Is your D&D campaign a game or a story?

[Herobizkit]

I voted 8. When we game, we're all about the story.

My DM has concoted neary 30k game years of history for his campaign world, he has a well-thought out over-arcing plot, and leaves it pretty much up to me whether or not I get involved. If I do, then that adds to the game world overall. If I don't, his NPCs will chug along with his original plans. The PC/NPC banter enriches the characters and their place in the world at large. We drive our own story, but there's alwyas a larger story that's going on in the background.

By contrast, my personal style of DMing is largely PC/NPC banter. In fact, my current solo campaign is being run along the vein of a soap opera. We have the main hero, dashing and suave and charismatic (and a Half-Celestial Gestalt Paladin/Rogue; he's pretty much a cross between Superman and Hercules in powers and demeanor). We have his cast of characters; four females, four males, and the interplay between them and the hero.

We run a 18+ game, and so the stories get "interesting". Basically, it all revolves around the hero trying to "get with" all four girls... at once. On the peripheral, he's also the king of a shattered country located in a tropical archipelago, and so we have a Pirates of the Caribbean/The New World vibe in there as well. I keep placing him in madcap misadventure after misadventure, and every once in a while I'll actually put him through a module to mix it up. It works VERY well, and I couldn't imagine playing strictly the "traditional" kill things and take their stuff or even the 3.5 wargame-y version of D&D with this scenario.

The story is pretty much made up as we go. When He DM's, it's the same way. Works well.

 

[fusangite]

Well, to be fair, in a story-heavy game, the opportunity to use a Sense Motive check to see through the villain's ruse would never occur. After all, skill checks are a game element -- sense motive checks can occur only when it would be dramatically appropriate, when they have reason to suspect someone.

Nonsense. A DM's job is to make the sense motive check dramatically appropriate whenever it happens and to amend the storyline on the basis of the change in fortunes in order to keep the metaplot structure viable.

Story in a game is not about the minutia of storyline; it is about the fundamental metaplot structure of the game. A GM having an eye to story does not have to mean control of the outcome of all significant events that comprise the storyline. The key is to define one's story objectives in such a way that the players are accorded virtually complete freedom to shape individual events and respond to their outcomes.

It seems like some people here want to make a GM caring about story equivalent to a GM depriving his players of free will. In my game, I know that the characters will pass through the Seven Cities and, in the course of doing so, find the Holy Grail. Do I know what cities the seven will be? No. Do I require that any individual attempt to attain an aspect of the grail will succeed? No.

If you can't give your players free will and still maintain a coherent theme and story structure, that's your problem. It's not a problem inherent in achieving these objectives. Don't assume that others have not figured out a way to do this. Story <> railroading; to assume that it is is insulting to people who care about both story and free will.

The more story you add, the more narrow the band of permissable actions for the PC's, the tighter and more linear the dungeon becomes.

I don't accept that at all. In my experience, the larger the number of narrative and symbolic structures that resonate in your campaign, the more creative avenues are available to both player and GM.

It seems to me that this debate is really a bunch of people who cannot figure out a flexible and fulfilling way to incorporate story into a campaign vehemently asserting that doing so is impossible.

 

[ThirdWizard]

One of my Players, a good friend of mine and the one I mentioned before, is also part of a group that plays on IRC under a very different DM than me. It's always interesting to hear him talk about the other game, becuase it runs so counter to mine in a variety of ways. The stories in his games are much better than mine, I fully admit. All the PCs are intricately tied to the plot, events in the first session are relevant to the last one, and the plot unfolds in a very novelesque way.

But, in order to do all this, he does things which I would never do in my games. First of all, PCs can never die. Like any well wrought Dickens-like story, the PCs are tied so intricately to the way things will turn out that their deaths would throw a wrench in things. In fact, he knows how the campaign will end before the first session. And, its a great story. But, there are things given up in order to achieve that kind of intricate noveleque plot.

And, the Players love it, and it is a really great game I'm told.

