D&D General DM Authority

[Chaosmancer]

K. If everything is "story" then it does no good to call something a collaborative "story" game. Just drop the "story" and call it a collaborative game. There's just as much information being conveyed in either case.

shrug Maybe. But people like to emphasize story for certain games, making a distinction between cooperative games like Pandemic and Roleplaying Games like DnD.

My only point is that blanketly saying that RPGs have no aspect of Collaborative Storytelling seems to go against the vision of that held by many people.

Nope. That's not what is being talked about at all. Roleplaying your character and seeing the world through his eyes would have the opposite reaction in that situation. "I'm going to take vengeance on the thief that took my stuff". What you are describing is the player viewing D&D from a more gamist perspective - which also has it's place as D&D is a game as well.

Speaking of, "the thief stole all your stuff", isn't particularly fun or engaging play for most people. I'd be pretty pissed to if it seemed that was done solely via DM fiat. #1 unspoken rule of most D&D games is that DM fiat shouldn't screw over players.

You seem to be hearing something different than what I am saying, which is making this a very hard conversation to have.

I have seen and dealt with people who felt their character was simply just an extension of them, and therefore they got incredibly defensive and angry when that character was under pressure, because it felt like they were personally being attacked at the table instead of their character being attacked in the game.

That is the perspective I believe @loverdrive was referencing. Not "Author Stance" vs "Token Stance" or "Gamist Perspective" vs "Theater Perspective" or anything else. You guys keep trying to make this some sort of attack of preferences when it was really just talking about people who take offense to bad things happening to their character, because it always feels like a personal attack on them.

It is something that happens. It is well documented, and it doesn't involve any of the things you guys are taking offense about.

Your point is literally: "Everything is a story and therefore D&D is as well". That's not a meaningful point. So what if it's a story by that definition when literally everything is? It's just semantics and even more meaningless semantics than the usual sort as the definition you are advocating for is empty and void of communicating any important idea.

No.

The point was put forward that isn't the biggest part of all RPGs collaborative storytelling.

This was repudiated by people claiming, "No, it isn't a story, it is just a series of things happening to people as they try and react to what is going on"

Well, if I look up "Non-Fiction Story" I see... ah, Hidden Figures, perfect example. There was a book and a movie made about this. The lives of three women, and how they overcame challenges and reacted to the events in their lives.

Now, I suppose someone could claim that that only became a story because an author or director came in and consolidated it into a new medium for presental, but then I'm reminded of a very simple question I heard in a movie last night "Mommy, can you tell me the story about how you and Daddy met?"

We don't see there as being anything false in calling the recounting of events in a persons life a story.

So, there is a strong basis for the nature of Role-Playing games being about storytelling. They aren't games about gathering points, or objective quests, in fact, the closest video game equivalents to DnD are generally those that tell a story.

Skyrim tells a story. Baldur's Gate tells a story. Fallout tells a story.

Therefore I can find no reason to say that claiming an RPG is in large part about telling a story is wrong. Especially when it would not be unusual for a DM to plan a plot.

Agreed. That's why i brought up football. That's why someone else brought up chess. Football and Chess are much more akin to the type of story D&D produces than what the typical connotation would imply. (Assuming one is good with calling what football and chess produces a story).

I disagree. First of all, both Football and Chess can easily (and have been) made into stories.

Secondly, there is a difference in objectives.

Chess ends when one player admits defeat or when the King is captured.
Football ends after three hours and twelve minutes, barring overtime to prevent a tied score.

When does DnD end? When the players sit down to play, what objective are they striving to achieve? It changes, depending on the story being told.

 

[Don Durito]

Yeah. The role part is really, at least as originally conceived, fundamentally about being able to have an infinite range of responses to situations, and a human referee to arbritrate them. It's as if you're losing a game of chess, and you decide you want to try and turn the tide by inspiring the enemy pawns to revolt against their king.

Character motivations and the like come later - and can actually cause conflict with the original intent. If a player is trying role-play an 8 Int Half-Orc and then they're actually likely to try and switch of the their brain when engaging in complex puzzle like situations rather then leaning into that.

 

[Helldritch]

Emphatically not true, @Helldritch. It's not only 100% viable to play D&D without character motivations that differ from player motivations—and extremely fun!—it's also arguably the original way that D&D was intended by its creators to work.

Yes, in the beginning, D&D was a wargame. It was not a role playing game. Note the evolution it had. From a wargame to a RPG, things have changed. The focus is no longer on combat (bit they are still a big part, but not the only part) but also on role play. It is the later part that will make stories about RPG sessions way more interesting and much more easier to create.

