Landmarks of Gaming Archive

RPGPundit

For the purposes of this forum, which are not to philosophize about nonsensical theories pulled out from one's ass, there must be certain "Landmarks" that one can use, as the foundational basis by which one can establish what can be legitimate gaming theory and what is explicitly to be discounted.
A Landmark is a go/no-go test based on simple statements about the reality of RPGs as they apply to the mainstream of people playing them today!
If a theoretical proposition violates the Landmark, by suggesting that in some form or another RPGs as the vast majority of people understand or play them are currently wrong, said proposition is automatically illegitimate, with no debate. The landmarks are, in other words, an attempt at defining what the Gaming community is like and how it works.

Here are my "Landmarks of Gaming Theory":

1. The vast majority of gamers are having fun gaming.

2. The vast majority of gamers are satisfied with the majority of their game as it is played.

3. D&D is the model of what most people define as an RPG, and therefore also the model for a successfully-designed RPG. It can be improved upon or changed, but any theory that suggests that D&D as a whole (in any of its versions) was a "bad" RPG is by definition in violation of the Landmarks. You don't have to say it is the "best" RPG, but you are obviously not in touch with reality if your theory claims that D&D is a "bad" game, and then try to invent some convoluted conspiracy theory as to why millions of people play it anyways, more than any other RPG.

4. Given number 3 above, it is self-evident that games that have a broad spectrum of playstyles (as D&D does) are by definition successful games. Any theory that speculates that games must be narrowly-focused to be "good" games is automatically in violation of the Landmarks. Note that this doesn't mean that you must say narrow-focus games are "bad", or that narrow-focused games can't be considered appropriate, only that you cannot suggest that gamers don't want to play in RPGs that have a broad spectrum of playstyle, because they obviously do want to play exactly those kinds of games.

5. Conflicts do arise in gaming groups; these conflicts are usually the product of social interaction between the players and not a problem with the rules themselves. The solution to these problems is not to "Narrow the rules", but to broaden the playstyle of a group to accomodate what the complaining players are missing. Thus, it is a Landmark that all correct gaming theories, if they deal with "player dis-satisfaction" at all, must focus the nature of that dissatisfaction on the rules ONLY to suggest that a given rules-set is too narrow; and even then only because it is a symptom of an interpersonal social conflict within a group.

6. Given point #3, above, any gaming theory that suggest that the GM should get disproportionately more or less power than they do in D&D in order for a game to be "good" is inherently in violation of the Landmarks. The vast majority of players enjoy a game where the GM has power over the world and the players over their characters; and while a theory can suggest ways that GMs and Players can experiment with interactively creating the setting, it cannot suggest that the Players should have the power to tell the GM what to do (except for the "power" to walk away from a game).

7. Any gaming theory that tries to divide gamers into specific criteria of "types" must make it clear that this is only one kind of categorization, and not an absolutist and literal interpretation that is a universal truth; it is only one form of categorizing gamers.

8. Any theory that suggests, therefore, that its "types" are mutually exclusionary in gaming groups is in violation of the Landmarks. Individual people can end up being mutually exclusive to each other, unable to play in the same group, etc; but that is because of individual personal issues, not because of an issue of playstyle.

9. Any gaming theory that suggests that a significant element of what many players find entertaining is in fact a "delusion" or unreal, or that the gamers themselves don't know what they're doing or what they're thinking, or what they want from gaming, is in violation of the landmarks.

10. Given points #9 and #1, the suggestion that so-called "immersion" is not a real or viable goal in an RPG, or that "genre emulation" is not a viable priority in a game, is in violation of the Landmarks.

So there are my 10 Landmarks. That's it, fuckers, game over. From now on any future gaming theory should be designed with them in mind, and any existing or future gaming theory that is in violation of those landmarks should be instantly rejected as a product of a brain-damaged mind. The clear line in the sand has been marked, on the level.

So please do NOT come in here talking about GNS or other Forge theories as if those were acceptable theories or proven fact that everyone takes for granted. They do not. Especially here. In fact, here it is taken for granted, due to the miracle of common sense, that GNS and almost anything else that's come out of the Forge is utter bullshit, mental diarrea of the worst kind, and that there are turds floating in gutters with more claim to being viable gaming theories than GNS. This forum is an attempt at working with theory to actually do something productive, and to be quite possibly the only place on the entire net where you can talk about theory without having to pretend that GNS works or is real.


Feel free to try to design new theories, with the goal being that these theories actually be useful for making RPGs (or improving existing RPGs), but keep in mind that any theory that doesn't take common sense (and thus, the Landmarks as a guide to common sense) into account would probably be better suited to reality-free zones like the Forge.

Here, we actually LIKE reality.

RPGPundit

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RSDancey

Agree. However, you have to admit that gamers having fun gaming are a self-selected bunch. There could be a large population of people who might otherwise be gamers who are not having fun gaming because something about the existing games offered wasn't fun to them.

It seems reasonable therefore to entertain theories about what kind of games might attract those people.

You might reasonably object that the existence of such people is as much a guess as the guess that there may be games they might like to play that do not exist. My response would be that objection is valid, but we have 3 clear historical precedents that suggest that the industry was underserving its market until a new game concept appeared:

Tabletop RPGs (1970s)

Collectible Card Games (1990s)

3rd generation MMORPGs (2003+)

Given that history, it seems not unreasonable to assume the existence of a population we cannot yet identify.

So would it be fair to discuss a game theory that did not require existing gamers to be not having fun (which is obviously inaccurate) even if it suggested that some people did not have / would not have fun with the existing games and that new kinds of games might be required to get them into the hobby?


Agree. However, I think this statement also needs the qualification that people who aren't satisfied with those games don't play them, which essentially restates my previous point.


Agree.


Agree.


Disagree. See AD&D 2E, a game that was less popular (in terms of sales) than both its predecessor and its descendants.

Sometimes, games just suck, but people play them anyway, and house-rule problems or accept a lot of arguments as the price to pay to get at the fun part.


Disagree. Otherwise you'd have to define all games people play and have fun with as breaking the Landmark unless the GM has the same level of power as in D&D.

What I think it would be immensely fair to say is that D&D-scoped DM power levels are not de facto a problem in any way, and are always a safe place to start from when engaging in game design.


Agree. Humans are to complex to reduce to simple points on a chart. Such reduction should always assume imprecision and exceptions.


Agree.


Agree, with the provisio that when a new idea does catch the fancy of a lot of gamers, we have to have the flexibility to admit that previous concepts missed something.

In other words, they may not know they want something until you show it to them.


Agree.

Ryan

Kyle Aaron

His theory about roleplaying gamers is incomplete because it doesn't cover people who... aren't roleplaying gamers?

You're confusing a roleplaying theory with "marketing." Marketing is about people who aren't into something yet, and getting them into it. That's a different thing.

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Abyssal Maw

I was impressed with Ryan's answers here, and I actually agree with his point about AD&D2e, which I didn't think I would.

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Stuart

How did the rules of AD&D 2E make the game "just suck"?

The rules of AD&D 2E were pretty close to AD&D 1E, weren't they? Are you saying AD&D 1E also sucked?

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Elliot Wilen

Just so. This idea certainly hasn't been borne out very well in spite of being in the air for a while among the story-game fans. They still by and large look to mainstream games as their gateway and mainstream gamers as their market.

Furthermore the idea that the market was "underserved" e.g. by the RPG industry prior to 1973 ignores the possibility that the market did not exist prior to that time. What happened to make it "RPG time" then? Quite possibly, the GI bill and general increases in college enrollment were major factors, along with increased leisure time in an era when the options for entertainment were comparatively few.

In short I'm sure marketers like to think that they're discovering new horizons but sometimes it's really just a matter of things falling into their laps.

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James J Skach

I'd also point out that the three examples he gives (TTRPG, CCG, MMORPG) I doubt anyone would say were the same kinds of games, would they?

So if he's right, and if there's a huge market that remains untapped, and if Storytelling focus is the key - isn't it within the realm of possibility that it's not the same market as TTRPG?

Just a thought...

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Abyssal Maw

There's actually guidance in the 2E DMG where this girl who has been playing a lawful neutral character for a couple of months is determined (by the GM) to have committed too many good acts. The advice is she gets docked like a level and a half.

First of all, thats a lot of XP, second of all, XP and levels didn't exactly flow in 2nd edition like they do in later editions (one of the most famously broken issues in 2E was the way XP worked. And the book was riddled with crap like that.

