What is the point of GM's notes?

[Aldarc]

Perusing through the Six Cultures blog, it's likely that the Story Games is elucidated so poorly and the OSR one is articulated more sympathetically because the author seems to be mostly an OSR oriented gamer.

 

[Arilyn]

I don't think that the author really describes Story (Now) Games all that well, as they devote considerable time simply quibbling about the Forge (e.g., terminology), the Big Model, and Ron Edwards rather than elucidating on the creative focus of Story Games.

I really like the article but agree with you on the Story Games. My understanding of story games is that they are not Story Now, and in fact play quite differently from role playing games, though share DNA. In a story game, players often know the end result and are playing to see how this happened. The mechanics of the game revolve around players "competing" or claiming narrative control, and then depending on the system, this can be allowed to become part of the fiction or not. There is roleplaying, but it's often timed and characters in the drama can be shared around. There may be time jumps, as players might decide to role play out a scene from centuries past that impact the current situation, as an example.

So in a story game:

Ned: I'm interested in the moment when the king sold his soul. Anyone want to zero in on that?

Chris: I'll take on the role of the king!

Ned: Awesome, I'll be the emissary from Hell.

Sharon: From what has been already established, we know the king's sister is key. I'll take on that role.

Carrie: Okay, so 15 minutes be enough time?

This is one example and not universal depending on system, but definitely think Story Now should not be labelled as Story Games because there will be confusion.

 

[Guest 85555]

BRG and estar - 2 parts OSR, 1 part Classic, 1 part Neo-Trad

I follow that blog. It was an interesting breakdown. I am not sure I have fully internalized all of his groupings yet (finding I get a little hung up on his choice of labels). It is very tough to say. Definitely OSR and classic are an influence. Ravenloft is a big influence and shows up in odd ways. I don't know about neo-trad. There are elements I share with it, but I think it might be on a slightly different track. I would say what I bring is a sense of the players actions leading to the story (but bound by their in game abilities), and a kind of embrace of chaos---I love evil parties who want to take over, and while it isn't a cake walk, I don't make that stuff impossible. I love campaigns where players identify some area they want to ascend in (an institution, a region, etc). I do tend to be very by the book. I don't think that is necessary for every GM. But I like going by the book so when lives are on the line it is a more natural proceeding. I have been known to slow down play more in those moments to check rules, to make sure I am applying them exactly as written. Again not to rules lawyer but to be fair when important things are being handled. I also tend to go into accountant mode: my voice becomes very neutral. I am simply tabulating and checking. Players have commented on this enough I know it is something I do (I remember one player barely noticing I told him he was almost dead, because my tone didn't change)

 

[Imaro]

FYI for users in this thread.

This extremely well-conceived and robust taxonomy of "cultures of play" (play priorties/styles) was just linked to in General. It looks absolutely great to me.

I'm in pretty robust agreement. My only quibble with it (as I put in the other thread) is "Storygaming." I think the blog author would have been better served using "Story Now" instead in his taxonomy. He captures much of the central ideas, but riding right alongside coherence around premise/dramatic need is the "Play to Find Out" priority. That is absolutely fundamental (if not paramount) and right there as a/the core tenet from Baker's Dogs in the Vineyward (Forge) to his post-Forge Apocalypse World. Sorcerer, My Life w/ Master, Blades in the Dark etc etc all feature this is the co-apex play priority (along with coherence around premise/dramatic need). The Forge was basically a reaction to "Story Before" gaming culture so "Story Now" is, in my mind, the most quintessential Forge offering.

I wonder how @Bedrockgames , @estar , @Emerikol , @Lanefan , @Imaro , @Maxperson , would classify their games using that taxonomy.

My general sense is it would be something like this (this is not remotely scientific obviously):

BRG and estar - 2 parts OSR, 1 part Classic, 1 part Neo-Trad

Emerikol - 2 parts Classic, 1 part Nordic Larp, 1 part OSR

Lanefan - 2 parts Nordic Larp, 1 part Trad, 1 part Classic

Imaro and Max - 2 parts Neo-Trad, 2 parts Trad

For reference when I run D&D (and derivatives) its basically:

Modvay Dungeon Crawls - 4 parts Classic

BECMI/RC Hexcrawl - 2 parts Classic, 2 parts OSR

4e - 2 parts Story Now, 2 parts Classic (though 4e-ified)

Dungeon World - 3 parts Story Now, 1 part Classic (though DW-ified)

Torchbearer - 2 parts Classic (though TB-ified), 2 parts Story Now

I feel like 2 parts trad might be too much as I'm not necessarily concerned with creating a "story" in isolation per se but I do want my games to create an "experience" by proposing situations based on the goals of my players that they can choose to act on through their PC's... I am a proponent of the players (who want to) contributing to the fiction in my games and of player agency in my games. So with 4 parts I would probably have to say

1 part OSR - I tend towards sandboxes when I play fantasy because player agency is important to me and if not running a sandbox I prefer games with a strong leaning towards player goal orientation, like Unknown Armies 3e Or Sine Nomine games where it's almost a requirement of play that the players have goals for their characters and the campaign I run revolves around achieving them.

