What is a Roleplaying Game?
This is a difficult question, because "roleplaying game" means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. However, at an
extremely high level, a "roleplaying game" is firstly some kind of
game--an activity with rules and many different possible outcomes, compared to things like puzzles with only one valid solution, or artistic pursuits where "rules" don't really apply. Secondly, it concerns
roleplay, that is, pretending to be someone you aren't in a fictional situation. If these sound like extremely generic terms, that's because they are; a lot of different things are "roleplaying games," and it is difficult to capture all of them in a single description.
So what is Swords Thrown Among Radiant Stars?
STARS is what some call a "Story Now" roleplaying game. This means that, generally speaking, the impetus for the characters to take action, for adventure to happen, for brave deeds or craven crawling...is you, the player. A "Story Now" game is focused on protagonists (you and your fellow players) going after whatever it is they believe worth seeking (their goal), examining and exploring the places they find themselves in and the events around them (their situation), and deciding what they're willing to do or endure to achieve that goal (resulting conflict). You then repeat this process for as long as it remains interesting for you to do so! Through your process of choosing a goal, facing situations, and resolving conflicts, you'll learn about yourselves and your characters, and leave a legacy to be remembered. Or, at least, that's the hope!
Like with many other roleplaying games--some you have most likely already heard of--there is someone there to facilitate this process, the Stargazer or "SG." Unlike the game masters of those other games, however, the intended purpose of the Stargazer in STARS is not to
create plot hooks for you to choose from. STARS is not meant to be a game where the players passively accept whatever things the SG tells them are valuable, nor even one where the players simply choose whatever they think is most interesting from a palette of prepared options. Instead, the players have control over what gets served up, with the Stargazer simply setting the stage so that the players can do what they like on it. Of course, sometimes in order for the players to be able to do what they like, certain things have to be
on the stage: you can't challenge your fear of heights by climbing a mountain if there's no surface to climb. This process, of furnishing players with the necessary situation elements so they can experience or endure conflict, is called "scene framing" or "framing the scene." It's one of the most important skills for every SG to learn, particularly because it is very easy to accidentally move from merely framing scenes and into writing plots.
It can be helpful to compare "Story Now" games to the two main alternatives, "Story Before" and "Story After." Most roleplaying games today are "Story Before." The players carefully create their characters, perhaps working with other players to do so, and write out comprehensive backstories, which will be used as the seeds for planned-in-advance character developments. The game master creates comprehensive world lore and information, develops various potential enemies and allies, and generally fills up the world with content. This may be a fully pre-written plot where player choice doesn't actually change anything (what some people call "railroading"), or it may be open-ended, where each player choice creates branching paths, but the choices are always whatever the GM provides. But either way, the goals
and the situations are mostly determined in advance, and the players react to these things as they see fit.
"Story After" games are relatively rare these days, by comparison to Story Before, but some of the earliest roleplaying games moved in this direction. For this, the GM does not really "plan" any goals or conflicts at all, and may even seem to resemble Story Now play by avoiding any semblance of "plot" or the like. The key difference is that there isn't any effort put to framing scenes
at all, or at least not until well after the scene is over. If, for example, one player loses his Wizard character early on, and chooses to play as that character's Fighter sister to quickly get back into play, then after the session is over, the player could look back and describe the successful dungeon run as "my Fighter was avenging her brother's death!" Here, the goal is decided
after the conflict is already over, and a progression is developed to
explain the events that already occurred in a satisfying way. That is the heart of Story After gaming, and for some folks it is the best part of roleplaying experiences.
Something to keep in mind, however, is that Story Now
does not mean that the Stargazer never prepares. Indeed, Stargazers absolutely SHOULD prepare things! But, in general, they prepare
less than Story Before game masters do, and the things they prepare should generally take the form of
useful tools and
resources to draw upon, rather than well-structured, thoroughly planned-out things. So, for example, when you draft up the star chart for your game, leave large areas of it blank--not
empty, but
unfilled. These areas will be filled in later, through your players triggering new situations due to their choices or the consequences thereof, or through you drawing on your prepared resources to frame a new scene."
That got kind of long, but I was trying to keep it in that "conversational instruction" mode while covering all the basics and providing compare-and-contrast examples.
If I have erred in my descriptions of these things in the estimation of anyone better-versed in these things than I am--such as
@pemerton or
@AbdulAlhazred or others--then please fault me, not the underlying concept. I am still very new to this stuff.
