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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 4507249" data-attributes="member: 3192">The distinction between role-playing and storytelling is well known outside the hobby.  Inside the hobby there are several people using an incorrect theory that is confusing them into believing the two are the same.  Storytelling isn't role-playing and you can't do both at the same time.  It's functionally impossible.  To be clear, doing something is not necessarily equivalent to portraying something.  It's the difference between normal existence and theatre acting.  In your response, I believe you are confusing 1. action occurring in a modeled space with 2. collaborative storytelling.  Just because the action is being modeled on a gameboard you cannot see does not make unreal.  Yes, there is narrative discourse going on.  Yes, elements of it are imagined, are ideas, which fall under one definition of "fiction".  But no, there is no "fictional narration" going on.I get this tweaks people's brains, but for decades most players understood this quite intuitively.  In the same way that the winners of 4E's combat system do not win because they "tell a better story", role-playing is the real success of playing a role in an actual reality.  That the dice rolling and rule following created a model of reality, which is attempting to recreate (emulate?) an imagined idea (the world), it does not mean the model isn't real because the emulated fiction isn't real.  This true in the same way playing a boardgame is real even though its' rules are trying to model a fictive reality.  I mean, really, if it was all just a bunch of collaborative storytelling, no dice rolls or numerical descriptions would ever be needed.  The quality of the story would rule all.Participant consent does not mean the action is role-playing.  In Skill Challenges, the players are taking authority over the reality of the world, not their merely their characters/roles.  In other words, they are telling a story and not role-playing their characters.  To take it one step farther, playing God is not role-playing or we will quickly find ourselves in the black hole of every game qualifying as a role-playing game.Where you say story-like I think you should say life-like.  This modeled space is a real construction just like a boardgame representing things in life.  Story is the relation of events real or imagined.  You cannot "take action" in a story because the storyteller isn't a character.  He's relating the actions of the characters.  In a role-playing game you are absolutely taking action.  In the exact same way a DDM player is taking action.That's like saying, playing Doctor Lucky and making house rules up as you go beyond the elements the published rules focuson, then you're telling a story.  Almost all games are simulating something.  Sports are probably an exception, but most boardgames and cardgames likely count.  The reality in each is as solid as the rules create.No, the overall game would be a hybrid between role-playing and storytelling.  Also, I'm not here to talk about game identity. I'm talking about actions real people take within a game.  You cannot do more than your character can without stepping outside your role (i.e. stopping the role-playing your character).  This seems immediately obvious to me.  Once you start dictating reality, your in God Mode (authoring a story).No, this is not a player narrating an event.  It's an abstraction of role-playing, but if done too often and too broadly it certainly may no longer qualify as role-play.  That said, the player couldn't purchase the items at those prices if in he were in area with different prices.  Or if his PC was nowhere near a seller of those items.  To allow otherwise would be to metagame or cheat: to do something your character cannot functionally do in this case.To clarify the point on being too broad or abstract:Just as you can role-play being a stock trader by playing the market with an imaginary stock portfolio, you can begin role-playing so broadly as to no longer qualify as "role-playing a stockbroker".  Instead, you're just pretending you have money in stocks and seeing how much they went up or down.  The degree of modeling is simply not enough for most people to qualify it as role-play.  The same could be said of fantasy football being the role-playing of a team owner.  It probably isn't at all as very, very little of the role is modeled.  Of course, in neither case can you "just say" you won without leaving all of reality behind and simply telling a story.You're right in the first and second sentences and wrong in the third.  Role-players are doing the things their characters are doing.  Not to belabor the point, but just as a flight simulator doesn't mean you are actually flying, it does mean you are actually the one doing the flying that is simulated.  In a fantasy RPG, the players honestly and truly are not their characters, but they are taking on their roles.  The fantasy world simulator allows this to be real as much as the simulator is capable.  It is as much a storytelling endeavor as using a flight simulator is so (i.e. not at all).If there were no flight simulator or fantasy world simulator, you definitely could say the participants were just telling stories about flying or being in a fantasy world.  But in order to not "just say this is so" we use the rules and make up house rules to cover the areas we want covered by our favorite RPGs games.  Check any House Rules forum for more proof on how story doesn't come into play when rules don't cover a situation.  You'll notice Pemerton above agreed that not all imaginings or the holdings of ideas (thoughts) is storytelling.  It seems like you believe the opposite.  All I can say is, no one outside of the Indie gaming community probably defines "story" in this way.Here was my phrase you're referring to:"I don't believe a DM/Referee ever gets to tell a story. He merely relates back to those playing what is happening in the world."Yeah, I tossed this one in there thinking I'd catch someone trying to call me on it.  Check my first response in this post.  It's the difference between using narrative discourse to refer to the real modeling of imagined ideas (fiction) and the rhetorical mode called "fictional narrative".heh heh <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  I know it's tough.  The difference is in short:Occasionally using narrative speech forms to talk about modeled fiction vs. collaboratively relating a fictional narrative.  I completely sympathize with folks who believe The BIG Model because of this confusion.When you say, "the action in Monopoly isn't sufficiently story-like" I get confused.  What kind of boardgames, cardgames, wargames, whatever-games would it take to show this is not collaborative storytelling even with a "story-like" enough game?So, is D&D Miniatures a storytelling game when played with the blind, but not the seeing?  As the activity is role-playing, it's educational.  Not to say other activities are not educational.  It's just in D&D the skills learned are rarely modeled well enough to aid in real life.  Combat would seem the best modeled activity, but I doubt it will help anyone in a real fight.  Learning how to face adversity, plan, and make decisions quickly are probably more likely learned skills in D&D.</blockquote>

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