1 part Trad - I'm not sure if I would fall into Trad with a different group... but the group I've been playing with for years has only a select few that have ever been interested in authoring fiction or stepping outside of their characters. Though often I am able to get them to author things through backstory and Q&A during session zero it rarely if ever will take place during play.

2 part Neo - Trad - I am totally open to player authoring of fiction and input, but in my games it tends to take place outside the narrative of gameplay. In other words we discuss, usually in session zero but it has happened between sessions on rare occasions, and come to a consensus or agreement OOC as opposed to a player authoring on the fly or playing games that use metagame currency to create fiction during gameplay. That said I really enjoy and run my best games when I have strong motivations, goals and desires from my players that I can build my sandbox around or to hang the narrative on.

Hope this helps a little with grasping the style I enjoy running. And thanks for bringing this blog post to my attention it's and interest read that's not hard to parse, I really enjoyed it.

 

[robconley]

Thank you for the full response.

Appreciate it, hope it useful in some small way.

What do you think that blog post’s taxonomy of Culture’s of Play?

I think is it well written and well considered and it like other similar well written and well written posts misses what I consider to be an important point.

Do you think it captures your play (if you had 4 parts)?

So first off, I am well aware that my views on the nature of tabletop RPGs not shared by many in the hobby or industry. Also my strong opinion that any general description should be useful for hobbyists trying to figure out something fun to do.

What the overall picture? It about focus. It hard to see that because with 100s of new games released each day often the question for a group is what game we play today? Then the game gotten off the shelf and used.

What if a different process is used? One with origins in the 60s and early 70s when published games were few and far between. In a nutshell the group thinks of something fun to play and then assembles the rules and other stuff to make it happen.

If you do that like back in the day, you will see pattern emerge centered around a general focus.

• If the focus is on opponents trying to achieve victory conditions (cooperatively or competitive) then you likely wind up making a board or wargame.
• If the focus is on folks playing characters having adventures in a setting then likely you wind up with a tabletop roleplaying game
• If the focus is on folks collaborating on creating a story or narrative with a game then likely wind up with a storygame.

Focuses even the broad ones I just listed are nuanced. Because of that hybrids are not only possible but actually comprise the fact majority of what hobbyist do. The fact I have three categories doesn't mean that all there especially if we go beyond pen & paper and into things CRPGs and Live Action.

The consequence of this is that playing a system is not the point of what the hobby does. The point is do whatever the fun thing we are focusing on. That the secret sauce of what happened circa 1970. Back then mostly they didn't have a choice because of the lack of published resources. Today it is obscured by the thousands of available published resources.

Also tabletop roleplaying games (and storytelling) far more prone to hybridization than boardgames. Boardgames are often tied to physical items: cards, boards, pieces, etc. In contrast roleplaying games and storygames about how we talk to each other. For a roleplaying game, the player describe what it is they do as their character, the referee describes what happens. Storygames are even more diverse in who describes what and when. This makes it easy for the group to change up with they do from session to session or even within a session. Even when there something physical involved, like dwarven forge, it still primarily verbal.

So what about the blog post. If you reread it you will see that the authors is actually talking about different folks focuses. Some observations the post has seems on point other I would disagree with. But the overall thesis of categories I think missed the mark. The problem is that hobbyists are not one note wonders, their interest varies from campaign to campaign, and session to session. Combined with the easy hybridization of roleplaying (and storygames) How many are classic gamers for very long, traditional games, OSR gamers, and so on?

But it doesn't mean it all chaos, most groups I observed are centered around a focus that the group agreed to use. To find out what anybody is at a particular moment you need to find out what they are focusing on.

Because it so easy to modify things, instead of figuring out what categories exist and who is in what category or in this thread case what percentage folks are of the different categories. Explain what you are about, and how what you do or say is useful for that purpose or focus. Refrain from overly broad claims

I think most hobbyist can figure it out from there.

So what the consequences of what I just said.

• Think of something fun you and the group want to try.
• Assemble the rules and material to make it happen.
• Don't worry about categories use what make sense. If it happen to be all form a single system so be it.
• Use rules and materials you and your group enjoy using.
• Keep in mind it is ongoing thing. Tastes will change, your "toolkit" to make fun things happen will expand.

As for me,

I focus on letting players "trash" my setting. I do this by focusing first on getting players comfortable with acting as their character as if they are there in the setting. I focus on letting players do anything they can their character abilities allow them to do as defined by the setting. The rules to me are just a useful tools to use and to tell players how things happen.

I tend to focus on systems that answer things in a form of "If a character does this specific thing, how do I adjudicate ". But I will compromise when doing that is tedious or not fun. For example I will use some type of wargame or mass combat system rather than setup thousands of minis to playout a better. Although my favorites for a RPG campaign tie directly back to the how characters are defined. AD&D Battlesystem 1e and GURPS Mass Combat are two good examples.

A consequence of my approach and focus is that when it comes to groups of player often it plays out is it would in life. The group discusses, considers, and cooperate in helping everybody get to their individual goals. There are limits to this as there is only one of me, and there are things I and the players rather not touch on in a campaign.