By comparison, 1E wasn't like that. It had kinda of it's own imperfect vibe, but there was just so much that was possible.

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RPGPundit

Hello Ryan. I would like to note that I have been a big fan, and defender, of you and your ideas about gaming; at least right up to the moment you went nuts just recently and did a full about-face on everything you were standing up for previously.

Still, though, maybe your ideas of gaming theory will be less insipid than the GNS-derived bullshit that the Forge has created. I doubt it, but hope springs eternal, and at least in your case I know that you really are (or at least were) a genius, unlike all the would-be genii over there. The only question is wheter you're now certifiably mad or what...


I agree, but note that each of these is basically a new hobby. RPGs quickly stopped marketing themselves as "wargames"; CCGs never marketed themselves as "roleplaying games"; and MMORPGs are computer games which are a whole phenomenon unto themselves.

So I would suggest that whatever you could create that would be fun for people who would NOT have fun playing RPGs would NOT end up being an RPG. It would be an entirely different pass-time, and should not be marketed as an "RPG".


Note that I said "conflict in gaming groups"; I said nothing about whether a game is more or less entertaining. I'm talking about fights between players, or between players and GMs.
I certainly agree that some games can suck more than others. The thing I'm disagreeing with here is the idea is that when there's a conflict or power-struggle within a gaming group, its the rules' fault.


That is pretty much what I'm saying, yeah. Within a certain spectrum, anyways.

See, HERE is where I talk about games that suck. Games that give GMs an inordinately larger level of power than D&D will suck. Games that strip away the power from a GM will suck.


Ok.


And yet here you are now, advocating narrativist storygames?!


It would appear that the majority of gamers have soundly rejected the supposed "concepts" of GNS theory, however. Most are perfectly happy with gaming RPGs the way RPGs have always been. Certainly, innovations come along in the rules, but every successful RPG has continued to follow the same basic skeletal structure and division of powers as D&D.

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RSDancey

Here's hoping that I'm not mad.

[ my comment about divergence from the RPG category stripped ]

I'll agree that RPGs were not wargames, and that CCGs were not RPGs, but I won't agree that MMORPGS aren't RPGs. I find very little difference between the actual play pattern I have observed under many different settings for tabletop RPGs, and how people play WoW and other 3rd Gen MMOs. (Except for the DMs, of course, who are thoroughly disenfranchised). For many players, there's now a category shift option where you keep virtually everything you ACTUALLY do now in a TRPG, but you lose the DM, and gain the potential for much larger groups than most TRPGs can support in exchange.

I think there's a very good argument to be made that WoW shows us there were (and are) specific problems with the TRPG platform which were causing a vast number of people to self-select not to play them. WoW addressed those issues, and several million people responded with money and time committed. I think we owe it to ourselves to take a long hard look in the WoW mirror when it comes to "fun" in the TRPG platform.


Really? You really think that game rules can't lead to intraplayer conflict? You don't think that rules can be designed to avoid common sources of such conflict?

I think I'm misunderstanding something here.


I think you are wrong.

I do think that most of the games that have tried to distance themselves from D&D's DM baseline have not succeeded in being more fun.

But I do not believe that is the result of some intrinsic nature of the format, but rather of the effort & resources expended to try to overcome the problem.

It may turn out that D&D DM power levels, like the distance from home plate to first base ends up to be a simply perfect balancing point, but I think we need a lot more work on other approaches before we can safely make that determination.


I am not advocating "narrativist storygames". I'm advocating the idea that we need to define the objective of the TRPG experience to be "tell a great story" then we need to take a long, hard look at the games we use to achieve that objective. And in addition, we need to look at the fact that the player network is changing rapidly in response to the 3rd Gen MMORPGs, and try to get ahead of the effects of that change.

I am on a 3rd path between classic TRPGs, and the output of the Forge and its fellow travelers. I'm trying to benefit from the best of both of those traditions while seeking a new foundation on which to stand.


GNS "theory" is demonstrably wrong, because it proceeds from a clearly false premise: that there are three kinds of players, G, N & S players. I trust my market research, and that research did not produce clusters of players in those particular spaces.

In addition, the theorists over at the Forge, while they got off to a really good start, seem to have failed to close. They don't have a strong set of working documents which describe what they believe to be true, and how to use it. Instead, they have thousands of messages scattered across blogs, message boards, and designer notes in games, and no two people seem to be able to repeat a standard definition or application for any of it.

I do think there are a lot of really, really good ideas in that work though. Frankly, I think the G, N & S segmentation works GREAT for game mechanics and the effects they produce when used (although I reject the idea that games must be all of one and none of the others, that's patently foolish). I think that they produced some very good, and very valid criticism of a lot of what we take for granted in stock TRPGs of many kinds, and that re-evaluating those assumptions based on that criticism would be very useful. And they have provided SOME vocabulary which will help us discuss these topics without having to stop and redefine a term every time we use it.

And I think that the logic problem they identified in the basic conceptual framework of most TRPGs (the so-called Impossible Thing) is a spot on, valid criticism, and I do think that there are a lot of people out there who really wish they were more empowered to "tell the story", rather than "experience the story".

So I am not willing to dismiss all that work, and all that effort out of hand, even if I don't agree with the finality of the analysis some of those people have reached, and if I fail to see the entertainment value in many of the games they produce while pursuing the resulting agendas, I certainly don't fail to see the entertainment value in some of those games.

I think we're less far apart than we may seem. I fully understand how powerful & successful D&D is, and what a template it has been for the whole category. But I'm also realistic as to its flaws and blind spots too.

Ryan

Stuart

Is there any actual evidence to back this up? I don't believe the claim that the player network is rapidly changing simply as a result of 3rd Gen MMORPGs. If it is changing, then there are other factors to consider.

This is somewhat true, although your research isn't that far off the GNS theory. It drops the S (which is pretty roughly tacked onto GNS) and divides G and N into short-term and long-term. Combat vs Story is the same as Gamist vs Narrativist is the same as Rollplay vs Roleplay. It's the same view of the gameplay in RPGs that we've been revisiting for decades. Your survey added an axis for short-term vs long-term, but it's basically the same thing.

Social, Reactive, Immersive, Collector, Spectator, etc -- these types of players aren't included in either set of theories...

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Settembrini

So, Ryan, what kind of Story ARE you talking about?

As you said yourself, your "Story-Games" are not the Story-Games-Story-Games.

Please deconfuse!

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RSDancey

I have spent thousands of hours playing D&D in a mental condition of subconsciously asking myself "what am I doing and why am I doing it", and in the body language, comments and sometimes outright statements of my companions, seeing them asking themselves the same questions.

I have always known there was this "thing" about RPGs that captured my attention and connected with some deep part of me that no other thing in my life really did. But that "thing" was usually not fulfilled or only partially fulfilled while playing most of the time. Occasionally, things would seem to "snap" into some kind of focus, and then I would really feel the power of the experience, and I would feel very fulfilled.

Several experiences in recent years have caused me to engage in a lot of introspection about that problem, and I have come to the conclusion that when an RPG session became a shared medium for storytelling, it was great, and when it fell short of that state, it was a long way from satisfying. And that the "great" part of playing RPGs was infrequent and seemingly unpredictable. I was mentally putting up with a lot of downside because the upside was so wonderful. The "20 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours" observation resonated strongly with me as being fundamentally true, and I attribute its truth to the disconnect between what I am playing the game for (shared storytelling experiences) and what the game delivers during most of an average session.

So what I want to do is design, on purpose, RPGs that set out to make that state of shared storytelling happen more frequently, under repeatable conditions, and to drag the assumption that doing so is "the point" out into the sunlight so I have the knowledge that the other people at the table with me share the same desire (which I think further increases both the frequency, and the potency of the shared storytelling mode).

Ryan

Settembrini

Great post, Ryan.
I think I understand a little bit better where you are coming from.

I´d just want to highlight that the vast majority of people I know and game with have fun 90% of the time.

Some questions:

Do you have fun...

• exploring the unknown?
• rolling a crit?
• solving a mystery?
• planning a war?
• preparing spells?
• anouncing your badass spell that nobody thunk of?
• moving around little miniatures?
• speaking with a funny voice?
• marking off HP-loss?
• fondling your dice?
• searching for the special die?
• rolling for initiative?
• encountering an unknown entity?
• bullying NPCs?
• respecting NPCs?
• buying equipment?
• meeting with buddies?
• eating the snacks?
• strategizing over the enemies plans?
• drawing a map?
• jumping through a portal?
• skimming books for feats?
• organizing your character/campaign notes?
• doing GM prep-time?
• making a smart maneuvre?
• making a smart move?
• making a would be smart maneuvre, that turned out to be dumb?
• putting your PC into harms way?
• avoiding danger?
• imagining what happens in the game world?
• flying a starship?
• riding a magic carpet?

