Storytelling vs Roleplaying

[Campbell]

I can see the point behind treating treating story games as a seperate category of game, especially when you're talking about the likes of Prime Time Adventures or Dread. Still, when you treat Story Games as some other thing completely unrelated to tabletop roleplaying games and refuse to call traditional RPGs that have some story game elements roleplaying games you deny the common roots and similarities between both types of games.

Story Games are an outgrowth of roleplaying games. The first story games were designed by folks who were trying to create a different type of roleplaying game.

Plus, it's like a sliding scale man. On one end you have traditional RPGs with simple narrative mechanics like M&M's hero points, WHFRPG fate points, Shadowrun's player-defined contacts, WoD scene durations and arguably D&D 4e's hp system. In the middle of the pack you have games like Mouse Guard which still involve themselves in game world concerns, but focus more on conflict resolution than task resolution. Finally at the far end you have games like Primetime Adventures that describe characters in purely narrative terms. By making it all about storytelling vs. roleplaying you dismiss the richness and variety of games all across the spectrum.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The former

There's a big difference there then. The self proclaimed story gamers say what they are doing is playing a form of roleplaying game whereas Exploder Wizard's claim is that story games cannot be roleplaying games and vice versa.

My problem is much more with someone saying "What you are doing is not a roleplaying game" than with whatever name they then put on it - rollplaying game, story game, whatever, it doesn't matter.

 

[Oryan77]

Sir, we don't need to hear any more about your... collaborative storytelling element...

Well that's ok, we usually end up turning it into a wargame anyway

But really guys, why's everyone trying to segregate each player into their own category all of a sudden? Seems like for 2 weeks now people have been discussing each gaming style and trying to sort out who should be classified as what. Aren't we all RPG gamers? It doesn't matter how you play it as long as you're playing in a good group. No need to get bent out of shape because some guy from another group doesn't like how you play D&D

Do what I do...roll up a character and name him the same name as the poster that really pissed you off. Then quickly kill that character with your favorite PC or NPC. Since he won't know about the death, there ain't nuthin he can do about that...now you know, and knowing is half the battle!

 

[Ariosto]

Looking at the topics from Chapter 1 of DMG2, I see it very plainly stated that they are about "story structure", "your cast of characters", "narrative storytelling", "the narrative", "the plot", "directed scenes", "your story", etc..

Flashbacks: "Flashback sequences move the character’s background story into the spotlight for the entire group to imagine."

Transitions: "Ask the players to describe a conflict that occupied them during the elapsed time period. Together, choose a dramatic moment, and frame a vignette around it. You might construct one vignette per character, or cast vignettes together into a scene of combined struggle."

Third-Person Teasers: "Scenes featuring a cast of player-controlled NPCs foreshadow events for their PCs. ... You might not tell the PCs what characters they’re playing. ... Third-person vignettes require players who can separate their knowledge of the events portrayed from what their characters know." (And players not scarred by the horrors of Vecna Lives!)

Story-telling? Yes, indeed! All the above are standard on stage, radio and screen. Their relationship to "playing the role of my character" in a "game" may pose interesting questions.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Let's define our terms.

Role-playing is pretending to be a character (in some context).

Storytelling involves, er, telling stories. Stories frequently have characters in them. Stories also have other elements, like conflict, resolution, setting, etc. (a basic narrative structure, avant garde stuff aside). You can be creating the story as you tell it, or the story can be created before you tell it, and then remembered by you.

Role-playing can thus be an element of storytelling (though it doesn't always have to be - you can play a role without any story, really).

This is, essentially, what an actor does: plays a role in a story. An individual monologue, however, isn't a story, but is still role-playing.

You can also tell a story without any role-playing by not involving anyone else who is pretending to be a character. A written story, or a verbalized epic poem, or even a completely computer-programmed movie, has no role-playing.

Of course, if you have a voice actor, they're playing a role, so then it is.

In the context of RPG's, it is hard to play a role without simultaneously telling some story. RPG's, by their nature as games, have conflict, so they have a basic 3-act structure: establish, conflict, resolve. In this way, every game is also a story. Most of the time, the story is about the players themselves: a game of poker is a story about one person at the table cleverly out-smarting and out-lucking the other players at the table. This is exactly what happens later, when, after the game, the winner talks about how he won: he tells the story of the game.

