NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark CMG" data-source="post: 6529079" data-attributes="member: 10479">Essentially every single game is different, and not just the game rulesets but each individual game played using any given ruleset.That said, RPGs basically began where folks looked at minis wargames and wondered if they could zero in and play just one guy.  By playing that role in a game, they explored a setting and made their way in the world being run by a referee, later known as a DM or GM or otherwise.  At some point, some GMs (to use the most general term) wanted to overlay a story onto the setting and added some storytelling elements rather than simply having an open setting to explore, in part because they may have felt it limited the amount of prep they needed to do for a setting and/or because they may have felt it yielded a more satisfying end to a game or campaign.  Eventually, full-fledged Storytelling games developed as an offshoot of RPGs.So, it's sort of a misnomer to refer to a way of playing a particular game as a playstyle rather than to refer back to the rules of the game and determine whether the game itself is meant as an RPG, an RPG with some storytelling elements, or a full-fledged Storytelling game (or even something else all together!), then determine if the people playing in that one instance are playing the rules as they were written or are removing some rules or adding some table-rules they happen to enjoy.  Change the rules and you're really playing a different game, not enacting a playstyle.  So, too, not everyone at the same table necessarily plays the same way though they might all adhere to the same rules.It's like when some of my local friends play Lords of Waterdeep we remove the Lord that gives an end game bonus for buildings, as some locals find that one unbalanced (I don't necessarily agree but I acquiesce).  That's not really a playstyle but more of a rules variant since the rules of the game are as they are and we're essentially changing them.It's also a matter of goals.  In a roleplaying game the goal is to play the game in that one role, regardless of whatever story might retrospectively be told about how things developed.  In a storytelling game, the goal is the story that will be developed by the player(s), and role (if indeed there are roles being played) are often not as high a priority.But, again, anyone can take any ruleset and do as they like with it, and everyone does so.  The only right way to play a game is by securing the collaboration of all the players, even if the rules aren't strictly followed.</blockquote>

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