Story-creation games (storygames) - are they RPGs?

[S'mon]

Last Saturday was my first experience of a Storygame, Quest, at the London Indie RPG Meetup Group - London Indie RPG Meetup Group (London, England) - Meetup - we cooperated to create a story of galactic derring-do, missing space princesses, AI spaceships, space knights, mutants, interstellar war, and the Ultimate Secret.
It was a lot of fun, and there was some playing of various roles (eg at times I played the heroic space knight Gordon and the villainous General Veers, both serving King Arthur of Space-Camelot), but I'm uncertain that it could be considered a "Role-Playing Game" as I understand the term. I wonder what other people think - are Storygames RPGs? Are they a different sort of game?

 

[Lwaxy]

What makes its status as an RPG questionable for you?

I'm still not sure about what really composes a "storygame" because almost all of the games i played or ran created a story. And usually there is more than one person "directing" it, even during APs.

 

[Umbran]

"Storygame" and "Role Playing Game" are not mutually exclusive, but neither are they synonymous.

There are RPGs, like D&D, in which a player takes on the role of a specific character.

There are Storygames (like, say, Once Upon A Time, from Atlas Games), in which the players take on the task of telling a story - while they may have a personal or favorite character in the story, they are not taking on the role of the character. You might argue that in a pure Storygame, the action is almost all "meta" - you don't have mechanics to resolve what the characters does based on the character's traits, you have meta-mechanics to control the flow of story.

And, there are game with overlap - where the player has a single role they play, but also has considerable freedom in controlling the flow of story directly.

 

[S'mon]

What makes its status as an RPG questionable for you?

I'm still not sure about what really composes a "storygame" because almost all of the games i played or ran created a story. And usually there is more than one person "directing" it, even during APs.

I'm talking about games where the aim of the game is to mutually create a story. As opposed to games where story is a byproduct of play. I would put D&D in the latter category.

From what I can see, the story-creation games default to players in author-stance, thinking about the story they're crafting, whereas RPGs like D&D default to players in actor-stance, thinking about the role they're playing.

 

[Lwaxy]

I would put D&D in the latter category.

I wouldn't generally do that.

I have at least 4 groups where the story is what matters. In two cases, we even know how it is supposed to end. Getting there is the difficult part. While players play their characters (more than one, usually) they also direct the story, and if a heroic death or a spectacular rescue or any other cool element is somehow justifiable, it will be put in for the sake of drama. Like episodes in a series.

 

[Desdichado]

I'm still struggling with exactly what is meant by the term "storygames", frankly. I mean, you've defined it quite well as a game that focuses on the narrative aspect of the hobby so much that it's gone into quite a different direction than the mainstream of the hobby. I think that's reasonable, although it moves storygames into a rare, indie niche within the hobby overall.

Part of what I struggle with is the indiscriminate usage of the term in many discussions where I see it, though. If quite mainstream and relatively common playstyles of even D&D--such as anything other than "pure", unadultrated sandbox play--is labeled storygame--and I've seen that happen quite a few times--then I struggle with what the term even means.

However, in terms of how you're using the label I'd say... that it's a small niche within the hobby that's gone quite a different direction than the mainstream, and as such I have little to no experience with it.

Helpful, I know.

But my incredibly uninformed opinon on the matter is that yes, they are RPGs--even if only in the sense that they're a spin-off niche; an "extreme" expression of a certain playstyle preference, if you will, that comes from within the RPG hobby. To use a biological analogy, in cladistic analysis, any descendent of a given group is by definition also part of that group. You never become something else, you're always nested within your ancestral roots. I don't know that biological analogies work particularly well with this kind of endeavor, but I think in this case it still does; storygames aren't nearly far enough removed from their "parent hobby"--RPGs--to merit their own label yet.

 

[Mallus]

As opposed to games where story is a byproduct of play. I would put D&D in the latter category.

I'm hesitant to call "story" a byproduct in a game that begins with the player creating a fictional character to use as their playing piece. It's a bit like describing a car as the byproduct of an automobile factory.

I'd say games where the action is explicitly the PCs re- telling stories --ie Baron Munchhausen-- is rightly called a storygame.

Anything where the player, the "I" is currently experiencing the action, isn't. They're just role-playing games with different focuses, descriptive languages, and approaches to task/conflict resolution.

 

[S'mon]

But my incredibly uninformed opinon on the matter is that yes, they are RPGs--even if only in the sense that they're a spin-off niche; an "extreme" expression of a certain playstyle preference, if you will, that comes from within the RPG hobby. To use a biological analogy, in cladistic analysis, any descendent of a given group is by definition also part of that group.

In that case storygames would also be wargames, since tabletop RPGs are descended from wargames, then. That doesn't seem an accurate or useful description to me.

 

[S'mon]

However, in terms of how you're using the label I'd say... that it's a small niche within the hobby that's gone quite a different direction than the mainstream, and as such I have little to no experience with it.

Yes - and most of the people in the room I was playing with, were also the designers of the games. It seems to be a small and fairly self-contained hobby.

 

[S'mon]

Anything where the player, the "I" is currently experiencing the action, isn't. They're just role-playing games with different focuses, descriptive languages, and approaches to task/conflict resolution.

I think this conflates
(a) what the characters are doing - experiencing the action - and
(b) what the players are doing - creating a narrative.

Since in the storygames the players are not usually experiencing the action from the internal aspect of a character, but from the external aspect of an author/creator.

There are characters in storygames of course, but from what I saw there is often limited if any identification with them by the players - certainly no more than the identification of a GM with an NPC in a traditional RPG.