The dividing line for Narrative / Storytelling games and Traditional RPGs is easily defined by WHEN the story happens. If the story of what happened can only be told after the RPG play is done, it's a traditional RPG.
To certain extent yes.
But only partially - I mean games called "Storytelling" (ironically enough Storyteller System do not helps Storytelling in any significant way) will have more predictable elements (as they are more bound by structure of play) but those are still RPG's, there are still rolls (or different sorts of resolutions), which mean there is still quite a lot of undpredictability. So you cannot really tell this story beforehand. Like "Blades in the Dark" - it falls under storytelling umbrella - as it means to emulate certain type of histories, and you know there has to be some SCORE - but well you don't know how score will work - what consequences shall happen, and so on.
Like Agatha Christie novel - you know there's gonna be a murder, detective and solution - but that doesn't mean you can get whudunnit before reading.
It's also easily defined by the role of the DM. In Traditional RPGs, the DM controls the world and the players dictate their characters' actions. If players can dictate what happens in the world beyond their own PC's actions, then it's a narrative/storytelling game.
No... not really. There are games that are otherwise very traditional that gives extra options to players to control enviroment/narrative for instance with exceptional successes, and there are narrative games that does not give players any specific power beyond that - as mentioned Blades in the Dark, really.
The stupidity is trying to make believe these two very different games are both RPGs.
But of course they are - they both fail under this wide, wide, wide umbrella.
You have roles you play both in FATE and in D&D you are bound to PC you created in general sense, and you're playing this character, and both are games with sets of rules allowing for your PC to achieve some goals or fail miserably in them. Some umbrellas are narrow, some are wide. RPGs are wide as hell.
You'd have to remove gaming elements - ergo conflict/trouble resolution mechanism of any sort - that is not based on DM's/players pure FIAT, to went beyond RPG elements by removing G-thing.
We can call a dozen things "rpgs", but improper and sloppy naming isn't going to make them the same.
No one wants for RPGs to be the same. They are wide category - like vehicles. I don't want my trucks and planes to be the same - yet they are all vehicles doing vehicle purpose - moving me from point A to point B.
Spell descriptions in 3e onward do not appear any more mystical, that is true, but in prior editions players did not insist to me that a poorly worded description in a spell write up should work exactly as written with a legalistic/rules lawyer/computer logic reading of such, if they a expected a spell to have an effect and you ruled a slight variation for the circumstances they did not spaz out and insist they were entitled to exactly the possible summons listed in the phb. They also never tried to diplomacy roll a king into giving up his crown or a dragon into having sexual relations and then insist if this did not occur that you'd cheated them of skill ranks. The problem was never descriptions, the problem was a mindset carried by players that had no experience with prior editions and made "builds" rather than "characters".
I have mixed feelings about it. I prefer clarity of rules, over DM fiat, but then if rules are not already clear then it's hard to be angry for GM on them.
Then I have a strong feeling most of Diplomancers simply have not read Diplomacy rules really.
I mean I read Pathfinder rules now: Diplomacy have 3 basic options here:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/diplomacy/ - and neither of Core options in any way allows you to diplomance King to give you your crown or seduce a dragon. The non-core options get more wonky - but well that's why they are non-core.
Except its not a new concept in any way shape or form.
Instead what you have is a new cult trying to push it as TRUE role playing. And invariably as all fanatics do. They eventually extend RPG to mean "everything on earth" and the term no longer has any meaning when they use it.
THIS is the problem. Not storygamers themselves. Its this cult that treats RPGs like a sex fetish and sets out to infiltrate and co-opt everything they can to push that agenda. And we are allready seeing the exact same thing forming in the OSR, just not as pervasive or hostile. Yet.
There may well come a time when we will be sitting here discussing how bad the OSR cult is as it co-opts and damages more and more games. Unlikely to be sure. But considering how these cults keep gaining momentum, it is still a possibility as long as we have more than a few nuts in the OSR.
Paradoxically I think important problem is D&D 5e. Which is in no way storytelling game. I mean it's less storytelling game than 4e, because 4e at least have those epic destinies and so on, which sort of forced GM to included in story and skew it a bit - as it was end-goals for PC's bound to mechanics of their advancements.
In 5e I see nothing storytelling really. No mechanics for it.
But because 5e is promoted by various hired actors and other goons, people overall, especially left-leaning drama queens get really bad ideas about it.
I do not consider what let's say Mercer do with his characters backstories and so on, to be bad per se, in fact in a way that's sort of cool - problem is of course it's in no way bound to mechanics of 5e - that's his pure fiat as GM, to create quests based on those backstories, and moments for characters to evolve in some direction. That's neither bad or good, problem is when people starts to think - that's how 5e should be played. And multiplicity of various mostly D&D shows, streams and so on makes this swamp even murkier.
Then of course SJW agenda to take over RPGS is not directly connected to it - I mean storytelling boom would happen even without SJWs because simply we have much more nerds now, much more geek stories, much more fantasy and sci-fi in mainstream, so lot of new gamers will come to gaming with promise to relive or make equally cool new stories. That would happen even without SJWs, as it's desire to fullfil certain hunger.
WTF? I thought one true wayism is about playing games? Not politics. The OSR is not fundamentally anti-SJW - that's just the Pundit. The OSR as a whole has always been fundamentally anti-political and that's what it must hold to.
Agreed.
And tbh not just OSR.
Exclusion is the road to excellence!
Intelligent Design is a road to excellence. You can say "no" and still make wonky system.
This is why 1E will always be the best. It was willing to say "no".
It also openly allowed GMs to ignore any edition "no" that was written down. Which basically was like saying "no but you know really it's up to you". And so we get all other editions and D&D clones.