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[mythusmage]

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).

Let me clarify. The purpose of any RPG is not to help you tell stories, the purpose of an RPG is to help you have adventures. Real (fictional) life adventures in places that might be possible, but more often are not. Each session played is a slice of life for the players and their characters. Story arises from the session as the participants go back over the events.

For example: A band of 6 adventurers make their way down a flooding river to bring medical supplies to an isolated town. The players, as their characters, live that trip in a sense. When they recount the experience for others they are telling the story of their journey.

 

[mythusmage]

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.

Is he? Or is he presenting events in the order he thinks they'd most likely occur based on what the players are doing, and what the opposition is doing?

Scenario: The Blerg Brothers intend to steal Old Man Hither's Quivering Stone and use it to create earthquakes. Said earthquakes and the threat of earthquakes will be used by the Blerg Brothers as part of a shakedown scheme. The players' characters have the task, should they accept it, to stop the Blerg Brothers before they get the stone, or get the stone back if they fail to stymie to fell felons.

What happens during this particular adventure depends on the GM and his players.

 

[mythusmage]

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."

Story creation I agree with. Story telling I can not. For in order to tell a story you need a story to tell. Until the adventure has been played there is no story to tell. But while the adventure is being played the events that occur can be remembered, mis-remembered, and staged for the story that might be told later about the adventure. One creates the story during the adventure, one tells the story after the adventure.

 

[mythusmage]

"The events in a roleplaying game should not be predetermined."

(snip)

Say rather that the events in a roleplaying game cannot be predetermined. For such is railroading, and I am adamantly against that.

 

[Templeton580]

Reducing complex subjects to statements such as "All X are Y" is misleading and, in the end, not at all helpful to understanding the complexity of our hobby, and certainly not helpful for embracing the diversity of approaches to be found within our hobby.

Go looking for "Narrativist RPGs," and you'll discover a slew of games whose mechanics are all geared toward character, characterization, mood, themes, plot hooks, plot twists, flashbacks, allusion, etc. (and I'm not talking about White Wolf). The stated point of these games is to create a story. Everyone at the table works toward that goal. If they're having fun, they're not wrong.

Mythusmage, what concerns me about your theories is that (from what little you've revealed of them), they are always exclusionary. You're always making sweeping statements about what role-playing games are and what they aren't. I have yet to see an admission that the experiences of other people may differ from your own.

Anyone can draw a line to separate people. It's not at all innovative to do so.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

(snip)

Say rather that the events in a roleplaying game cannot be predetermined. For such is railroading, and I am adamantly against that.

This, however, is the core of your fallacious argument: you are adamantly against railroading, as, admittedly, are most experienced RPGers. However, by claiming that a roleplaying game cannot be predetermined, you are stating that railroading is, not wrong, but impossible.

At the bare minimum, an RPG can be a pure 100% railroad fest with the PCs moved from A to B to C with no real input on the outcome. That may make for a less than ideal session, but it's hardly impossible.

In fact, if it weren't possible, I daresay you would never have become adamantly against it. One rarely hears a person adamantly against flying pigs.

"Good RPG sessions," in your opinion and that of most experienced players and GMs, may lack predetermined events; "RPG sessions" may, however, include them.

 

[fusangite]

Well, Cutter, I'm guessing mythusmage has put us on his ignore list because we are challenging his view that he didn't just invent the idea of simulationist play the other day. I'm guessing Sweeny and Umbran will join the list soon. Of course, you're being more offensive than I by repeatedly directing him to a website where people are and have been discussing his idea with greater sophistication for several years. Still, say what you will about the tenets of exclusionary simulationism, at least it's an ethos.

Nevertheless, because I have a major paper I have to submit in two weeks, I feel called upon to waste 15 minutes responding to mythusmage's "points" anyway.

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.

First of all, mythusmage, perhaps you could tell us why Story Now games are not what they claim to be. How do you explain games like Buffy that include mechanics that act directly on story? Are these games, like the ones that include battle maps, not RPGs either? Most RPGs are only story post-facto; a subset are stories both post-facto and during play.

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.

Mythusmage, at this point I'm just going to come out and say it: you are acting like a megalomaniac. You state that something that appears to be a preference a "should be" is not really a preference but a fact, an absolute truth. What proof do you offer of this? You state "it is my considered opinion that this is the best way." The fact that you find a particular way or working is most effective in your own life does not make this way of working an absolute universal fact for everyone else in the world. You sound absolutely pathological here conflating your "considered opinion" about what is "best" with an unalterable universal fact. Step back and take a look at how you are communicating.

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

So, it's bad for people to enjoy narrativist games? How, exactly, are they harming themselves or others by playing games with their friends in the privacy of their own homes and enjoying that experience. Why is it important for you to stop people having fun in this way?

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.

Have you ever read about how storytelling works in oral tradition cultures? Some anthropologists make the argument that storytelling started as a decentred, unpredictable, multi-person activity and that our modern construction of stories with careful plotting and a single narrator only came later. Are you really taking the position that cultures like the Australian Aborigines don't tell stories?

You see, mythusmage, things seem very clear to you right now because you have never studied storytelling, RPG theory or anything else about which you have been issuing authoritative "proclamations" the past few days. Being ignorant is an easy way to make the world appear simple and easily definable.

The purpose of any RPG is not to help you tell stories, the purpose of an RPG is to help you have adventures.

Actually, the purpose of RPGs is to get together with your friends and have fun. They have no grand social purpose beyond that because It's just a game, man.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

It still doesn't tell us what railroading is, and that's a word so vague as to not be very useful.

But I see what mythusmage is trying to say. He's describing roleplaying games where the GM describes the world and the players describe their actions within it. The GM doesn't restrict their actions beyond preventing them from doing things that are impossible in the setting or within the terms of the rules.

Okay, and? I've played in some of those games; they were okay, I guess. Lots of people play that way every week. Lots of people play different ways, and the stuff mythusmage is excluding is so broad as to encompass a lot of different play styles.

So, okay, you play that way. Want to talk about techniques that help or hinder you? How to talk to players to ensure they all feel comfortable with your playstyle?

Because that would be an interesting conversation. Saying "I play this way, so should you" isn't very interesting.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

fusangite, I don't think it'd matter if he ignore-listed me or not; he already just quotes the one line where I repeat what I think he's saying, and snips the parts where I ask him "Okay, given that, what's your point?"

I don't think he's aware of Story Now techniques, or lumps them in with "GM railroads the plot", which is exactly the opposite thing. I agree that players should never be blocked from making meaningful choices, but I use techniques like Bangs and scene framing to skip that day's journey down the river and get right to those choices. Players and GM are mindful of the things they want to address, and focus on those events in play rather than just living in the world and letting events come as they may. He might very well consider that "railroading", or maybe even "not roleplaying". There goes the opportunity for a meaningful discussion.

That's the problem with exclusionary thinking -- it limits your tools.

 

[Desdichado]

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.

How is that a very important difference? It seems a pedantic difference to me.

And I'm not one of those Forge type people, and I don't really have much interest in strictly narrativist play styles (although at least I'm aware of them) but to me a good story as a product of the gaming session is one of the primary reasons I play. But saying that its story-creation instead of story-telling is kinda disingenious.

So, if I sit down and whip up an impromptu story for my kids before bed-time, is that not storytelling because it's not pre-determined? Is a work-in-progress novel not a story because it's not determined? Although I understand (I think) what you're saying, I don't understand why you feel the need to differentiate story-telling from the act of playing an RPG session, nor do I understand why you insist on creating new definitions for these terms that are different than common usage.