I don't see how anyone could create that type of experience story-wise without pushing aside certain aspects of the gaming in the system. I don't see how a write-as-we-play game is ever going to achieve the kind of thing that is inherent in that kind of gaming, because it will inevitably be messed up in some way. Because, that's generally what Players do.

Now, you can have a good story, and I have good stories, and we talk about old campaigns and old sessions, and I have intricate NPCs that plot things in circles within circles, and its a very character driven game at times. But, its not any kind of amazing storytelling going on. We enjoy the stories because we're invested in them, because we lived them out, not because of any real merit on their own part. Sure, every once in a while, I'll hit on a great plot for a game and it'll go off without a hitch. It isn't all that common, though.

I don't doubt that someone out there can do what that guy does above without the heavy handed DMing, mind you. But, I do think that that is a very very rare quality that I never expect to see in action.

 

[Melan]

I voted "7". I like to place my players in complex environments with several variables and let them forge their own destinies. Whether they want to explore the haunted house, lord over their domain or set up a smuggling operation in cooperation with the local pirates is their own prerogative. Once plans are set in motion and the situation is "engaged", I let cause and effect do the rest... sometimes spiced up with a generous helping of randomness to avoid predictability. I guess this mode of play is closer to the game end than the story end, although it may look like a story to an outsider; maybe even some players.

As an alternative, I also like straight challenge-based gamist play, preferably set in large dungeons governed by game logic. That's pure game. I know my current group won't go for that, so these plans are currently on hold.

 

[Heathen72]

I was away from ENWorld for awhile, and it's because of threads likes this one that I realize why I didn't miss it.

Threads like this one have the potential to be a good thread, but often fail when someone insists on describing the opinions of others bull**** or what have you. Even if the smileys were replacing 'dust', I don't think it's a very respectful way to address someone else's argument, particularly when you know the sort of forum that the moderators strive to run here. I wonder if you would prefer comments of that ilk to lie like dice where may, and if you feel that efforts of moderators to keep the forums civil is just a form of self aggrandizement. I for one am happy that these forums are kept (relatively) free of the cowardly sniping and ego tripping that blight other internet forums, so when people who don't feel this way go elsewhere for a while, I don't miss them.

Oh, and it's half story and half game for me.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Story in a game is not about the minutia of storyline; it is about the fundamental metaplot structure of the game. A GM having an eye to story does not have to mean control of the outcome of all significant events that comprise the storyline. The key is to define one's story objectives in such a way that the players are accorded virtually complete freedom to shape individual events and respond to their outcomes.

With respect, if there is one beginning and one end and just 30 different ways to get to the end, that's still constraining the action. And if it's like a choose-your-own-adventure book, that still limits choice to a few points along the way. And if you can react to individual events and shape the future of the plotline, if you allow for more randomness, the story almost always suffers for it.

Defining those objectives still limits player choice to "you have to want these objectives." It's minor, yes, and it's definately something a lot of people can live with and have a lot of fun with, but it's definately antithetical to the style Gygax mentioned above, where you play the game and then tell a story about what happened in the game. It's more concerned about the story (ever so slightly, but slightly nonetheless) than about the game, so much so that it will waive a few options about the game to satisfy the needs of the story.

I mean, I'm not knocking it. I've played and really enjoyed some heavily story-based games. But I fully admit that they did put some constraints on the players, too. Constraints they could live with, and enough randomness to create events that surprised me, but they were there. Certain characters might have been too important at certain moments to die, certain villains had to be introduced, certain NPC allies had to come about, there was a definate "end" and "beginning," etc.

It's a chicken and egg scenario, really. Any D&D game contains at least a minor element of story (you go into dungeons because you want to get rich), and at least a minor element of gameplay (roll to hit). Many contain more elements of story (you're all destined to be great heroes, we're trying for a horror game so no gnome bards named Gaylord, we're fighting giants invading the town in this campaign, etc.), but all those ponits of story start to tread on the toes of the game (no evil characters, no gnome bards named Gaylord, better play a Dwarf if you want to be a good fighter, etc.).

