Do you play more for the story or the combat?

[Mallus]

I suggest reading a book on the subject.

Can you suggest one? To be honest, I doubt it'll change the views on role-playing that I've formulated over the past 20 or so years, but I admit to being fascinated by opinions that run so contrary to my own.

RPGs resemble any kind of simulation because simulation is designed to resemble something else.

Are you agreeing with me that RPG play resembles fiction, at least enough so as to share certain terminology?

No one is really killing elves in D&D the same way they are not really buying property in Monopoly.

No one is arguing this, either. Relevance?

All simulation is fiction.

This is another example of generalizing the meaning right out of a word, in this case, the world "fiction". Do I really need to demonstrate that all simulations are not fiction? OK, a computer weather simulation is not fiction. Happy?

When we tell a story we are relating events.

When we write a story, alone or collaboratively, we are inventing events, in real-time, on the spot, so to speak, etc.

When roleplaying no actions are predetermined for the roleplayer so no story is related.

A story is being created.

Story is the RE-telling of events.

A story (ie fiction) is the process of being written is still a story. It still possess definitive, story-like qualities. Which, I might add, are shared by RPG play, hence my use of them when discussing D&D.

But roleplaying exercises go out of their way to ensure you don't have to stop roleplaying when playing them.

And yet we roll so many little dice...

And if you go read a book about roleplaying you will see roleplaying = training.

Would these books be about role-playing gaming, or about role-playing in other contexts/disciplines? All role-playing is not the same.

In RPGs with fictional roles like World of Warcraft as you mention and D&D it is practicing to be a fighter in a fantasy world. Or a spellcaster. Or a cleric. etc.

I game to play fictional characters in adventures stories. I'm not practicing to anything, except perhaps funnier and more imaginative. I've never met anyone outside of you, how, that saw RPG play as a form of training.

 

[Mark]

Uhm... both.

Sometimes it's a little bit more one way or the other, depending on mood.

Why is "both" not an option? I don't think I can quantify how much I like one or the other to +/- 0.0000001%.

Pick a side. We're at war.

Spoiler

[/Colbert]

 

[Aus_Snow]

I game to play fictional characters in adventures stories. I'm not practicing to anything, except perhaps funnier and more imaginative. I've never met anyone outside of you, how, that saw RPG play as a form of training.

Word.

Although. . . there is (or was?) one other guy on EN World who thought and/or felt much the same way about RPGs - 'jack' somebody I think. . .? Hm.


Oh, and incidentally, I prefer 'sandbox-style' play (including as DM, GM or whatever.)

 

[Doug McCrae]

The question doesn't make sense - for the vast majority of D&D players they are both essential. There's no 'more'.

 

[Quartz]

I picked Story, but it's only just. Combat is usually a strong part of the story in D&D games and thus the system itself revolves around combat. Think Elric or Conan: the story's more important, but it's progressed through combats.

 

[The Little Raven]

Pick a side. We're at war.

I've made my choice.

 

[fanboy2000]

That's news.

Yep, it's a news story. Newspapers are filled with news stories that don't include conflict. Every time there's an eclipse, there's a news story about it.

Or an example of possibly the begining of a story. It's just an event you are recounting.

Well, that was howandwhy99's point, recounting an event is a story. Everyday people tell stories to their friends and family are nothing more than recounting events. I agree with it.

The story comes out in the rest. what happened next? How did you survive? How did you get out of the damaged library? Did you wrestle with an inner desire to flee without helping anyone else?

What if all I did was go home and tell my girlfriend about it? "Hey, Kim I got this story to tell you. I went to the library to do some studying. So, I'm in a cozy chair minding my own business when a metor comes through the roof! It was the size of loaf of bread and smoke was coming from it. Apparently, someone from the university is coming to get it so they can do a geological analyses on it."

Conflict will come in 6 forms:

Man vrs Himself
Man vrs Man
Man vrs Society
Man vrs Nature
Man vrs Supernatural
Man vrs Technology

Yes, I learned that in high school english. But just because that's what they said in english class doesn't make it true. For one thing, in an english class, the stories studied are published stories. That doesn't even begin to cover the number of stories that are told everyday.

