Storytelling vs Roleplaying

[Ariosto]

The Jungian sense of persona, and its ancient literal senses of mask and character, correspond quite well to what I gather of the "Gygaxian D&D" concept of role-playing (although I have not read Role-playing Mastery).

It is "through the mask" that information comes to the player, and through it that the player affects the imagined world.

 

[ExploderWizard]

MoogleEmpMog: I can dig it.

(whole review)

You must spread some xp around before giving it to Ariosto again.

 

[Hussar]

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

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.

Most of the indie/forge stuff or just any game that allows players to affect the story/gameworld beyond their character's abilities (ie not "making decisions as if you were your avatar")

The thing is though, those elements are not exclusive. You can have games where the players have limited editorial control (Action Points) while at the same time playing a role and making decisions based on that role.

Now, some decisions you as the player make might not be based on that role at the time, but, many of them will.

My single point of contention here is that Exploder Wizard, and I believe Ariosto as well, contend that as soon as you can make any editioral change in the setting as a player, you are no longer playing a role playing game, but are now playing a story telling game.

Bascically, this definition excludes the vast majority of rpg's out there, other than pre-3e D&D from the definition of role playing game, since almost every rpg from the beginning of 3e era onward, and certainly many from before, allow players limited editorial control over the setting.

Again, what's the point of defining role playing game in such a way that it excludes the majority of what pretty much everyone calls a role playing game?

AFAIK, no one calls Hungry Hungry Hippos a roleplaying game, nor does it bill itself as one. There's absolutely no confusion. Advanced Squad Leader, while probably complicated enough to be an RPG, also doesn't bill itself as such and I don't think anyone would be confused enough to mistake it as one.

One danger here that I'm seeing is that editorial control is being equated with narrativism. It's not. Nar gaming in the GNS model is a totally different animal. Being able to effect changes in the setting by spending resources available to all players is not an exclusively Narrativist (again GNS meaning) element. Editorial control appears in just about every RPG out there to some degree.

 

[maddman75]

Daily powers I see as being rather anti-story. Fights in fiction have a rhythm to them, they build to a climax in which the hero is in terrible peril until he wins with his biggest baddest uber-move, not an at will power. 4e's daily powers otoh tend to be used at the start of a fight for gamist reasons as they are more effective then.

4e boss fight: BOOM!!! Boom!! Boom!

Fictional fight: Boom! Boom!! BOOM!!!

EDIT: It's true the players have the power to make the fight feel more like a fictional one. Imo they probably won't though due to the competing pressures of gamism.

That's just a feature of 4e, its focused on making a fun tactical game, not create an interesting fight story-wise. Exalted's mechanics enforce this, though its multilayered and often not seen until you actually play.

First off, everyone has killer combos. Good guys and bad guys. Everyone also has killer defenses. These are paid for in 'motes', the magic currency of the game. Generally in a fight characters throw attacks at each other, deflecting each others blows until they start to run out of motes.

Now enter the stunting rules. If you describe what you do in a cool way, you get to roll extra dice. You also (and this is more important) get motes back. So when everyone is low on motes, they start stunting their asses off, doing more and more cool things until finally they can pull off one of their killer moves while the enemy is defenseless.

boom, boom, BOOM

I suppose you could find a way to enforce this in 4e as well. Maybe a shot clock or something, where the DC for your daily goes up for each Encounter power that you've used, encouraging players to use them as killing blows rather than openers.

Another way would require them to be redesigned, but model them after the stake in the heart move in Buffy. The attack does normal damage, but if 5x damage would kill them, they die. Otherwise they just take normal damage. Makes you want to ensure you soften the enemy up before going for the kill.

 

[ExploderWizard]

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.

GURPS is quite easy to adapt and play as a story game. A lot of the cinematic options pave the way and the point based system is great for designing custom advantages that allow the player to control plot elements.

I do not share howandwhy99's strict definition of roleplaying. I do believe that once the game master and the players begin to share the responsibilities of world editing the roles of both the player and GM blur to a point eventually making a GM just another player. For as long as rpgs have been around, the universal rule of DMing has been to leave player choices to the player. With a game handing out narrative control like candy the players become the editors and contributing byline writers of the game world. The players still have thier characters all to themselves but the DM must share his/her toys with the group. In order for narrative control to be equal then the DM should be able to share in the PC's decision making process. This would result in everyone having a hand in playing all the roles. More control over the game for everyone and a loss of individuality for all.

 

[jdrakeh]

You're not in a dungeon, your avatar is.

Pffft. You've never seen that movie with Tom Hanks, have you?

 

[maddman75]

Question: If an OD&D GM asks for character backgrounds, even brief ones, and uses that information to flesh out his world, is the group no longer playing RPGs, according to your definitions?

What about a wizard casting a Wish spell?

If a player makes a suggestion as to what's beyond the hill and the GM takes it, are they still playing roleplaying games? If so, what is the functional difference between this an a system of points that the player can use to define things about the setting, with GM veto (as nearly all games that use these mechanics support)?

Here's another one. I commonly use the Luck roll as a form of metagame mechanic. Player asks if there's a crowbar in the ol' toolshed. Roll luck and there is, fail and there isn't. Are you going to claim that Call of Cthulhu isn't a roleplaying game?

Would you be willing to consider less offensive terminology? I agree with Obryn that saying your style is REAL roleplaying and other people's ways are something else is inherently offensive. I'll accept 'story-game' as a subcategory of Roleplaying Game, but not a seperate category. I don't feel when I play Buffy instead of Call of Cthulhu that I'm taking part in a totally different hobby. What would you call games without metagame mechanics?

 

[lutecius]

I see those as being more gamist - they present players with interesting resource management or tactical decisions.

I agree here. I've always felt the narrativist justification was just that, a justification. I believe the main purpose of these mechanics is balance though, not interesting resource management.

One could also see them as simulationist, as in a real fight one normally doesn't see the same maneuver employed over and over. However it could be argued that they simulate fictional fights, which are interesting in the same way.

I don't think that not being able to ever repeat a manoeuvre during a fight is particularly simulationist and if a manoeuvre works, unless it specifically relies on surprise (rather than skills) I don't see why it couldn't be used over and over in a real fight.
In a fictional fight, it would probably be boring. However, simulating the progress of a fictional fight sounds narrativist to me.

 

[ExploderWizard]

My single point of contention here is that Exploder Wizard, and I believe Ariosto as well, contend that as soon as you can make any editioral change in the setting as a player, you are no longer playing a role playing game, but are now playing a story telling game.

I won't speak for Ariosto but I believe that editorial changes in the game made from outside the chosen role give the game more story orientation and brings it further from roleplaying.

Shared gameworlds can be a wonderful thing. If everyone in the group runs games in the same shared world then all can share in it's creation and editing. As a player I come to a game wanting to play the character, influencing the rest of the game through the running of that character. When I want more narrative control I will run a game and give up the joy of playing a single character.

 

[Ariosto]

... and I believe Ariosto as well ...

Nope.

Nar gaming in the GNS model is a totally different animal.

Everything in the GNS model is a totally different animal!