Libramarian
Adventurer
Like tabletop RPGs - done badly it isn't very good. Your point?
That the thread's definition for story game is way too broad to be useful.
Like tabletop RPGs - done badly it isn't very good. Your point?
I'm leaning heavily toward solutions more related to FATE than railroading, especially since I'm going to go intergalactic sandbox with my next campaign. I'm gearing up to be content sitting and GMing nothing much until the players decide what they're going to do. I want them to give me the plot hooks.
That the thread's definition for story game is way too broad to be useful.
This means that if you want to use traditional RPG rules to run a story game with narrative logic (dramatic arcs, etc. etc. etc.) you've basically got to give the DM big gobs of power to the DM to overrule the rules left and right to make things more story-like and to nudge the PCs towards the plot.
Let say you're playing a game and in the first combat encounter your character gets hit by a lucky critical and dies, do you:
A. Have the DM try to avoid that sort of thing from happening through narrative power (making sure that the big scary orcs avoid attacking the wizard with 4 HPs) /dice fudging.
B. Tell the player that his character is dead and that he should go roll up a new one.
C. Play with a system that's set up so that the whole situation is pretty much impossible.
It makes sense, sure, but it includes boring, unfun games, like sitting in a circle narrating stuff going clockwise.Except the thread gives a definition - and one that makes sense. If you the player have narrative control of the world outside your character's direct actions (rather than simply offering suggestions to the DM) it's a storygame. If the control you have is what your character can do it's an RPG.
So action points are RPGs. Plot points are story game. If the players frame some of the scenes it's a story game.
@ThirdWizard , you might want a look at Leverage or MHRP's distinctions before adding in FATE aspects and compels. I'm not sure how to add those to D&D (+2/-2 and the latter offers a complication on a 3?) - but penalty invoked by the player I find even better than DM-Compel Bargain.