Storytelling vs Roleplaying

[Hussar]

The primary goal is what (besides a good time) the participants want most out of the game.



If the role of storyteller/editor is distributed among the group then there really isn't a need for a player to play just one character at a game session. The DM and players can just share the actions of all the characters and contribute to the story where appropriate.

While this is a possible way of doing it, it is certainly not a usual way of role playing. Having editorial control over the setting does not give me editorial control over other player characters.

I don't think that would go over very well with some players. Part of the appeal of roleplaying is identifying with a character, making it your own, and playing that role on a semi-continual basis. Without a sense of ownership of that character the energy and interest in playing that character just wouldn't be there.

Agreed.

The players have good cause to complain when the DM tries to control/make decisions for thier characters. A DM should never do this.

Agreed as well. Although I would ammend that to "almost never" just because there probably are times when DM's do take control of characters - charm spells being the most obvious example. But, yes, you point is well taken.

The DM does not have a character to identify with. The world apart from the PC's is the DM's "character". Is it really fair to say that the players have a right to jump in and make decisions for the DM's "character" but take offense if the DM does likewise?

So now you're saying that I can no longer effect ANY changes in the game world for fear of making decisions for the DM's character? What if I want to build a castle? Don't I make changes in the DM's character simply by adventuring?

Or is it I can only make prescribed changes, those allowed by the DM?

I'm not sure you really want to go down this line EW. You are making traditional roleplay sound like the worst kind of railroading. The players not only can only react to what the DM sends their way, but also can only react in certain ways for fearing of making decisions for the DM's character?

Note, btw, in my diamond dog example, I actually never changed the DM's setting at all. Well, that's not entirely true. I added a dog. That is the full extent of the changes I made to the DM's setting. A dog.

If the DM is taking offense at my adding a dog to his setting, then perhaps that DM should be having a bit of a lie down and rest.

 

[ExploderWizard]

But, that's not what I said.

When you are a player, if you cannot, at any point in time, exert any editorial control over the setting without the game stopping being a role playing game and turning into a story telling game, then you are forced to be a passive consumer. You can't be anything else.

Are you willing, as a player to permit the DM to have editorial control over your character from time to time? Lets say the DM gets to choose every other feat and every third power you get. In return you get to edit aspects of the game world. Sounds fair to me.

If, as a DM I cannot exert editorial control over PC choices from time to time it would be a tad restrictive to me.

 

[Hussar]

Are you willing, as a player to permit the DM to have editorial control over your character from time to time? Lets say the DM gets to choose every other feat and every third power you get. In return you get to edit aspects of the game world. Sounds fair to me.

If, as a DM I cannot exert editorial control over PC choices from time to time it would be a tad restrictive to me.

So, you think that adding a dog to a setting is the same as changing every other feat and every third power? That these are on the same level?

And, I noticed you ignored the question. Is someone who plays Eberron in 3.5 edition D&D playing a role playing game or a story telling game? Please explain your answer.

 

[Ariosto]

Why is it roleplaying when the DM declares there is a privy in the courtyard, but not roleplaying when the player does it?

It's not role-playing; it's game-mastering.

For most, maybe all, rpgers, there isn't a "primary goal" at all. There are a variety of essential features.

That hardly seems to me to void the usefulness of a taxonomy that can distinguish among D-Day, D&D and Dark Cults.

I don't like railroaded games either, but some people do, and they are still roleplaying games.

I did not say that they were not. I disagreed with Hussar's depiction of all RPGs as railroads.

 

[Cadfan]

I don't accept the analogy between the gameworld and the PCs such that the gameworld is the DM's PC and therefore the DM is entitled to absolute control over it.

1. The gameworld is much bigger than a single PC, both in imaginative scale and in table time.

2. A PC exists to a certain extent only as an interaction with the gameworld. For example, it does you little good to imagine your character as an orphan raised by a circus if your DM declares to you that there are no such things as circuses.

3. No one games the way EW implies. No one constantly asks permission for every action in order to avoid inadvertently "adding things" to the gameworld. People make assumptions about the gameworld, do things, "add things" in this thread's parlance, and the DM flows with it, interrupting where he feels it important to do so.

To put it another way, lets say I decide that my character wants to give a coin to a beggar. The DM hasn't expressly stated that there are any beggars, but I know I'm in a big town in a market place. Without even thinking about it, I will likely assume that there is a beggar somewhere, and declare that I am giving a coin to him. I have in essence added a beggar the the gameworld. Now the DM would be entitled to declare an absence of beggars- maybe he's decided that this particular market is heavily patrolled by strict guards who eject the poor. And that would be his business. But most likely, in the typical game, the DM doesn't have an opinion on the subject and just rolls with it. So I said I was giving a coin to a beggar- a beggar sounds like a plausible thing to be there, giving a coin to a beggar is something my character is capable of doing, so it just happens.

