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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ClusterFluster" data-source="post: 8935214" data-attributes="member: 7040441">I have proposals for some terminology...First issue involves the confusion over the term "story." Storys are patterned after beginning-rising-closing actions that often impart a moral. However, this does not fit the Sandbox style of game play, where it's said that you get a story out of the sequence of events after you've already finished your ordinary fishing trip--these are Tales, not stories, and the distinction needs to be made moving forward. A mere sequence of fictional events will never be a story, though they can still be entertaining as far as gold gathered, battles won, and bragging rights for solving peculiar critical thought challenges. This is record keeping, or lore keeping as you might prefer, but not story making. When talking about either/or in general, "Events" is fine.Second issue involves the method of how the events in a given game even transpire. I've started with five categories:Scripted:There is an ultimate end point that needs to be reached, but everything leading to up that point is generally negotiable, though there are pre-loaded elements to interact with which are concerned with this end point. I'm borrowing from the idea of TV shows in particular for this idea, as a script tends to be revised a lot over the course of the show's existence. Any individually published adventure goes here.Guided:There is no ultimate end point, but there are lots and lots and lots of pre-loaded elements for adventurers to interact with as they go about their business. You essentially create alternate realities of this world through every group playing separately, with every group's next adventuring party. Published campaign setting books go here.Note: The above two categories should only count when you use a super-majority of all the written elements (60% or more) as written and generally played in any sequence provided, but not when otherwise mining these books for a handful of ideas to use in other play styles.Algorithmic:Almost everything about each adventure is randomly generated, the pure sandbox style of play. I'm not aware of any sandbox materials yet that might offer something of what Campaign Settings do, but if those materials existed I might call these "Almanacs" which would present a loose grouping of thematic elements that won't have much of a hard-coded continuity, set of relationships, or schemes for world domination. Honestly, most people would prefer to use the random tables given in whatever counts for a game master's rulebook, anyway.Rationale:This category is most unlike the others for its permissiveness for the players to making adjustments to the game world or story. As far as I understand this, many games that claim to be "story games" fall into this category, as generally you're allowed to do almost anything if you can come up for a reason as to how you can accomplish your action.Note: I get the impression that this latter category is celebrated for not needing GMs, but I think you could make the case that Algorithmic games can fit here too, if each player took turns rolling against a set of tables to generate a hex or dungeon room, for instance. Out of any category, this one is not my favourite at a glance, but I won't rule out creative sets of conditions where I might do so.Fatalist:This is railroading, where the GM has absolute law over the game, and events are not merely scripted so much as pre-ordained. If this were a historical period played out, all of the players get justifiably upset that they are just acting out the choreography of DB Cooper's escape and disappearance. Not much needs to be said here, as nobody likes this category, but it needs its own placeholder to help make sense of the others.The third and final issue that I would bring attention to, is the idea of "winning" D&D versus "accomplishing" something in the game world. I'm not a big fan of the idea that D&D is only meant to cater to the mantra of "as long as everyone had fun!" because I'm skeptical that won't just lead to abuse by the players, creating the opposite problem of the fatalist GM. However, you do sort of "win" in games that have defined end goals like "stop Tiamat/Strahd in their own lair before X happens and they Y!" You also "win" sandbox games when you survive to amass enough gold to build a headquarters for that player, at least as written in the OD&D game. However, these are all accomplishments as a common ground, and more importantly it deescalates the hyper-min-maxing of characters that are simply made to demonstrate how "broken" the system is. Accomplishment still requires that your character faces uncertainty and risk, especially some mortal danger, and it takes the heat off of trying to turn every game into a rules lawyering tournament where nothing about the combination of your character's features makes any sense when put together because the chief consideration was the highest output of damage/healing/aoe/et cet.</blockquote>

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