It's not an absolute destruction of free will (because no one would say that that's any fun). It's a more subtle, more like creating a channel for the water to run down, to direct the flow of the game.

In my experience running story-laden games, if a PC were to Sense Motive on the secret villain, there's three choices. (1) Build up his Bluff to bizzarrely high levels (absolutely possible), (2) Hand-wave the check so that no matter what he rolled it wasn't good enough, or (3) Allow it to succeed, but then build another layer to it so that that one success doesn't dissolve the mystery entirely. Of these, 2 is the most story-heavy (because it's impossible to ruin the secret), 1 is fairly story heavy (it's effectively impossible, but justified in the rules), and 3 is the least (it still makes the SM check irrelevant in the grand plot, but allows some flexibility and reward for a skill check still). Either way, the flow cannot cross my dam and figure out who my "main villain" is because that would suck for storytelling and no one at the table would have fun. Versus my more game-like games, where a PC uses Sense Motive and I tell them exactly what they can sense if they beat the villain's Bluff check, and if they do, then they can slay the villain early and get the reward and then move onto the dragon in the hills or the kobolds in the sewer and such.

It is a basic principle of game design even videogames have embraced. The story-heavy style is similar to a Final Fantasy or Zelda game or even one of your older Mario games where the next action is basically either laid out before you or within a narrow band of choices (you could take the warp zone, or you could barrel through in a striaght line). The game-heavy style is more similar to the "hub" system of an MMORPG, where there's a main meeting palce and stuff going on all around it that you just need to tease out of the surrounding NPC's (you never need to take the Fetch Water quest, and you can instead just gather orc ears all day long if that's where you have fun). In Final Fantasy, you never have a choice to abandon the world because that's not why you're playing the game. In an MMO, if you want to just grind without worrying about the missions, you're free to do so because you could be playing the game for many reasons.

It seems to me that this debate is really a bunch of people who cannot figure out a flexible and fulfilling way to incorporate story into a campaign vehemently asserting that doing so is impossible.

You seem a bit too defensive, so step off the flurry of blows for a moment. All I'm saying is that the more flexible the "story" the less "story-like" and more "game-like" it becomes. Are choose-your-own-adventure books a story or a game? They blur the line as much as a story-heavy session of D&D does.

Every campaign has story and rules. That's kind of the enjoyment of a roleplaying game, after all. And they do come into conflict ("main character" dies, "main villain" doesn't save, "important clue" gets overlooked, "inappropriate character" gets unwittingly introduced), and where they come into conflict is where the game says one thing ("he failed the save, he died") and the story says another ("that's anticlimactic! He shouldn't die!"). If you fall on one side, the other does suffer, and balancing both so that it's at a fun level for the group is one of the key responsibilities of a DM. Every good DM balances it at a level that's fun for their group, but not every group has fun with the same amount or type of constraints.

When I played a story-heavy game, they absolutely wanted to see what happens next to their narrowly imagined characters that I put wierd limits on ("you're all gnomes," "you start as normal people with NPC classes," "keep the same characters from the last campaign, this will be the sequel," "You begin in Carceri as prisoners, tell me how you got there. This campaign will be about escape," etc.). When I play my current game-heavy games, it's more about the challenge of monsters and missions, and about the world they're in ("we don't want to die, so what party roles do we need?", "should we go on that quest about the Athar and the dead god, or are we more concerned with the money we can get as couriers?", "I want to play a Cha3 Thri-Kreen").

"All characters must be Good" is a constraint born of story, and while not every group would care about such a constraint (and some would prefer it, even), it is still a constraint, born out of reasons of plot and story. If it was more game-based, alginment wouldn't matter -- the story would arise out of the rules the PC's choose to use, rather than the rules shaping themselves around the story to be told.

 

[fusangite]

With respect, if there is one beginning and one end and just 30 different ways to get to the end, that's still constraining the action.

