Game vs. Story

[Greg K]

I am really not sure where I fit into this.

1. The game element is important for resolving actions

2. Verisimilitude of the setting is more important to me than
a)an individual player's desire to either play some cool race, class, pc or utilize some other mechanical element that I have predetermined does not exist in the particular setting;
b) handwaving either training (i.e., allowing it behind the scenes as per the default assumption) or prc requirements;
c) ignoring in-game events in favor of the default multiclassing rules.

3. Roleplaying is important.

4. Rather than have a story with a predetermined outcome, the player's actions decide the story. I may have a metaplot and I'll provide hooks that the players may choose to have their character's ignore. Some of the hooks may be tied to the background of individual characters and may even lead to confilicting goals between characters.
Also, the character actions do have consequences. Ignore certain hooks and the choice may come back to bite the characters in the backside as NPC plans continue whether the PCs engage them or not. Piss of the wrong people and the character's make new enemies that I had not previously considered. Likewise, aid and befriend the right people and your character's will make allies.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Tell the story through the game. Don't attach a game to a story.

That's my ideal opinion anyway.

In reality I suspect many people meet in the middle, or just go along with whatever their GM wants, so long as they're having fun.

 

[Wombat]

I reject the notion that a campaign can't be a balance of both.

However, in my case, as long as it's understood that we're all telling the story--the DM may be guiding it, but he's not the sole author--I'm more story/plot-driven.

QFT

 

[Mercule]

Pretty close to the middle. Today, I'm favoring game by a hair. A year ago, I would have said story.

IMO, you need both. If the GM over-rides many die rolls, you may as well just be listening to him tell a story or writing some sort of cooperative book (not bad, but not a "game"). If you completely ignore the story, then you lose what separates D&D from DDM or even chess.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Story-telling and pre-determined endpoints are not the same thing. / Story-telling does not need to have anything planned out ahead of time at all

A matter of semantics and degrees. It depends on the context with which you use the word story. By my definition of story, it specifically means that it is planned out fully in advance or is a recounting of something that has already happened.

A better definition for our purposes is that to me, a story based game describes a game where the actions of the players have a minimal impact on the outcome of the story. In such a game, the villian will always manage to escape, the lesser combats have no meaning, and there is no way for the players to fail to complete the quest short of quitting the game.

A game situation should always have failure being every bit as possible as success. Any DM can create an encounter where the players will lose and are captured. It is harder to create an encounter where the players have a reasonable chance of both success and failure.

To me, the mark of a good DM is one who can create a scenario where the players can succeed or fail, but will enjoy the game either way.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[jdrakeh]

"I’m/we’re playing a game, and any story comes of that process." This is narrativist play in a nutshell, so that's the answer I chose ('cause I dig narrativist play).

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm just not seeing how there can be a balance there -- you either are willing to fudge the game for the story you want to tell, or you are willing to leave the story open to whatever the game gives you. Or a scale -- how much of the game are you willing to fudge for your story, or how much of your story are you willing to concede to the game?

A story doesn't need to have every detail scripted out and immutable ahead of time. Indeed, it's a poor story that isn't subject to it's own flexibility.

For instance, I may be telling the story of how a group of heroes challenged the Necromancer King in his stronghold to the East. A character dies, it's no big deal, I can still tell the story (it's just about different characters). The characters ultimately fail, that's fine, it's a story of the great struggle. The characters get sidetracked and go fight goblins for a time, that's a bit more troublesome, since that's not the story I'm interested in telling.

There's always a mix of both, where, for me, the story provides the inspiration for the core of the game, and the game informs how the story progresses. The story comes first and takes precedence, usually, though. If the rules dictate something lame, I'm very comfortable ignoring the rules and going with what's awesome instead.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Game. You can tell a story about what happened in the game after the fact if you want (because you can tell a story about anything).

My view as well.

 

[DungeonMaester]

I'll go with what R.A. Salvador said in a D&D podacast. It was something to this effect:

Its not the DM's job to be the entertainer. D&D is a template for players to tell there own stories and the DM's job to be a sort of Shepard.

Which to me means the Dm should enable the players to tell the story of the [character's life] with plots, but the plots should not be the focus of the game.

---Rusty

 

[Ourph]

Isn't this fudging by another name? How is it different to have your fudging codified beforehand? You are still changing the results of the dice which are not intended to be changed after the fact. Once the dice stop moving, that is the result of the action. Be it a hit, miss, massive damage, failed save, whatever, the dice are the means of determining results.

Any action which changes that is fudging. Not that that's a bad thing. I like the idea of hero points actually. But, that is moving along the spectrum from a very strong gamist approach where the roll is always the roll to the other end where the dice can be overruled at any time.

I don't think codified fudging is necessarily "gamist" or "storyteller". It depends on why you're including those mechanics in your game. If the purpose is to allow the story to ride over road-bumps created by unlucky dice rolls, then you're doing it for "story" concerns. If the purpose is to add an extra layer of granularity to the resource management portion of the game, one that creates a whole new layer of strategic thinking for the players, then the motivation is obviously "gamist".

So the real difference between codified fudging through action points or whatever and uncodified fudging is that the latter really can't be motivated by "game" concerns. If the players don't control it and don't know it's an option beforehand, then they can't incorporate it as part of their strategy and mastery of the game. Which isn't to say that uncodified fudging by the DM can only ever be motivated by "story" concerns. In my experience it's much more often motivated by interpersonal concerns (the DM feels bad about killing Jeff's character because Jeff just had a hard day at work) or time concerns (nobody wants to wait around for Jeff to roll up a new character, so the DM rules him at -9 and stable instead of -20 and a bloody smear on the floor) rather than true "story" concerns, but I would suggest that it's impossible (at the very least extremely illogical) for uncodified fudging to be motivated by "gamist" concerns.