A Question Of Agency?

[FrogReaver]

I'm rather unclear on this point! Every sandbox, at some level boils down to a 'menu', that is it is some sort of collection of 'interesting situations' which are scattered around on some sort of 'map' (these could actually be anything, they are dungeons/lairs/terrain typically in most D&D games which are spread on a literal map). By dint of exploration and decision making the players select (or maybe stumble upon) some of these 'situations', or possibly learn about them and select them explicitly (IE they get a treasure map, they follow it instead of selling it).

I'm afraid your analogy can technically be used to describe the real world. Life is just a menu of "interesting situations". Which is why I said, call it that if you want, but that's a pretty shaky foundation to draw any kind of useful conclusions from.

 

[robconley]

I think upthread you said the you feel that games like Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark fall under "collaborative storytelling games" (which presumably this has some contrast with "traditional roleplaying games")?

I've heard this before by other parties. I'm wondering why you feel this way?

Because the focus on creating a narrative (story) collaboratively using the mechanics of a game. Just a wargames is a focus on achieving the victory conditions of a scenario, and tabletop roleplaying is about interacting with a setting as a character with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

Now before you (and readers) thinking I am drawing hard and fast lines, it about focus. Focus is inherently fuzzy and readily adapted to hybrid forms. This can be illustrated clearly by the difference between Melee and The Fantasy Trip. Battletech and Mechwarrior. The former games are considered wargames, while the latter games are consider roleplaying game.

As they both use the same mechanics the only substantial difference is of focus. What you intend to do with the mechanics. In Melee the intent is to defeat your opponent(s) in a melee by achieving the victory conditions of the scenarios like last man standing. In The Fantasy Trip the focus is on pretending to be a character having adventures using the rules of Melee to handle combat.

In Battletech the focus is on defeating your opponents by commanding Battlemechs and other forces and achieving some victory condition. In Mechwarrior the focus on playing the pilot of a Battletech and while the system uses Battletech to resolve Mech on Mech combat it incorporate a lot of other subsystems and material not relevant to people focused on playing Battletech.

So it was with Blackmoor the first tabletop roleplaying campaign. By all the account I read, at first it would look and feel like an elaborate wargame campaign. While players were their character within the campaign, it was more of means to fight the larger battle of law versus chaos with both side comprised of players. But with advent of the Blackmoor Dungeon the focus and campaign shifted into something we would recognize today as tabletop roleplaying. Why? Because exploration of the Blackmoor Dungeon was a choice of the player as their character. It wasn't really relevant to the law versus chaos scenario. Ultimately it proved a distraction which lead to the downfall and exile of the forces of law. But it was so popular and so well-like that exploration of dungeons and ruins like the City of the Gods became Dave Arneson's campaign focus thus giving birth to tabletop roleplaying.

So with storygames, the focus is on collaborative storytelling using the rules of a game. Which values certain mechanics over other. Just as mass combat rules fell by the wayside and became a niche for tabletop roleplaying. It doesn't mean that there isn't overlap or hybrid system that straddle the line. As I said kitbashing previously I find kitbashing is the norm not the exception.

My view is that wargame, tabletop roleplaying, and story games lie on a spectrum. Yet each has a distinct focus. None of them are a 2.0 version of the others. Instead it represent increase in the variety and types of game.


So how is this theorycraft of any practical use?
The implication of my assertion is that rather than picking a game and then building a campaign. You decide on a campaign, what you want to focus on. Build the setting of the campaign whether it is wargame, roleplaying game, or storygame. Then pick the rules that best suits the campaign. One case it may be Blade in the Dark, another is may be D&D 5e, and another still it may be Shadowrun Crossfire. And you don't have to "pure". You can take a little from each game the only value judgement is whether detail makes the campaign your group want to run less work and more fun to play out.

I happen to be focused on having the players play as their character experiencing a setting. You may be more focused on collaborative narrative with everybody pitching in on a equal basis. With those as framework each of can work our group to pick or define a setting, and the rules we will play by.