But so is agreeing to play D&D instead of Burning Wheel. So is choosing to play a wizard and not a fighter. There are all kinds of things that channel player choices in a particular direction.

When I set up a game, there is usually a quest, a big, world-altering quest in the premise. If people agree to play the game, they agree that achieving the quest's objective will be important to their character and something that will inform (as opposed to define) his priorities. I don't see this as any more of an imposition than setting what game system my campaign will be using or what the setting will be. In my view, a fundamental agreement on party objectives is no different than a fundamental agreement on the setting and the system.

For me, setting, system and meta-structure are all one big decision. In the kinds of worlds I build, they mutually entail eachother.

And if it's like a choose-your-own-adventure book, that still limits choice to a few points along the way.

Well, given that you have read my post, I think it should be pretty clear to you that my games are anything but.

And if you can react to individual events and shape the future of the plotline, if you allow for more randomness, the story almost always suffers for it.

No. It doesn't. That's the point I was making. Just because you can't figure out how to allow for free will and random events without harming your campaign's meta-plot is no reason for you to assert that doing so is impossible.

My big problem with this thread is that people who have had trouble with railroading either as GMs or players are arguing that their experience is universal and absolute. Some of us can enhance story elements while simultaneously enhancing players' free will. Maybe instead of asserting that what we are doing is impossible, it might be worthwhile to examine how we are doing it.

Defining those objectives still limits player choice to "you have to want these objectives."

Yes. "I think Sauron should be overthrown," "I think the Holy Grail should be recovered," "I think the war should be stopped," "I think the Princess should be rescued," "I think the Ancient League should be restored," are the kinds of things I would like my players to agree on from the outset.

If you want to define having an incredibly basic shared objective as an excessive limitation on free will, my gaming style is probably too authoritarian for you. But there are no preset scenes, no preset events, no Sense Motive checks that have to fail; this initial agreement is all I need to move forward. Whatever means the characters choose to achieve this general goal will profoundly shape the events that comprise the story. But the story will still be of the PCs' attempt to find the grail, stop the war, rescure the princess, restore the ancient league or whatever. They may succeed or fail; they may get sidetracked from their quest for a long time; they may succeed in their quest by means I could not possibly have predicted at the start of the campaign, all through the exercise of free will.

It's minor, yes, and it's definately something a lot of people can live with and have a lot of fun with, but it's definately antithetical to the style Gygax mentioned above, where you play the game and then tell a story about what happened in the game.

No. It's not. Look at the many modules Gary has written in his 30+ year career and get back to me. What Gary is talking about in this quote are the events comprising the story. The events that comprise my stories are not predetermined or even predictable. How they fit together is only explicable in hindsight, as Gary suggests.

It's more concerned about the story (ever so slightly, but slightly nonetheless) than about the game,

You can only argue this if you relegate everything that does not involve rolling dice to the realm of "story." In my view, figuring out what the villain is doing and why he is doing it is part of the very essence of gaming; figuring out the big mystery in the world is an activity that is clearly both story and gaming. To argue that things have to be one or the other sets up the kind of unhelpful dichotemy that is leading to this debate.

so much so that it will waive a few options about the game to satisfy the needs of the story.

I never restrict my PCs' choices once there is a basic agreement on the campaign premise and setting. Even if they want to turn aside from their quest at the last minute, as happened in one of my games, I do nothing to curtail their choices.

But I fully admit that they did put some constraints on the players, too. Constraints they could live with, and enough randomness to create events that surprised me, but they were there. Certain characters might have been too important at certain moments to die, certain villains had to be introduced, certain NPC allies had to come about, there was a definate "end" and "beginning," etc.

Well, as I am explaining, to assume that these constraints are a necessary feature of prioritizing story is incorrect. It is a clearly incorrect description of my games and those of friends of mine.

It's a chicken and egg scenario, really. Any D&D game contains at least a minor element of story (you go into dungeons because you want to get rich), and at least a minor element of gameplay (roll to hit).

So maybe this dichotemous reading is doing more damange by confusing issues and prevent creative solutions than it contributes in helping to understand, explain or anatomize play styles and campaigns.

