Chess is not an RPG: The Illusion of Game Balance

[The Crimson Binome]

But, that's not the spectrum. You don't do storytelling games without role playing. At least, not when we're talking about RPG's. Role assumption is fundamental in all role playing games. If you're not taking on a role, you're not playing an RPG. That shouldn't be controversial.

Right. Everyone agrees on that, which is why it makes sense for RPG to be the umbrella term. The question is how to sub-divide them, so that you end up with useful categories. Segregating all of the games that contain storytelling elements into their own category is a logical way of doing so, from the perspective of anyone who wants to avoid playing those types of games.

A role playing game needs all three elements - role assumption, some sort of random mechanic for determining outcomes and a narrative that follows causal links. Without any of those three, I'd say you aren't really playing an RPG.

As a side note, I would disagree that you need a random element in order for it to be a game. Chess, for example, does not have any random elements. (Unless chess was debunked as a game earlier in this thread, and I just missed that by skipping to the end here.) You definitely need to play a role, though, and exist within a causal world.

So, no, roleplaying is not the other side of the spectrum from story gaming. There's a reason you still have a character in story games - the presumption is, you are going to act in accordance to the dictates of that character. Granted, in a story game you ALSO have degrees of authority over the game as a whole, but, you still have a character in front of you.

Storygaming is not a term which has yet been defined. As a game element, storytelling is the opposite of roleplaying, because it involves the player just deciding stuff without actually playing a role within the world - you're just telling what happens, because the player has assumed authorial agency within the narrative beyond that which is granted by the character.

D&D doesn't stop being a role playing game because I use Inspiration (a purely player resource) to affect some change in the game world.

Inspiration is not purely a player resource, though. It has meaning within the game world, in much the same way that a barbarian's limited number of rages per day has meaning within the game world. It's just kind of nebulous and hard to define.

The character doesn't decide to spend Inspiration to gain advantage in this particular situation, but the player should recognize when the character is inspired, and use it to represent that. Given that Inspiration is handed out by the DM in situations where it is appropriate, and the DM can easily veto inappropriate uses of Inspiration, I would say that it's working mostly as intended as an in-game resource.

The same is not necessarily true of Action Points (from various earlier d20 products), or Hero Points (from Pathfinder), or "bennies" (from whatever game would be silly enough to assign such a common name to a significant game mechanic; you might as well call them "steves" or "freds" for as silly as it sounds).

In many cases, these resources are only given when the character suffers by playing into its flaws, as though there is some sort of karmic connection between, for example, wasting money on alcohol and later succeeding on a difficult skill check.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Right. Everyone agrees on that, which is why it makes sense for RPG to be the umbrella term. The question is how to sub-divide them, so that you end up with useful categories. Segregating all of the games that contain storytelling elements into their own category is a logical way of doing so, from the perspective of anyone who wants to avoid playing those types of games.

Of course. This, of course, makes games such as AD&D 2e and the whole of the WoD Storygames. In fact I'm not sure what you've got left if you take out the games with story elements. Possibly OD&D.

As a side note, I would disagree that you need a random element in order for it to be a game. Chess, for example, does not have any random elements.

We're agreed here. And "Diceless RPGs" (technical term for RPGs with no randomisers) are definitely a thing including (amongst others) Amber, Nobilis, and a licensed Marvel game.

Storygaming is not a term which has yet been defined.

Objection! I've tried to throughout the thread - and most clearly right here. A game where the mechanics include a narrative structure and the games are planned to last for a limited number of sessions - in practice the games are generally based round the five act structure (it makes for better games than the three act structure).

As a game element, storytelling is the opposite of roleplaying, because it involves the player just deciding stuff without actually playing a role within the world

Nope. This is where the Storyteller System messed things up and poisoned the well a little. A good Storygame can have the players never leaving character to decide anything. For this I'm going to cite My Life With Master, Monsterhearts, and Montsegur 1244.