My point still stand

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, I've not seen those be problems tied to the perspective I was referring to. They don't want things to happen in-fiction that force them out of making decisions in-character, and they don't want it to be impossible to imagine that the world is not mercurial (guess I couldn't find a worse way to say this?). If another player can (from outside the fiction), change the world in-play (as opposed to behind the scenes or when the GM does it), they can't have the feeling of a versimilitudinous world.

I can quite get not wanting scene-editing or the like for that too, it just seems to me that if I found that disruptive, I'd also find the fact that a fifth level fighter can take so much more punishment than a first to be a problem, too; I mean, people are going to find a problem with immersion where they do, but that strikes me as being pretty selective about what's needed to be a "convincing" world.

I think the things you mention are more theoretical issues for people who enjoy rules and crunch, that would rarely if ever pull a person with the preferences I mentioned, out of immersion during Actual Play. And on the rare cases it does it usually has more to do with how the GM integrate the rules and fiction.

I've seen it do so in the past. Where people found themselves having to reify it (in other words come up for reasons why it worked like that in-world), with some pretty degenerate results (aka characters who acted like they knew they could take more damage, because acting like that wasn't true in character while it clearly was out of character was exactly the same sort of dissonance they had with metacurrancy.)

I mean, I am not sure what you mean by level variable hit points, but how often does this come up in actual play, in-fiction, that it makes the world seem incoherent? Could the GM have described things in a way that made sense? Not sure where the issue comes up as I haven't seen it. Assuming you mean "hit" as opposed to "strike", I have seen some issues here, but it just requires the GM to describe things in a way that works.

The GM could do that with metacurrancy, too; it just requires the players to wall off what they know from what the player knows. If they can't or don't want to do one, the other seems no more easy.

D&D is by no means perfect for this type of play, but neither is any system, on the whole I have had the best experience (with this type of play) using some versions of D&D. Of course D&D isn't perfect for any type of play (nor is any game), certainly not more player authorial style which it doesn't even claim to support without optional rules and which MANY other games are explicitly designed to handle.

However, systems with less blatant stylized, abstracted, honestly war-game derived mechanics can at least be closer.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Emphatically not true, @Helldritch. It's not only 100% viable to play D&D without character motivations that differ from player motivations—and extremely fun!—it's also arguably the original way that D&D was intended by its creators to work.

At the very least, its been a common case with token play for decades.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Definitions that make discussion difficult within the context should be avoided. ie; "Let's talk about x in collaborative storytelling games!" "All games are collaborative storytelling games, even Chess and Go Fish!" it's just counter productive.

Sure, but that isn't what is happening.

"RPGs are in large part about collaborative storytelling"

"No, Role-playing what role-playing games are about, you can't tell a story without an author."

Well, yes, you can. Storytelling is woven into the DNA of RPGs, and trying to separate those makes no sense. Sure, if someone wanted to ask, "What is the best Colloborative Storytelling Game" that would lead to an entirely different discussion, but trying to say that storytelling has nothing in common with RPGs?

That is wrong.

That's fine, you don't understand something that is important to other people. My issue is that I am going to guess that you don't actually want to understand their point of view.

No. The issue is I think people are discussing a topic that has nothing to do with the point being raised.

#1 "All players should be Actors and enjoy the game from that player stance" was not what was being said.

#2 "Players should remember to separate the idea of their character from themselves, because bad things happening to their character is not an attack on the player at the table" was what was being said.


I completely agree with you that #1 is an inappropriate statement and should get pushback, but arguing #1 when the point was #2 is like salting your driveway in the Summer. You aren't helping anything, and you are kind of making a mess.

No, they didn't say that it was "a fundamental part of the experience", they said it was; "the main thing" which is very different.

Potato Potatoh

What you are saying here though; "working together to craft a story" I wouldn't even agree "is a fundamental part of the experience of RPGs". Working to Craft a story just isn't a part of the game to some people, let alone a fundamental one.

Why, because they don't take actions to progress the plot? They don't have dialogue with side-characters? What exactly is missing from RPGs that prevents it from being about making a story for a large group of people?

1st person narration and "actor stance" are different things.

Okay, but neither of them were what was being discussed.

People take offense when bad things happen to characters they don't see as projections of themselves.

People roleplay characters they see as projections of themselves and don't get offended when bad things happen to them.

People can play in "actor stance" or whatever you want to call it, not wanting to consider the overall story in their decisions, and not see the character as projections of themselves.

Sure, people can.

But generally if a person has a hard time separating their character from themselves, it is more likely to cause problems in the long run.

Not because of whatever playstyle thing you think I'm talking about, but because being unable to seperate your character from yourself means that when the DM plans on bad things happening, you are more likely to feel personally attacked instead of seeing it as just part of the game.

 

[happyhermit]

I have seen and dealt with people who felt their character was simply just an extension of them, and therefore they got incredibly defensive and angry when that character was under pressure, because it felt like they were personally being attacked at the table instead of their character being attacked in the game.