In my experience running story-laden games, if a PC were to Sense Motive on the secret villain, there's three choices. (1) Build up his Bluff to bizzarrely high levels (absolutely possible), (2) Hand-wave the check so that no matter what he rolled it wasn't good enough, or (3) Allow it to succeed, but then build another layer to it so that that one success doesn't dissolve the mystery entirely.

This doesn't really happen in my games. NPCs with secret and important knowledge can be identified and thoroughly interrogated but only a party that has completely figured out what is going on could possibly know all the right questions to ask. And if they know all the right questions, it's about time to wind down the campaign because the mystery is now gone and we're just in cleanup. I guess that's like (3) but your description of (3) implies that the additional complexity has to be added at the time of the interrogation and is not, as in the case of my games, built in from the very outset.

Of these, 2 is the most story-heavy (because it's impossible to ruin the secret), 1 is fairly story heavy (it's effectively impossible, but justified in the rules), and 3 is the least (it still makes the SM check irrelevant in the grand plot, but allows some flexibility and reward for a skill check still).

Here you're just using "story-heavy" as a synonym for GMs limiting free will. It is very easy to argue against story-oriented games if that's your assumption. My point is that there does not need to be a positive correlation between an orientation towards story and a limitation on PCs' free will.

Either way, the flow cannot cross my dam and figure out who my "main villain" is because that would suck for storytelling and no one at the table would have fun.

My characters have scried-on the main villain, know what he looks like, know what kind of magic he is using and what people call him. But this information is of only limited utility because they haven't pieced together the whole puzzle. Making puzzles where there are shortcuts -- where complete understanding can be achieved from the outset is bad puzzle making. A puzzle has been improperly designed if there exists a wrong way to solve it. Whenever my players figure out what's really going on, that'll be time to wind the campaign down. If that happens too soon for a GM's liking he should just suck it up and get to work on a new and better campaign.

Versus my more game-like games, where a PC uses Sense Motive and I tell them exactly what they can sense if they beat the villain's Bluff check, and if they do, then they can slay the villain early and get the reward and then move onto the dragon in the hills or the kobolds in the sewer and such.

In one city my characters reached, they did 8 episodes worth of work in one and a half. It was breathtaking and I was really impressed. And the story benefited from these events. They still vanquished the rulers of the Peaked City. To my surprise, they managed to do all this and, due to some good rolling on the part of an NPC, failed to get the part of the grail they had travelled there for.

The point is that the parameters I had set for my story were in no way injured by the characters (a) cutting through all the intrigue and strangeness and attacking the main local bad guy and destroying his tower pretty much immediately (b) failing to get the portion of the grail I had anticipated them getting from the bad guy. Did this harm my grail quest metaplot? Not one iota. It just filled in more details and more sharply defined the situations they would face in future.

It is a basic principle of game design even videogames have embraced... (clip)

But humans are smarter than Pentium chips so hopefully we need not be constrained by this unhelpful zero-sum idea of the relationhip between story and game.

You seem a bit too defensive, so step off the flurry of blows for a moment. All I'm saying is that the more flexible the "story" the less "story-like" and more "game-like" it becomes.

My problem with what you are saying here is that you are making the false assumption that to be story-focused is identical with requiring a preset sequence of events to take place. I understand that this is the received wisdom in our hobby. But I don't believe it is the case. I do not believe we are dealing with a zero-sum equation.

For goodness sake, look at Ron Edwards' concept of "story now." Now that's not a theory of story I have much interest in running but I know how it works. And it is premised on the idea that games are story-focused to the extent to which you create mechanics to allow players other than the GM to operate directly on story unmediated or only partly mediated by their own character.

By defining "story" as railroading or something close to it, rather than looking at all the ways people have developed (be it my way of working or The Forge's way of working) for enhancing story while simultaneously enhancing PC free will, you are railroading the debate in an unhelpful direction. There are lots of ways to define and prioritize story that only enhance the "game" aspects of the game. Let's examine what those are and how they work rather than seeking to refute their existence.