Because I and most people I know have fun with this stuff, and that´s happening all the time, not only in a few instances. There´s a huge number of people who have a strong disconnect with the 20 to 480 ratio some people like you keep mentioning.

So from what I´ve understood, you really have mostly fun when the happenings in the game world play out in a way that it presents something that would be fun to watch on American Television? Character centered fun? Relationships? Is that the stuff you dig?


So maybe, just maybe, most people want adventure, where you want story.
Could that be?

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RSDancey

1) Unit sales volumes of RPGs have collapsed. This is not a "D&D problem". Sales have collapsed across virtually all RPGs in the market.

2) Market research indicates many people playing MMORPGs used to play tabletop RPGs and have stopped to play MMOs. Look at Nick Yee's site (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/) as a good place to start.

3) In July of 2006, I conducted a market research study for a client in the hobby gaming space who publishes RPGs. Of that publisher's RPG players, 45% reported playing an MMO, and 32% played more than 4 times a month, and of the people who had played an MMO, more than half reported that the experience was "more fun" than playing any tabletop RPG. This leads me to believe that these people will act in their own self-interest and switch from the RPG to the MMO platform.


Wow. Now I'm going to sound like a Forgite. I apologize in advance.

You don't appear to understand what those terms mean. I will discuss these terms using games, not people, because I think it makes the definitions more clear; in true "Big Model" theory, G, N & S refer to people, not games.

"Gamism" refers to a state of play where competition is the dominant value. Poker is a pure "gamist" game; nobody is narrating or simulating anything. The only thing you do is try to beat other people.

"Simulation" refers to a state of play where the point is to create a simple system to model a complex system, and then explore how that system responds to different kinds of inputs. Sim City is a nearly-pure "simulation" game; you have no opponents, and no victory conditions, and the point of playing the game is to see how many different results you can obtain using the toolset.

"Narrativism" refers to a state of play where the point is to create an interesting story. MOST RPGs strive to be narrativist games. Few have victory conditions. Very few have competition. Most use their rules mechanics to simulate the bare minimum required to facilitate the story, and abstract as much as possible.

Our market research did not find any significant clusters of people in the TRPG player network who expressed strong preferences for "gamist" or "simulationist" RPGs. They are all basically Narrativists. Our 2-axis graph serves to further subdivide the Narrativists, not to separate Narrativists from other kinds of gamers, or other kinds of game experiences.


Because, in my opinion, these "kinds of people" do not exist in enough numbers to become visible as a definable set of traits & interests. And you can't design successful products for tiny groups of people when there are obvious, big groups of people who need to be served first.

Just because we may imagine a certain kind of player, or because we may observe a certain kind of player, or we may even be a certain kind of player, it does not follow that such kinds of players represent a large enough sub-group to be useful in discussing the player network.

Ryan

RSDancey

I want to state that there's a difference between "having fun" in general, and the "having fun" because of thing you're doing generating the fun. I enjoy hanging out and shooting the breeze with my buddies as much as the next guy. If my TRPG sessions become an excuse to hang with the gang, then why not just do that, and not wrap it in the pretense that we're roleplaying?

And frankly, I think most people aren't "having fun 90% of the time" when they're gaming. I don't have fun 90% of the time when I'm doing ANYTHING, and ESPECIALLY not when I have to deal with other people's downtime. TRPGs are FULL of periods of downtime, when you're waiting for someone to decide what to do, or for a rule to be reviewed, etc.

I SCUBA dive. I LOOOOOOVE it. It typically takes me 3-5 hours of work to perform a 30-50 minute dive. If I described SCUBA diving to other divers as "50 minutes of fun packed into 5 hours", most of them would chuckle and agree. The time we spend on maintenance, gas fills, trip times, setup & tear down, and post-dive rinse & pack up is the "price" we pay for that magical interval under the water. I often "enjoy" parts of that non-dive time, but I wouldn't put up with it for one minute if it was not for the underwater time payoff. And if some technology comes along that cuts that non-dive time in half, I'll embrace it happily.

I think that some people see "20 minutes vs 4 hours" as a criticism of them, and that a lot of the response that comment gets is defensive. I never, ever meant it as criticism of people, but only of the format. It should be possible to pack "more fun" into that 4 hours. And that should not be a goal anyone in the hobby has a problem with pursuing.


I redacted the list. I have fun with all that stuff. I think that if you sat down behind a 1-way glass wall, with a stopwatch, and added up the time each participant in a game group spent in a 4 hour block of time doing those things, you'd end up with about 20 minutes. That stuff may be happening during 90% of the time, but it's not happing to each participant 90% of the time. (And based on observation, I don't think even that exhaustive list of stuff accounts for 90% of the time. I think a HUGE portion of the time is spent on "distractions" that have little or no value to anyone.)

Frankly, I think that if you asked people "what was fun about that game session", you'd be told about a moment or two of storytelling greatness, not "the times I got to roll dice for initiative". That kind of "fun" is like the fun I get from maintaining my SCUBA regulators; it's interesting, and I like mechanical stuff, and I like working with my hands, but it's a means to an end, not an end unto itself.


Nope. You're missing it. I "dig" the part where the group, collaboratively tells a great story, through the medium of the rules. Not watches. TELLS. As in "creates using our imagination something that did not previously exist".

Ryan

James J Skach

Forgive me, Mr. Dancey, if I disagree given that my entire experience, admittedly my anecdotal evidence, completely contradicts your observations. And that's almost 30 years now of playing in various home games and at conventions.

And I truly mean no disrespect. It's just that I've never been in a game where the primary point was to create an interesting story. Do I think it exists? Absolutely. Have I ever seen it? Nope.

I think, perhaps, this is the extrapolation of terms and something lost in the translation. I think if you asked people if they wanted to be a part of an interesting story when playing, most would say yes. I think to extrapolate that to "I play RPG's to create interesting stories," and then "RPG's should be written with rule sets that focus on creating interesting stories," is the leap that fails.

But, I'm just going by my experience and what I've heard/seen people say.

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James J Skach

Wow. This might be a cultural divide just too broad to bridge.

And I want to thank you, Mr. Dancey, because without (for the most part) all the high-falutin condescending talk, you've nailed why I think this is, essentially, a different hobby.

Because the first time I heard RPG's described as a "shared story-telling experience," my reaction was: WTF?

I feel sorry for you that you've had to struggle so long in games that weren't fun for you. Good luck on creating some that are more to your tastes.

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RSDancey

Can you imagine having fun using the rules of D&D to do something that isn't about telling a story?

Can you imagine a game where you use the rules of D&D, but there's no story taking place? Like "4 people are in a room. They fight. Go!"

There are probably thousands of ways to use D&D to play a game that has no story in it. It is clearly possible. But nobody ever uses the game for that, do they?

Look at the GenCon program book. Page after page after page of RPG sessions submitted by people seeking others to game with. Every single one of those submissions states a premise and a story as the defining aspect of the session. None of them. I repeat, NONE OF THEM suggests that a group form to see who can roll the highest initiative, or who can assemble a character capable of delivering the highest possible damage, or any of those thousand other things you could do with D&D, but nobody ever does.

Doesn't that seem to suggest that the story is the point, and not the result?

Ryan

Abyssal Maw

I have made this exact point before. Everyone. Everyone. Everyone. Values story first. Absolutely true.

But here's the disconnect:

The forgie definition of story *only* includes those stories that involve tackling a social issue or a moral dilemna. Often they aren't even stories, so much as just collections of interactions. Sometimes these are essentially just one-act play, "two characters discussing their relationship while on a train" kind of level of detail.

And my point is, you can't "play" that beyond a certain point. Certainly not in a reliable way, and definitely not if the people you are playing with don't care to be thespians. Often individual characters (and the ownership of characters by individual players) is deemphasized and none of this is really conducive to campaigns.
Often the characters are themselves disposable entities and the propponents pride themselves on their courageous "striving for failure to make a better story".

