A Question Of Agency?

[Fenris-77]

The phrase 'storytelling' does seem to be a bee in some bonnets, yeah. Those same people tend to dislike emergent fiction as well, while I think that sounds like something you flash from under a beige overcoat. I can sympathize with people not wanting story to be a focus though, and there are conceptions of how that looks that can feel like you, as a player, are some how beholden to to the group in a way that in many games you aren't, or shouldn't be, because in many cases while each player is playing their character, and responding in character to the events in game, they aren't making any kind of conscious attempt to 'tell a story'.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yeah, it doesn’t necessarily bother me personally, but I recognize it as a bit loaded to some folks.

In this case, I don’t think it’s the term so much as the idea that it’s the goal itself for some games but not for others.

Especially when, from many examples provided, often those who say storytelling isn’t their goal are eschewing actual game mechanics.

In that sense, storytelling seems almost foundational for that approach. Seems odd to then say that it’s not a goal of play.

Eh. The replacement for mechanics isn't a goal of telling a story, but a goal of "replicating reality," or any other similar term. Granted, I find this goal a grand lie, as all that is happening is that one person's assumptions are being substituted in and then reified as replicating reality, but the goal isn't storytelling, and I'm not sure the outcome can rightly be called crafting a story. A story results, but, again, this is so broadly true as to be trivial. I think that the label storygame only really fits if the goal is to craft a story primarily and/or story advocacy is strongly indicated by play.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I agree with @Fenris-77 that the dichotomy between "telling an interesting story" and "advancing the characters' agendas" isn't so stark as you seem to imply here. There's absolutely nothing that says you can't tell interesting stories by advancing the characters' agendas. I mean, if a GM (or publisher) writes an interesting story" in the form of an Adventure Path, there's not likely to be much if any consideration of any individual character's (or a given party's) agenda, but that's a specific type of play.

The word I used was advocacy. What are you advocating for? There's always a story that will emerge, for better or worse, entertaining or not, from any play. The point of my post wasn't to say that story didn't happen with character advocacy, but that forming a good story was not the motivator for the player's actions. IE, the player advocated for their character, and a story occurred, rather than the character was moved in a way that best created a story. It's an important distinction, and why I used the word I did.

One of my favorite games featured quite a lot of story advocacy, in that I often subsumed my character's goals to maintain cohesion and promote story. It was a hoot -- so I have nothing against this mode of play. I think it's required for games like 5e, for instance, to often subsume character to the group. Usually this is accomplished by limited the scope of characters to those that function in this manner, so it's hard to detect because the decision is made early and is nearly universal. There's a reason there's a strong aversion to lone wolf types or evil characters in a lot of the D&D world -- character advocacy in these cases clashes with the norms of story advocacy in the zeitgeist.

In other games, character is primary, and inter-character conflicts are not avoided if character advocacy demands it. AW does this well, for instance.

 

[Lanefan]

I'll also note that your approach to 5e is highly idiosyncratic. There's no space in the 5e rules for "roll a d20, don't roll a 1."

Sure there is. The DM gets to set the DC of anything, and here it's been set at whatever 2-plus-modifiers would be.

 

[Fenris-77]

Eh. The replacement for mechanics isn't a goal of telling a story, but a goal of "replicating reality," or any other similar term. Granted, I find this goal a grand lie, as all that is happening is that one person's assumptions are being substituted in and then reified as replicating reality, but the goal isn't storytelling, and I'm not sure the outcome can rightly be called crafting a story. A story results, but, again, this is so broadly true as to be trivial. I think that the label storygame only really fits if the goal is to craft a story primarily and/or story advocacy is strongly indicated by play.

If we want to talk about story I think the only level that it's close to universally true at, for given values of true, is that each player might perhaps be said to be crafting their own story, the story of their character. Like X versions of the same novel or something. In some games there might be a consensus that a larger story is a desirable outcome (great) but I still don't think that playing an RPG, described at the level of the party, is in any useful way synonymous with storytelling unless a group effort is made to make it so.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Sure there is. The DM gets to set the DC of anything, and here it's been set at whatever 2-plus-modifiers would be.

Sure, although the DC can't be "don't roll a one" by the rules. That's a die-based resolution, not a DC.

 

[FrogReaver]

Sure, although the DC can't be "don't roll a one" by the rules. That's a die-based resolution, not a DC.

Just sounds like another way to describe the dc to me.

 

[Ovinomancer]

If we want to talk about story I think the only level that it's close to universally true at, for given values of true, is that each player might perhaps be said to be crafting their own story, the story of their character. Like X versions of the same novel or something. In some games there might be a consensus that a larger story is a desirable outcome (great) but I still don't think that playing an RPG, described at the level of the party, is in any useful way synonymous with storytelling unless a group effort is made to make it so.

A group effort IS made to make it so. There's all kinds of agreements to not fight with each other, to share similar goals, to avoid acts that harm others, even indirectly. This is an extremely common set of agreements made in party focused games. The system itself reinforces this by framing challenges at the party level rather than the individual level (go ahead, figure out how to use the CR system for a single character) and by advice like spotlight sharing and pacing (the rest structure is focused on this kind of party-level balancing). 5e games that feature common PvP, or actions taken against other party members, are very rare.

 

[prabe]

The word I used was advocacy. What are you advocating for? There's always a story that will emerge, for better or worse, entertaining or not, from any play. The point of my post wasn't to say that story didn't happen with character advocacy, but that forming a good story was not the motivator for the player's actions. IE, the player advocated for their character, and a story occurred, rather than the character was moved in a way that best created a story. It's an important distinction, and why I used the word I did.

That's fair and reasonable. I guess I think more-interesting stories are likely to emerge from play if the players are advocating for (or at least honestly playing) their characters in pursuit of their agendas, than if they are focused on what will make a better story, or persistently subsuming their agenda to make a better story (which I think is different than deciding to help another character pursue their agenda).

 

[Fenris-77]

First I had one hair, now I have two! Abracadabra!