Unpopular opinions go here

[Celebrim]

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.

Sure, but that happens when you translate a novel to a movie as well. Any time you move to a more expensive story telling medium there is likely to be condensing of the story to just it's biggest moments, and when you go to a visual medium those are likely to also be those that are visually impactful. The act of condensing the story to tell it in a different medium doesn't mean that the thing you condensed wasn't also a story. The LotR movies takes out the entire Old Forest, Tom Bombadil, Fog on the Barrow Downs sequence from the novel as a clean lift. In doing so, it loses some small things such Frodo hewing off the hand of the Barrow Wight which in turn causes Frodo to be seen as less heroic by movie watchers than book readers, as well as the origin story of Merry's sword which adds a little depth to the fight against the Witch King. But I can't say that it's the wrong move. I also will not say that the sequence they lifted isn't a story or is a bad story.

Your argument to me really isn't that an RPG doesn't produce a story. You're really claiming that it doesn't produce a good story or a story to your taste.

Real life incidentally works the same way. Take the drama "Band of Brothers" made as a TV miniseries. It too is made by condensing and arranging things. Entire scenes, side quests, subplots, conversations, shopping trips, encounters, etcs. are removed from the real living version of the story when translated to a TV drama. But that doesn't mean that the real life version of the story, the life that was lived, wasn't also a story. It's just to live that version of the story would require devoting a significant fraction of your life, and so for dramatic purposes they cut it down into something more made for human leisure compared to the months long grinding reality of the story. But just because it got cut down doesn't mean one is less or more of a story than the other, unless you have a very particular definition of story.

 

[innerdude]

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.

I am likewise interested in the link.

It certainly resonates with my experience with trad/D&D+adjacent gaming.

To a degree it's kind of pointing to another unpopular opinion percolating in my head, which is that narrativist games generally should do even more to separate themselves from traditional RPGs.

Like, as a strong proponent of PbtA / FitD, I would want it to be communicated even more forcefully than it is now that these games will play out in uniquely different ways from what they're used to.

Like, in the past I might have bristled if someone said Ironsworn wasn't an RPG in the traditional sense. Whereas now I might bob my head and say, "Yep. And that's a good thing, because it's not a traditional RPG."

If someone wanted to create a new categorization for them and take them out of the general "RPG" umbrella, I'm good with that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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?

This seems to vary considerably. While I've absolutely seen what you're referring to (a D&D player who joined our RQ group carrying forward D&D assumptions, not so much mechanical as structural that Did Not Apply) I was part of a fairly big group that (mostly) transitioned to RuneQuest when it first came out, and while there were a few learning-curve things (discovering that being outnumbered by even weak foes was Bad For You) but past that, we were changing over to do something different, so we took things as it came. Same was true of most games we did over the years.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

1. No D&D world benefits from official metaplots and D&D settings would be better off if they never existed in the first place. One of the best design decisions for Eberron was avoiding building a metaplot into the setting.

2. Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms are both extremely overrated.

3. Gygax is held in too high regard by much of the D&D fanbase, especially the ones who have been around since the TSR era.

4. People who act like D&D died after TSR are at best viewing the past through nostalgia-tinted glasses, and at worst ageist and elitist gatekeepers who wish to act superior to newer players because they play a different style of D&D than they're used to/familiar with.

5. The expectation that canon for a D&D setting will be consistent forever is unrealistic and shortsighted. Change can be, and often is, a good thing. And moral outrage at the fact that they changed a minor detail about Archsorcerous Melfwinster the Bravulous is both silly and immature.

6. Dragon Age: Origins is the best D&D video game ever made. And it doesn't take place in a D&D world (even though the setting is better designed than the majority of D&D worlds).

 

[Reynard]

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?

I would submit that RPGs and story games are different, if related, types of games.

 

[aramis erak]

Story creation via play of a game is much older than D&D.

Spoiler: proof

"Here, then, is the story of the battle of Hook's Farm." from HG Wells, Little Wars, 1913. Not the earliest reference, just the one I don't have to search for.

Fundamentally, any simulationist boardgame or minis game is a story generation engine. Many abstract games do so, too

This seems to vary considerably. While I've absolutely seen what you're referring to (a D&D player who joined our RQ group carrying forward D&D assumptions, not so much mechanical as structural that Did Not Apply) I was part of a fairly big group that (mostly) transitioned to RuneQuest when it first came out, and while there were a few learning-curve things (discovering that being outnumbered by even weak foes was Bad For You) but past that, we were changing over to do something different, so we took things as it came. Same was true of most games we did over the years.