But I see that as unsustainable. These groups generally ONLY play at conventions. Half the time they play (or more than half) the game is intended as a playtest, "tryout" or demo and not even an actual game like you might naturally play for fun. They almost never seem to catch on or get played in a serial fashion with established groups, unless the designer himself is a member of that group. And because there are so many of these games and they all have different rules, you have to spend a certain amount of time teaching the rules. Every single time you play.

Since most people probably aren't going to play more than once, that may be the only time they try it out.

Because.. well.. why would they? Character development (indeed, character ownership) is often discouraged, everyone has to constantly address whatever dreary social issue of the day has cropped up, everyone fails in order to be cool, and the entire thing wraps up in under 3 sessions so that nobody needs an excuse to come back. So sure, they are producing stories.. but they're all like these college creative writing "issue" short story type deals. Which is trite. Some of these guys are even doing improv exercises before they play like wiggling their bodies all around.

Campaigns are themselves stories. It seems obvious that the best way of appealing to the ubiquitous desire for story is to have games that facilitate better campaigns, rather than create these anti-campaign episodic deals.

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kryyst

But that in itself is a story albeit a short one. You can't play any role playing game in such a fashion that it doesn't create some kind of story. The quality of the story is subject to very. But that's a function of the ability of the people telling it. The rules are irrelevantly. If you can you are no longer playing a role and are no longer telling a story. You can have an RPG that is primarily driven by the story even if the rule is as simple as each person talks for 5 mins then switches. That's a rule, that could be a game. If each person has a different character(s) that they are responsible for within the game then you now have a role playing game.

But the bottom line is that the quality of the story is not defined by the rules of the game. They are two seperate things that have two seperate purposes. But you can't use one independently of the other and still have a role playing game. You'll either get a Story with no game or a board game with no story.

The interesting bit is that you can make a fun game that doesn't drive or is driven by a story. However it's impossible to make a game that creates a good story. That's entirely in the abilities of the individual.

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Stuart

I strongly believe there are other factors to consider than simply 3rd Gen MMORPGs. D&D 3e launched during the EverQuest heydays, and your own research from 99/00 concluded that people would play BOTH videogames and table top games. The Board Game industry is picking up, even though people could play those games online. It's something more than just WoW...


The Methodology for all Nick's surveys is to post links on the main portals catering to specific MMORPG games. It's just as reasonable to say that the people playing MMORPGs who *didn't* come at them via TTRPGs are a prospective customers.


How's that?

So you're saying a "Power Gamer" which you describe as "a player who most enjoys the game when it delivers a Tactical/Combat Focus" is... a narrativist player?




Don't you think there are a lot of collectors in the hobby games industry? And think socializing is a major reason for face-to-face gaming instead of gaming over the internet?


I think that's true.

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estar

I don't disagree what you are saying about MMORPGs versus RPGs in terms of sales. However I don't think it is the complete picture.

I been playing MMORPGs since the beginning starting with Ultima Online. Along with the experience of running a NERO boffer style LARP. Plus my regular table-top sessions never disappeared.

The one thing I noticed what MMORPGs and LARPS shared is their lack of endurance. By endurance I mean how long players stuck with playing the actual game. Compared to Table-top it seemed that MMORPGs had a high rate of churn of players coming and going. That long-term players are rare.

Have several observations in over a decade of play. I throw in LARPS because boffer style have some of advantages and disadvantages of MMORPGS.

All game systems are limited by nature and eventually you just run out of things to do. For boffer style LARPS the problem is generally more the rule set for MMORPG it is the setting. But both rule set and settings for both are more limited than table-top.

Long term players have social connections that keeps the game interesting. Either a guild, or a group of friends. Very long term players manage to associate with multiple groups or become part of staff in the case of LARPS.

MMORPGS and LARPS have a problem with griefing either in-game or socially. Due the volume of players you WILL get a few jerks in the mix.

The combination of the above three makes MMORPGS (and LARPS) more intense but ephemeral experience. As far as MMORPGS goes many players leap from game to game especially now in the 3rd generation.

It seems to be that Table-top groups are harder to form but endure longer. That players buy more for the game itself then they would for LARPS and/or MMORPRGS.

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Elliot Wilen

The flaw here, I think, is that you offer examples of "pure" gamism and simulationism, to show that those aren't what people who play RPGs are after. Similarly when you talk about socializing with friends. However you do not offer an example of "pure" Nar which can serve as a yardstick; instead you fall into the common naive GNS trap of assuming that any interest in "story" (conceived a certain way) = total willingness to compromise other aspects of the RPG experience.

The idea of abstracting "the bare minimum" necessarily begs the question of what that minimum is, as well.

What lies at bottom of this is that RPGs are in practice a compromise between competing interests, and attempts to move them in one direction or the other will always provoke questions of "why don't you do X instead?" This should be a sign to you that your tastes aren't universal, after all, and the observation that "we're all Narrativists" is less significant than you might think.

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Alnag

Actually based on your research Ryan and GNS, everybody (or mostly everybody) is simulationist, because they try to simulate/explore story, that is part of simulationist creative agenda in Big Model. Narrativism is about very special "kind" of story.

That is why simulationist games are more popular than narativist or gamist for that matter. Because there is huge amount of simulationists around (that kind which simulates or explores story) and fewer gamists or narativists.

And here you are. This is the problem with GNS/Big Model - it is so incomprehensible and full of smoke and mirrors you actually can not easily grasp it. The reason is exactly that kind of mistake you do. You should think, that you strive for narativism although you acutally want to explore story (or something). The experience of common player with narativist game is not a pleasant one.

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Settembrini

I still think Mr. Dancey has not defined "Story" in any meaningful way that would de-obfuscate his statements.

If he doesn´t want moral dillemmata and American Television plotlines, then why call it story-game?

That´s what NARR is and what it delivers: moral questions and statements, concerning the individual. Double points if it really is more about the players than about the characters.

And most people don´t like that.

Ryan, could you provide a link or an actual play example of what you mean when saying "story"?

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James J Skach

Yup. every time I've ever played it's not about telling a story. It's likely a story will result; but it's not the point - whcih is why I say to leap from the one to the other is a mistake. Don't get me wrong, [i]some[i] people sit down with the direct purpose of constructing a story. I say, "Have fun!"

But don't mistake the fact that many of us expect a story will happen with that as our purpose or goal.

Aren't there like, dueling things at WotC? It's not my cuppa, but there are obviously people who do it. Besides, you've just used the setup for the fourth module in the Slavers series (A4) IIRC

Some do - as I said, I've seen..dammit...you're going ot make me look this up, aren't you...I give you the D&D Fight Club Arena!

And as I keep saying, the difference between having a story in it, and setting out with the purpose of shared story-creating exercise are two completely different things.

Wait - a premise and a story? It seems to me that they present a premise, and most participants expect a story to result. But I doubt many, except those specifically designated and story-creating endeavors, bank on people setting out to tell a capital-S-Story as their overarching goal.

So...if you're not telling a story your fighting over initiative? Excluded middle, perhaps?

do you know how many posts in thread and yahoo groups I've seen where people discuss this very subject? It's amazing the depths to which peopole understand these rules and figure out the maximum damage.

I've given two examples (Arena and Max Damage discussions) in which people do things that have nothing to do with sitting down in a session with the goal of collaboratively creating a story. Which, quite frankly, is besides the point, because:

No. The observations you have provided suggest nothing more than people expect that a story will result. The question is if they sit down to create a story, or experience something that will result in a story. My conjecture based on my experience is that the historical majority of the TTRPG, the players are the latter. There are certainly those who prefer the former, and, as I've said, I hope they get interesting games to do so. But to change the entire hobby for them seems like a nose-face-trees-forest-baby-bathwater-pick-your-metaphor act.

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Stuart

In this interview ( http://www.theoryfromthecloset.com/s...tc_show008.mp3 )Ron Edwards discusses The Forge, his Theories, and the Brain Damage comment. It certainly sounds like "Narrativism" meaning "Story Now" is different from "Story Before" or "Story After" which you'll find in many, many RPGs.

You might also want to look at this game:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1234

Which is game-game-game and has a definite winner.


It's not Narrative (in the GNS sense). It's not Simulationist. So it must be Gamist.

And yet... story.

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Levi Kornelsen

(Yeah, after some thought, this is a thread worth dropping in for.)


Yes. And, to your later points, also yes, goddamit.

The "properly Narrativist" definition of story is too narrow.

The White Wolf one is bloody stupid.

But, as Stuart said:

Levi Kornelsen

This is a damn tricky statement specifically because of the way that the concept of story has been appiled to gaming.

