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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Indaarys" data-source="post: 9244003" data-attributes="member: 7040941">Yes, thats what roleplaying is. I didn't say RP couldn't result in an emergent story.What do you believe storytelling is? I'll take from Wikipedia:Improvisation is the key word in that definition as it relates to RPGs. Important to note here too, regarding your stated examples, that presumably your character wasn't a blank automaton. They likely had a name, some amount of personal history, and probably other characteristics. Thats storytelling. Blades in the Dark is, as we all know, fundamentally about undeground criminals or otherwise seedy types doing jobs in a vaguely Victorian England setting, noted for having a specific design towards emulating narrative elements of the film Ocean's Eleven. That is all storytelling. You can't play Blades in the Dark and not fall into any of these elements without fundamentally breaking the game's rules. You're required to tell stories, you cannot just play it. Clocks in particular are a massive storytelling mechanic, given they aren't actually Clocks but a countdown to a new narrative beat.And meanwhile, as an RPG, all of these elements are interacting with improv, aka roleplaying, and those mechanics are fundamentally whats allowing whatever emergent story could be said to be happening. Which makes sense, as thats the entire point of that activity, but that doesn't mean the other part of the game isn't doing any storytelling. That it does is the entire point; BITD and is progenitor aren't systemic, mechanic driven games, and so they'd have no point being anything further than freeform roleplay if they weren't injecting bespoke storytelling into the roleplay. Case in point, heres a random screengrab from some sort of blades document I had on my phone:[ATTACH=full]343660[/ATTACH]This under the Action Roll. All results here are fundamentally about storytelling, whether thats you the player doing it or the game doing it for you and expecting you to fill in the rest. And mind, this isn't being pointed out as a criticism, we just have to be honest about what this is.This is a variable, dice-based prompt. An unambiguous success grants practically full leeway to the Player, and the remaining results offer prompts to act upon instead to modify the intended action, with additional integrated mechanical triggers to offer up different prompts, revolving around the Position/Effect framework. You the Player are expected to adhere to Yes,And and act accordingly with these prompts. You the Player are fundamentally telling a story by engaging this. Its a small microcosm of a story, merely a fleeting moment in a larger narrative, but it is still a story being told. It just might not feel like it because you don't have a choice but to do it, and because it does the heavy lifting. Climbing up and down Position is a decent enough feedback loop, but it isn't fostering emergence, the improv is. This, as it happens, is why these games collapse completely if you strip away all this assumption of narrative (aka strip away the improv), and thats not really a good thing for a game whose mechanics we want to say are fostering an emergent story. Blades didn't invent improv.</blockquote>

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