Like Thomas, I've had most players adapt to the game. L5R was no issue to switch over for most.

There are some players, however, who don't (can't tell if it's can't or won't) adapt, then complain about the game not being their favored poison. (The most egregious examples have been Classic Traveller players with no other RPG experience.)

 

[Celebrim]

I would submit that RPGs and story games are different, if related, types of games.

That may be true. But I think you will find that defining an RPG is difficult. And defining a story game is just about impossible. The biggest problem is probably going to be that whatever definitions you think up, several people are going to be unhappy with them and create a number of competing definitions.

But for my part, I think "Story Games" are usually quite close to Theater Games. This definition tends to exclude quite a few things that supporters of Story Games will want to claim are Story Games.

 

[aramis erak]

Two things.

First, does that granularity actually matter? Is it important enough to keep?

Second, the USA is almost using the metric system. There's only a few holdouts like distance. Here's a video from Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about it.

The benefit of Fahrenheit's scale is that of being the typical range for human habitation.
That being, nominally, for most of Europe and the Americas, 0° to 100° Fahrenheit. Which is roughly -17° C to 38°C
Adding another 15°F to each end, so -15° to 115° F, and you get most of the inhabited deserts and tundras. That is to -27 to 47°C

Centigrade is no benefit over Kelvin, and Kelvin is what's used in physics. One could do the same transform to Fahrenheit that Kelvin did to Celsius... and have a 460-560 range for human comfortable hab, and 445 to 575 for overall range.

Likewise, the base 10 sucks as a mathematical function; we'd be far better off for mental math with base 12.

 

[overgeeked]

Sure, but that happens when you translate a novel to a movie as well. Any time you move to a more expensive story telling medium there is likely to be condensing of the story to just it's biggest moments, and when you go to a visual medium those are likely to also be those that are visually impactful. The act of condensing the story to tell it in a different medium doesn't mean that the thing you condensed wasn't also a story.

If you start with a story then condense it, sure. But you have to start with a story first. Which you don't when translating an RPG live play into an actual story format like novel, cartoon, comic book, etc.

Your argument to me really isn't that an RPG doesn't produce a story. You're really claiming that it doesn't produce a good story or a story to your taste.

No. It literally does not produce a story. Preference or quality doesn't enter into it.

Real life incidentally works the same way. Take the drama "Band of Brothers" made as a TV miniseries. It too is made by condensing and arranging things. Entire scenes, side quests, subplots, conversations, shopping trips, encounters, etcs. are removed from the real living version of the story when translated to a TV drama. But that doesn't mean that the real life version of the story, the life that was lived, wasn't also a story. It's just to live that version of the story would require devoting a significant fraction of your life, and so for dramatic purposes they cut it down into something more made for human leisure compared to the months long grinding reality of the story. But just because it got cut down doesn't mean one is less or more of a story than the other, unless you have a very particular definition of story.

Yes, it does. Because real life isn't a story. It's a long sequence of events, some boring and utterly mundane, others minorly interesting and engaging, others wildly dramatic, and some better off forgotten. To get to a story we take the real life condense it, edit it, alter it, etc in order to accentuate the drama and conflict and remove all the boring and tedious bits. If our real lives were as jam-packed with action, adventure, death-defying feats, etc as what's in most stories, we'd have literally no need for stories.

 

[MGibster]

No D&D world benefits from official metaplots and D&D settings would be better off if they never existed in the first place. One of the best design decisions for Eberron was avoiding building a metaplot into the setting.

I have mixed feelings about this. But first, I really need to state that you have good reasons for this opinion. When I look back at the metaplots from the 1990s, for all games not just D&D, I don't look back at many of them with any particular fondness. Ravenloft is my favorite setting, but I don't really care about the Grand Conjunction. But a big reason why I don't remember many of the metaplots with fondness is because of how companies handled them. They would dole the plot points out in little tidbits forcing you to buy multiple products if you wanted to keep up. And then some adventures just ended up with the PCs watching the main characters of the metaplot do all the cool stuff. And then there are times when the metaplot comes along and just changes the setting in a way you don't care for. L5R I'm looking at you.

Gygax is held in too high regard by much of the D&D fanbase, especially the ones who have been around since the TSR era.

In recent years I've come to the same conclusion. Mainly it was his name I always saw so he was the one who got credit. But in the last few years I've come to learn about and appreciate the efforts of others, especially some others I can't recall ever hearing of, who influenced D&D and other games in ways I hadn't realized.