Do people want great stories from their games? Damn right they do.

But What kind of story do they mean? The kind where the GM creates glorious events, riding you forward on a gorgeous and invisible railroad? The kind where we all contribute to plot and basically give up "owning" characters or setting, to the point where some current gamers can't feel invested anymore? The awesome and always-spotaneous 'shit that just went down' that we spout to each other in the pub afterwards, which basically has to happen by accident? The stuff that comes out of a "sandbox" game that's got so much conflict dumped into it that you just can't help but create something storylike simply by resolving things? The kind that comes from characters with huge ambitions seeking to make those into reality, and being challenged every damn step of the way?

Because, see, some of those don't go together easily, and some don't go together at all.

estar

This is immersion, the sense that you are actually there in the action. LARPS attempts to enhances this via Live-action. MMORPGs through the graphics of the setting. Both use the number of players as well.

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Levi Kornelsen

Well, it's probably a flow state, anyhow.

Stuart

I think of Flow State and Immersion as different but related concepts. You can enter a flow state playing Chess... but you don't feel "Immersed" in a medieval battlefield by playing Chess.

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Levi Kornelsen

By my lights, there's more than one kind of flow state, and immersion is one of them.

And this is based on intensive research, fella-me-lad. I've played the videogame flOw for many, many hours, and read hundreds of amateur opinions right here on this very internet.

So there!

Abyssal Maw

(There I was writing what I was certain was "my most offensive post ever. probably.." and then Levi agrees with me. Some days villainy doesn't pay!!!)

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Alnag

IMO flow is just a part of immersion in RPG sense.

Nevermind... I think in Ryan Dancey's research there was no definition of story (although I might be mistaken). I belive that the people that time understand it in its common sense. That means not in the sense provided by GNS/Big Model for narrativism.

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Levi Kornelsen

Right on. So, it doesn't mean that specific thing.

What does you think it does mean, then, in the common sense, to the people that answered the survey?

'Cause "the common sense" could still mean a hell of a lot of things - and very possibly did, to different people.

Abyssal Maw

My own (admittedly unacademic and probably stupid) definition of story is "an account of characters that go places and do things".

The more interesting the characters are and the more exciting the things they do is directly related to .. the accessibility (i.e. "fun value") of the story.

So the best games are the ones which enable the most interesting characters doing the most interesting things.

Adventures.

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Alnag

Story IMO is a set of interconnected events leading frome some issue to some conclusion. It has its tone, it has its setting, it has its characters, it has an element of excitement, adventure, fun, whatever. But I belive that the most important is a meaning or conclusion. It lead to something.

But as Abyssal Maw says it. Adventure - that's it. RPGs always had the story element in themselves. The fact that some people want a very specific kind of story (about moral dilemma or whatever) doesn't make the other games story-less.

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Levi Kornelsen

I can go with that.

Which leads up to whether or not the games on the market right now do that in a way that is different enough from the enjoyment given by MMOs and other such. Because if the thrills are similar enough, well, MMOs and video games are more convenient to flick on, and have higher budgets.

(My own opinion is that, yes, they're different enough; though I do suspect that at least one chunk of the old target market has gone bye-bye over the years as video games have gotten shinier).

RSDancey

Luckily, this isn't the Forge and we're not bound by their limited views.


I agree with this statement wholeheartedly.

Ryan

RSDancey

No, it's not. I know the difference between the feeling of immersion, and the feeling I get where the collaborative storytelling function is working.

Ryan

RSDancey

YES!

That's the whole thrust of the argument. That there are things ALL RPG players have in common, which are paramount, then there are other things that cause that large group of RPG players to sub-segment.


I do not think that the drive to "collect" corresponds with the drive to "play". We know, just by looking at the difference between players and player/buyers that there cannot be a very large number of collectors, otherwise, those collectors would be sustaining a much higher rate of purchase on the long tail of accessories.


I have abandoned the idea that being face-to-face in meatspace is a strong driver of value for RPGs. It matters, but its not a critical value.

Ryan

Levi Kornelsen

Why have you abandoned this idea?

RSDancey

Sorry - I do not support the idea that G, N & S modes of play are mutually incompatible. This is part of the Forge dogma I don't think can be supported based simply on observation. Most games are some combination of G, N & S; very few games (and very few fun games) are all one and none of the others.

Ryan

beeber

and with this, you have ceased to be relevant to gaming.

why i bothered to poke into this thread, i don't know

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RSDancey

Again, I do not support the idea that games are all one thing and none of another. I think that RPGs in particular are hybrids between Simulationist & Narrativist gameplay. But I think that the Simulationist part of the equation is scaffolding. Its the skeleton that supports all the rest of the body, which is Narritivism. If the game doesn't have a strong & good simulation engine under the hood, the player community seems to reject the game. On the other hand, if there's not a Narritivist payoff, the community won't accept that game either, regardless of how good a simulation it is.

Ryan

RSDancey

Because it is obvious to me that people are roleplaying just fine in virtual space. And they're socializing just fine in virtual space. In fact, due to geographical distance it is possible that virtual roleplaying & socializing may be the only alternative for a lot of groups.

Since people are clearly doing it, and doing a lot of it, then I have to admit that real-world roleplaying/socializing can't be listed as a critical value for success.

Ryan

John Morrow

What does it mean to "value story"?

Levi Kornelsen

My view differs. A couple of points, not necessarily all that related:

1) The kind of roleplaying that seems (to my google-y eye) to be most successful online is fandom roleplay. Whether or not it "ought" to be called a form of RPG is an exercise for semantics-monkeys; they call it one, and that'll do for me. But it doesn't need game rules as they're commonly known - it runs by pure social convention.

2) People like socialising in the real world. And with more and more of our entertainment forms attempting to hone their online chops, RPGs are more likely to get lost in the shuffle, not less, by trying to chase that dream. The opportunity, as I see it, lies in exactly the opposite direction - in tabletop RPGs becoming more noticed, more interesting to outsiders, precisely because they emphasise and market based on their differences from that rush for the online pie. Take a look at the Wii, and the way people play with it in get-togethers - I think that's closer to the dynamic that RPGs serve, the one that designers might want to go chasing.

John Morrow

What does it mean to "tell a story" in this context?


I don't know about that. I've play-tested a Goodman Games tournament module and it was really all about optimal play and puzzle solving, in my opinion. The point seemed to be to survive and or "win" in a competition of player cleverness, not to tell any sort of story.

RSDancey

See my blog:

http://web.mac.com/rsdancey/RSDanceyBlog/Blog/Blog.html

Summary:

Great Story consists of 4 elements:

A Premise (what the story is about)
Drama (challenges to goals & beliefs)
Evolution (things change in response to the drama)
Pacing (things move towards a climax)

"There are 4 guys in a room, fight!" doesn't start with story. Story could be added by the participants, but it would not be strictly required in order to have fun with the scenario. If you just run a combat session to see who lives and who dies, strictly by the mechanics and player options, you're not generating a Story under my definition (there's essentially no Premise, and very little Drama).

Ryan

John Morrow

Thanks for the concise definition. You do an excellent job of explaining yourself and getting to the point.


Can traditional episodic television, where there is little or no Evolution, produce a Great Story? What about something like Seinfeld which not only had very little Evolution but where the stated premise was that it wasn't really about anything? Can Premise be so broad as to include "slice of life" situations, where the story is simply about daily life for the characters?

Elliot Wilen

Right, in fact I agree with this entirely. Had you responded to Stuart with "You don't appear to understand what I mean by those terms [G, N, & S]", it'd have been far clearer; instead you wrote "you don't appear to understand what those terms mean". With a very generous construal of the "story" that you associate with your version of Nar*, I can get behind this as well: But with caveats: this is about "the player community" in general; there are definitely people who fall outside your area of interest as defined here--though I'm not one of them.

I also wonder at the relative conservatism of what you're proposing to do, compared to the ideas you've put in your blog and over at some other forum.

*In other words, "story" is just having the elements of the game mean something in relation to each other across space and time, for me as a player.

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walkerp

Yep. real-world roleplaying is better, but it is more and more becoming a luxury. As technology develops, remote gaming becomes more and more viable, whether the computer acts just as a communicator (chatting, VoIP, webcam, forums, email) or as an actual facilitator to the game (Fantasy Grounds II, Battlegrounds, etc.).

I do both and while I would generally prefer face-to-face, some of my best friends live across the country from me and I still want to be able to game with me. We have a pretty good time.