It's the "therefore" where you lose me. People can see their character as an extension and not get offended, and people can get offended when they don't see their character that way. Getting offended is the issue and it's not a necessary result of that way of playing.

That is the perspective I believe @loverdrive was referencing. Not "Author Stance" vs "Token Stance" or "Gamist Perspective" vs "Theater Perspective" or anything else. You guys keep trying to make this some sort of attack of preferences when it was really just talking about people who take offense to bad things happening to their character, because it always feels like a personal attack on them.

It does seem like you are talking more about the "self-insert" character at this point, which is a different issue and doesn't seem to match what I was originally responding to, but it also doesn't have to lead to taking offense, and of course people who don't play self- inserts can take offense as well.

but then I'm reminded of a very simple question I heard in a movie last night "Mommy, can you tell me the story about how you and Daddy met?"

We don't see there as being anything false in calling the recounting of events in a persons life a story.

Sure, but if someone described their relationship as; "They worked together to craft a story" most people would wonder what the heck was going on.

Therefore I can find no reason to say that claiming an RPG is in large part about telling a story is wrong.

I do, because it doesn't have to be (using a useful definition of story, not one that says "any game is telling a story") and so, it's putting one's own preferences onto others. Nothing wrong with saying it CAN be a large part of the game, or even the biggest part. Unless, you mean that a particular game is in large part about telling a story, that could be true, depending.

 

[Maxperson]

Without these, it stops being a role playing game. And Frogreaver is 100% right at that point. But D&D is a role playing game. No role, no D&D but a simple hack and slash game. At that point, play a video game. At least you won't wait for a DM and you will be able to play zounds of hours in a row.

That's simply untrue. There are multiple ways to play a role, and investing yourself in the character to think and decide how it does is only one of them. Another way is to be yourself as a fighter named Gorock and go around making decisions you would make while in the role of a D&D fighter. There's not One True Way to roleplay.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Yes, in the beginning, D&D was a wargame. It was not a role playing game. Note the evolution it had. From a wargame to a RPG, things have changed. The focus is no longer on combat (bit they are still a big part, but not the only part) but also on role play. It is the later part that will make stories about RPG sessions way more interesting and much more easier to create.

My point still stand

D&D did not in any meaningful sense "evolve" from a wargame into a roleplaying game, because it was never a wargame. (It was called a "fantasy wargame" in 1974 because the term "roleplaying game" had yet to be invented, but the game did not significantly change between 1974 and 1977 when we first see the term "roleplaying game" replace the term "wargame" in D&D's subtitle.)

Even at its earliest, when D&D did ostensibly (and optionally!) use a wargame (Chainmail) as one of its component parts, to substitute for having a robust combat system of its own, it was also using parts of Avalon Hill's Outdoor Survival board game for other purposes. Because the focus of the game was almost entirely on dungeon and wilderness exploration, not combat.

In other words; your point not still stand

 

[Chaosmancer]

It's the "therefore" where you lose me. People can see their character as an extension and not get offended, and people can get offended when they don't see their character that way. Getting offended is the issue and it's not a necessary result of that way of playing.

People can juggle chainsaws and not get cut too.

But if I see someone starting to throw chainsaws in the air, I'm going to be concerned that they are doing something dangerous that could seriously backfire.

It does seem like you are talking more about the "self-insert" character at this point, which is a different issue and doesn't seem to match what I was originally responding to, but it also doesn't have to lead to taking offense, and of course people who don't play self- inserts can take offense as well.

Self-Inserts are basically what I am talking about, and what I believe @loverdrive was talking about. That's why I keep trying to tell people that I think you misunderstood their point and began arguing a context that they were not assuming.

Sure, but if someone described their relationship as; "They worked together to craft a story" most people would wonder what the heck was going on.

Or they would feel they are being poetic.

Besides, while going out on a date is living in the moment, playing a game where you decide your character goes on a date is a step removed and far more likely to be understood as "crafting a story"

I do, because it doesn't have to be (using a useful definition of story, not one that says "any game is telling a story") and so, it's putting one's own preferences onto others. Nothing wrong with saying it CAN be a large part of the game, or even the biggest part. Unless, you mean that a particular game is in large part about telling a story, that could be true, depending.

Perhaps that is fair, but I think the vast majority of people on this thread engage in the same types of actions, that lead to the same type of story-telling.

When the DM sits down and says "You are all mercenaries working for the Blackhand" then they have begun crafting a story that the players are participating in.

When the DM asks "What do you do" after the King is shot by assassins, then you are in part crafting a story. The story can be framed as "what would Jason (the player) do" or "What would Robpierre (the character) do" but there is still a narrative going on and being followed as a fundamental part of the gameplay loop.