Unpopular opinions go here

[overgeeked]

D&D was never designed to tell a story, and even across successive edition changes, the game engine continues to reflect this. Describing playing D&D as "telling a collaborative story" is like describing woodworking as "the act of creating sawdust"; it treats the byproduct (which is what the "story" of D&D is) as if it were the goal.

Thanks for the link. I don’t think I’ve read that piece before. Great stuff. I especially like the biography angle. The whole game is generally like someone’s whole life. Filled to the brim with bits and pieces of trivia and anecdotes that do not add up to a story. It’s only in looking back and selectively picking and choosing elements that fit an assumed end or theme that we can fashion a game session or campaign into something resembling a story.

I think it would benefit a lot of people to watch a few episodes of Critical Role and then watch the corresponding episodes of Legend of Vox Machina. The game is played in 4-5 hour sessions, a dozen or so per arc…which are then translated to 2-3 episodes that are each 30 minutes long. What makes it into the cartoon is the story. What’s left on the cutting room floor is the game. That is to say there’s a lot of noise to signal, a lot of chaff to wheat.

ETA: For example, the Briarwood Arc. In the live play, that arc takes 15 episodes for a total of about 56 hours and 45 minutes. In the cartoon, that arc takes 10 episodes for a total of about 5 hours. Numbers taken from here and here.

 

[J.Quondam]

Many a dramatic narrative have I found within the dice cups of Yahtzee!

I have it on good authority that the original name of Yahtzee was "D&D", which was short for "Digits & Dice".

 

[overgeeked]

RPGs are not video games. The character sheet is not a HUD that you smash buttons on to gain benefits in the fiction of the game. To play RPGs in this way is to utterly fail to understand the unique nature of RPGs.

That said, video games are decades ahead in design. Many video games have a unity of design, theme, game play loop, mechanics, fiction, etc that is almost completely unknown in RPGs. RPG designers seem so afraid of the label "video gamey" that they ignore the absolute wealth of advances in game design seen in that industry. And yes, most, if not all, of it can translate into RPGs.

That said, re: mechanics, all you really need for an RPG to function is a task resolution mechanic. Most of, if not all of, the rest is about the imagination of the participants.

 

[Celebrim]

I think it would benefit a lot of people to watch a few episodes of Critical Role and then watch the corresponding episodes of Legend of Vox Machina. The game is played in 4-5 hour sessions, a dozen or so per arc…which are then translated to 2-3 episodes that are each 30 minutes long. What makes it into the cartoon is the story. What’s left on the cutting room floor is the game. That is to say there’s a lot of noise to signal, a lot of chaff to wheat.

ETA: For example, the Briarwood Arc. In the live play, that arc takes 15 episodes for a total of about 56 hours and 45 minutes. In the cartoon, that arc takes 10 episodes for a total of about 5 hours. Numbers taken from here and here.

This is an important observation, but I don't think it proves the point.

I used to play Risk a lot as a kid. Then in college I encountered Risk as a computer program. Now, six player Risk with human players and no automation can take 12-16 hours. It's a very long game. But played with six human players on software rather than with a board and dice, the game can be played in under an hour - often under 45 minutes.

You could replay the game after it was over, showing all the exchanges of territory, replaying the story produced by the game in under a minute.

I've never gone back then sense and played it on a board with dice. The mechanics of rolling the dice, reading the dice, removing pieces, and so forth were taking ten times as long as playing the game, and all of that could be dispensed with. The choices that went into the game were only taking like 10% of the time of play.

I wouldn't call the story of Risk the point of playing the game. It's the actual production of the story of the game that is fun, because you don't know how it is going to turn out and because it involves meaningful choices and gambles and sometimes diplomacy. In the same way, I wouldn't say the story is the point of an RPG, because the act of producing the story is fun in and of itself with its uncertain outcomes and meaningful choices. But I wouldn't say that the part that isn't story is chaff and worthless, as tactical combat, puzzles, social interactions and so forth can all be fun. Instead I would say that playing an RPG is about both the act of producing a story and also the act of experiencing a story.

I disagree with the idea that the story is a byproduct of play. It necessarily the primary goal of play of everyone at the table. But I do find that everyone at the table enjoys it more and more satisfied by play if along the way of fulfilling their other aesthetic goals they are also at the end creating a story. One of the reasons for this is that most of the aesthetics of play in an RPG are momentary experiences, but the creation of a Narrative is something that the group can collectively reminisce about.

 

[Reynard]

If you're rollling dice without the goal of creating a story, you're playing yahtzee, not D&D.

There is a significant difference between "telling a story" and "creating a story." RPGs do the latter much better than they do the former.

 

[overgeeked]

This is an important observation, but I don't think it proves the point.

I used to play Risk a lot as a kid. Then in college I encountered Risk as a computer program. Now, six player Risk with human players and no automation can take 12-16 hours. It's a very long game. But played with six human players on software rather than with a board and dice, the game can be played in under an hour - often under 45 minutes.

