Story gaming for me is generally co-op, weird concepts like writing letters, or GMless games, etc.

I don't see them as actual roleplaying games but as some weird off-shoot. That I wouldn't touch with asbestos gloves. But each to their own of course.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on October 16, 2022, 06:26:17 AM
I do. Because as a GM, you're in the position of trying to craft a fun experience. Which leads to the question, "What is fun?".

It's a greenish liquid that comes in small vials. And all you have to do is pour some into your game. We often either forget to use it or use it too sparingly. Until a much wiser GM comes along and tells us the one thing we never would have thought to do. Add more of it to the game.

Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?

Not trying to be a jerk, but if you ask ten people to define something in their own words, you'll get ten different answers. Then, inevitable, someone's criteria gets raked because it touches on some gaming system that fits the criteria but not the wider definition. Like what's already happened in this thread.

The only question that should matter is: Is the game fun to play?
Who really cares what defines something as "story game" or "RPG" or any other arbitrary title you want to give to sitting around a table with friends and playing make-believe? The point of the hobby is about having fun, even if the ruleset *is* objectively lazy or oversimplified.

This so much. We've had fun with a game many would call a "story game".

But then, I inadvertently once used the term "story game" when trying to explain what an RPG is. And it kinda makes sense. Not sure why some use the term for games with greater player influence on the setting.

Would WEG Star Wars be prototypical story gaming with the force point mechanic?

Quote from: Trond on October 16, 2022, 09:58:44 AM
This so much. We've had fun with a game many would call a "story game".

But then, I inadvertently once used the term "story game" when trying to explain what an RPG is. And it kinda makes sense. Not sure why some use the term for games with greater player influence on the setting.

Because you almost have to.

There's a dirty little secret, but it's really a universal truth. You can tell someone what to do, or you can tell them what you want done. You don't get to have both. Because the first challenge you hit, where the results the method produces does not match the results you want, you do have to decide which it's going to be. Are you going to stay the course no matter the outcome? Or are you going to abandon the method and do whatever you have to to get the result.

Since games are more or less a set of rules for play, there's a strong tendency (by which I mean is almost exclusively the case) that they provide methods. But not the outcome. Take chess, for example. I could play it as a means of keeping my mind sharp. Or I might play it because I believe it teaches greater lessons about strategy. Or I could play as a way of staying connected with an old friend who also enjoys the game. Or I could even play competitively. What the aim or goal or purpose of playing the game is up to me.

Now do the same with RPGs. Some people use it for socializing. Some to play as a character different than themselves. Some to play a character like themselves but in a different time and far away place. Some just like coming up with backstories. Some like world building. Some just want to kill things and take their stuff. And you know what? Some people use it as a means of making stories.

If you to say the aim of the game is collaborative creation of these stories, there's more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak. I would make a strong case that AD&D helps facilitate better stories than most of the games ostensibly designed to do so. So if you want to say this type of game is something different from games like AD&D, the difference has to be in the method. And not anything involving the aim. Not, "Well, these games are for creating stories, and D&D is for simulating a fantasy world." It would be news to a lot of people playing D&D a long, long time that it actually isn't good for making stories and it's only for creating some kind of virtual reality.

Quote from: Wisithir on October 15, 2022, 10:35:42 PM
They are story-game elements but they do not break GM fiat or the narrate-declare-adjudicate cycle.

Ah, yes, GM Fiat... that mythical construct of GM as absolute arbiter of the campaign to whom all players must bow down or leave that only truly exists in those rare places with enough players desperate enough for games that a GM can actually get a full table while running exactly what they wish.

Conversely, my experience is that GM's who don't work with the players when setting up the campaign and at least partially cater to their desires and go along with a consensus of player desire is quickly a GM without players and only dreams of a campaign while GM's more willing to be flexible have no problems filling seats at their tables.

What I see time after time when people drop a narrative metacurrency token down, even if the GM technically has final say, in practice they're really only judging whether or not the narrative addition of the player (and how important the addition is to that player) is disruptive enough to the enjoyment of the rest of the table to be worth refusing it lest they lose a player over it they won't easily be able to replace.

