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[JohnSnow]

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

Here's a first - I agree with Gary and Mythusmage.

My personal preference in RPGs is towards rules that lend themselves to the playing of a game. However, part of the experience of "playing an RPG" is to make decisions "as your character would" not as a player "playing a game." That's where the waters get incredibly muddy.

The intention of a roleplaying game is to have fun playing the game. The decision factors should be mostly "How would X react to this situation?" and NOT, "what's the most advantageous decision from a game standpoint?"

My reasoning for the necessity of a consistent "game world" is that I can't decide how my character would react if I don't know what he knows. That's HUGE. I can separate what I know from what he knows (that's what roleplaying IS), but I can't assume knowledge that I don't have that my character should. And to me, that's the role of the rules in the game - providing that frame of reference from which my decisions on my character's behalf can be informed. The uncertainty is provided by the dice, but just as I know what my chances are of clearing a 10' pit before I make the jump, so too should my character (ergo, me as his player).

I think this gets very complicated, because all roleplayers are storytellers as well as playing out a simulated life (virtual reality, if you will). As players, we define our characters' pasts. That's storytelling. As GMs, we design the world up until the point where the players enter it. That's storytelling. Things go on in the world around the players - that's storytelling. But where those are influenced by the PCs, that's not storytelling, it's a living, virtual world. If your storytelling is good, figuring out the decisions of your creations is easy. Some things the GM does are still "story" elements because the GM plays the role of the arbitrary events that aren't in the control of any person - like earthquakes, weather, and so forth. And because the GM is constantly adding things to the world - expanding the story. But where those things meet the players, it's not story anymore - it's simulated reality.

Of course, that's just my take on it.

 

[fusangite]

The intention of a roleplaying game is to have fun playing the game. The decision factors should be mostly "How would X react to this situation?" and NOT, "what's the most advantageous decision from a game standpoint?"

But what if people have more fun asking and answering the second question? And isn't a good system one in which the answer to both questions is identical?

My reasoning for the necessity of a consistent "game world" is that I can't decide how my character would react if I don't know what he knows.

That seems flat-out impossible. I think what you mean is that you can't play a character reasonably if you don't have some way of accessing or deploying knowledge he has that you do not. The rules allow you to approximate character knowledge, not to obtain it.

And to me, that's the role of the rules in the game - providing that frame of reference from which my decisions on my character's behalf can be informed.

I have much the same perspective. For me rules=physics. But that doesn't mean the rules cannot also do other things. Rules will always equal physics, regardless of the purpose for which they are designed. I would argue, for instance, that games that describe themselves as narrativist essentially impart a postmodernist physics to their world. If the rules enable a direct interaction between the PCs and narrative structures, this means that the physics of the world inhabited by the PCs resembles these narrative structures. This isn't totally alien -- we can look at the conceptions of physics of many pre-literate societies to see narrative structures incorporate into a physics with storytelling actually shaping the physical world.

But where those are influenced by the PCs, that's not storytelling, it's a living, virtual world.

Can it not occupy a middle ground between these, be a bit of both or synthesize the two by incorporating narrative structures into the physics of the world? Given how complex you acknowledge things are, why are you so certain that this is a certainty in play?

Of course, that's just my take on it.

I really appreciate you framing your perspective in this way. Like Gary, you are expressing a preference for and analysis of "simulationist" play without positing it as some kind of holy writ. I hope future debate on this thread can turn in that direction.

 

[howandwhy99]

Sorry for the snarkiness; I think the thing people are reacting to is mythusmage's tone of "This is how to play" rather than "This is how I enjoy playing". That rarely goes over well. But it makes more sense to have a meaningful discussion in the thread rather than complain about that.

Thank you. I went back and read over the parts where MM responds and it does seem like there is a disconnect. I'm not sure what he is getting at, but I do believe these series of threads are supposed to create a "gestalt" shift in vision to a more Simulationist style of play. -- Now to go back and read the rest of your post.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

I think this gets very complicated, because all roleplayers are storytellers as well as playing out a simulated life (virtual reality, if you will). As players, we define our characters' pasts. That's storytelling. As GMs, we design the world up until the point where the players enter it. That's storytelling. Things go on in the world around the players - that's storytelling. But where those are influenced by the PCs, that's not storytelling, it's a living, virtual world.If your storytelling is good, figuring out the decisions of your creations is easy ... where those things meet the players, it's not story anymore - it's simulated reality.

Snipped slightly to focus on the part I wanted to respond to.