You could replay the game after it was over, showing all the exchanges of territory, replaying the story produced by the game in under a minute.

I've never gone back then sense and played it on a board with dice. The mechanics of rolling the dice, reading the dice, removing pieces, and so forth were taking ten times as long as playing the game, and all of that could be dispensed with. The choices that went into the game were only taking like 10% of the time of play.

I wouldn't call the story of Risk the point of playing the game. It's the actual production of the story of the game that is fun, because you don't know how it is going to turn out and because it involves meaningful choices and gambles and sometimes diplomacy. In the same way, I wouldn't say the story is the point of an RPG, because the act of producing the story is fun in and of itself with its uncertain outcomes and meaningful choices. But I wouldn't say that the part that isn't story is chaff and worthless, as tactical combat, puzzles, social interactions and so forth can all be fun. Instead I would say that playing an RPG is about both the act of producing a story and also the act of experiencing a story.

I disagree with the idea that the story is a byproduct of play. It necessarily the primary goal of play of everyone at the table. But I do find that everyone at the table enjoys it more and more satisfied by play if along the way of fulfilling their other aesthetic goals they are also at the end creating a story. One of the reasons for this is that most of the aesthetics of play in an RPG are momentary experiences, but the creation of a Narrative is something that the group can collectively reminisce about.

Which is why I suggested people actually watch the episodes. There's so much more that's left on the cutting room floor than just the mechanical handling of the game. Entire scenes, side quests, subplots, conversations, shopping trips, NPCs, encounters, etc are all removed from the live play when translated into the cartoon.

Fun gaming moments like tactical combat or puzzles can be great fun to play through, but also make for incredibly boring story beats if reproduced verbatim in another medium. Again, look at how the combats of Critical Role's live play are translated into the action-adventure cartoon of Legends of Vox Machina. Dozens of attacks are combined into one or two big ones. A handful of cast spells are combined into one big one. Rounds are cut, actions left out, etc. It's translated from game play into story. Game play does not produce story.

Again, play creates a lot of chaff. You have to sort through it to find the wheat. To use another analogy. Game play is throwing mountains of spaghetti at the wall. Most of it falls off. The few noodles that stick are the story...if, and only if, you put in a lot of work turning those game play beats into something resembling a story.

RPGs are a fundamentally different activity than storytelling. Through game play you might stumble into something that could resemble a story only if you squint really hard and ruthlessly cut and trim.

It's like how humans have evolved this weird mental trick of seeing faces that aren't there as a survival mechanism. The human brain also turns things that aren't stories into stories by selectively editing and reorganizing components to form a coherent story. That's where the "story" generated by RPG game play comes from, if it comes from anything. Even the best storygames played in the best way do not produce "finished" and "polished" stories. They produce very rough first drafts that need to be ruthlessly cut and edited and arduously hammered into shape to finally produce something roughly analogous to a "story."

 

[J.Quondam]

There is a significant difference between "telling a story" and "creating a story." RPGs do the latter much better than they do the former.

Depends on the RPG. Story-telling RPGs are a thing, as surely as D&D is not one of them. We just adopt the rule set that gives us the most enjoyment in creating that story.

Seriously, the "debate" surrounding this appears to boil down to whether (a) the mechanics allow for in-the-moment collaboration to end up with a somewhat well-structured story in the way a LotR novel or movie is; versus (b) the mechanics are cloaked in fiction (with words like "dragons" and "dungeons") to generate a sequential experience that the players retrospectively shape into a story that more resembles mad-cap adventures like the Iliad.

But either way, a story pops out in the end. So the question is... Does it really matter in any sense except a purely academic one?
I mean, if I say my D&D results in a story, it does.
Or doesn't it?

 

[Jd Smith1]

RPGs are not video games. The character sheet is not a HUD that you smash buttons on to gain benefits in the fiction of the game. To play RPGs in this way is to utterly fail to understand the unique nature of RPGs.

A lot of people, especially 5e players, play exactly like that, and it is still an RPG.

And when playing on line, the PC is literally a HUD controlling your primary input in the game. And is far superior to F2F.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Playing online is vastly superior to playing F2F. It is so easy to find & keep motivated, involved players for literally any game. Particularly for those of us who live in areas where the TTRPG community is very small.

 

[MGibster]

Changing RPG systems is highly unlikely to result in an overall change in experience, relative to changing the underlying thought paradigms related to the exercise.

This is true. Just from personal experience, whenever I've switched to a fantasy game that wasn't D&D, I've had a hard time with the players trying to play the game as if it were D&D. When we started playing Legend of the Five Rings back in 1997, my players ran into some difficulties adapting. One of the first problems we ran into was looting the corpses of fallen enemies. In L5R, a corpse is unclean, not just physically but spirtually as well, and if you touch it then you're unclean as well and other people will treat you as if you're unclean. There's a whole 'nother caste of people who will loot the corpose for you if necessary. But it's not like you're going to be selling their gear. Are you a samurai or a dirty merchant?