Hope that clarify things.

Again, like my (stupidly obnoxiously WTF) long post above, I have to bin this as another misapprehension of what is happening both at the systemization level and at the actual table level (the play) of these games.

If I were forced to give these games a tighter zoom name than Story Now (which does not translate to collaborate storytelling) or Play to Find Out, it would be Protagonist Collision gaming.

Players create dramatic need-laden protagonists under system premise (eg Gods watchdogs meting out justice and upholding the Faith in a supernatural wild west that never was) > GM creates threats/obstacles to the PCs dramatic needs > these things collide and we see who is ascendant, who is broken/bulwarked/changed (and how), and who is dust.

My view it still a form of collaborative storytelling but one with a more competitive or resource bound aspect. The challenge is how can I create a interesting with my group given the resources the system given me. The resource being some type of metagame mechanic or currency that player not the character can do. Or maybe it a zero sum setup and more competitive. Like I said all sort of hybrids are possible.
However in traditional roleplaying because of it focus, players don't expect to be able to something that their character can't do. The game you describe, the player can do more than what their character can do. From I seen
As player you have mechanics at your disposal

Story emerges out of that, but the process is definitely not collaborative (in the "hey guys we're all on the same side here lets get this rock up this hill" kind of way).

Competition can be a form of collaboration as far as the end result goes. Look at places of natural beauty like rain forest. Definitely some competition there but yet the result is something complex that defies the laws of thermodynamic.

Wrapping it up.
If you think I am an old gamer talking weird naughty word, I am not offended. I well aware that my view are not shared the mainstream or many of the niches of our hobby.

I believe my view has a practical application help people produce campaign that are fun and interesting to play.

• Figure out what you or the group want to focus on for the campaign
• Make a setting for the campaign
• Create or collect the rules need to make the above happen.
• Play

Note that nowhere I am saying how to play the campaign. Just pick whatever make it work the way you and your group wants to work.

 

[Fenris-77]

I often consider the campaign and setting before I think about rules set, and the choose the rules that best suit the kind of game I/we want it to be, or the rules that best emulate some genre bits, or what have you. Rules in service of the desired play experience rather than the other way around.

 

[Campbell]

I have never really liked the comparison of games like Sorcerer and Apocalypse World to collaborative storytelling largely because the impression I get from that is players and GM colluding together and making decisions based on what they think will result in the best story. I have seen some groups do this in Fate as well as some mainstream RPGs (Vampire and Fifth Edition). I am no fan of this sort of play although Fate does an admirable job of enabling it.

That's about as far from my experience of Apocalypse World as you could be. As a player I'm just like advocating for my character in the same way I would in any other roleplaying game. There's some collaboration in setting design, but not like in the moment of play. Rather the focus is on playing the character in moments of stress and finding out who they really are when push comes to shove. It's an exploration of the inner world rather than the outer.

The GM's role is quite different, but again not really about telling stories. Rather their job is to design scenarios that test the character and get to their truth.

If anything I guess we could call it a storyfinding rather than storytelling game, but my preferred nomenclature these days is character exploration game as juxtaposed against setting or world exploration game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I would say that people with other play preferences do also make somewhat similar mistakes in their framing where they fail to see the constraints of those play priorities as meaningful constraints. Like in most Story Now play a player is free to decide what their character wants, but there is a shared expectation that they will push hard for that once established. We all have expectations for their play. This means players are not free to explore for the sake of exploring. There's nothing to explore besides character. Setting is built in a lazy fashion. We often do not see this as a constraint because it's what we want.