Yes. Challenge = conflict- Conflict does not have to equal fighting. The story is in how your protagonist either manages to overcome, or fails to overcome the challenge he is faced with.

Of course conflict doesn't have to equal fighting things.

This is what I liked about howandwhy99's point: if a story is recounting past events, then it makes sense for me not to plot out the story before the PCs have a chance to participate. Now, I've already said that I present challenges to my PCs, so clearly the stories my players tell have conflict in them. The stories usually aren't the ones I would plot out though, if I plotted out in advance. They don't seem to conform to the kind of story I've heard other DMs plot out. My players tell stories how they did something particularly creatively or something unexpected and funny that happened in game. That part of the game is important to me, the telling of stories afterwords. Telling stories beforehand isn't as important to me.

 

[fanboy2000]

That sounds like a conflict to me. Without conflict the story would be:

I went to the library to read some books. I did.

This seems to illustrate my point about the definition of conflict being expanded so a story can be shown to have conflict. A meteor falling through the roof is interesting, but it's hardly a conflict. I wasn't threatened by the meteor, and there wasn't any interaction between it and me. I just observed a rare event.

Conflict is [often] interesting, so that makes a story worth telling, but it seems to me like it's possible to tell an interesting story without conflict.

 

[Scribble]

Yep, it's a news story. Newspapers are filled with news stories that don't include conflict. Every time there's an eclipse, there's a news story about it.

Well, that was howandwhy99's point, recounting an event is a story. Everyday people tell stories to their friends and family are nothing more than recounting events. I agree with it.

What if all I did was go home and tell my girlfriend about it? "Hey, Kim I got this story to tell you. I went to the library to do some studying. So, I'm in a cozy chair minding my own business when a metor comes through the roof! It was the size of loaf of bread and smoke was coming from it. Apparently, someone from the university is coming to get it so they can do a geological analyses on it."

I think what is going on here is that we're kind of talking about two seperate things. I'm talking (and I believe LostSoul was as well) about narrative story. I believe D&D takes a more narrative story approach.

Yes, a news story is called a "story" and is a recounting of events, but it's not a narrative. The narrative would be about your "struggle" to pass the test. You go to the library only to be interupted by a meteor the size of a loaf of bread. Oh oh will our protagonist be able to overcome interuptions and still pass that test?!?! dun dun dunnnnn....

Yes, I learned that in high school english. But just because that's what they said in english class doesn't make it true. For one thing, in an english class, the stories studied are published stories. That doesn't even begin to cover the number of stories that are told everyday.

Cool your english class was good? What do you want me to say to that? I learned it again in countless writing classes in college? You learned it in english class because it's pretty much the basics of narrative. The foundation.

Rules can be broken, and often are to good effect, but you need to undertand why you're doing it first.

Of course conflict doesn't have to equal fighting things.

This is what I liked about howandwhy99's point: if a story is recounting past events, then it makes sense for me not to plot out the story before the PCs have a chance to participate. Now, I've already said that I present challenges to my PCs, so clearly the stories my players tell have conflict in them. The stories usually aren't the ones I would plot out though, if I plotted out in advance. They don't seem to conform to the kind of story I've heard other DMs plot out. My players tell stories how they did something particularly creatively or something unexpected and funny that happened in game. That part of the game is important to me, the telling of stories afterwords. Telling stories beforehand isn't as important to me.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here... As it doesn't seem to be related to what I said.

D&D games are narrative stories in the midst of being told/written. They aren't fully written until the end of the final adventure of the campaign.

Some D&D narratives take the form of the 3 act play. Some are a more free form. All of them will have conflict, as thats pretty much the basis of the game itself. You bring the plot, and the characters, and the dialogue and the choices... but whether or not the final story is about a failure to overcome the conflict or how you DID overcome the conflict is for the most part determined by the rules.

 

[The Green Adam]

The Plays The Thing!

Story definitely. Combat is simply one element of the story, a component to generate tension and drama or a way of resolving it. In a RPG you can have story without combat but combat without a story is a war game.

AD