Are choose-your-own-adventure books a story or a game? They blur the line as much as a story-heavy session of D&D does.

"Story heavy" <> railroading. Now, if you want to talk the original poster into making this a poll about railroading, you can probably get the discussion you want. But, at the moment, "story" is defined in a sufficiently nebulous fashion that these assertions are really unhelpful.

RPGs are storytelling games we play; the idea that game and story are things that exist in opposition to eachother has repeatedly hurt out hobby.

And they do come into conflict ("main character" dies,

That's why I like the Holy Grail as a story inspiration. It's built to withstand this and kind of expects it.

"main villain" doesn't save,

There's no such thing as the main villain being killed too early. That's a design flaw in a particular game, not an inherent flaw.

"important clue" gets overlooked,

My games are full of clues. I assume 90% of them will be overlooked. (My current group is overlooking about 85% and so are doing awesome). The problem is games with few clues requiring that over half of the clues must be found. But that's a general problem with defining story as being equal to requiring a predetermined set of events to unfold in a specific order.

"inappropriate character" gets unwittingly introduced),

How is that a problem. One of the favourite NPCs in one of my campaigns was the spirit of a farmed salmon in a grocery store that ended up in a PC's body. What makes a character inappropriate? Either they are possible in the world and, thereby, an informative extension of it. Or they're not, in which case, it's the GM's fault that they exist at all.

and where they come into conflict is where the game says one thing ("he failed the save, he died") and the story says another ("that's anticlimactic! He shouldn't die!").

No. A bad, inflexible story structure says another. A good, flexible story structure says, "Oh goody! What does that change?"

Your complaint seems not to be against a thing but against it being done badly, perhaps because you have never seen it done well.

When I play my current game-heavy games, it's more about the challenge of monsters and missions, and about the world they're in ("we don't want to die, so what party roles do we need?", "should we go on that quest about the Athar and the dead god, or are we more concerned with the money we can get as couriers?", "I want to play a Cha3 Thri-Kreen").

You're sort of ignoring a key constraint you would characterize as "story" here: the characters are all adventuring together. How is that less of a constraint than them sharing an objective or worldview? In my view, imposing a shared objective, background or worldview (or set thereof) on characters actually erases the nasty question of what they're all doing together. I would certainly feel the options, and indeed the coherence of my character would be tested by the requirement that I have to always adventure with a Lawful Evil Cha 3 Thri-Kreen. I'll choose wanting to rescue the princess over having to adventure with that guy any day as the option less likely to tax my suspension of disbelief.

If it was more game-based, alginment wouldn't matter -- the story would arise out of the rules the PC's choose to use, rather than the rules shaping themselves around the story to be told.

I've never heard of alignment as being born of "story"; alignment is just a crappy cluster of rules that need to be expunged from the game.

 

[The Shaman]

Some stuff not worth repeating here.

The definition of irony: making a personal attack to decry people who make personal attacks.

I'm too disinterested to go back and look, but believe it was fusangite who said that a lot of the differences here seem to be simple semantics, and I'm inclined to agree - I think different people are using the word "story" to signify different things, leading a dozen people (myself included) to vehemently talk past one another for days.

The definition of pointless: see above.

:\

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think it's a semantic problem.

A good, flexible story structure says, "Oh goody! What does that change?"

A story is passive. It's something that is presented to you. You read a story -- a passive act. You don't get to change the story, alter the story, or manipulate the story. A game is interactive. It is something you do. You play a game -- an active process. You get to control the game, change the game, and manipulate the game.

RPGs are story games. At times, telling the story comes into conflict with playing the game because the two are fundamentally different ways of spending time that are melded together in an RPG.

If choices change the story, then that is part of a game (choices don't come into the Lord of the Rings or The Matrix or The Iliad or Conan novels) not part of a story.

