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

[Raven Crowking]

I voted 5. It's a game primarily, in terms of setup and play, that contains strong story elements (NPC plots, backstories, intentional references to cultural elements such as mythology and folklore). The story part is derived from the interaction of the players with those elements. What the players have their characters do, and how the world responds, is the story. It is not preordained; if the PCs do nothing, then doing nothing is the story.


RC

 

[Odhanan]

I, for one, think the story does not come afterwards. It comes during play - the best role play comes when the players feel they are in the middle of the story. People don't immerse into role-play if the story only comes afterwards, because you don't get much emotional connection to non-story.

I don't think we are on the same page. I am advocating here that a role-playing game isn't about a story, it's about events. It's about "acting during (seamingly) real events", not "being in a story". It's about "being there", not "being an actor in a movie". It's about present and immersion, not narrative.

 

[Raven Crowking]

BTW, for the record, I am totally with Umbran regarding the Shaman/Umbran argument. While I am sure that the Shaman has fun with the game he's playing, I'm equally sure that I would have more fun as a player with Umbran running the game.

Because a game can be played it a reductionist manner, it doesn't follow that doing so makes a better game.

RC

 

[Firebeetle]

I'd like a bit more narrative, actually; the players seem to want more game.

True that! I'd like to move to an 8, but we are at a 5 right now with leanings to 4.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Oh boy another round of 'Guess the Sig'! I will go with....

"I think it is time you took a swim in Lake You."

How close am I?

I'll make that my next one.

It says" ...over 90% of my campaign design is done after i get the characters and is tied into their characters backgrounds. I am really telling "their story" not "the story of group number 12". the possibility of just "rolling up new guys and keeping at it" doesn't exist for the games I run and prefer. - swrushing"

 

[Lord Mhoram]

When I say that a roleplaying game can consist of encounters that are tied together by the players rather than the game master, is that really open to interpretation?

I see the tone of your posts, and I may be misreading them, is not that a RPG can consist of those things, but that it must. Which would lead one to want to show that while it can, it is not a must.

 

[The Shaman]

I see the tone of your posts, and I may be misreading them, is not that a RPG can consist of those things, but that it must. Which would lead one to want to show that while it can, it is not a must.

Thanks for pointing that out, Lord Mhoram - rereading the thread I can see how that impression could be taken, and no, it's not my position that one must play this way, but rather that it's possible to play the game without the storyteller's conceits, particularly as they were presented here:

I, for one, think the story does not come afterwards. It comes during play - the best role play comes when the players feel they are in the middle of the story. People don't immerse into role-play if the story only comes afterwards, because you don't get much emotional connection to non-story.

Even if the story only comes afterwards, you don't get good story from a random collection of events. The events have to be structured - they need logical consistency, interesting linkages, and high probability of complex interaction with the character personalities. That requires setup - and that process of setup is what good GMs are referring to when they talk about writing story or plot for their games.

So, it is not reenactment, true, in that the end is not predetermined. But it is premeditated.

Again, I call bull, for the reasons outlined above.

It's very hard sometimes to make a point on this forum, particularly when running against the grain of the so-called conventional wisdom - it's just too difficult to answer three or four critics at once in a running dialogue, particularly through a medium that tends to remove shades of nuance. 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.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Point taken, The Shaman.

 

[tahsin]

When I DM, I use the game rules as a framework for a collaborative story. Doesn't matter which system I'm using, I've got to have a good story.

For me, killing critters for their loot got old about ten years ago.

I agree. Player's will get bored quickly when the game is all hack 'n' slash for loot and a mediocre story behind it. What keeps people interested is the drama and the conflict.

 

[Teflon Billy]

5 for me...

It's both, and I'm not really interested in "one or the other". I currently game with a guy who seriously places story first, and it is really getting on my nerves.

I'm not even sure why we made characters given the amount of "handwaving" that goes on with regards to our superpowers.

His endless bitching about my bringing up "Rules" during play is aggravating as well. I've tried to explain ad nauseum that "Rules are the Physics we sue to interact with your setting", but he disagrees. We are basically there to give improvised dialogue at appropriate points in his grand epic.

And I'm done with it.

On the other end of things is a group I play with at the FLGS occasionally. Their game of D&D is essentially "Tom Clancy's Lord of the Rings" so focused on Tactics and Equipment is it. Whila pleasant diversion, there is nothing gripping about it. It's simply the world's most complicated game of chess.