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[mythusmage]

Hey, mythusmage, did you see Joshua's poll about different kinds of players?

The leading reason for playing (last time I checked) was story.
It was followed by kicking arse, ambition, and brilliant planning.

Popularity is no indication of accuracy. Believing you are in a story does not mean you are in a story. RPG session as story is based on a misunderstanding of what story is, and of what a RPG session is, and by that measure the session = story trope is wrong.

 

[mythusmage]

Have to disagree. Too many stories have been created where the narrator is describing events as they unfold ...

Look at those stories again. Events occur as the author wants them to. They are pre-determined. For all the language is present tense the events in those stories has already occurred. The stories are narratives of events that have happened, not of events that are happening.

By its very nature story cannot present events as they occur. For events as they occur cannot happen exactly as one would wish. Too many variables. Too much can happen when things are happening right then and there.

In a story told in the present tense the character goes to the store. In an RPG session the player may plan for his character to go to the store, but events may intervene. A robbery, a traffic accident, missing a green light, road work. All this and much more can delay or even forestall a visit to the store.

Determinism rules the world of story, free will and blind luck the world of the RPG. And there's nothing you can do to change that.

I have read stories told in the present tense. How they were written changes nothing about what they are, and that is narratives of events that have already occurred.

 

[mythusmage]

Re Forge GNS - I agree with the original poster re the proper role of 'story'. Although I love Drama in my games, I have found Forge-style attempts to create Narrativist play through "Story Now" - "This is the Premise of this Scene/Session" - profoundly unsatisfying as a player and unworkable as a GM. To me it feels like by forcing a particular issue you're draining the life out of the game. The most moving dramatic moments I've experienced in play - where PCs had to make horribly difficult decisions - all arose naturally in play, rather than being pre-agreed by GM & players. And attempts to form a pre-session agreement on Premise were embarrassing and quickly abandoned.

You are an observant fellow.

I do agree strongly regarding dramatic moments. Such really work best when they arise in the course of play. When they occur naturally.

A village has been overrun by goblins, a small child is about to have its skull crushed by a goblin's mace. What does the group do? A moment of tension, a moment of drama. Will the characters intervene to save the child's life. And what are the consequences of their actions.

Then you add in complications if so (sadistically) inclined. Matters the characters could not have known of at the time. Such as, the goblins are doing the right thing by killing the child, and the party makes a bad situation even worse by saving it. Life, whether the real thing or an imaginary one, can be messy.

 

[S'mon]

You are an observant fellow.

Thanks.

I think that neither the Vampire-esque model of Storytelling (metaplot & railroading, possibly with the illusion of player choice, what the Forge/Edwards calls Illusionism) nor the Forge-approved Narrativist/Story Now/Premise-based model of Storytelling, actually give a very satisfying play experience. To me the best play experiences and most satisfying memories have been in games that combined goal-oriented Gamist play with plenty of Simulation and a space for Drama where it naturally occurs .

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Determinism rules the world of story, free will and blind luck the world of the RPG. And there's nothing you can do to change that.

I'd disagree to such a broad generalism on principle, but this time I can actually do so on personal experience, which tells me that you can get away with enough "determinism" in any game as a DM as long as you know you players well enough to approximate to a very high degree of certainty how they will react to certain key elements in a scene. This ties a little into the fact that too little options are, after some time, just as frustrating to the average player as too much options.

 

[wedgeski]

Story: An account of what has happened, regardless of how it is told.

RPG Session: Life in an imaginary world as it happens, for good or ill.

I agree with these, but that doesn't stop RPG's being a form of storytelling. I can quite happily tell you the story of any one of my campaigns, some of which (I like to think) were determined by the players' actions. Some of them are even pretty good stories in and of themselves. That they were generated inside a framework of 'mights' rather than 'wills' does not change the result.

Your problem lies with the assertion that an RPG session, and 'roleplaying', as in the concept, are one and the same. They are not. An RPG session is the author tapping away at his word processor. Roleplaying is the novel that results.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Anybody who does not think that RPGs are a form of storytelling has never sat through a session of 'no sh*t, there I was' stories in the aftermath of a great campaign. While the mode is improvisional theater the result is a collabarative story, and when the elements fall into place it can be a good one.

The Auld Grump

 

[hexgrid]

I agree with these, but that doesn't stop RPG's being a form of storytelling. I can quite happily tell you the story of any one of my campaigns, some of which (I like to think) were determined by the players' actions. Some of them are even pretty good stories in and of themselves. That they were generated inside a framework of 'mights' rather than 'wills' does not change the result.

Anybody who does not think that RPGs are a form of storytelling has never sat through a session of 'no sh*t, there I was' stories in the aftermath of a great campaign.

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.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

I *think* mythusmage is saying that the events of a roleplaying game should consist of players living out the fictional lives of their characters in a world created by the GM. Dramatic things will just sorta happen if you do that, right?

I disagree. "Drama where it naturally occurs" is kind of a dodge. No matter how much everyone at the table wants it to be so, the characters and the game world don't exist. They are fictional constructs. To the extent that dramatic, interesting things happen in the game, they didn't "just happen"; they were created by an interplay between players and GM. I think people are advocating that this happen unconsciously rather than consciously.

--
I don't want to get into defending GNS (really, I don't) so I'll just talk about "Story Now" by itself as a concept. Story Now isn't about playing out a precreated story -- that "Now" part is important. It's about the players and GM setting up situations in game that lead to meaningful decisions. The whole point of Story Now is that it's not deterministic.

I've run several games that were about the theme "What would you do for power?" and the theme informed my decisions rather than dictating them. Rather than have things "just happen", I set up character-relevant situations where there was a benefit and cost to gaining power. Game prep is about setting up issues characters will have to deal with, but have no one right answer.

Story Now isn't for everyone, I know. I just like it 'cause it works for us.

--
I totally agree that there should be no "set story" the GM has in his head at the start. To the extent there is a story, or theme, or whatever, it's created during play by characters making decisions. I just personally prefer to have the whole group mindful that we want interesting things to happen consistently during play, rather than just hoping it'll happen eventually if we "live in the game world" enough.

 

[Faraer]

A story can come of the session, but the session can never be a story as it is being played.

I think (and I think the same when Gary Gygax says it) that this is (a) a statement of (simulationist) personal approach which you shouldn't feel the need to project as the Natural Way of Things and (b) a definitional quibble: i.e. if the aspect of most stories that they're preplanned and told by one person to an audience defines stories in general for you, RPGs are not stories. I disagree: I don't think there's anything essential to a story that says it can't be improvised, created by multiple people, immersed in, or take place without an external audience. I think you're particularly wrong about stories being inherently past-tense: the most primal stories are myths, and they take place in an eternal now. Like all successful art, stories transcend time and make notions of past and future meaningless for their duration. You need to experience better stories if you've always felt them at a remove. -- But they've been called stories since the beginning of roleplaying, most posters at ENWorld (the most gameist of major RPG forums) see them that way, and they're indisputably like stories in many ways in any case.