This isn't to say that the DM doesn't absolutely control the setting in the abstract sense, but it is to say that the DM doesn't spend all day miserly guarding every last shred of that control. No one plays that way- EW has essentially constructed a straw person of his own opinion, in which every action requires express DM permission in case formerly unstated attributes of the gameworld would make that action impossible. No one plays that way, instead the gameworld is jointly created with the DM exercising editorial control and veto power.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Heck, like I said, 3e as Action Points. Exploder Wizard, is it your contention that anyone playing in Eberron in 3e is no longer engaging in a role playing game? That Eberron turns 3e D&D into a story writing game? After all Eberron explicitly allows players to have some editorial control through Action Points. They can decide not to fail a roll at almost any time, they can jump farther, attack more, retain cast spells, and IIRC even effect small changes in the scene. Does that mean if I'm playing in Eberron I'm no longer playing a role playing game?

This is why I'm having such a hard time with EW's definition. It's far and away too restrictive.

Sorry I didn't intend to avoid the question I just forgot.
An action point in this sense is much like a character power that is available to all PC's. Like any other ability, the examples you provide enable the PC to affect those things within his/her sphere of influence from within the role. I don't have enough detail to comment on "small changes in the scene". If a PC could use an action point to say, "that 3rd bugbear in the patrol wanders off in search of food." then that's a different matter.

You can play a story based or roleplaying game in Eberron as the players wish.

So, you think that adding a dog to a setting is the same as changing every other feat and every third power? That these are on the same level?

The point isn't about specific examples and thier equality. It is about issues of ownership/entitlement cutting both ways.

 

[LostSoul]

There's a conflict with traditional games and storytelling:

You can't be challenged if you can control the world as an author.

This isn't always true, based on the game; Spirit of the Century limits your authorial powers via resources. I'm aslo assuming the reason you're playing a traditional game is to overcome challenges; if you want to play D&D to tell stories to each other, then there's no conflict.

Most D&D games have at least some storytelling going on in them. "What are you doing right now?" "I'm sitting on the porch of the inn, smoking my pipe, listening to the crickets chirp." The crickets chirping isn't roleplaying but it's not a big deal. The important thing is that the DM has final say. He could say, "Actually, on this world, crickets don't chirp so much as whine." But that's not really important.

(Where it gets interesting is if the DM says, "Actually, they are not chirping tonight." He knows it's because there's a monster in the grass sneaking up to kill the PC. Now the player can react to that. Would he have had the same information if he just said, "I'm on the porch"?)


A year ago I might have sided more with Hussar, but now I see things differently. The DM, with his authority over the game world, enables the players to play their roles. They don't have to step out of character in order to figure out what's over the next hill. They don't have to make a choice between character advocacy (where you make choices that align with what your character wants - or thinks he wants) and creating adversity.

The DM can supply all the adversity he wants and it works because he doesn't care if the PCs succeed or not. His job is to make sure the players can make the kinds of meaningful choices they want. Because of this they aren't just passive consumers of the DM's material; they interact with it, change it, shape it, exploit it, all through playing their PC roles, while the DM maintains consistency of the game world, making their choices matter.

At least that's what I think now.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

So long as we don't get into such preciousness as GNS jargon, in which none of the terms mean what they conventionally mean.

This whole thread exists because you and EW cling to a narrow and outdated use of "roleplaying" that hasn't been valid for most people ever.

 

[Ariosto]

If a player exerting editorial control over the game world is not roleplaying, then I guess the player writing up a background for his character isn't roleplaying either. Coz, you know, that's editorial/narrative control in a sense too.

Just so! That's not role-playing; it's role-definition.

This all started because ExploderWizard (as I understand the post) found the inclusion of theatrical "scene-playing" elements in the DMG2 a notable departure from the emphasis on role-playing that EW considers key to D&D ("the game", as opposed to "the brand", as Philotomy Jurament put it).

I think that's trying to close the stable door after the horses have bolted; the new game is by design a break with old D&D. "Story-telling" in various forms is a big part of that, just as it was in the 2e era. Thus, it seems to me quite appropriate that the DMG2 should include such a chapter.

I certainly don't think it's going to make 4e "no longer an RPG"!

The broader topic is one dearer to me, as I see the development of the story-game as having been hindered by a reluctance to set aside "legacy" assumptions. Maybe some people see ways in which unthinking adoption of "war-game" concepts has at times constrained experimentation in the RPG field.

 

[Ariosto]

In a way, many of our difficulties are a credit to the brilliance of Arneson and Gygax. Any much-bruited "revolution in gaming" is likely on closer examination to be really just another orbit, long ago followed, around the core concepts those pioneers set forth.