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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9094724" data-attributes="member: 6696971">The reason why I don't like the term "storygame" isn't related to pejorative (whether the person using it intends it as such or not).  Its because "storygame" as typically used tends to be a haphazard binning of games that have very significant, demarcating features.  The way people tend to use storygame would bin Swords of the Serpentine and a "storygame" deployment of 5e D&D with BIFTs/Inspiration serving as a lot of performative affectation and color and cues for the GM to curate play toward BIFT-conception power fantasy story arcs for players with a game like Burning Wheel, Shadows of Yesterday, and Dungeon World.  While those games share some high fantasy genre and some nomenclature, that is pretty much where it ends."Storygame" is, imo, a pretty bad offender when it comes to taxonomic culture.  It generates a top of the hierarchy classification and people just stop there without either (a) demarcating the vast differences in what lies below it on the tree or (b) even considering whether lower tier classification descended from a common ancestor.In Forge classification, SotS and the above depicted 5e game would be called High Concept Simulationism.  In The Seven Culture of Play, they would be called NeoTrad.  Both of these classifications do considerably greater work when it comes to describing all of (i) what these games generate during play, (ii) how they do it, and (iii), therefore, how to successfully design toward such a game.Meanwhile, "storygame" (as it is haphazardly thrown around) seems to basically just punt to the lowest resolution description of "these systems aim at generating a story" without talking about the all-important features of design, authority, participant responsibilities, processes of play, and the experience of play derived by the prior...all of which deeply divide them from alternatives.  That zoomed-out, information-poor classification would have you trying to design or play Burning Wheel and landing on Swords of the Serpentine (deeply different games, experiences, designs).  One of my best friends loves SotS (while simultaneously hating 5e...which, again, just depicts how different such designs are).  I couldn't get him to play BW if his life depended upon it.What the "GM's say" is, what the "system's say" is, what the "players' say" is and what the GM meta and player meta is for these games is deeply divergent.  That is why I find "storygame" to be a pretty terrible offender.  It offends me not because its an epithet, because its a "conversation-ender" in the worst way possible (people feel like they've landed in an information-rich environment when they've actually participated in net harm to better understanding of just wtf we're each doing when we play various games and how designers design toward those particulars).</blockquote>

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