I think, maybe somewhat in a way that is analogous to other people saying that a sandbox can lead to player agenda focused play, that a 'story now' or 'zero myth' type of game can also lead to exploration. Think about it this way, it doesn't matter when the GM, or a player for that matter, made up a piece of fiction. It is equally unknown and surprising to the other participants in the game either way. No 'lesser amount of exploration' therefor happens in my DW campaign where the material flows directly out of my brain, and onto the table in real time, vs @Bedrockgames or @estar, @Lanefan, or @FrogReaver when they run a sandbox and make it up a month ahead of time, or the night before. Heck, they're telling me that most of what they do is made up on the spot anyway! So in terms of exploration, nobody is losing out. They may be, in my game, learning more about areas of the setting that they are directly interested in based on their 'drives' though. Nor are they necessarily likely to learn about something simply because I wanted it to appear, as might be the case in an AP.

There is a contention that somehow there is more verisimilitude in the sandbox, because somehow the decisions being made about what takes place are theoretically less focused on some notion of 'what naturally follows' from the current fiction. Also perhaps that there is likely less meta-plot in zero myth (I guess tautologically that is true on day one, but it need not remain so throughout the game). I'm not sure I buy these things. Maybe players feel that fairly arbitrary-seeming responses of the world to their queries (yeah, your brother is dead) seem more authentic? I'm pretty dubious. It could be that its a little easier to achieve that feeling in, say, a sandbox, but I'm kind of a data-driven type, so I'm suspicious of those kinds of claims.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is almost impossible to talk about in the, heh, abstract. You can posit the situation, sure, but I suspect that most groups wouldn't have that problem. Lots of games have more or less abstract systems for all manner of things, and players that like those games seem to do just fine. Obviously not every game is for everyone of course, so I'm sure at least some people would have the problem you outline, but I don't think it's a matter of Blades being too abstract at all, but rather a matter of some players enjoying an different play experience.

Yeah, I was only discussing that in the context of lifting it and dropping it into a D&D game of the type @estar was talking about. It works great in BitD because the players simply create some fiction for themselves as they go about taking advantage of a bonus or whatever. Because very little is nailed down about the setting in terms of factual details they are free to do that, and it is simply part of the process.

OTOH once you are in estar's high background detail 'Majestic Wilderlands' (or whatever) then how would the players do that? They can't easily just invent an old boarded over basement window everyone forgot about, for example. Nor can they simply invent a judge to be bribed to explain the +1 they got on some check because they own the Warehouse District. All of that COULD be sorted out, but it has to be sorted out by the GM, because nobody else has permission to introduce any fiction, and nobody else has his (what must be) 1000's and 1000's of pages of notes on everything under the Sun! In a more subtle way, how fitting are all of those details to the execution of a given sort of activity (IE gang building in this case) to the established fiction, which is so dense that there may well be no area in the whole setting where you won't run into endless obstacles that thwart any such effort? Now, we don't know of that is true or not in this specific case, but as a player contemplating taking on some sort of activity like that, I'm already a bit worried.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, I was only discussing that in the context of lifting it and dropping it into a D&D game of the type @estar was talking about. It works great in BitD because the players simply create some fiction for themselves as they go about taking advantage of a bonus or whatever. Because very little is nailed down about the setting in terms of factual details they are free to do that, and it is simply part of the process.

OTOH once you are in estar's high background detail 'Majestic Wilderlands' (or whatever) then how would the players do that? They can't easily just invent an old boarded over basement window everyone forgot about, for example. Nor can they simply invent a judge to be bribed to explain the +1 they got on some check because they own the Warehouse District. All of that COULD be sorted out, but it has to be sorted out by the GM, because nobody else has permission to introduce any fiction, and nobody else has his (what must be) 1000's and 1000's of pages of notes on everything under the Sun! In a more subtle way, how fitting are all of those details to the execution of a given sort of activity (IE gang building in this case) to the established fiction, which is so dense that there may well be no area in the whole setting where you won't run into endless obstacles that thwart any such effort? Now, we don't know of that is true or not in this specific case, but as a player contemplating taking on some sort of activity like that, I'm already a bit worried.

