D&D 5E Is D&D a Story or a Game? Discuss.

[BookBarbarian]

In your opinion, is D&D more story or more game?

It doesn't really matter

What are the consequences of that?

Pointless arguments

 

[Wiseblood]

D&D is a set of game rules. DM's and players turn it into a story...or they can.

Frustrated DM: "It was a perfectly good story until the players got involved and turn it into a series of muggings and murders. "

Advanced Muggings & Murders TM

 

[Caliban]

That's still a story; it's just a different story.

One person's story is another's crime report.

 

[clearstream]

Yes, but the question has never been whether we can distinguish between games and stories; the question is whether D&D itself is a story or a game.

D&D is a game: we play characters, roll dice, try to win and not lose.
D&D is also a story: characters are travelling on an adventure in a fictional world, with dialogue and social interaction, plot hooks, etc.

In your opinion, is D&D more story or more game? What are the consequences of that?

As you say later in your discussion, the question itself is misguided. The OP states (or heavily implies) that D&D is a story and a game (lit. "D&D is also a story"). It could be that we both find that problematic. For me, we can say that players and DMs can use the rules and premises of D&D to tell stories. But we can't say that D&D is a story. The OP could have asked "Is D&D more telling a story than playing a game?" That is an entirely different question.

Seriously, you are dealing with a whole website filled with some of the foremost experts in role playing games many or most of whom have IQ's over 140. I doubt there is a scholarly treatise that can match even a fraction of the brainpower available on EnWorld. I certainly know that the literature on this subject and the textbooks tend to be.... lacking, by comparison.

You mistake my meaning. People here certainly have the ability to unpack it, but this forum isn't a suitable place to do that because the subject I refer to is extremely complex. Maintaining a progressive and focused analysis is very difficult. The people here are no doubt up to it, but linearly threaded forums are not the best tool for the task. Also, I believe that much of the debate here is not particularly in earnest, and that would likely derail somewhat - adding to the difficulties.

In fact, I'd say that since a story is inherently a form of communication, until it interacts with something (a reader, for example) it isn't even a story.

This probably reveals that we are talking about different things. I am taking story to entail an account or recital. We can say that a book contains a story. We can say that a story-teller tells a story. I think that we can agree that a book that contains a story, continues to contain that story even when there are no readers to be found. I appreciate that you perhaps dislike this definition. It doesn't fit into what you are trying to say. But that doesn't really entitle you to discredit it (or me). If you like, you can say that you don't want to talk about my definition. That's fine. I don't feel you've been too clear yet what you mean by story, seeing as it seems to reside in so many places.

 

[clearstream]

So let's remove the game aspect a bit. Let's say kids are playing pretend. They are playing make believe....that they're space rangers, let's say. What are they doing? Playing a game? There are no mechanics in the sense we tend to attribute to games.

That's a good example to raise. Let's apply two different descriptions of what these kids are doing.

A) The kids are a story. Or perhaps their play is a story.
B) The kids are telling a story. Or their play fabricates a story.

Does our description turn everything into tomatoes, or using it can we still tell tomatoes from potatoes? Is our description progressive i.e. can we use it to move forward our understanding? If we say the kids are a story, I feel like we're stuck there. I've no idea how children can be a story and I don't really know what is meant by story, seeing as it is also children. It has a certain whimsical charm, but for me lacks analytical power. Because of that, I can't use it to better understand kids or stories. The description really, when you get down to it, takes us is all sort of odd directions.

On the other hand, if I differentiate kids from playing from storytelling from stories, I have a lot to become interested in. Is play the same as storytelling? That's a very meaningful question. What constitutes good story telling and how might I recognise a good story. I don't know about you, but for me really useful questions roll right on out of the description.

So in a nutshell that's how I approach this. Story telling happens in D&D, no question, but D&D is not a story. That latter description is a dead end. Maybe when the OP asserts "D&D is also a story" that's just poorly chosen wording. If so, fine. I'll back right down and say - "Oh, you meant does D&D include story telling? Right then, that's a worthwhile description to look into."

Does that help clarify/make sense?

 

[Shasarak]

In your opinion, is D&D more story or more game? What are the consequences of that?

DnD is neither a story nor a game. They had to create a new term to describe what it is: A Roleplaying Game.

 

[Shasarak]

I disagree on a fundamental level. There is no world except that which the players and the DM create. That's a setting. It informs the game. The story is what you call the game after the fact. The story is what does happen. The game is all that could happen. Dungeons and Dragons is a set of rules that tells you what could happen.

If DnD is a set of rules that tell you what could happen, which rules are there to describe what could happen when the PCs walk into their first Pub?

 

[MichaelSomething]

It is both and neither at the same time.

Sent from my VS990 using EN World mobile app

 

[clearstream]

D&D is a game: we play characters, roll dice, try to win and not lose.
D&D is also a story: characters are travelling on an adventure in a fictional world, with dialogue and social interaction, plot hooks, etc.

In your opinion, is D&D more story or more game? What are the consequences of that?

I believe it is wrong to implicitly conflate "story" and story "telling" here. With that in mind, I would say that roleplaying is a process and story is a product. D&D is roleplaying. Through playing D&D we can tell stories. We can capture those stories and recite them unerringly (e.g. video them), but each time we redo the process new things can happen. Games are process oriented. Stories (for a worthwhile definition) are products.

Really it would be better to ask different questions. And that ground has been covered pretty well, elsewhere.

 

[clearstream]

If DnD is a set of rules that tell you what could happen, which rules are there to describe what could happen when the PCs walk into their first Pub?

That's a good example. D&D includes rules - they're an important element, just as dice are - but it also includes people in a playful state. Playfulness is engaged with the PCs walk into a Pub to produce a story about that. The rules might get involved if there is a bar fight, or the players want a room, or need to get information from the barkeep, etc. Playfulness is not "story" even though playfulness produces stories. One is a process, the other a product.