In Fiasco the PCs need to set the scenes. There is a case to be made that Fiasco is a Storytelling game without being an RPG. But MLWM and Monsterhearts both have fairly orthodox GMs, and Montsegur is on a pre-plotted railroad where you play your role to the bitter end and is still deep and challenging; you're just dealing with overwhelming forces.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Objection! I've tried to throughout the thread - and most clearly right here. A game where the mechanics include a narrative structure and the games are planned to last for a limited number of sessions - in practice the games are generally based round the five act structure (it makes for better games than the three act structure).

Sorry, that's what I get for jumping into a 40-page thread without reading it. It really does sound like an extreme deviation from anything like a traditional RPG, though. Like, I don't even have an opinion on it, because it's so far beyond what I understand an RPG to be.

Nope. This is where the Storyteller System messed things up and poisoned the well a little. A good Storygame can have the players never leaving character to decide anything. For this I'm going to cite My Life With Master, Monsterhearts, and Montsegur 1244.

Yeah, that's probably where my confusion came from. The Storyteller in the Storyteller System is the one who has authorial power to decide things, so I use the term "storytelling" to define authorial power that exists outside of actual in-character agency.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Of course. This, of course, makes games such as AD&D 2e and the whole of the WoD Storygames. In fact I'm not sure what you've got left if you take out the games with story elements. Possibly OD&D.

Nonsense, there are plenty of roleplaying games which feature zero storytelling elements. Unless you go out of your way to add some, AD&D or 3E included no storytelling mechanics by default. Palladium, by and large, also avoids granting authorial power to the players. I never encountered storytelling elements in Shadowrun (2E or 3E) until we purchased one of the supplements. And it should go without saying that GURPS is generally devoid of that sort of thing, as well.

 

[Bedrockgames]

i think we already had like four to five pages of debate on this thread about story/narrative/etc. I am pretty tapped on that subject.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Yeah, that's probably where my confusion came from. The Storyteller in the Storyteller System is the one who has authorial power to decide things, so I use the term "storytelling" to define authorial power that exists outside of actual in-character agency.

That's how I'd define it to. The degree to which a game is a storytelling game is the degree to which players have out of character authorial control. The extreme is collaborative writing, where all parties have authorial control, and which, contrary to an assertion above, can be done as a game. If there's another way it's used, I haven't seen it.

"Pawn stance" vs "actor stance" is another sometimes disputed term. For me it's just 3rd person vs 1st person play. If I think and act in terms of "I do this" rather than "my guy does this" that's actor rather than pawn.

There should be a sticky at the top of the forums with a definition of how we're going to use words like this on the board. Then we can spend our time arguing about RPGs rather than arguing about how we're going to argue about RPGs.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Nonsense, there are plenty of roleplaying games which feature zero storytelling elements. Unless you go out of your way to add some, AD&D or 3E included no storytelling mechanics by default. Palladium, by and large, also avoids granting authorial power to the players. I never encountered storytelling elements in Shadowrun (2E or 3E) until we purchased one of the supplements. And it should go without saying that GURPS is generally devoid of that sort of thing, as well.

A game with no storytelling mechanics would be one entirely lacking in cause and effect. A Storygame adds a story structure onto it.

And GURPS isn't devoid of storytelling elements even if you go beyond the cause-and-effect definition and into the scene framing. I'm pretty sure it actively has more storytelling elements than e.g. Vampire: The Masquerade. It has such things as the gizmo and luck advantages. White Wolf games are in no sense Storygames - indeed Storygames come out of a reaction against White Wolf games as not being able to deliver on their promises.

Sorry, that's what I get for jumping into a 40-page thread without reading it. It really does sound like an extreme deviation from anything like a traditional RPG, though. Like, I don't even have an opinion on it, because it's so far beyond what I understand an RPG to be.

If you were playing Monsterhearts (to take one example) you'd barely know the difference between it and a trad RPG unless you were the MC (GM) - and even then it's subtle. If you were playing Monstsegur 1244 you'd basically be playing freeform.

Yeah, that's probably where my confusion came from. The Storyteller in the Storyteller System is the one who has authorial power to decide things, so I use the term "storytelling" to define authorial power that exists outside of actual in-character agency.

