knight goes to slay a dragon and rescue the princess, there is actual danger to the knight precisely because we don't know how things will unfold and because the dice can often be unforgiving. If it were a movie, the jaded among us who would be bracing ourselves for yet another cheesy ending where everything works out. That it doesn't have to go that way in an RPG is what allows an old, played-out story to be engaging again. Someone writing a novel would have to throw every literary device in their arsenal at the knight-dragon-princess story to make it interesting. In RPGs, we don't have to work that hard. It's easy.

QuoteI use the definitions found in the Oxford and Webster dictionaries. I am pretty sure that 1E DM Forward and ExploderWizards are using those terms in the same way. The only other definitions I encountered are jargon definitions used by the storygaming community.

Okay. So then per that forward, story has been a selling point of RPGs at least as far back as May 16, 1979, and presumably well before that point since I really doubt Mike Carr was waiting at his typewriter with baited breath for the latest news that "story" has now been invented and approved for use in RPGs before keying the final strokes on the foreword.

If we're all in agreement here on this term (I'm partial to Oxford myself), then you're just clearly objectively wrong. What do you have left to argue about? Well, in 1974 nobody ever thought roleplaying games would ever be used to make stories. It wasn't until much later, somewhere around 1977-1979 that this newfangled idea emerged. Also note Mike Carr words it as "to watch a story unfold"--he's referring to the story happening in real time. So if you're claiming you're using the normal definition, just like Mike Carr, then you need to quit insisting stories are only something you have after the fact.

At some point, you're going to have to admit stories have always been a part of RPGs, and it wasn't until weirdos started obsessing over story that reactionaries in an extremely dishonest cope began pretending roleplaying games have nothing to do with stories.

QuoteI get what they are trying to do here but in doing so distort the meaning of story compared to how most people use it. Which I feel is reflected by the dictionary definitions I gave above. That a narrative is an account of a sequence of events. While a story is about describing those events generally in some entertaining way.

The above definition from narratology incorrectly conflates story with narrative. Especially when it talks about how film can be only a pure story if shot in real-time. I can see how the conversation is getting confusing as you are continually conflating story with narrative yourself. 

I've only used the word narrative once here, and it wasn't in a context you could use to infer that I was conflating anything. On the other hand, let's take another look at the definitions you claim you're using.

QuoteNarrative - a spoken or written account of connected events; a story.

According to this right here, one of the possible definitions of narrative is as a synonym to story. And, sure, laypersons do frequently use the two interchangeably. So I don't blame the dictionary here. I just find it kind of funny that you leap to conclusions with no evidence that I'm conflating the two words when even if I did use the two words interchangeably, that's actually 100% kosher by your own definition.

As for narratology, if the definition you found incorrectly conflates story with narrative, then why are you posting it? Why are you using that as representative of narratology? Why didn't you continue looking for a better source?

I mean, your every single point here smacks of bad faith. And the most charitable interpretation is you just know so little about the subject that you can't tell a good source from bad. But if you know so little about the subject, you ought to be a lot more deferential. Or just ask.


Here you go:

Quote from: The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Termsstory In the everyday sense, any narrative or tale recounting a series of events. In modern narratology, however, the term refers more specifically to the sequence of imagined events that we reconstruct from the actual arrangement of a narrative )or dramatic) plot. In this modern distinction between story and plot, derived from Russian Formalism and its opposed term fabula and sjuzet, the story is the full sequence of events as we assume them to have occurred in their likely order, duration, and frequency, while the plot is the particular selection and (re-)ordering of these. Thus the story is the abstractly conceived "raw material" of events which we reconstruct from the finished arrangement of the plot: it includes events preceding and otherwise omitted from the perceived action, and its sequence will differ from that of the plot if the action begins in medias res or otherwise involves anachrony. As an abstraction, the story can be translated into other languages and media (e.g. film) more successfully than the style of narration could be.