There's a thing we're all referring to, where GM, players, and rules interact to determine an outcome. You call that "a living, virtual world", someone else called it "story-creation". Some people are using the word storytelling to refer both to this activity and to the times one person says what happens.

So I guess I'll refer to them as "I decide" and "we decide", respectively, to avoid the story word.

When "I decide" happens, I'm inputting things into the game based on my own agenda, whatever that is. Sometimes that agenda is explicit, sometimes implicit. If I use "I decide" to dangle a plot hook in front of the players, that's more explicit than if I use it to say it's raining.

When "We decide" happens, we are also inputting things into the game based on our agendas. That's a key point to me. Your agenda might be "what would happen", based on the previous input and the rules, but the real people at the table are still deciding the results based on their own agendas.

"Figuring out the decisions of your creations"... I think that's a dodge. They don't exist. They're imagined. It's important for most people to have those decisions seem plausible based on previous events and the rules, but that's not the same thing as them acting on their own. Whether you go with what feels like it would happen in your gut, or what a die roll says, you, the player or GM, had an agenda and acted on it.

And that's cool. If a primary reason to play is to imagine that you're really there, then that's your primary agenda as well. That might include sublimating the "player decides" component and pretending it's the "character decides". That seems to be a technique that enhances immersion for some people.

But it's still an agenda, and it's not the only possible one to have. You could have the sole agenda of "Whatever lets me 'win'", and you're then playing your character like a game piece. You could have the sole agenda of "Whatever would be most interesting", and you're to some extent authoring your character like you would in fiction.

Realistically speaking, these are mixed agendas, it's not 100% a single one. You can play your character in a believable manner, try to provide them with a good chance of success, and have their action be dramatic as well. And I think that happens in play all the time. That's why I think it's so important to say that the people at the table are making real decisions, consciously or unconsciously, about what happens during "We decide".

 

[BryonD]

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

I play D&D purely to enjoy playing the game.

If a story doesn't come out of the playing, it is a fair bet that I did a poor job of it.

 

[howandwhy99]

To give you a better idea of where I'm coming what follows are a few of the basics I think my current DM is using.

First, we start with all the PCs in a similar position (hook) and in a small area.(scope) Let's say the PCs start off in a village in a rural duchy being evacuated by the King. The people on the ground don't know what is going on and this includes the PCs.(starting knowledge) As they were strong, young individuals they were asked to stay & guard half of the village as the other half was escorted out.(motivation) Wolves surrounded the village and fears spread about whether or not the first villagers even escaped.(beginnings of the first challenge) The PCs are looked up to for what to do next. (shared responsibility)

Now this is just the "starting adventure" to get things going. Geographically placed around this village are probably a dozen or more other adventures. Each have been modified to fit in the world. Each of the powerful NPCs in those adventures are "forces" effecting the world and are actively changing as events unfold. Other higher level adventures are also placed, but more often based on Time. These have their roots in the current world/situation, but they typically do not challenge the players until the PCs are potentially more powerful.

It's possible to play a Sim game where you just sort of trudge around the countryside, interacting with things as they come up. To the extent things come up, they're injected into the imagined landscape by the GM. He usually has a purpose to this, unless he's just rolling random encounters.

Random encounters are rolled for. But the lists are mostly created from the lists of creatures/NPCs in these dozen or more adventures.

Players get to make meaningful, big decisions from time to time, but maybe there's a lot of fighting orcs cause they're there, or buying supplies, or hanging out in taverns. I'll call that "Story Whenever", 'cause if you were to tell somebody about the stuff that happened in the game, you're kinda skipping the blah parts and getting to the parts where the PCs did something really interesting.

Everything in the world is a potential adventure. Everything is tied into some deeper story or mystery. Travelling = learning. The players' knowledge about the world == to the characters' knowledge. When we travel, our group passes through a series of adventure hooks. So in part, we are already in a half dozen adventures. All at once.

If you're going for Story Now, every session's going to have several places where the players had their characters make meaningful decisions. You're not driving for big, dramatic stuff every scene, but you're not playing out three days of overland travel either. Whatever the parts are that your group thinks are kinda blah, you gloss over them.

True, we gloss over travel through desolate areas. To maintain the random/realistic element to the world Encounter rolls are still made.

Okay, so Bangs and scene framing are tools towards that approach. A Bang is just a situation the GM presents that forces a meaningful decision. It's a question that can't be ignored, but doesn't have one right answer. (If the PC can ignore it, it's just an event; if there's only one right answer, it's railroading. Either way, not a Bang.) By "meaningful" I mean it makes a difference in how play proceeds past this point, and not just "I die or don't die".