Ah. It might help to know that Storygames have as one of their roots "What Storyteller games promise is great. It's just a pity they suck at delivering, and we should make games that can actually deliver without removing agency."

 

[The Crimson Binome]

A game with no storytelling mechanics would be one entirely lacking in cause and effect.

Right, back to our mixed-up terms. In this sense, I meant there are many games which do not give non-character authorial agency to the players, rather than ones which lack internal causality. I can see that we're in agreement, in spirit if not in vocabulary.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Right, back to our mixed-up terms. In this sense, I meant there are many games which do not give non-character authorial agency to the players, rather than ones which lack internal causality. I can see that we're in agreement, in spirit if not in vocabulary.

There are indeed many such games. GURPS, however, is not one of these games. See the advantages Super Luck and Gizmo amongst others. The old Marvel Superheroes (I think) also uses abstract karma points to rewrite dice rolls. And there are Storygames that don't allow you to. It's a slightly different thing.

 

[Hussar]

BTW, Saelorn, Bennies is short for benefits, a fairly common idiomatic expression. It's not meant as a proper noun name.

But, you don't get to have it both ways. If Action Points are a story gaming element, you cannot then claim that 3e has no story gaming elements.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You absolutely can if you want, but people don't have to accept your model or your definitions if they fail to reflect their experience at the table. You yourself point out we know very very little of actual play (we don't know how much char-op boards reflect widespread use at real tables for instance). I don't know what basis there is here for a working model of RPGs (and I personally haven't seen one that I have found useful for design or for play). My concern with models and definitions is they so often seem to be about getting the hobby where folks would like to see it of (don't like min-maxing? make a model of RPGs that excludes that as a valid style of play. don't like story? make a model of roleplaying where story is the antithesis of roleplaying). We can do the same with definitions. Once again this is exactly what Wick is trying to do. Clearly he favors some kind of RP-heavy campaign and is redefining RPG to exclude groups that play differently than him (even though I think most of us know a huge chunk of people play the way he defines as not roleplaying). What is worse, he also clearly doesn't have much love for D&D and so he uses definitions to claim it isn't an RPG---which is an insane claim to make). Stuff like this is exactly why folks are so wary of models and people trying to control definitions in the hobby.

What I do know is players are pretty diverse and to get a game off the ground you need to please 4-7 people at the same time. Give me a model that allows me to do that, to sell lots of books and make lots of gamers happy, and I would happily use it.

The problem is that none of these terms ever gain traction, so we're stuck going back to the old GNS theory just because that's the only thing that everyone has heard of.

And even Ron Edwards has given up on that.

My take is that it's simple. Roleplaying games are broader than any model can be (which is where the Big Model failed - it devolved into a theory that explained the presence of invisible pink hippomen and square circles). And as such models will not actually cover the spectrum of games; all they can do is highlight things and lead to a better understanding of a subset. (And from this perspective GNS was a success - the S part was a failure, but G was useful as a pushback against the "Rollplaying not Roleplaying" crowd and a focus on N (which was most of what Edwards and the Forge were interested in) lead to interesting things).

A contour map is a very useful thing as long as I don't confuse it for the whole territory.

but, I don't see why that's any better than using 'Roleplaying Game' for only pure roleplaying games with no storytelling elements, and 'Storytelling Game' for roleplaying games which include such things.

It's not as though there are any pure Storytelling Games out there, devoid of roleplaying elements. (Are there?)

I'm pretty sure collaborative writing qualifies, and there are probably more people doing that than RPGs.

And that's what's wrong with trying to use Storytelling Game for Roleplaying Games that also involve at least some author stance. That collaborative writing is numerically a much bigger field than tabletop RPGs. And Polaris and Kingdom from within the RPG community I've both heard described as storytelling without roleplaying per se. (I really must get round to reading Kingdom/Microscope).

Using "storytelling game" for a subset of tabletop RPGs is like using "Football" for a hockey rules variant in which everyone is also allowed to kick the ball. To me this is ridiculous, and the only purpose it appears to serve is to attempt to exclude people.