I disagree with your assertion Levi, that this tends to be run by social convention. There is a lot of gaming using established systems. I run an online email game using GURPS and am setting up a Savage Worlds one with Fantasy Grounds. The rules will be adjusted for the medium, but they are still the shared rules of conflict that we would use on the tabletop.

Kyle Aaron

He probably can't get a game group.

I mean, would you game with someone who said his gaming was "twenty minutes of fun packed into four hours"? Online, he can be anonymous.
Yes, everyone will end up living their lives at their computers. Because of computers, we'll have a cashless society (first predicted about 1980), and a paperless office (first predicted about 1975), and everything will be done by videoconferencing so there'll be no more business trips (about 1985).

And yet, we have more cash in circulation than ever before, more paper being used in offices, more business trips being taken, and so on. People use electronics for money, reading, and communication and at the same time do it all physically, too.

Amazingly, most people still like to meet in person. There's the occasional catpissman living in his parents' basement who has to game online because no in-person group will have him, and the occasional miserable bastard in his lonely apartment in the city mumbling about how he'll show them all, but most people prefer the physical company of others - just as they prefer physical money, and printed out books, etc.

We'll get the cashless society, the paperless office, everyone only videoconferencing and not travelling, and everyone only roleplaying online, about the same time we get the flying cars and everyone wearing jumpsuits.

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walkerp

Boy did you ever just waste a lot of space. Gaming online is a viable and growing option. No we don't have paperless offices, but people are socializing more and more online. It's just reality. RPGs can adapt to that quite well. Doesn't mean it's going to replace the meatspace tabletop.

RSDancey

Its been a long road, with many miles yet to go. But I'm starting to get the hang of it.


Sometimes yes, usually no. It can certainly produce Stories. But they're not Great. People remember jokes from Seinfeld. The story they usually remember is Master of My Domain, which has Premise, Drama, Evolution and Pacing. (In the end, the characters are changed; you know who succeeded, who failed, and why).

This is actually one of my huge beefs with ER. It looks like a Great Story, but the more you watch it, the more you realize it is just a Story. Fantastic Premise, gripping Drama, and pitch-perfect Pacing. But there's almost no Evolution. Sometimes it has Great Story moments, but usually only at the end of a season, or when an actor decides to leave and the writers build that change into the narrative.

West Wing, on the other hand, often features Great Story; the episodes where no evolution happens, and there is no meaningful climax were few.


I think that the more "pungent" your Premise is, that is to say, the more it really matters to the characters, the more fun you will having making a Great Story. "Slice of life" isn't very pungent. It may be workable, but it will rarely rise to Greatness. Making "Slice of Life" rise to Greatness probably requires a very skilled group, and even then, may often fail in practice.

One of my favorite saying is: "In the Ham & Egg breakfast, the Chicken is interested, but the Pig is committed". For Great Storytelling, I want to be the Pig.

Ryan

cmagoun

Yes... you are absolutely correct. Story is the freakin' point or else we would all be playing Talisman or Advanced Third Reich or World of Warcraft. Even the most hardcore simulationist/gamist hybrid has to admit that at the end of the day, they want the narrative of the game to be... something. Not necessarily interesting or poignant or powerful, but it should exist and make sense and be worth recounting. We are playing adventure games, not Godot: The Waiting.

But I do think that when we talk about story in RPGs, we immediately think of the wrong types of stories. You are having trouble seeing it, and those who are on the other side of the discussion are having a hard time elucidating it.

When we talk about RPGs as "Collective Storytelling Vehicles" we forget that novels, movies and TV shows are not the only stories worth telling. There are also sporting events, eyewitness accounts and boisterous retellings of an experience. These are stories too and they can be just as compelling and interesting to tell, but there is a difference right? The former is about the visions of the authors while the latter is about the experiences of the involved individuals.

I want to play games that allow me to participate in an experience (even if it is a simulated experience). Do I want that experience to be exciting and worth emotional investment and give me an interesting story to tell? Sure I do. Would playing a storygame with guidelines for premise and pacing and rules for narrative control create a more consistent story? Probably... but I do not want to play games that allow me to author a narrative. That isn't the same at all.

You want to make me Ian Flemming when I really want to be James Bond.

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RPGPundit

It seems to me that what you don't have is the ability to guide the game; the game itself (the setting, the characters, and the plot) remain firmly in the hand of the computer game designers.
This means that if you like first-person shooters, or games where you go around a designed world killing stuff and doing preset quests, or games where you get a bunch of "story" dictated at you in lengthy animated scenes you cannot affect, and then switch to a series of fights/dungeon crawls, then yes, computer games can do everything RPGs can do (excepting, even in these cases, the face-to-face social value, which for many is an immense part of the appeal of tabletop RPGs).

But if you're a DM wanting to create your own campaign, or if you're a player wishing to have some influence over the things that happen in the game based on your character outside of the limited options computer game creators allow for you, that doesn't work out so well.


If your argument is that any attempt on the part of tabletop RPG designers to try to make D&D (or other RPGs) more like WoW in an effort to COMPETE with WoW is doomed to failure, I'd agree.
If your point is that we should look at WoW and see what we can use from it (and other computer games) to make D&D more appealing in its own right to people who enjoy these kinds of games, I'd also agree.

If your point, however, is that we must fundamentally change RPGs into games where the main purpose is "to tell a story" rather than to play a character or to go on adventures, I think your conclusions couldn't be more wrong.


For the most part, I believe precisely that. There are few games I can think of where the rules themselves, rather than personality clashes between people in the gaming group, will consistenly cause inter-group conflict.


We've had a shitload of evidence thus far, and I think that ongoing attempts to diverge from that current DM-player relationship will continue to prove this.


I disagree with that fundamental idea. Most gamers do NOT play RPGs to "tell a story". They play RPGs to play a character, to have an adventure, etc.
If you want to "tell a story" go around a campfire or join a fanfiction-writing group on yahoo or something.


Can you give an example of this that is directly the result of application of Forge Theory?


Well, thank the great magnet for that at least; you might not be totally certifiable after all.


I disagree with the assertion that the "impossible thing" is an accurate conceptual framework. Rather, its a knee-jerk reaction of the tiny minority of wrong-headed people who got into RPGs to "tell stories", mostly drawn by the so-called "Story-based" gaming movement directed by White Wolf in the 90s, that claimed that their games did such a thing, and of course did not.
The truth is that inasmuch as any story is created at all by RPGs, it is as a mere byproduct of the PLAY in the game, which is the central purpose of an RPG. Neither the GM nor the Players are supposed to "create a story" in the sense of making RPGs a mechanism by which to tell a novel-like story with a fixed plot, beginning, middle, ending, and where telling a good, coherent story is the main goal. Story is an accident in RPGs, a regular RPG campaign written out as a novel or even a TV show would be a really crappy story that would make small literary sense, as major characters die unexpectedly, things happen which are irrelevant to the plot, etc etc.
The GM controls the default of the "world" and sets the groundwork of the "plot" (NOT a story, just the setup). The players control their characters. The "story" is created, if at all, by the unexpected actions and choices of the characters run by the players on the world created by the GM.


I do. It seems like a tremendous amount of effort to try to force RPGs to do something they were never MEANT to do. The usual "solution" to the non-existant problem created by the Forgies appears to be to try to create entirely new games and call them RPGs when they're not; and even those games seem fairly pointless to me when a better story could still be created with less effort by simply engaging in multi-person storytelling rather than trying to create a set of mechanics to do the same job.

RPGPundit

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Elliot Wilen

He's not talking about you, he's talking about simming.

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I am indeed.

Elliot Wilen

Pththth. You've lost me again. All you're doing now is privileging a certain brand of fiction over others.

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Stuart

Even though the survey you worked on for WotC had an axis that was:
Story Focused <--- ---> Combat Focused

...


Or it could be that the products you have for sale aren't to their liking. I'm pretty sure you've heard of Magic the Gathering, and in fact there's an entire branch of hobby games called "collectible" card games. The link between collecting and playing is clearly established in the hobby game industry.

Since you're interested in online games, you should look into virtual economies. In particular take a look at things like collecting rare and exclusive furniture in Habbo Hotel and collecting upgrades for your avatar in Gaia Online -- the biggest forum on the web, which happens to have many RPG elements.


I can imagine having lots of fun using the rules of D&D to do something that isn't about telling a "Great Story" as you've described it.

