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[Col_Pladoh]

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."

Howdy Henry,

As I agree completely with Mythusmage's take on this matter, and he is spot on, all I can say to your query addressed to him is this: the aim of the RPG is not to eventually create a story. Any story that evolves during or after play is a bonus that is developed by the participants who enjoyed playing a game.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[fusangite]

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.

Agreed. When we get to a thread like this. Much as GNS drives me up the wall, it does force one to acknowledge the contribution Edwards has made to the discourse in our hobby.

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.

And the belief that this "living in" will yield anything close to a true simulation of the character one is attempting to approximate radically limits how sociologically different the game world can be.

 

[fusangite]

Howdy Henry,

As I agree completely with Mythusmage's take on this matter, and he is spot on, all I can say to your query addressed to him is this: the aim of the RPG is not to eventually create a story. Any story that evolves during or after play is a bonus that is developed by the participants who enjoyed playing a game.

Cheers,
Gary

:starstruck:

Ok... let me recover. Gary, I agree with what you say in this paragraph 100%. (And how could one who grew up on your books not?) But I'm not sure that this is what mythusmage is saying.

 

[barsoomcore]

I love the image of RPG sessions "excreting" story. But that is exactly what happens, and a perfect way to describe it.

You might set out to create story, or you might not. Either way is fine. But once you wrap up for the night, you've created story. It's just lying there on the table for you to make use of if you like.

RPGs don't have to be "story-telling" (and depending on your definition of "story" maybe they can't be), but they are unavoidably (and automatically) "story-creating".

I think mm is using a definition of story that excludes RPGs from their list of things that are them. To mm, a story is a pre-defined narrative that the user takes in just as instructed by the artist. I'm not sure that's a valid definition of story, but he's using it to illustrate a point of difference between a novel and a D&D campaign.

And I agree with him that, given the definition of story he's using, RPG sessions are not stories. Where you go with that little bit of wisdom is up to you. I DON'T think it implies that some styles of play are necessarily deprecated.

 

[TheGM]

Okay, I just finished co-writing the third book in my main gaming world, with two of the three being based upon campaigns that actually ran...

There is a significant difference between what flies at the table and what is needed in a good book, but the story lines are similar.

Storytelling is a good analogy though because you are telling a tale, the only real difference is that none of you know the finale' yet. I use the "storytelling" analogy to say that in my games it is not all about rules and optimization, that thought is required and reaction to events around you is a necessary part of the game.

Some of my players "get into the character's head", but not all of them, and that's cool with me. I want them to think and react, and at least try to do what the character would do, not what they want to do (which occasionally are very different, as I'm sure you've seen also).

I don't see one form of play as "more valid than the others", I do prefer to associate with people who like a balance of roleplaying and combat, and aren't going to nitpick the mechanics to death, but that's human nature.

 

[Henry]

...the aim of the RPG is not to eventually create a story. Any story that evolves during or after play is a bonus that is developed by the participants who enjoyed playing a game.

Oh, I never said it was the sole aim of RPGs: But it IS a method, and it IS an aim for some people, even if it's not the original purpose for an RPG. Do you refute that storytelling arising from play is an important element in the hobby? How many times have you had to duck or suffer "let me tell you about my character" stories at cons?

 

[SweeneyTodd]

I think mm is using a definition of story that excludes RPGs from their list of things that are them. To mm, a story is a pre-defined narrative that the user takes in just as instructed by the artist. I'm not sure that's a valid definition of story, but he's using it to illustrate a point of difference between a novel and a D&D campaign.

And I agree with him that, given the definition of story he's using, RPG sessions are not stories. Where you go with that little bit of wisdom is up to you. I DON'T think it implies that some styles of play are necessarily deprecated.

I think that's what I find a little difficult about mythusmage's threads recently. He's stated repeatedly that he's trying to produce a great paradigm shift in roleplaying, but just gives a little tantalizing snippet of his "philosophy". When asked to clarify, he's channeling The Architect from the Matrix movies ("vis-a-vis" and such), and when you take the effort to translate what he's saying, it's something like "The events in a roleplaying game should not be predetermined." I mean, cool, I'm in agreement, but obfuscation of a simple concept isn't the best way to get a meaningful discussion.

 

[mythusmage]

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

Note that the stories are told about the adventure, after the adventure has occured. The adventure itself is not a story, but (fictional) life as it happens. A very important difference.

 

[mythusmage]

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?

Not really. It is not a case of 'should' but a case of 'is'. In my considered opinion that is the best way to describe what goes on in a session. You play an imaginary person caught up in events, and that person's survival and possible profiting depends on how well you understand and make use of the tools made available.

 

[mythusmage]

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.

You are asking stories to be something they are not. You can improvise in a theatrical scenario or when story telling, but the basic plot is laid out and is followed. An RPG adventure cannot be plotted because too much is indeterminable. Because events cannot be predetermined with any accuracy this means sessions cannot be stories according to the traditional meaning.

You are right that they have elements of story in them, but that does not make them stories. It comes down to a misunderstanding of analog. An analog is an item that is like the original, but is not the original. Saying that a hurricane is like a dust devil, only hundreds of miles across is an analogy. In that both are circular winds they are alike, but the hurricane is so much more than a dust devil, and has features no dust devil could ever claim.

The same holds true of RPGs. RPGs have elements that also belong in story. At the same time RPGs have elements that belong in life. When a session is being played it is those analogs of real life that hold sway. Later, when the party has had time to unwind, the players can give their accounts of the action, at which point story holds sway.

I'll get into why treating a session as story is a bad idea later.