That's how I'd define it to. The degree to which a game is a storytelling game is the degree to which players have out of character authorial control. The extreme is collaborative writing, where all parties have authorial control, and which, contrary to an assertion above, can be done as a game. If there's another way it's used, I haven't seen it.

Possibly so And as you point out this is actually an independent factor from whether or not something's an RPG.

"Pawn stance" vs "actor stance" is another sometimes disputed term. For me it's just 3rd person vs 1st person play. If I think and act in terms of "I do this" rather than "my guy does this" that's actor rather than pawn.

It's a bit more than that. In Pawn Stance play, following the logic of your character's characterisation into making what you know to be bad choices is simply bad play. In Actor Stance play picking good choices against the logic of your character's characterisation is known as metagaming.

 

[trystero]

If Action Points are a story gaming element, you cannot then claim that 3e has no story gaming elements.

Minor nit-pick: Action Points are not present in the core 3e or 3.5e rulebooks; they were an option added (as far as I know) in the 3.5e Unearthed Arcana supplement. So it depends on whether we take "3e" to mean "core 3rd edition" or "3rd edition with all the available options".

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Minor nit-pick: Action Points are not present in the core 3e or 3.5e rulebooks; they were an option added (as far as I know) in the 3.5e Unearthed Arcana supplement. So it depends on whether we take "3e" to mean "core 3rd edition" or "3rd edition with all the available options".

There's a whole spectrum of inclusiveness on what "counts" for an edition. While Unearthed Arcana would suggest that Action Points are no more core than either generic classes or complex skill checks, Eberron ensured that Action Points were fairly popular in terms of actual play. At a practical level, the existence of Action Points would vary from table to table, much like Critical Hits in earlier editions.

 

[trystero]

There's a whole spectrum of inclusiveness on what "counts" for an edition. While Unearthed Arcana would suggest that Action Points are no more core than either generic classes or complex skill checks, Eberron ensured that Action Points were fairly popular in terms of actual play. At a practical level, the existence of Action Points would vary from table to table, much like Critical Hits in earlier editions.

I never played anything in Eberron, so I wasn't aware that it used Action Points. (Myself, I never saw them used in play in 3e or 3.5e.)

 

[Hussar]

Additionally, Action Points were part of the SRD, which meant they had pretty widespread use, IMO.

 

[prosfilaes]

Additionally, Action Points were part of the SRD, which meant they had pretty widespread use, IMO.

They weren't; if you look through http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwiki.php?title=d20:Revised-d20-System-Reference-Document , you won't find them. They're at http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/actionPoints.htm , but that's text from Unearthed Arcana, not the SRD.

 

[Hussar]

The Unearthed Arcana was added to the SRD Prosfilaes. It would be be hard for them to add them to the original SRD, considering they hadn't been written yet. It's the same way that Epic rules are also part of the SRD.

 

[Umbran]

Here's a thought I think nobody has come upon...

Just about every RPG has a section at the front - "What is an RPG?" This is to explain to the really new, uninformed player what the thing is about. Why aren't we referencing those in this discussion?

 

[Hussar]

Here's a thought I think nobody has come upon...

Just about every RPG has a section at the front - "What is an RPG?" This is to explain to the really new, uninformed player what the thing is about. Why aren't we referencing those in this discussion?

I referred to this several times upthread and got told by [MENTION=40166]prosfilaes[/MENTION] that the forewords to RPG's are meaningless.

 

[prosfilaes]

The Unearthed Arcana was added to the SRD Prosfilaes.

Not as far as I know. The Epic rules and the Psionic rules were both added to the SRD and show up in downloads of the original RTF files. Unearthed Arcana wasn't; it was released under the OGL.

It's the same way that Epic rules are also part of the SRD.

If you open a copy of the Epic Level Handbook, you'll see that it says there is no Open Gaming Content inside. If you open a copy of Unearthed Arcana, you'll see that it makes pretty much the entire book OGC. That, and not being part of the SRD, is what made it available to other publishers.

I referred to this several times upthread and got told by [MENTION=40166]prosfilaes[/MENTION] that the forewords to RPG's are meaningless.

That is not what I said, nor is the context remotely similar.