What makes a great story doesn't always make an enjoyable experience (ride, game, event). Do you want to make a "Great Story" or do you want to make a "Great Game". Seriously -- think about it.


Then make an online game. Or maybe write a novel.

The continuing success of board games convinces me there are many people who would still enjoy a tabletop RPG experience. With improvements of course.

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RPGPundit

I agree with this statement, and add further that all of the SUCCESSFUL RPGs have been games that would be considered "incoherent" by the Forge for having all three supposed "elements".

But I notice you didn't address Elliot's actual point in this response; you seem to be mistakenly assuming that gamers' interest in having cool "story" happen in their game means that they want CREATING a structured story to be the "main goal" of an RPG and would be willing to sacrifice some or all of the rest of the RPG experience in favour of this.

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estar

I am looking at the latest posts on Ryan's Blog and I just don't get why a new style of game is needed. Maybe I just need to wait for a few more to see what is different. But the ones so far (up to Action!) reads like GM advice.

In Action! I don't see how "Yes" or Roll is that different. For example for a long time my player question me about where they are during the course of an encounter. If they are in a peasant hut and don't have a weapon they "Hey Rob does this hut have a mortar and a pestle? Most do so I roll on the off chance it doesn't (make it a 10% chance it doesn't) and yes there is a mortar and a pestle. Player picks up the stone pestle and proceeds to knockout the burly peasant they just woken up.

If the player instead say "Gee, the peasant had a mage brother who left a scroll here I go find it." I would say no as I have a pretty good idea whether something like would exist at that locale.

A borderline case would be the player asking if the peasant was a yeoman and has some weapons like a bow or spear they could grab. Whether that would depend on the circumstance. For example if the player said I dodge into one of the larger huts then it would be likely that it would be a yeoman's residence and so I would just give it to them. Otherwise I would say no.

Frankly I feel the emphasize on story is misplaced. What players at a tabletop like is choices whether they are new or older players nobody likes being railroaded. Whether it railroaded by bad rules, bad GMing, or bad plot. Time and time I had people tell me at LARP events and at my table is that "Rob, I like your games because I feel I can make an impact. My actions have consquences and change things around me. I have choices over where I go and what I do."

That why I support Sandbox settings like the Wilderlands, why I like Harn style detail, because it give my player's chocies and they are the happiest when they have a lot of options.

I think one aspect of the RPG of the future is something that helps GM and players manage and play with a lot of choices in their game. In the beginning not only people didn't know what an RPG was but they didn't how a medieval village worked or dozens other details of a campaign world worked. Judges Guild and other companies at made tables and other aides that allow people to generate the detail and get some understanding of how a campaign world.

Now it been story this and story that. Rules support a story. Story support rules. Sure it is fun for a lot of people but it leaves a whole segment of gamers in the dust. GMs picking up these books become slaves to the story they tell and players are unhappy because they don't have a lot of choices.

3.0 gave D&D interesting choices from a rules standpoint but what they do for the GM and plot? They gave a lot of story, Forgotten Realms, Eberron, etc. I went into Game Stores in Bloomington, Manhattan, Harrisburg, and St Louis and I find GMs sitting at a table literally reading the adventure out of the various WoTC hardbacks.

The "core" of RPGs the "thing" that transformed it from wargames is discovery that having choices in the freeform nature of RPGs is fun. That what a new age RPG should be focused on not story.

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RPGPundit

Yes, but by that logic the place where the MOST roleplaying just fine is going on online is in freeform roleplay going on in chatrooms and mailing lists where they do this without any rules at all (aside from netiquette and certain conventions, but no mechanics).

So by that logic, does that mean we should ALL abandon RPGs with rules altogether and just try to do that? Should we all go join Harry Potter rp lists or Inuyasha chatrooms or some shit like that?

RPGPundit

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Levi Kornelsen

That's normal, sadly.

John Morrow

OK. Yet Seinfield was an incredibly popular television show despite the absence of Great Stories. Why did people watch? For the jokes and for the characters, both of which were very memorable. People certainly liked it when the story was good, but that's not the main reason why they tuned in each week. And I think the same is true of role-playing games. I think that some players play for the characters or the interesting moments (often caused by a series of unusual die rolls) and not necessarily the story.


Yet ER is still going and West Wing is not. And I'm sure we can come up with plenty of other examples of very popular series with almost no Evolution or lacking some other element that makes the story component great. For every Babylon 5 with a story arc, there is an episodic show like classic Star Trek where very little character development happens between episodes. And television sports, which are very popular, too, can be totally lacking in story in any conventional sense. So what I think that suggests is that people watch television for more than just Great Stories, though people certainly enjoy them when they happen (as a Rutgers alumni, I certainly enjoyed the "Cinderella Story" of Rutgers' rise into the top 10, if only briefly).


The problem is that when you force the Premise to be "pungent", you can wind up sacrificing other things that people enjoy about the medium. For example, Professional Wrestling does a great deal to promote Great Story with rivalries and grudge matches and so on, but it suffers as a sport and many people don't take it seriously because of the widespread perception that it's staged. Reality television is driven by the idea perfected by Mark Burnett that one could creatively edit the experiences of people into compelling stories, yet reality television suffers when the producers try to artificially generate good stories by manipulating the situations that the people are in. And the antics of a celebrity become far less compelling when they are staged to create publicity than when they are spontaneous and unscripted. And as I've argued elsewhere, I think that many televisions shows are trying to show that they are willing to kill off major characters to escape the boredom of predictability of absolute script immunity, which removes the tension from a lot of drama.

So the danger I see in the intense focus on "pungent" Premise, on forcing Evolution out of characters, from intense Pacing and relentless Drama is that the result feels like an engineered experience, every bit as forced as the dreaded railroaded adventure. It becomes a predictable paint-by-numbers experience.


I'd rather get to decide when I want to be the Chicken and when I want to be the Pig rather than having the rules or GM make that decision for me. I'm quite willing to have my characters risk life and limb for an NPC that they care about but I don't want to have to tag an NPC as a plot device before the game starts and then wait for the GM to grab them and start jerking them around to make my character dance.

John Morrow

I think that part of the problem is that if the goal is to tell stories, then the quality of the stories that are created matter, yet many people seem reluctant to talk about that. I'm glad Ryan isn't. If all games inherently produce stories and any story is as good as any other story, then nobody needs to do anything. But if we are talking about story quality, then crafting rules and games to produce a certain quality of story makes some sense.

RPGPundit

Ok, wait.

Here's the White-Wolf Idea of making story in RPG: "The DM or adventure writer creates a fixed story with a beginning middle and ending, where the plot unfolds in that precise way, and the PCs basically get to live out the story being told by the 'Storyteller'; they should have the appearance of free agency, but should not be allowed to actually affect the outcome of things, except possibly through very fixed 'choice A/B/C' story-trees".

Meanwhile, the Forge idea of story appears to be this: "the players collectively decide what the story is going to be about before the game starts, often to the point of getting to decide what many elements of the setting are like, instead of having the GM create it. The players then go on to play out characters that fit this pre-conceived theme and story, and randomization is not allowed to work in such a way that it will affect the 'quality' of the story itself, players will be allowed to direct their actions and results and even the events outside of their own character in order to best 'address the premise' that everyone agreed on".

You seem to be suggesting a kind of story that isn't like either of these; but how exactly would your "story" work, then? And how would it be different from how RPGs work now? It seems like your idea of story doesn't mean either creating a "novel-type" story like the WW-games tried to, nor does it seem to involve a "premise uber alles" concept that the Forge so loves.

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Levi Kornelsen

I dare you to define "good quality" in stories.

In plain english, without "it's subjective" cop-outs.

Stuart

Another issue to think about is that the "story" of an RPG session is often seen as "good" by the players -- but usually not by the people who are subsequently told about it, and weren't part of the game session. This shouldn't be overlooked - what makes a good story is different from what makes a good experience.

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John Morrow

I think Ryan actually did a pretty decent job of it.

At the Clarion writer's workshop, Damon Knight was apparently famous for writing "Who cares?" at the end of stories where the characters didn't develop. That's Ryan's Evolution. Writer Holly Lisle wrote a hilarious article titled How To Write Suckitudinous Fiction that does a pretty good job of defining what makes stories bad.

I've read dozens of books on writing fiction and have listened to plenty of authors and editors at conventions and the list of things that define good fiction and bad fiction is fairly consistent and Ryan's short list does a pretty good job of boiling it down to the essentials.


