Telling a Story vs. Having Fun

[Psion]

It's a watermelon. I am constantly spitting seeds at my players

Crothian wins the thread!

 

[BlueBlackRed]

If it ain't fun, I ain't stayin'.

 

[T. Foster]

For me, it's all about the feel of wandering lost through an endless labyrinth, never knowing what's around the next bend or behind the next door, scared out of your wits of the deadly traps you know are all around, the horrible monsters that are chasing you, and the just plain weird stuff you've occasionally run across -- talking statues, magical fountains, insane temples to dark forgotten gods, etc. -- hoping to discover great lost treasures -- sacks of gold, jeweled necklaces, magical potions and swords -- which will enable you to delve even deeper into the endless labyrinth, try to avoid even deadlier traps, run away from even bigger and scarier monsters, and hope to recover even richer treasures. "Story" plays almost no part in this -- there's no real narrative arc, no particular character development, no moral issues being explored (except perhaps the symbolic tug-of-war between fear and greed); it's all about the visceral experience at the moment of truth -- you're standing at an intersection deep beneath the earth, utterly lost and in total darkness except for the light of your flickering torch, wondering whether to go left (did you actually hear the faint sound of laughter or was that just water dripping?), go right (is it your imagination or does this hallway appear to slope gently upwards?), or try to open the door in front of you (is it locked? is it trapped? what's on the other side?); suddenly your ruminations are interrupted when you hear shuffling sounds approaching up the corridor from behind -- whatever it is, you know that if it catches you it's going to kill and eat you -- no more time for indecision, you've got to choose a path and follow it right now!

When I want a story, I read a book.

 

[fusangite]

He was using as an example of his ideal game a WoD game he ran, where he scripted out the entire story well in advance, kept the PC's as mortals with no special powers but had lots of elder vampires, high ranked werewolves, and master mages around (so that their powers could prevent the PC's from doing anything that ran contrary to the story, and making sure that the PC's weren't key players in the story so they could not make any decisions that would not go along with the story), and considered the game a success because he told the story he wanted to tell, the PC's didn't mess it up and sat there and listened to it, and he felt satisfied. As a player in that game, I can say that it was a huge railroad game, it was pretty boring (breathless, long-winded descriptions of even minor events and throwaway NPC's, repeatedly roleplaying out trivial encounters, long scenes where he plays several NPC's that are having a discussion, or otherwise interacting), and if you told him you weren't having fun, he made it clear that you were there to watch his story unfold as he performed, and walking out on the game in the middle because you were bored week after week and weren't having fun would be like walking out of a movie before the climax.

I don't like those kinds of railroading campaigns but, weirdly, some players do. I have actually met them. On occasion, I have had players demand to be railroaded in my campaigns. My point is that, just as there are women out there looking for short, bald, impoverished men, there are players out there looking to be railroaded. For those people, there is no conflict between your friend's GMing style and their objective of having fun. Ron Edwards, in his taxonomy of RPG play styles (with which I'm by no means in full agreement) was forced to come up with a label for this style of WoD play precisely because he was confronted with too much evidence of there actually being players out there who enjoyed essentially being spectators in their own story.

I would use as an example of an ideal game my last D&D campaign, especially early on. I had 5 of my friends come up to me over the course of about a week and say they wanted me to run a D&D game, so we all got together one night and worked on making a campaign. We discussed what campaign setting we were interested in using, the general tone of the campaign, and then discussed house rules and what books we would be letting in, until I came to a consensus with my players about the system (D&D 3.5), setting (Forgotten Realms), tone (lighthearted with occasional serious moments, mostly action and dungeon crawls with some politics), and house rules. Once we'd agreed on the game, we played once a week, the players had fun roleplaying their characters and going on adventures every week, sometimes wandering from city to city, sometimes blasting their way through a dragon's lair or a kobold nest, and a larger overarching plotline slowly starting to weave many of their prior adventures into a coherent story. If the PC's weren't having fun, I wasn't doing my job, and if anybody wasn't having fun to please tell me so we can fix it.

You see -- this would also drive me batty, as both a player and a GM. What I personally value in a game is when play is centred on discovery, on solving a mystery, on coming to know the world. I would be left absolutely cold by a campaign centred in a world so thoroughly known from the outset. As a player, I'm interested in having my GM weave a complex web that I will spend hours unravelling and figuring out. That's my kind of game. I think it may be that an error in your posts is that you don't fully appreciate the range of modes of play one can get out of an RPG. The trick is matching the right people with the right kind of fun. If you can't do that, any play style will fall flat.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I voted fun... but that is not to say that there can't be a story. On the other hand... the story can not be put ahead of the fun (and when I say fun... I don't mean running around alughing all day like an idiot type of fun... I mean the emotional charge that the players (and GM) get from doing whatever it is that they're doing).

Some GMs let the story get ahead of the characters, where X event must occur at Y time. This often times leads to the evil railroading and the even worse character powerlessness. Now... I suppose that there might be players out there who are okay with sitting around and letting the DM tell them the story, only interjecting with minor tidbits that are insignificant to the plot here and there... But I don't know any of them.

Later
silver

 

[The Shaman]

See my sig!

Yeah, go back and look at Melan's sig!

 

[Terwox]

Sounds like the White Wolf guy just spouted off all the random nonsense that somehow got published in the Vampire: the Masquerade storyteller's handbook. Thankfully, they stopped letting people publish garbage THAT pretentious.

Gaming without a story is fun, although not nearly as fun as gaming with a story. I'd sacrifice the story for fun any day, although I sometimes game with a DM who will sacrifice fun for the story... can't say I like it that way at all.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

I think fusangite pretty well said most of what I wanted to say already.
Fun and story aren't really in opposition. The most electrifying moments of my current campaign are those where the players begin to dive through the web of events and through their actions, end the conflict.

Does anyone else think that it might be sort of fun to play in a game where many of the sequences and outcomes were already pre-determined, and the goal was to play along to make it happen? Like, you know that you need to lead an army into the pass to hold off the undead scourge, but it's up to you to play that up, and act it out. Maybe you go and give an inspiring speech, or form alliances, or hire mercenaries.

On a side tangent, my worst gaming expierences are with DMs who play like they've got a story to tell, but either don't have one (or much of one) or don't know how to deliver it. Doing a story based game with people who like/know story is a ball though.

 

[painandgreed]

Fist, I clicked on the wrong choice by mistake. Clicked and hit return faster than I could read. I hit "story" instead of "fun". It's most definatly "fun". As an avid WW fan, I'll have to say that if any GM thinks its about his story and telling it as fine art, then he should go off and write a book. Sometimes that can be fun, other times it's better to let the players control the story, and others you just want to roll some dice, kill things, and take their loot. It's still a game, and that means having fun. I'm not there as a player or a GM to have some author validate his story by having others play in it.