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[wedgeski]

This misses mythusmage's point. You can tell a story about what happened in your campaign, but the session itself was not storytelling. The story can only be told after the fact.

This misses my point. MM started talking about 'RPG's but has now started talking about 'RPG sessions'. I agree that RPG sessions aren't storytelling. I do not agree with the original assertion that RPG's are not a form of storytelling. There is a difference between the act of roleplaying (a 'session') and roleplaying as a concept ('interactive storytelling', IMO).

 

[hexgrid]

This misses my point. MM started talking about 'RPG's but has now started talking about 'RPG sessions'. I agree that RPG sessions aren't storytelling. I do not agree with the original assertion that RPG's are not a form of storytelling. There is a difference between the act of roleplaying (a 'session') and roleplaying as a concept ('interactive storytelling', IMO).

Understood.

It seems like this whole discussion is at least partially semantic. Maybe it would be less open to argument to say that RPGs can be a form of "story creation."

 

[wedgeski]

It seems like this whole discussion is at least partially semantic. Maybe it would be less open to argument to say that RPGs can be a form of "story creation."

Yes, absolutely. The entire debate actually extends from MM's definition of 'story'. In any case, semantic though they be , I'm quite enjoying mythusmage's threads today.

 

[Viashimo]

I disagree and say that RPGs are a form of storytelling. For though the events in a 'story' have already passed through the pen of the writer, they are not a 'past' they are a 'present'.

A book is read in the present, what transpires happens in the present of the book. Even in a non-fiction history text book, the action transpires in the present because the narrative - though describing the past - returns to the present through the narrator, or historian. Once you have read Shakespeare's The Tempest it doesn't become the past because it has not truly transpired each and every time it is read, and subsequent each and every time it is referred to it is a form of the present. So, in essence though a story is written with permanence, the RPG is still right in the present with a story.

Each time a novel or story is read/told it unfolds in the present, the reader (unless it's being reread) knows not what is going to come next for sure. The same is true of an RPG where the story is being created in the present and the 'readers' don't know what is going to happen next. The biggest difference between a novel and an RPG is that the RPG is being written as well as read as each second passes, while the novel in most cases is only being read at any given moment.

Since each novel is in the present, and not the past, it is unfolding as time passes, as you read it. A counter-argument here is that it can reread and it is very difficult to replay an RPG step by step by step. Here it falls back to the simple truth of no matter how many times you read something, what is there does not change, merely your comprehension of what is there. If you want to read stories where life unfolds 'as it happens' or as close as it can in a fictional reality that only give an imitation of 'life' perhaps you should research into those who right 'realist' literature, which has fallen out of favour from authors. Having just completed university-level english courses(in high school), might I suggest The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence (I probably didn't write her last name right, oh well :S) any of her other books. *This is not meant to be an advertisment, but an exampe*.

 

[Odhanan]

At the core a story is a narrative of events that have occured. Even when told in the present tense a story is a recounting of matters that have already happened. In an RPG session the events are happening. Story deals with the past, RPGs deal with the now. A fictional now, an imaginary now, a never could be now, but now. A story can come of the session, but the session can never be a story as it is being played.

100% yes. Same thing goes for a theatrical comparison. You cannot say that RPGs are like theater and "scenes" since there is no script and it isn't reproducing a given plot. It is enacting theorical plot elements that will almost never combine in the way they were intended to.

The closest comparison you could come up with is RPG uses the same kind of concepts as Commedia Del'Arte but with a frame created through game mechanics (as opposed to given/precise characters like in CDA, even though archetypes are present and used in RPG). But even then that would be forgetting that the public and the performers are one and the same, that RPGs are made to be entertaining, fun, games for the people who practice them.

The whole WW "storytelling" concept is flawed.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

The DM is telling a story, unless he is presenting a series of random, unrelated events. The players have some input into which way the story goes. The players, on the other hand, are having a mainly simulation-type experience.

 

[Odhanan]

The DM is telling a story, unless he is presenting a series of random, unrelated events. The players have some input into which way the story goes. The players, on the other hand, are having a mainly simulation-type experience.

I don't agree. The DM is the eyes and ears of the PCs. He provides the interface through which the PCs interact with the fictive world. He also provides a base situation that the characters are meeting. The rest is enacting the now, whatever it may be.

A campaign becomes "story" once it has been played. Not while it is.

 

[Henry]

Mythusmage, that's WAAAAY more semantics than I like in my games. Will you agree then that RPGs are a "story-creation" method? Story-creation, story-telling, whatever you call it, lead to a story. For most purposes there's little need to separate it out this much. It's kind of like the flak over Mary Shelly's man-made human being called "Frankenstein" and not "Adam" or "Frankenstein's Monster."

 

[fusangite]

I disagree with Ron Edwards' GNS theory BUT...

Edwards very intelligently observes tha regardless of your style of play, all RPG play produces story. But it does not follow from that that all RPGs are collaborative storytelling. Story comes into being because the play describes/produces a series of connected events.

There are many styles for producing and describing these connected events. Some of them players acting directly and consciously on the story itself. But most do not. Most involve the players having their characters react to events in the game world based on a set of expectations about how things will go if a particular course of action is chosen. Sometimes this entails the player referencing knowledge derived past events that have been played out in the game; sometimes it entails the player referencing physical knowledge about the game world as expressed in the rules; sometimes it entails the player referencing other kinds information in other ways.

Games essentially excrete story involuntarily. Story is the product of RPG play, not the act of RPG play.

 

[fusangite]

might I suggest The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence (I probably didn't write her last name right, oh well :S) any of her other books. *This is not meant to be an advertisment, but an exampe*.

I love that book. And I never, in a million years, thought it would be discussed on ENWorld. Any successful book that ends with a conjunction is awesome. And yes, you got her last name right.

This is a bit of a shot in the dark but Yukio Mishima's Temple of the Golden Pavilion is another character study novel you might really like.