Another consequence is that aside from the first person roleplaying that what my campaign is about depend on the setting and initial situatin the players created for themselves. TOR/AiME was great that I finally got how to run a Middle Earth campaign and not have it feel like my Majestic Wilderlands. Despite me using a lot of Tolkienisms in MW.

Hope this answers your question.

 

[Lanefan]

That sort of thing, yes. I'm not surprised to see maps in there, and their use to resolve travel.

Picking up on a couple of the other things - cosmology and deities to give religious PCs something to work with; history to show how things got to be what they are - there seems to be a heavy emphasis here on not just what there is but knowing, in advance, how it got there.

To think about how a different approach might work, consider the following:

* In the real world, the way that we establish historical facts, and even more cosmological facts, is to look at what there is and to reason back from it to probably causes, with that reasoning informed and constrained by our best accounts of the relevant causal processes;​

​

* Sometimes we don't know;​

​

* Sometimes we discover new things that are and these force a revision of our historical conjectures, and perhaps even a revision of our accounts of the causal processes.​

Yep, and the same can hold true in the game world.

Just 'cause something's noted in the player-side setting history doesn't necessarily mean it's true; the discovery of the actual truth (or a different wrong version!) is something I can later mine for adventure ideas if needed.

For example: (spoilered in case any of my players wander by)

Spoiler

In the player-side history in my setting, a volcano erupted 90 years ago not far east of the "core" adventuring area, concurrent with some other significant events elsewhere in the region.

In the DM-side, that was no volcano. It was a spaceship crash-landing in the mountains and exploding. The other concurrent events were pre-planned by the aliens (a.k.a. Mind Flayers) and their on-world allies to coincide with this; with the intent being a near-instant takeover of a large swath of territory (and this could get into a very long story, which I'l leave off for brevity). It all failed.

During the campaign a couple of parties have come closer than they realized to figuring this all out but still haven't put the pieces together, meaning I can still mine some more adventuring out of it as time goes on.

None of those facts about how humans work stuff out about the world they live in gives any reason to think that the world is inconsistent. It just means its complicated and we don't know everything about it that there is to know!

Agreed, and this is easy enough to reflect in the setting history as well.

Now imagine adopting a similar sort of approach in establishing a RPG setting:

* Eg a player chooses a god for his/her religious PC, based on what s/he thinks is cool or genre appropriate or whatever - now we know that that god is party of the setting;​

​

* Maybe another player writes up some backstory for his/her PC which refers to a time spent in exile in The Barrens, so now we know that place exists;​

​

* Etc, etc.​

A player making up a deity on the fly won't happen here; deities (other than very minor local variants) are something I lock down in advance as I've designed a plug-and-play universal cosmology for use across all my games. Work done once that never needs doing again - my favourite kind.

Also, I design the setting, in general terms at least, long before any players get involved or I even know who they're going to be. Thus, if a player/PC wants to say she's from The Barrens but there's no The Barrens on the map, all that tells me is a) she's most likely from somewhere off the map or b) The Barrens is a rather small and insignificant place somewhere on the map. Which is fine - I don't map out the entire world ahead of time; I tend to stop at the continent and surrounds where the campaign is likely to take place, and leave the rest blank for future use/expansion/etc.

Of course it won't work if our processes for working out what happens now rely upon all that background/historical stuff as an input. But they don't have to. Other processes are quite possible and can work quite well.

What I've found - much to my joy - is that having a DM-side history at least somewhat nailed down can quickly and easily become a near-bottomless mine for adventure and-or story ideas, should I need them.

 

[Lanefan]

SPOILER ALERT

Apparently my 2021 Dungeon World Tender Profile would contain:

* I like latitudinal rivers, mountain ranges in the top left, and home steadings at the base of those mountains.

No big deal.

Look at how many - and I mean there's loads of 'em - fantasy novels where the map at the front has mountains to the north-ish, ocean to the south-ish, and the area where most of the action occurs is in between.

 

[Lanefan]

This extremely well-conceived and robust taxonomy of "cultures of play" (play priorties/styles) was just linked to in General. It looks absolutely great to me.

Interesting article, for sure. Thanks for the link!

Lanefan - 2 parts Nordic Larp, 1 part Trad, 1 part Classic

Er...maybe? On reading the article I see my/our games somewhat relating to four out of six of the categories, largely eschewing those the writer calls Story Gaming and OC/Neo-trad.

That said, we don't really fit neatly into any of the categories presented. We have some elements of OSR as the writer defines it, but not others. Ditto Nordic Larp, Trad, and Classic. So if four parts are needed for a definition, maybe one part each, but it'd be more like a pick-and-choose amalgam of these rather than whole-cloth adoption of each or any one.

 

[Fenris-77]

No big deal.

Look at how many - and I mean there's loads of 'em - fantasy novels where the map at the front has mountains to the north-ish, ocean to the south-ish, and the area where most of the action occurs is in between.

Just for giggles I made my most recent campaign map a southern hemisphere one. So ocean then desert in the north and mountains in the south. The action still happens in the middle though.

 

[pemerton]

Just for giggles I made my most recent campaign map a southern hemisphere one.

The southern hemisphere is no doubt a pretty strange place.