To be fair, the presence of something like the boarded up window, or the judge, are perfectly possible in many many instances of sandbox. The players ask and the GM decides, right? In some, I will grant you, the ability of the players to 'ask' is pretty curtailed, but that's on the GM, not the play style. In my sandboxes, for example, both the window and the judge happen all the time because of the way I run my games. That's not to say there's no difference between Blades and traditional OSR sandbox play, because there is. The fact that the permissions are hard coded into the Blades rules set is a significant difference, as it means those things are no longer up to the whim of the individual GM, which I think is your main point, if I'm readings you right.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

We not talking software but people. People do the actualizing not the mechanics. When mechanics are used it because people chose to use them as the way to actualize the principle. But is not necessary or a requirement but a preference.

Well I would suggest you write out to yourself how you run narrative games in a manner that relatively systemless. Then whenever you use a system don't use what fits, alter what needed and go from there.

This is speaking from the experience of dragging the same setting, Majestic Wilderlands, through a dozen system over 40 years. A hopefully more accessible example is Adventures in Middle Earth versus 5e. AiME successfully adapt 5e into a Middle Earth roleplaying by jettisoning most of the lists and creating new elements for their lists (class, creatures, cultures, items, etc). Adapting an existing mechanics (feats) into something different (virtues) but better suited for a ME mechanics. Finally adding new subsystems (Audiences, Shadow, etc) fill in things that needed to be addressed in a ME campaign but wasn't in 5e.

The same with how you run narrative. List out all that you do without reference to a system. Then evaluate the new system in that light. Jettison what doesn't fit like Wizards, Spells, and Cleric for AiME, kept what does, add what missing and keep it consistent with the bases system like AiME's Journey, Audience, and Shadow rules.

There is no reason you can't use adapt the D&D mechanics to the structure that Blades in the Dark as long as you understand how D&D works and what it means to use that but not this. For example many people consider the encounter balance guidelines as part of the rules. They are not. However they were use extensively in D&D 4e organized play and the published modules. But one could, as I did, ignore them completely and run a D&D 4e campaign like one did for GURPS or AD&D. Like I did with my Majestic Wilderlands.

Well, we will have to differ on the subject of principles and mechanical structure to support specific styles of play. Believe me, I've gamed for as long as anyone here, and invented a wide variety of games of all ilks, including a few homebrew RPGs. Played a lot of published games too.

For instance, I don't agree with you that you can really adapt D&D to work like BitD. The very structure of how characters are built and how they advance will work against you. By the time you removed all the rules from D&D that you don't want/need/get in the way, nothing would be left! Sure, you might be able to play a game where you have STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA 3-18 ranges, hit points, and armor class, but maybe even those constructs won't work for you in all games!

In any case, I find it extremely easy to say that there are appropriate games for specific styles of play, moods, genre conventions, and even specific milieu. I mean, sure AiME works, but as you pointed out, they got rid of a lot. I would also say that this is a 'D&D adjacent genre', but the same sort of process would never work to make an RPG about being a Marine in WWII in the Pacific, right?

 

[pemerton]

I was especially disappointed with the experience I had with CoC a few years ago when trying to play it in a way analogous to how I would run narrative games. It just got in the way so much that I would really never run it again, though I am a fan of the genre. Maybe someone more skilled than I am can do it, but CoC actively inhibits narrative style play in multiple ways (and is just painfully clunky, I'm amazed I was able to run it back in the 80's without more trouble).

I would strongly recommend Cthulhu Dark. 4 pages. I've used it twice for one-shots. No prep required for an excellent play experience.

 

[Fenris-77]

Hmm, there's some middle ground there. Flashbacks work just fine in D&D, and the idea of a roll to determine starting position works fine too. I know becauce I've adapted some Blades stuff to run heist games in D&D. It's not identical of course, but you can nudge D&D closer than you might think with just some minor tinkering. It would be easier to just run Blades of course, but sometimes what you have is D&D players who want to play a heist. Anythewho, not to derail us, just tossing that out there.