Let's talk about "plot", "story", and "play to find out."

[pemerton]

As far as flashbacks are concerned, these seem to be rather ubiquitous in RPGing. For instance, here's a post from a couple of weeks ago suggesting that a "flashback" approach to knowledge skills is the standard way of resolving them, in D&D and similar games: Difficulty Numbers: Scaling, or Static?

 

[VHawkwinter]

This started in another thread but I thought I would spin it off into its own thread before it goes wild.

What do you think of TTRPGs (broadly) in relation to "story." Are RPGs "stories." Are they "story generators"? Something else? How do the particular mechanics of a game interact with what you think the relationship is? How about adventure structure, particularly for campaign length adventures, from At The Mountains of Madness to The Enemy Within to Curse of Strahd?

For you, personally, are you telling a story when you play a TTRPG?

I am not. "Don't Prep Plots, Prep Situations" is solid advice.

For my part, I think you are creating a story through play, but that story is not what happens at the table per se. Rather, the story is how we talk about it after the game is done. Stories have a structure that does not really work in play. RPGs are messy, ephemeral things in play, with terrible pacing and contradictory plot elements. But once play is done, the thing that remains with us is the story that RPG play generated. Perhaps most interestingly, that story is different for every participant.

Definitely. Though you can obviously record it, much of what's happening is internal. If you were to record it and then edit it and then do a movie commentary track with the other players to get what was going on with them, you could compile the story as a compilation of everyone's experiences, but that is a bunch of extra work nobody does except maybe for the Critical Role people.

Every single element that makes play more like a story makes it less like an RPG -- because RPGs are defined by their embrace of player agency. In trad games this is mostly the GM, but more modern games give players tools to put their fingers on the scale as well.

Agreed

As is probably obvious, I am an advocate of playing to find out and presenting situations rather than plots or adventures.

Same-ish. I might have "Adventures" planned, but I normally plan them as a list of events that happen if the players don't interfere, and then have what the different factions have for resources they can mobilise to respond if the players do interfere. Throw out 4-7 of them happening on a clock simultaneously, and the game is what the players choose to do. The story is a retelling of those events.

I have run published adventures which are not that - but often those go off the rails and the adventure just gave me crappy prep to handle it and I have to wing it from basically nothing.

 

[VHawkwinter]

As far as flashbacks are concerned, these seem to be rather ubiquitous in RPGing. For instance, here's a post from a couple of weeks ago suggesting that a "flashback" approach to knowledge skills is the standard way of resolving them, in D&D and similar games: Difficulty Numbers: Scaling, or Static?

Huh. That is so unusual to me. I have never used knowledge skills that way.

 

[aramis erak]

I'm just saying that not all opinions are correct. In this case WotC gets to be the one to decide if it's the same game or not, and they've decided that all the editions are D&D. That makes them factually correct and your opinion can't change facts.

Definitionally, opinions cannot be incorrect (exception for "professional opinions," which are a different thing). They can be biased, based upon incorrect assumptions, etc, but they're personal views of the individual; to accuse them of being incorrect is 100% accusing them of lying about how they feel.

 

[aramis erak]

Frankly, your stance on edition naming is bonkers and unmoored from reality. There are countless things where different editions of a thing with the same name are incompatible. Yeah, you can have that opinion, but please stop derailing threads with it. People are not gonna agree with you.

Some other games where that kind of incompatibility is present:

Traveller: The New Era was a different engine (well, distantly related engine to be totally pedantic) from Classic Traveller and MegaTraveller. T4 is a redesign from first principles of Classic, but was as incompatible with CT/MT as it was from TNE (its immediate predecessor).

Gamma World used the Marvel Super Heroes color table engine for one edition, an AD&D derivative for several, and was itself a merely semi-compatible follow-on to Metamorphosis Alpha. Then there's the D&D 4e version of it. And the completely-a-port Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega (Amazing Engine).

Arrowflight - 1st ed was a d6 count successes dice pool; 2nd is a 2d6 ≤ stat+skill; 3rd is supposedly also the 2d6 version

And more GDW... Twilight 2000 1e was a 3 difficulty percentile system (1d100≤ skill × diffMod), using 3d6 stats; Twilight 2000 2.0e was a 1d10 system with 2d6 stats and the same 3 difficulties (and a fourth for combat only) (1d10 ≤ skill × Diffmod); Twilight 2000 2.2e looks just like 2.0 unless you read in detail, and is 1d20 with 5 difficulties (1d20 ≤ (stat+Skill)×diffmod), T2013 (aka T2k 3.0) was skill d20's; T2K 4e is Year Zero Engine Step Die version (atts d6/d8/d10/d12, skills same, count successes.) They're the same only in name and setting conceits; 2.0 and 2.2 use the same char gen and mostly the same combat (except autofire).

And that's not counting games licensing non-gaming IP...

Dragonlance - AD&D for the 1st edition; The SAGA System (not to be confused with SWSE) doing Card Based play in DL5A, then a d20 port of some description that I didn't bother with.

Marvel: 3 color-table versions (MSH, Revised MSH, MSH Advanced Set), SAGA System (as DL5A, but actually changes the core mechanics a good bit, and different deck even), The Marvel Universe edition, and now the System 616 Marvel Multiverse using a 3d6 engine.

Star Wars had 3 WEG editions (1.0, 2.0 2.1 aka 2R&E) with some notable differences). 3 d20 editions (d20 and d20 revised, then SWSE) with the third of those (SWSE) being essentially the prototype for D&D 4e... and much loved... plus one FFG edition which is now (due to Asmodee «bleep»ery) republished by Edge Studios.

Star Trek had 2 Fasa Editions... highly compatible those two; percentile attributes and percentile skills, lifepath char gen. Then the LUG version, wholly new system with different stat range (1-5 for PCs) and similar skill range (0-5), a different kind of lifepath char gen. Then the Decipher version (2d6 stats, 2d6 skill checks with skills in a 0-10 range and a stat mod), now Star Trek Adventures (2d20 to 5d20 < Stat+skill) with yet another different lifepath system, and an optional point build and even build-in-play.

 

[aramis erak]

As far as flashbacks are concerned, these seem to be rather ubiquitous in RPGing. For instance, here's a post from a couple of weeks ago suggesting that a "flashback" approach to knowledge skills is the standard way of resolving them, in D&D and similar games: Difficulty Numbers: Scaling, or Static?

Ubiquitous? Disagree. relatively common? Sure.