Choosing your adventure is playing a game. If you can interact with the plot, it isn't purely a story anymore, and the more you can interact with the plot, the more game it is. If you shape the story through the actions of interactivity, then you are playing a game mostly, I'd say. It's defined by interaction, by playing. If you shape the story more through narrative (an inherently passive thing), you're telling a story mostly I'd say.

It's an active/passive dichotomy. Game = Active, Story = Passive. You can't be both at once, though you can alternate between the two, and the ratio of the two helps to differentiate play styles in D&D.

I'm not using "story" to define everything non-rules-related that happens in D&D, nor am I using it for a synonym for railroading. When you read a book, watch a movie, or hear a song, you are recieving a story. A story is something observed. In the best examples (like Shakespeare, for instance), it's every detail is lovingly crafted to support a core theme -- the story can be said to be about something true to the human nature, but it's not something that an observer can disrupt.

I'm not using "game" to define everything mechanics or crunch-related in D&D, nor am I using it to embody some ideal of free form. When you play a game, you are actively participating in an event. A game is something engaged in, something actively performed. In the best examples (say, Poker), the rules are crafted to present a combination of luck and skill that leads to reward. The game can be said to be a contest, a race, a challenge, but it's something you have to interact with.

I don't know of any D&D group who would be happy being told a story where the occasionally roll dice for no reason, and I don't know of any D&D group who would be happier playing Poker. RPG's try to fuse this active/passive dichotomy. It's a story because it has characters and stage and actors, it's a game because there are challenges and random chances and skill tests.

In that, D&D becomes an active story and a passive game. Rolls are made without the players (think random encounters or treasure rolls), while a story is selected, altered, and chagned by choice (which is a game). You try to "play the story." Different groups like different levels of this.

You know that game where one person has the stick, starts telling a story, and then moves the stick onto the next person after about a paragraph, who must then tell the same story, keeping everything the former person did intact? That's a game. It's all about story, but it's interactive and challenging and random and a test of skill. It's a game where you play the story. It's more game than it is story because choices for amusement take prescedence over choices of theme, character development, and plotting concerns.

If your story is flexible, then I'd say you're more playing a game than telling a story, because I wouldn't go up to Shakespeare and tell him King Lear would have been better if he randomly generated the plot in comittee, but I would tell him a game of King Lear would be more fun like that.

 

[fusangite]

I think it's a semantic problem.

A story is passive.

No. It's not. Look at oral tradition storytelling. Does that look passive to you? If you want to argue that story=19th and 20th century novel, sure. But these things are subsets of story.

I agree. It's a semantic problem. Your definition of story is "thing that limits the free will of PCs by predetermining events and outcomes." This definition of story is unhelpful in that it is neither the definition of story in contemporary popular or academic discourse, nor is it the definition in the, albeit anemic and problematic field of RPG theory.

It's something that is presented to you. You read a story -- a passive act.

But think about all the other instances where story doesn't fit that definition. Again, you are substituting "modern novel" in place of "story" to come up with this.

It's an active/passive dichotomy. Game = Active, Story = Passive.

No. You have decided to set up what is known as "false dichotemy" and are achieving this objective by radically circumscribing the definition of one of the words you are placing in opposition to the other.

If you want to redefine "story" as "a passive experience analogous to reading a book," I suppose you could make that argument. But what would be the point? That doesn't fit with any working definition of story in the popular or the academic sphere. So what good is it?

My reason for participating in this thread is to explode this false dichotemy; for some reason, you want to save it.

I'm not using "story" to define everything non-rules-related that happens in D&D, nor am I using it for a synonym for railroading.

You have yet to convince me that you are not doing the latter.

RPG's try to fuse this active/passive dichotomy.

But this is just a false dichotemy you have constructed in order to save a definition of story that doesn't pass muster. Instead of working on saving your peculiar definition of story, why not adopt a broader definition of story and look at ways that "game" and "story" are mutually enhancing?

If your story is flexible, then I'd say you're more playing a game than telling a story,

But that's because you've redefined story, not because the statement you are making would be true for people who are working with some more common definition of story.