This is why, personally, I only run games where any metacurrency-like elements expressly do NOT have any "affect narrative" uses, just game mechanical ones like extra actions or re-rolls or fueling specific powers/actions. But if you do run one where metacurrency can affect narrative elements, then it's in a GM's interest to either learn the "Yes, but..." and similar techniques of managing such abilities or just outright state such uses are 100% off the table at the start of the campaign if they don't want to have generally unhappy players.

Quote from: Tasty_Wind on October 15, 2022, 12:01:58 AM
I'm just curious what y'all would consider a "story game" or "story gaming". There seems to be no small amount of contempt for the concept among those in the OSR scene, but what qualifies?

A campaign where the focus is on the group collaborating on creating the narrative of a story using the rules of a game. As opposed to tabletop roleplaying where the focus on the players interacting with a setting as their characters with their actions adjudicated by a human referee often using the rules of a game as an aide to make this easier.

Because it is a matter of focus not system, this leads to endless debates over "what is a storygame". You could easily have the exact same debate over whether a campaign is about wargaming or tabletop roleplaying. Which is also about what is focused on.

In general a defining characteristic of storygame is metagame mechanics that the participants are expected to use to further the narrative of the story being created. The mechanics are metagaming because they represent things that the participants can do, not what their characters can do.

This opposed to mechanics for tabletop roleplaying which focus on what the player can do AS their characters. There are however aides that are metagaming mechanics. Some to help the referee manage the setting while the campaign unfolds. Others to help players to help describe what happens to their characters between adventures.

In RPGs players and the referee may have plans, but they are like plans we make in real life. There is no guarantee that events will unfold in accordance to these plans. In constrast in storygames, there is a overall narrative structure that is being fleshed out by using the game.

Quote from: Lunamancer on October 16, 2022, 10:36:31 AM
If you to say the aim of the game is collaborative creation of these stories, there's more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak. I would make a strong case that AD&D helps facilitate better stories than most of the games ostensibly designed to do so. So if you want to say this type of game is something different from games like AD&D, the difference has to be in the method. And not anything involving the aim. Not, "Well, these games are for creating stories, and D&D is for simulating a fantasy world." It would be news to a lot of people playing D&D a long, long time that it actually isn't good for making stories and it's only for creating some kind of virtual reality.

Eh, well, broadly speaking there are two kinds of stories: 1) The 3-act structure and 2) Rambling shaggy-dog stories.

Some games are designed to elicit stories in 3-act structure. Let's call them story games. They provide incentives to generate introduction, confrontation, and resolution. Sometimes this advice enters into non-story game territory, such as advice that every scene (or every room of a dungeon) in a traditional RPG should pose a narrative question to the characters or that we should track torches with usage dice.

Some games are great at generating rambling "stories" that would make terrible movies. This kind of story only makes narrative sense to the players. Perhaps the story is honed over time in player memory. A long sandbox/dungeon crawl is remembered as a tighter more coherent story (the messy bits and loose ends being forgotten). You see this when players reminiscence about previous events in a traditional campaign. "Remember when we investigated the missing cattle, found this suspicious old guy, discovered he was a werewolf, and slayed him?" Yeah, okay, but what about the two-session distraction at the inn and the unnecessary detour into the abandoned quarry that only served to get so-and-so killed? Those scenes get left on the cutting room floor.

Comparing games/rules to decide a "better story" only makes sense if we know what a story is and how it's told. Story game are designed and intended to tell a story at the table with a minimum extraneous matter. Listening to someone re-tell a story-game story could actually be tolerable. Listening to a traditional RPG player re-tell a campaign would be mind-numbingly dull unless it's culled down to the essentials.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on October 16, 2022, 06:26:17 AM

Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?

I do. Because as a GM, you're in the position of trying to craft a fun experience. Which leads to the question, "What is fun?".

Fun is a subjective experience, not something narrowly defined by a title. I'm not particularly fond of romcom films, finding the tropes to be largely trite and predictable, but there were a few that I actually enjoyed. Ultimately, it's just unhelpful to list something as "X" and expect it to include a lot of what other things labled "X" include. Much more helpful to evaluate each individual thing by its own merits.

You can already see the biases taking form in the comments above, with claims of a "lazy" ruleset seemingly being used to claim the entire subgenre is not enjoyable, as if simplified mechanics are somehow automatically a bad thing. It's flawed thinking that smacks of Intersectionality: using superficial parameters to lump things together and pass broad judgments upon them. The flaw of Intersectionality is that it arbitrarily decides when to stop counting characteristics. Brought to it's logical conclusion, Intersectionality will ultimately arrive at the individual. Lables are merely a means to collate traits and form things into groups, but they are still arbitrary as they necessarily exclude any traits that don't make the list.