I don't need "it's subjective" cop-outs so long as you don't try to argue that just because someone somewhere likes something, that it's good. There are people who are willing to literally eat crap but that doesn't make it good food.

walkerp

Very well put, CMagoun.

walkerp

Sounded to me like you were pretty much discounting any online gaming that wasn't simming. I'm saying that it is a growing and viable method of roleplaying.

John Morrow

I think in those cases, the players think that the game was good but not necessarily the story. Role-playing is often a "You had to be there" experience, just like a vacation to an interesting locale. And just as it's usually boring to listen to someone talk about their vacation, it's also usually boring to listen to someone talk about their character or their game. Why? Because the enjoyment doesn't come from the take-away story value of what happened but from the experience of doing it.


Absolutely.

Levi Kornelsen

Right on.

By that definition of quality, then, I don't consider it necessary for games to produce "quality stories" at all - it's one objective among many.

When a game fails to produce what I consider a story at all - and my own definition is the most basic "There was a conflict of some kind, and it was resolved, and the whole series of events hung together enough that I could draw a point from it if I cared to do so." - I think that's sucky.

Levi Kornelsen

Not my intent.

What I'm saying there is "The king of the hill onlinesimming, and it doesn't need designers." - and that's all I'm saying.

The other stuff does seem to be growing, but it hasn't yet passed my "Holy living hell, that's actually rather popular!" threshold, yet - and simming has.

Which may just be me, naturally.

Elliot Wilen

It's subjective.

Seriously, if you think the Hollywood blockbuster is the model or at least foundation of quality then it behooves you talk about exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement. So, good for Ryan in laying his cards on the table.

If that what he's up to, though, I'll be at another table.

EDIT: denouement, dammit!

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Damn, I wish I had a link right now....

Brand Robins talked about this on his blog, once. At great length. His opening statement was something along the lines of "My gaming stories suck - and that's a good thing."

RSDancey

I just revised "Action!". I swear I revised it before I read your post. A lot of what you say I independently realized in self-critique.


Rob, if the Impossible Thing is a logic trap, then I think the Possible Thing you've just enunciated is the whole thrust of my current work. When it happens, people notice. And they notice that it isn't happening in a lot of other games they play. In my opinion, you've just restated the core ideas of Great Story.

Ryan

RSDancey

Here's my working theory for D20 games:

The participants all agree on a premise. May take some practice. People will probably make lists of interesting and fun premises (premisi?)

The GM says "ok, let me tell you the rules of how the world works". Sometimes that may be very lengthy, sometimes that may be very brief. Season to taste.

Then the players make characters. A new part of character creation is going to be defined as making some things your character believes explicit, and some goals your character wants to achieve explicit. There must be consensus between all the participants that all the beliefs and all the goals are acceptable to the whole group.

The GM now has an obligation to work those beliefs and those goals into the story as it unfolds. The timing & nature of that is not determined, but emerges from play.

The GM is responsible for keeping the pacing moving. The GM's tools to control pacing are information and challenges. The GM doesn't say "do your characters want go to the Caves of Chaos". The GM says "Bob, your character has determined that your missing sister is being held by kobolds in the Caves of Chaos".

The point of the game changes from "kick down the door, kill the orc, take his stuff, and power up" to "kick down the door, kill the orc, take his stuff, and power up for a reason". If the reason is satisfying, the game will be satisfying. And I'm arguing it will be more satisfying than doing the same thing without a "reason".

Ryan

Levi Kornelsen

This is different from what most game groups do, how?

HinterWelt

I had a less than gracious response written up but decided to pass. Let me just say, yes, I second the question.

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Halfjack

Thirding it -- I'm baffled as to what Ryan's been playing until his revelation.

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Gunslinger

I think he is talking about character reason instead of game reason. The reason it is hard to distinguish is because many of us have rolled them up to get the same experience playing. The definitive line is quite minute but the tools to achieve that goal are experiencing a change of focus. I don't think it's really that big of a change. I think poorly worded testimonies (theories) may have muddied something that could be positive.

Kyle Aaron

Probably not much. His multiple orgasms over Burning Wheel turn out to have come from playing it once, after all.

Too busy taking about gaming to do much, I suppose.

Now if he were only a loser like me, he could talk about gaming and game a fair bit, too!

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RPGPundit

Ryan,

First of all, other than the fact that some groups might be all that "explicit" about character beliefs and goals, what you're saying doesn't seem to be all that different than how most people already play.

Furthermore, it doesn't seem like your emphasis is on creating "story" at all. "Creating story" to me would imply creating a beginning, middle, and end to a preset tale.

What you're talking about doesn't seem to be about that, it seems to be about Character, not story.

I mean, what you're talking about doesn't sound like "tips for writing a better novel", it sounds like "tips for doing better improv theatre".

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RSDancey

Here's what happens in many game groups.

DM says "I want to run a game". Players say "ok, here are the characters". Now the DM tries to figure out how to put those characters into some pre-determined plot for an adventure. Players try to figure out how to do whatever they think their characters would do in that adventure, and try to do whatever the player wanted that character to do in the first place.

The players rarely work together to generate a group of characters that would make "sense" to be a part of a team. The usual trope is to make up reasons for various people to end up trusting each other with their lives & fortunes.

A constraint that is assumed is that the characters start off near the bottom of the economy, because in most games the ability to go to the king's treasure room and just select high-end magic items, or the cash to acquire same "breaks" fundamental assumptions about campaign play.

A further common constraint is that characters appear without social ties. Apprentices don't have masters, squires don't have knights, etc. Nobody ever seems to have parents, siblings, spouses or children. Sometimes such relations are implied by backstory, but they have no mechanical impact on most games, and in many, many cases they are never really even considered by the players or the DM.

Maybe the DM and the players get on the same page, maybe not. In many games, the DM essentially "wins" the tug-of-war, since the DM is the person doing virtually all the narration, all the plotting, and making go or no go decisions on all the crucial plot points. If the players tolerate this, then all is well. If not, people's attention starts to fade and the game starts to break down.

Maybe the DM got the story told the way it was "supposed to go", and maybe not. Maybe the players got a chance to shape the story, maybe not.

By and large, success in telling a coherent story is pretty hit or miss. After long practice, some groups learn to do it almost instinctively, but some groups never do. Some groups point to the log of whatever happened on an adventure and say "that's the story". Others might insist that "story" wasn't supposed to happen in the first place, so its absence wasn't really important.

My intent is to do 2 things:

1) Formalize the process of getting the whole group involved in setting up the story, and in realizing it through play

and

2) Having explicit rules designed to make #1 happen repeatably, so that people can get better at it through regular practice rather than happy accident.

Some of the tactics behind those strategies are consensus driven character creation, characters with explicit beliefs and goals, characters with social networks, a potentially wider age, experience and wealth range than most games typically feature, game rules that enable collaborative narration and authoring, and last, but far from least, the idea that the premise of the story is defined up front, and agreed to by all the participants, and that the session/adventure/campaign is designed to express that premise (at least until such time as there's a consensus to change it).

Rather than having all that happen "by accident", or relying on mastery of the storyteller's art, I think it can be formalized and reduced to instructions. And that's what I've set out to do.

Ryan

Levi Kornelsen

Hm.

Each of those bits has been done in other games before, and are done informally by a great many groups.

However, they are't "standard and built-in" to the majority of game texts.

So, yeah, I can see that being a fruitful line to explore.

Settembrini

What you describe is bad RPGing based on a misunderstanding what an RPG is.

Traveller, AD&D 1st: look at the modules, no pre-determined plot.

You are describing the sickness of the nineties: Story-Telling! (WoD, L5R, Ad&D 2e etc.)

So actually, your whole point is that Story-Telling is bad, so now you want to have more Story-Telling?

I´m more confused than ever.

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I'm playing in a campaign like that now. The DM seems to be having great fun, setting the most powerful members of the party (his NPCs) against his monsters. The only trouble is that sometimes we want to do the wrong thing and he has to correct us. He had to take over someone's character last time. I think we're bad role-players.

I think everyone would accept that there are some campaigns that go like this. So if you can come up with a framework which stops that happening, but doesn't imply to the people who are fine without it that they're doing it wrong, then you'll have something that everyone will praise.

I suspect that such a thing will be much more about the 'social rules' (the assumptions of who decides on what events happen etc) than the 'game rules' (did I hit or not, how is a character defined etc).

PPS by the way Levi, I sent you a message with a suggestion for Perfect20, but you never replied

Stuart