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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9318822" data-attributes="member: 6696971">This centering of all of TTRPGing around storytelling is a misunderstanding of what is happening in various games.  Some games are concerned with storytelling.  Others are not.* I spent 1984 through 1999 running Moldvay Basic Pawn Stance Dungeon Crawls.  Sometimes Expert as well.  RC starting 1991 and I was doing Hexcrawls with it. These games were never interested in macro-storytelling.  It was 100 % challenge-based play.* I ran Everway a bit in 1995-96.  This game was definitely interested in macro-storytelling, arcs, beats, etc.* I was in the 3e FR playtest from 1999 and ran an FR-based 3e game from then until 2004.  This game was 100 % OC/NeoTrad.  People were playing beloved OC characters that they imported into this game from prior games and they had a deep conception of who they were and character arcs they expected to be mapped onto play.  They expected metaplot.  They expected loads of auxillary content that amounted to Forgotten Realms Setting Tourism for their OC characters.  I ran this for 5 years through level 22.  This game was deeply preoccupied with character metaplot, setting metaplot, setting tourism, drama, and prefabricated arcs; macro-storytelling.* In the last 20 years, the majority of my GMing has been Dogs in the Vineyard, Torchbearer, D&D 4e, Shadows of Yesterday, Sorcerer, My Life With Master, Marvel Heroic, Mouse Guard, Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, Monsterhearts, Thousand Arrows, The Between, Strike (!), Blades in the Dark, Lazers & Feelings, Lady Blackbird, Agon, Stonetop.  These games were structurally and intentionally disinterested in macro-storytelling, arcs, beats.  They're all "situation/conflict-play with cascading gamestate/fiction leading wherever" (often with the site of conflict being the scene/encounter, sometimes deeply deeply structured loops) and some of them feature challenge-based play (either integrated or on a toggle).* I ran Dread and Ten Candles in this same interval and both of those games seem intentfully designed with dramatic arc and macro-storytelling imperatives.* I intermittently sat in for a flakey 5e GM for a large chunk of sessions over the course of 2016-2019 (spanning 12 levels).  That game and that text was/is absolutely undergirded by GM-as-storyteller with Neotrad tools (Inspiration and Background Traits and some modules for metacurrency) that you can opt-into.  These players (young boys) mostly just wanted to beat puzzles and kick butt; I indulged them.  They would complain about their dad's exposition and metaplot that they didn't care about whatsoever while I was GMing.  When I ran the game, it was this weird combo of challenge-based play and adlibbed Neotrad-like scenes when I could wrangle the boys into advocating for the thematic core of their characters.  Sometimes that worked.  Oftentimes, they just wanted to kick butt and take names.  I did, however, have a lot of luck with the Social Interaction, "NPCs as puzzle" minigame.  This generated a lot of social conflicts because they enjoyed the minigame.So, the dad's base 5e game?  Totally preoccupied by macro-storytelling imperatives.  When I ran it, I made it mostly challenge-based play (combat encounters and NPCs as puzzles) with some auxiliary free form Neotrad scene...though the base game was interested in macro-storytelling, the players weren't and I'm not going to absorb and map onto play your elaborate metaplot that neither I care about nor your players care about...when that GM came back and his Railroad was in tatters, he had to figure out how to lead all the Roads Back to Rome again (not my problem...maybe show up consistently if you want to keep your Railroad totally intact).</blockquote>

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