I cannot define what is fun for anybody but myself. Listing off traits such as simplified mechanics, a metacurrency function, and a player-driven narrative explains nothing about how a system actually plays. I can imagine how that particular collection of traits could both be either fun or utterly tedious based on my preferences and experiences. Don't get me wrong, lables have their uses, but they don't do much to explain anything beyond broad classifications. Beverages can be broken down into juices, sodas, beers, etc., but that doesn't describe how anything actually tastes.

Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?

What I give a shit about is being offered to play in a ttrpg and come to find out they are playing a story game. Story games are great for those who enjoy them, but story games seem to demand recognition as a ttrpg when clearly they are not. And the foundations of story games are built on the premise that until they came along ttrpg's were fundamentally broken and bad game design when in fact it the other way around. ttrpg's have a depth to them bordering on fine art which many casual players will ever reach while story games are people sitting around talking out their ass and really, no one wants people talking breathlessly for minutes at a time. As a ttrpg'er I expect there to be a flow of action and uncertainty, that the world I am playing in has mulled over before hand by the GM and there is a "there" there. Doing something with intent results in better quality than playing to find out what happens. So to me story games are a casual affair with no investment by anyone at the table where well crafted living game worlds lifts everyone at the table into worlds one would not otherwise have lived. ttrpg's challange you to use the most fascinating thing about the human mind, imagination, while story games are purely a social happening much like going out to dinner with friends.

Quote from: the crypt keeper on October 16, 2022, 01:55:06 PM

Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?

What I give a shit about is being offered to play in a ttrpg and come to find out they are playing a story game. Story games are great for those who enjoy them, but story games seem to demand recognition as a ttrpg when clearly they are not. And the foundations of story games are built on the premise that until they came along ttrpg's were fundamentally broken and bad game design when in fact it the other way around.

Really? That was the founding principle? Or was it just born out of a desire for less-comprehensive rules to better cater the goal and play-style of the game?

Quotettrpg's have a depth to them bordering on fine art which many casual players will ever reach while story games are people sitting around talking out their ass and really, no one wants people talking breathlessly for minutes at a time.

Except that "story games are great for those who enjoy them."

QuoteAs a ttrpg'er I expect there to be a flow of action and uncertainty, that the world I am playing in has [been] mulled over before hand by the GM and there is a "there" there. Doing something with intent results in better quality than playing to find out what happens. So to me story games are a casual affair with no investment by anyone at the table where well crafted living game worlds lifts everyone at the table into worlds one would not otherwise have lived. ttrpg's challange you to use the most fascinating thing about the human mind, imagination, while story games are purely a social happening much like going out to dinner with friends.

You edited off the part of my post that was most salient, and by doing so I think you sorely missed the point. Even casual "social happenings" where people are talking out the asses can be a fun experience. Are you saying you don't like going out to dinner with friends? Because the fact you equate that to story games, which you denounce with such derision, is very curious. Maybe your point is that when you want a traditional rpg experience, you don't want a story game. Fine. When I want a beer, I don't want someone giving me a glass of warm milk. I get it. These are different experiences with different expectations of gameplay. But then to go off on tirade about how one is supposedly better than another is just weird. I mean... thanks for your opinion, I guess, but nothing you said is even remotely related to the point I was making.

Quote from: rytrasmi on October 16, 2022, 11:44:58 AM

Quote from: Lunamancer on October 16, 2022, 10:36:31 AM
If you to say the aim of the game is collaborative creation of these stories, there's more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak. I would make a strong case that AD&D helps facilitate better stories than most of the games ostensibly designed to do so. So if you want to say this type of game is something different from games like AD&D, the difference has to be in the method. And not anything involving the aim. Not, "Well, these games are for creating stories, and D&D is for simulating a fantasy world." It would be news to a lot of people playing D&D a long, long time that it actually isn't good for making stories and it's only for creating some kind of virtual reality.

Eh, well, broadly speaking there are two kinds of stories: 1) The 3-act structure and 2) Rambling shaggy-dog stories.