Bangs are tricky to come up with. Attacked by orcs? Not a Bang if you have to fight them (not a choice), or if it doesn't matter if you fight them or run (not a meaningful choice). But "Orcs attack, and your old half-orc friend Grog is among them, and he's on their side" is a Bang. What's the deal here? Why's Grog with them? Do we kill them all, or try to kill everybody except Grog, or try to reason with him, or run away and worry about it later? Whatever choice they settle on is going to affect later play.

These sound like what DM's do to keep the play interesting. To keep it ever evolving. Lost one of your villagers while trying to immigrate the lot to safer lands? A half-orc you say? Perhaps he convinced his captors to let him join. And the brigade he does just happens to be assigned to one patroling the PCs area. These are nice. They add spice. But I'm not sure they could be done well spontaneously without a firm grip on how it effects everything else you initially decided to do with that half-orc. (i.e. - his body can no longer be the clue that the orcs are traveling westward)

Scene framing is perhaps simpler. Mostly it's about thinking about what the conflict and the stakes are in the scene you want to set. It's definately about having a reason for a scene other than "some stuff happens." Lots of things happen off-camera in a movie, but we only see the interesting ones. That example Bang above frames a scene (there's a conflict and stakes), but you could also have a scene of the party traveling overland and just having a conversation for a while. The biggest thing here is developing a sense of both how to start a scene (what you want it to accomplish), and how to end it (when that's been accomplished).

This sounds more like what players do when planning their character's actions. Wanting to trick the wolves and orcs into killing each other, our heroes dig traps and set an ambush in a grove outside the village. A captured orc is tied up in the bottom of the trap's pit. Then fresh blood is used to create a fake trail heading back near the orc encampment. Presumably the wolves will smell the blood and inspect, while the orcs follow the trail. Both may fall into the trap, and each has a fair chance of combating the other. If this happens, the PCs use that chance to escort the villagers away.

Anyways, I like the techniques you mention. They seem like what you might have referred to before as meta-textual (where the players change the game to suit their tastes) rather than "in-game only" thinking. IMC, if I want cthulhu horror, more puzzles, or a love interest for my PC, I just mention them to the DM tho. Is this different from what you are saying?

 

[howandwhy99]

Is this actually a problem? *snip*

I have to agree with almost everything you say in your post. This first part confuses me though. Yes, there are bad DM's everywhere. But don't you find ones running *only* adventure A, then B, then adventure C to be limiting the PCs to a degree? What if they choose not to follow the adventure? IME, there are more DMs who follow this format than not.

(There are exceptions to note: Lost City of Barakus is fairly broad and points out that areas not shown on the map are for the DM to fill in.)

 

[barsoomcore]

But don't you find ones running *only* adventue A, then B, then adventure C to be limiting the PCs to a degree? What if they choose not to follow the adventure? IME, there are more DMs who follow this format than not.

Thank you, that answers my question nicely. Our experiences are obviously very different. What's a problem to you is no problem whatsoever to me, because I've NEVER encountered a DM who behaves that way. But if you have then I can well imagine it must be frustrating for you.

 

[Ranger REG]

Once again I see people are missing the point. You are not telling a story as you play, you are engaged in events as they occur. And as in real life the outcome of those events is not set. Even when a story uses the present tense the events are set, they are determined. You cannot chage them. A story is deterministic. The events in an RPG session are not determined. By the very nature of the beast they cannot be determined. There are too many variables, too many things that could change the outcome from what is desired to, more often than one would like, something quite undesired.

Yes, people do like to tell stories. No doubt after a good adventure stories will be told of the events. But while the adventure is being played the players are not telling a story, they are, in a very real sense, living the adventure. Stories are experience at a remove, adventures are immediate experience. You could turn an adventure into a story, but it stops being an adventure.

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.

Won't this discriminate certain settings, that gamers would prefer to avoid. Take for instance, a Lord of the Rings RPG (be it from ICE or Decipher). If you place a party of PCs during the time of the War of the Ring, won't they somehow feel like one of those non-speaking extras on the films because whatever they do may or may not impact upon the event simply because the spotlight is on the Fellowship and not them?

Or do you simply prefer the kind of immersion in which the event taking place in the setting is somehow affecting them and not the other way around?

 

[The Shaman]

...I've NEVER encountered a DM who behaves that way.

You are very fortunate - I'd call it about fifty-fifty from my own experience.

Some GMs are just so hell-bent on 'telling a story' that they forget it's a game for EVERYONE at the table. :\