Point Me to Some Storytelling RPGs?

[TarionzCousin]

I've played a lot of Amber Diceless: two multi-year campaigns and I'm currently in the middle of a third. Also, Amber conventions every year and numerous friendly weekends.

It's not a "story-telling" game in the same sense of the word as Fiasco, PTA, or Dogs in the Vinyard. In fact, it's much more traditional in the sense that the GM creates the world and conflict and the players react.

Instead I would point you toward FATE, which allows limited player creation in the form of compels and tagging.

The ultimate story-telling game is Baron Munchausen.

A good review found at sfsite.com.

One of the things that makes the game so wonderful is its simplicity. The cover copy refers to the book as a "Role-Playing Game in a New Style," that new style being a system (if it can be called such) that has no game master, no set adventures, no statistics, no encounters, no dice, no charts... in fact, it barely has any rules at all! Play simply proceeds around the table to right, with each player inviting the person on his or her right to tell the company about the story behind some incredible incident. 200 such possible incidents appear in the back of the book ready to be dropped into game play on a whim. "Tell me, my good sir, how it was that a mistake with your laundry saved the entire court of France from drowning?"

The player challenged with such an invitation then has about five minutes to relate the story and he had better make it good, because this is a game with a winner, and winning depends on telling the best story. Of course, what fun is a challenge without interaction? As a player's story unfolds, the other players are free to interrupt with wagers ("I can well imagine, sir, that it was at that very moment that Neptune himself rose from the seabed with your stockings tangled in his trident!") and objections ("Perhaps you are mistaken, sir, for I know the very laundress of whom you speak and I assure you that she would never apply so much starch to your smallclothes.") to complicate matters. In fact, the greatest number of rules in the game revolve around these wagers and objections, how they are made (a system of betting with coins), and how they are resolved (incorporated into the story, rejected, or, in extreme cases, taken to duel of rock-paper-scissors). The most serious rule, however, concerns what may be asked or said -- players must never call each other liars because, of course, all of them are nobles and would never claim anything less than the honest truth.