Some games are designed to elicit stories in 3-act structure. Let's call them story games. They provide incentives to generate introduction, confrontation, and resolution. Sometimes this advice enters into non-story game territory, such as advice that every scene (or every room of a dungeon) in a traditional RPG should pose a narrative question to the characters or that we should track torches with usage dice.

Some games are great at generating rambling "stories" that would make terrible movies. This kind of story only makes narrative sense to the players. Perhaps the story is honed over time in player memory. A long sandbox/dungeon crawl is remembered as a tighter more coherent story (the messy bits and loose ends being forgotten). You see this when players reminiscence about previous events in a traditional campaign. "Remember when we investigated the missing cattle, found this suspicious old guy, discovered he was a werewolf, and slayed him?" Yeah, okay, but what about the two-session distraction at the inn and the unnecessary detour into the abandoned quarry that only served to get so-and-so killed? Those scenes get left on the cutting room floor.

Comparing games/rules to decide a "better story" only makes sense if we know what a story is and how it's told. Story game are designed and intended to tell a story at the table with a minimum extraneous matter. Listening to someone re-tell a story-game story could actually be tolerable. Listening to a traditional RPG player re-tell a campaign would be mind-numbingly dull unless it's culled down to the essentials.

I think this is a really good way of approaching this question, because there are really two distinct kinds of story games and this puts a solid distinction between them. Really, I only consider Three Act games to be true Story Games because a story is supposed to have a beginning, middle, end, protagonists, and antagonists. If you don't have a set answer for the entire duration of your campaign, you don't have a story. You have a sandbox. I'm not going to say that's not fun, but it is something completely different.

Really?

A thread about what a storygame is and no one quotes the guy that literally invented the genre?

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html

Ron Edwards on the White Wolf "Storyteller" system: ("Narrativist play = "Storytelling" play.)

Quote from: Shit Ron Edwards said: on October 15, 2022, 12:01:58 AM
The so-called Storyteller rules-set is not especially, nor even partly, facilitative toward Narrativist play. Furthermore, I have observed only a decided minority of White Wolf play that can be called Narrativist, usually involving considerable rules-Drift.

Proof a broken watch can tell time twice a day.


The wikipedia entry does a decent job of describing what a storytelling game is fairly well:

Quote from: From Right-wing Wikipedia said: on October 15, 2022, 12:01:58 AM
...A storytelling game is a game where multiple players collaborate on telling a spontaneous story. Usually, each player takes care of one or more characters in the developing story. Some games in the tradition of role-playing games require one participant to take the roles of the various supporting characters, as well as introducing non-character forces (for example, a flood), but other systems dispense with this figure and distribute this function among all players.

i.e. The ability to manipulate the reality of the game setting is more evenly distributed among the participants in order to create a compelling "narrative" or story. This is in contrast to actual Roleplaying games where the players only have agency over their characters, and the GM runs the virtual game world.

This is all quite straightforward to anyone that was paying attention when the forge started to do their thing.

Of course WotC is busy doing the same "RPG's are Storytelling games" marketing BS that White Wolf did - muddying the waters for those that lack access to a dictionary, or the reading comprehension to understand the actual meaning of "Story".

The wikipedia entry was edited by storygamers as were a few RPG entries to better fit their 'narrative' as of last time I checked. They lie and to this day still try to lie about what is and isnt a story game.

As said. Normal story gamings been around from the get-go really.

This cult story gaming fakery cropped up about a decade+ ago. Round the same time SJWs were starting the 2010 wave. And use the same tactics and selling points as they do.

Want to talk about story gaming mechanics and play styles? Fine.

Want to extoll your cult's agenda and how you are going to 'save' me from the evil DM? Get lost.

Quote from: the crypt keeper on October 16, 2022, 01:55:06 PM

Quote from: Effete on October 16, 2022, 02:46:13 AM
Counter-question: Who really gives a shit?

What I give a shit about is being offered to play in a ttrpg and come to find out they are playing a story game. Story games are great for those who enjoy them, but story games seem to demand recognition as a ttrpg when clearly they are not.

Part of the problem is that the story gamer cultists invariably take things to the extreme. Ever pushing to remove more and more rules until you are not story gaming. You are just story telling. Which they will claim is a really real RPG.

The normal folk into normal story gaming are nothing like this and get unfortunately lumped in with the fruitcakes.