D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[SableWyvern]

None.

A GM is always a story teller. I just don't understand the resistance to calling what we do as DM/GM's story telling. Well, that's not true. I do understand. It's an attempt to try to differentiate different play styles by claiming differences that don't actually exist. To me, sandbox=player freedom to choose the direction of the campaign. Nothing else really matters. The rest is all just trying to mystify the procedure.

You spend a lot of time telling other people what they really think.

Personally, I don't call anyone at that table a storyteller, because I don't view the purpose of play to be to create a story.

I don't believe this is in any way unique to more traditional sandbox players than anyone else. If you want to view your play as storytelling, that's fine by me, but the impression I get from people like @pemerton is that they don't, and I see no reason to disbelieve them. As I've already said, Play to Find Out seems very similar to me to the concept of emergent story and the resistance to actively crafting a story seems to be something we all mostly agree on.

But at no point are DM's, particularly in any sort of traditional RPG, not a storyteller. You cannot avoid it. When the DM/GM is creating virtually every single thing in the game world, plus motivations, conflicts and whatnot, there is no way for a DM not to be a story teller.

I feel I avoid it just fine. My players feel I avoid it just fine. We all feel that stories emerge only as a consequence of play. My players are making their own stories in the game world in the same way they as people do on a daily basis in the real world. What they are not doing is simply engaging with my story.

The fact that, "The bishop is an angry man," can be considered a story (and it can be, legitimately) is completely orthogonal to the type of story we're actually discussing here.

 

[robertsconley]

Lore IS plot. There is no difference here.

Last time I checked, they were two separate words were embodying different concepts. And this is first time you mentioned plot.

 

[Hussar]

All you are doing is in insisting and not really responding to peoples points, then accusing people of obfuscation. Look you can disagree on story. That is no problem. But can you stop with the accusations?

Wait what? I was asked a question and I answered the question. Do I consider a timeline a story? Yup, I do. The troll(?) in the glacier encounter? No, I wouldn't call that a story since there's no conflict there. But, I imagine, that the conflict is pretty inherent. Hungry trolls live here. Granted, I'm adding "hungry" to that. But, how do you think that encounter is going to play out? I'm pretty sure that 99% of the time, it's roll for initiative time.

I'm calling it obfuscation or mystification, whichever you like, because that's exactly what's going on here. And, I'd point out, I'm hardly the first one to point it out. For all the complaints of using Forgisms and whatnot, folks are awfully quick to stake out their own jargon and insist that only their definitions be used.

 

[SableWyvern]

Last time I checked, they were two separate words were embodying different concepts. And this is first time you mentioned plot.

I missed that. So @Hussar is opposed to the entire notion of emergent play and also the widespread phrase, "create situations not plots".

Anyone is welcome to disagree with those things and question their value as advice, but it's not at all constructive to assume that it's a settled point that they're axiomatically wrong, because huge numbers of people agree with them and find them useful.

 

[Hussar]

Last time I checked, they were two separate words were embodying different concepts. And this is first time you mentioned plot.

Sorry, misspoke. Lore=story. My bad.

 

[Hussar]

I missed that. So @Hussar is opposed to the entire notion of emergent play and also the widespread phrase, "create situations not plots".

Anyone is welcome to disagree with those things and question their value as advice, but it's not at all constructive to assume that it's a settled point that they're axiomatically wrong, because huge numbers of people agree with them and find them useful.

Emergent play is not possible when one single person at the table is in control of 99% of everything. There is no space to emerge.

 

[Pedantic]

Of course the language is clear to you. You're the one getting to define all the terms and then shoot down any terminology that might call into question your assumptions. Hey, I'd love to be able to do that too.

You get to claim that you're doing something that is different. You're sandboxing. Not just running a game, but, a special and unique kind of game that only those privileged enough to comprehend the beauty of the process can truly perform. The fact that what you're doing is pretty much exactly the same as what every other DM out there does must be challenged with obfuscation and jargon. We're not creating stories, we writing "drama". We're not deciding events based on anything so plebeian or crass as whatever the table might enjoy. No. We are basing events on the "logic of the setting". On and on and on.

Right, it's very clear you don't value those distinctions, but like, it's pretty obvious to me that those aren't the same things?

I would make different choices of my primary goal was moment to moment presenting interesting things the table would enjoy, than I would if I was trying to create a consistent fictional world, and clearly a bunch of people have even finer gradations than that.

 

[SableWyvern]

Emergent play is not possible when one single person at the table is in control of 99% of everything. There is no space to emerge.

And we're lucky you're here to let huge swathes of people in the hobby know they're wrong.

All you're doing is overtly attacking the way other people play because you don't understand it, and then complaining that you don't like the way the people you're attacking defend themselves.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm curious what your concern with Story Now is. To be clear (though I wish it weren't necessary to say this explicitly), you're entirely within your rights to not like it. I'm just curious why it is a problem for you.

For my own part, I'm not very keen on Story Before unless it's a well-written AP like Zeitgeist (which I still someday hope to play in the original 4e version), but accept that it's the unfortunately most common mode of play even for homebrew campaigns. I almost always dislike Story After, though, because such games so frequently end up being deeply unsatisfying to me. That is, where Story Before has annoying bits where we have to follow the breadcrumbs or the like, Story After all too often just...goes nowhere and does nothing. It makes the arc of the campaign feel like a meandering mess without merit, especially if characters die since that leaves their goals unfulfilled, all potential just....wasted.

And yes, I know real life is like that, there is no story and no resolution, just the eternal march of the Present. I also know that I'm not interested in playing Real Life, I can do that by walking outside or watching the news. So Story After is a big ask for me--I'm putting my faith in the mere possibility, and not a particularly high chance IME, of there being a satisfying arc as part of the experience. Slice-of-life vignettes can be fun for a little while, but they get old really, really fast, and the "thrill" of combat or treasure-hunting doesn't make up the difference.

I understand. We simply want very different things. I want to play Real Life, if real life was a fantasy world full of exciting things to potentially become involved in. A slice of that life suits me just fine.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Of course the language is clear to you. You're the one getting to define all the terms and then shoot down any terminology that might call into question your assumptions. Hey, I'd love to be able to do that too.

You get to claim that you're doing something that is different. You're sandboxing. Not just running a game, but, a special and unique kind of game that only those privileged enough to comprehend the beauty of the process can truly perform. The fact that what you're doing is pretty much exactly the same as what every other DM out there does must be challenged with obfuscation and jargon. We're not creating stories, we writing "drama". We're not deciding events based on anything so plebeian or crass as whatever the table might enjoy. No. We are basing events on the "logic of the setting". On and on and on.

There is nothing snobbish about sandbox. And I am not framing it as elite. I included what you do as sandbox too because to me, sandbox , while it usually has a map and prep, is ultimately about letting the players do what they want and giving them agency. The only reason we avoid the term story or plot, it because we are trying to avoid railroading. Nothing patrician about that at all. For whatever reason you have taken offense to it. I am not sure why, especially since I have made a point of defending you in this thread and keeping the definition of sandbox expansive enough to include what you do too (so it isn’t like my language is trying to exclude you). As for sandbox doing what regular GM’s do: it doesn’t claim to reinvent the wheel. It just promises the players freedom to do what they want and the advise and language in the advise is greered towards that end