Storytelling vs Roleplaying

[Ariosto]

I think the utility of this discussion is that people can say, "Okay, here is this technique; this is what I think it's good for and what it doesn't do so well."

Then people can discuss that.

For example, "Third-person teasers" from the DMG2 preview, where the players play some other, DM-generated PCs in order foreshadowing some element of the game world. This is what I think about that:

This technique isn't good if you want to maintain player-PC role-identification; that is, the PC knows what the player knows.

It's not so good if you want to figure out what was revealed in the teaser scene for yourself.

It's good for ratcheting up the tension.

It's good if you want to show things to the players that the PCs would have no way of knowing.

It's good for creating sympathy with NPCs.

That kind of discussion I could see being useful.

Quoted for Common Sense

 

[ExploderWizard]

EW and Ariosto, what games do you consider to be 'story games' but not roleplaying games?

Once Upon A Time is the one I have played quite a bit of.
I have played some GURPS as a story game, the mechanics are neutral.
I have played D&D 4E as a roleplaying game. The design leans toward the narrative/story side but it doesn't have to be played that way.

I don't have direct experience with many heavy narrative based games marketed as RPG's.

 

[Obryn]

... is not something I have undertaken. Perhaps someone else has, and you simply cannot be bothered to distinguish individuals and their statements from each other.

It's possible!

Now, perhaps Obryn and McCrae would be so kind as to share the definition of "role-playing game" that they consider the proper one? If we are to be bound by it, then it would be nice to know what it is!

I have very little interest in trying to define a slippery term like that. (I had a professor in grad school whose career was more or less dedicated to - I kid you not - defining the term "heap.") I'd say a good first start is to take a look at everything currently marketed as a Role-Playing Game, look for common threads, and go from there. I'd say identification with an avatar in the game, advancing that avatar, interacting with an imagined setting, and making decisions as if you were your avatar would be a good start, though.

-O

 

[Ariosto]

Someone is free to call Dungeon!, The Awful Green Things from Outer Space, The Creature That Ate Sheboygan, Circus Maximus or Rogue Trooper "a role-playing game".

Someone else is free to call it "a pretty poor role-playing game".

People are still going to view things as unsatisfactory, and for precisely the same reasons. You can take away a particular word, but you cannot take away the whole apparatus of language -- much less the thought that gives rise to it.

So, take away! However, once you create the void, you cannot claim infinite vetoes over what people interested in carrying on a discussion come up with to fill it.

At some point, either you must quit such quibbling and deal with the actual ideas -- or else people with more serious concerns will cease to pay you any mind.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Once Upon A Time is the one I have played quite a bit of.
I have played some GURPS as a story game, the mechanics are neutral.
I have played D&D 4E as a roleplaying game. The design leans toward the narrative/story side but it doesn't have to be played that way.

Yeah, Once Upon A Time isn't a rpg. But then, no one thinks it is, afaik. It is indeed a storytelling game. GURPS is a simulationist rpg. How did you run it to make it into a 'story game'? D&D 4e is a traditional rpg with more emphasis on gamism than simulationism. No narrativism at all, as far as I'm aware.

None of those are what I would've suspected one might mean by 'story games'. Well, except Once Upon A Time. But, like I say, no one thinks it's an rpg.

I thought you were talking about games that bill themselves as rpgs but are heavily narrativist, such as Prince Valiant (the first narrativist rpg) and Forge type games such as My Life With Master or Dogs In The Vineyard. Or maybe Vampire 2nd ed which has a chapter on storytelling which includes techniques similar (or identical) to those in DMG 2 such as flashbacks, dream sequences and foreshadowing.

I thought you might also be talking about player control of elements outwith the PC's control, which are not, imo, necessarily narrativism, such as in James Bond 007.

EDIT: The only other person I've seen using the term 'story games' to refer to what other people call roleplaying games was howandwhy99. He seemed to be using it to mean any rpg published later than 1990. I guess I've been assuming that you and Ariosto are cut from a similar cloth, which is probably very unfair. Howandwhy's definitions are highly eccentric, I don't even think any edition of D&D would've fit his weird definition of what a roleplaying game is.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Now, perhaps Obryn and McCrae would be so kind as to share the definition of "role-playing game" that they consider the proper one?

No one has yet come up with a decent definition.

If we are to be bound by it, then it would be nice to know what it is!

Oh, we're bound by something far more useful than a definition. Meaning. The use of language. If something is generally called a roleplaying game, then as far as I am concerned it is one.

This gives me a quite wonderful advantage in discourse - people know what the f--k I'm talking about!!

 

[Doug McCrae]

Someone is free to call Dungeon!, The Awful Green Things from Outer Space, The Creature That Ate Sheboygan, Circus Maximus or Rogue Trooper "a role-playing game".

Someone else is free to call it "a pretty poor role-playing game".

No one does either of those things though, so it isn't really a problem.

 

[lutecius]

I'd say identification with an avatar in the game, advancing that avatar, interacting with an imagined setting, and making decisions as if you were your avatar would be a good start, though.

Doesn't that (bolded by me) exclude the more narrativist games?

D&D 4e is a traditional rpg with more emphasis on gamism than simulationism. No narrativism at all, as far as I'm aware.

I tend to agree but I believe Mearls justified the encounter/daily power mechanic as "giving the player more narrative control".

Healing surges have also been defended (by 4e supporters, not designers) as emulating some pulp/fantasy narrative tropes.

 

[Ariosto]

No one does either of those things though, so it isn't really a problem.

More precisely, no one so far has done so in this thread.

games that bill themselves as rpgs but are heavily narrativist, such as Prince Valiant (the first narrativist rpg)

You've got that backwards! The full title is Prince Valiant, the Storytelling Game.

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Prince Valiant is most like a "roleplaying" game, such as RuneQuest, King Arthur Pendragon, Call of Cthulhu, and Dungeons & Dragons, but is even different from them. Prince Valiant is a storytelling game.

 

[Obryn]

Doesn't that (bolded by me) exclude the more narrativist games?

Such as?

-O