QuoteTo be clear a sequence of events is being created as a tabletop roleplaying campaign is being played. And after the campaign, an account can be made of what happened thus creating a narrative. But it is only then it is available to be described as a story.

Any sequence of events is a story. Since you agree a sequence of events is being created as a tabletop roleplaying game is being played, then therefore the group is collaborating on a story. It is also a narrative. We don't play out PCs going to the bathroom. We pick and choose out of everything going on what we focus on. Consider the Assassin function in 1E, where it's something you can use in blow-for-blow action during play, but also assassins can also do missions "off screen" using the Spy and Assassination tables. Which do we do? Do we play it out, or do we handwave it? That's a narrative decision, and it's a call that the rules set the DM up to make.

QuoteYou are complaining about people redefining terms while falling into the same trap of defending terms yourself. The way to get out of the trap is to quit assuming people are using these terms the same way you are and spell it out like I just did.

As I said, the word story's got a dozen different definitions. If I'm talking about stories in real time and you've selected a definition by which that is impossible, you have clearly chosen the wrong definition. If you really have no idea what definition I'm using, at the very least you can still conclude that a definition that doesn't fit what I'm saying is obviously not the one I'm using. And yet you insisted on going with that definition anyway. That's not a problem of a speaker not defining their terms. It's a problem of the listener not even trying to understand. You talk about courtesy in defining your terms, you have exercised no courtesy at all in doing an honest job at understanding. And at this point, I honestly have questions if you are using the definitions you provided out of courtesy.

Quote from: Lunamancer on July 23, 2023, 01:57:57 AM
Let's see how this tests.

Boring? Check. I've seen this exact patronizing analogy more times than I care to count.

Adventuring while playing an adventuring type RPG is boring?
WTF???

Quote from: Lunamancer on July 23, 2023, 01:57:57 AM
I never said anything about going into author stance.

You didn't? If you are role playing a character and while doing so, are contemplating what to do based on what would be good for the story then you ARE in author stance. The character is part of the imagined game space and as such, is not aware that he/she exists solely for the amusement of players crafting a story. So when a character is making a decision and weighs story concerns as a factor then you have broken the author stance wall. A role played character can only react to game world stimuli and the results of those interactions is what crafts the story. In an RPG that is the only way to do it without going into author stance.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on July 23, 2023, 10:29:50 AM
You didn't?

Nope. Never once anywhere ever.

QuoteIf you are role playing a character and while doing so, are contemplating what to do based on what would be good for the story then you ARE in author stance. The character is part of the imagined game space and as such, is not aware that he/she exists solely for the amusement of players crafting a story. So when a character is making a decision and weighs story concerns as a factor then you have broken the author stance wall. A role played character can only react to game world stimuli and the results of those interactions is what crafts the story. In an RPG that is the only way to do it without going into author stance.

Emphasis mine. There seems to be a conflicting message here. In the former statement, if I'm role playing a character I can also be in author stance? But in the latter statement, a roleplayed character can only react to world stimuli? Which is it?

Quote from: Lunamancer on July 23, 2023, 09:22:56 PM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on July 23, 2023, 10:29:50 AM
You didn't?

Nope. Never once anywhere ever.

QuoteIf you are role playing a character and while doing so, are contemplating what to do based on what would be good for the story then you ARE in author stance. The character is part of the imagined game space and as such, is not aware that he/she exists solely for the amusement of players crafting a story. So when a character is making a decision and weighs story concerns as a factor then you have broken the author stance wall. A role played character can only react to game world stimuli and the results of those interactions is what crafts the story. In an RPG that is the only way to do it without going into author stance.

Emphasis mine. There seems to be a conflicting message here. In the former statement, if I'm role playing a character I can also be in author stance? But in the latter statement, a roleplayed character can only react to world stimuli? Which is it?

Reading comprehension wasn't your strongest subject was it? Obviously you like to play story games. Have at it.