In an RPG, the story is about the characters that the players role-play as. Even a game of D&D that is only combat is still a story with role-playing: it has players pretending to be characters who are fighting for their life against things that want to kill them. You can't effectively make a game without the basic elements of a story, so while you can role-play without a story in general, you can't play an RPG without also telling some kind of story (even if it is a simple or shallow one). You could play a game without any role-playing (like Poker), but then you wouldn't be playing an RPG.

Thus, there is no dichotomy between "storytelling" and "roleplaying" in an RPG. Playing an RPG is automatically doing both. D&D, as an RPG, is doing both. Every time. Even if you don't specifically label it, you are going through both of these activities. Later, when the guy is telling you about the session, it's probably only storytelling, but if the guy acts out the session with his friends, it's both again, and if the guy dresses up like his character for sexy times with the missus, it's probably only role-playing.

When you play D&D, you do both.

If you don't want to call what you're doing "storytelling," that's needlessly re-defining what storytelling is. The timing doesn't matter: you're telling the story of D&D as it happens.

If you don't want to call what you're doing "role-playing," then unless you're really just adding up numbers, you're probably re-defining that, too. Even if you're yourself, but transported to a strange fantasy world, you're playing a role that you don't actually have (you're pretending to be something you are not; a poker player just is what it is, even if they're telling a story).

It seems to me that EW is needlessly re-defining "storytelling" so that he is not engaged in it.

But he is.

When my scrappy local little league team goes up against the rich kids from suburbia, it's a story.

When I play a game of Chutes and Ladders with the kiddies, it's a story.

When a team of adventurers goes into a dungeon, it's a story.

A story is not a codified, strict, structural thing. Essentially, anything with a beginning, middle, and end (and ideally a conflict) is a story. Anything that moves through the fourth dimension. The entire universe can be seen as a story, as can an individual life. Heck, in a strict definition, even sexy times and monolgues can be stories (though they don't have to be seen that way, and usually aren't).

 

[Doug McCrae]

even sexy times... can be stories

So that's why it's called the climax!

 

[korjik]

Let's define our terms.

Role-playing is pretending to be a character (in some context).

[snipped]

A story is not a codified, strict, structural thing. Essentially, anything with a beginning, middle, and end (and ideally a conflict) is a story. Anything that moves through the fourth dimension. The entire universe can be seen as a story, as can an individual life. Heck, in a strict definition, even sexy times and monolgues can be stories (though they don't have to be seen that way, and usually aren't).

Too True. Good Post.

To amplify on Kamikaze's post: What is roleplaying/ a roleplaying game is highly dependent on how you play.

Freakin' 40K can be a role playing game if you want it to.

Arguing about who is role playing and who is story telling is like arguing if the sky is azure or cerulean.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So that's why it's called the climax!

Also why pr0n doesn't need a plot.

 

[Ariosto]

The techniques mentioned above undermine role-identification and shift toward an emphasis on "acting" in the thespian sense. Preservation of the role-identification element was a key original reason for the referee's position: The players' information was limited in accordance with their roles.

That seems to me reason enough to distinguish the hybrid from the traditional RPG. It is not that it is no longer at all an RPG; the significance is in the compromise of that element for the sake of a story-telling element.

What raises red flags, especially in the context of the material in DMG1, and of experience with previous experiments in changing the concept of D&D and of the RPG, is the overall tenor.

Taken too far, the "script" assumption makes a mockery not only of D&D, or even of the RPG, but of the very basic concept of game. At (or preferably before) that point, one might step back and re-assess what is happening with this forcing of square pegs into round holes. One might decide to design a really good story-telling game instead.

 

[Obryn]

Why do you feel that way?
Just because you don't enjoy story focused games doesn't mean others feel the same way.

So, Obryn and Doug McCrae, do you look down on story-telling games?

There's really no sigh big enough for these comments.

My objection, pure and simple, is to one group of roleplaying gamers trying to lay claim to the name "roleplaying game" and telling other roleplaying gamers that what they are playing is not a roleplaying game, but a story game.

And that's how I know it's a dig. As Doug McCrae said, it's always the writer or speaker who's the real roleplaying gamer, and the person they're talking to as "other." You could substitute just about any other term for "story gamer" in this context, and it would still be an insult.

Saying, "What, you think story games suck?" is not a real response to my objection.

-O