NathanAlright, this is it for awhile. I promise.
But... I think this one is important, or at the very least, important to me. #ttrpg #rpg
Game
Story
Poll ended at .
I wonder if folks are voting for "game" because often the "story" in most #ttrpgs is conducted by one individual?
Story is less inclusive in most role-playing games, than game is.
Socialism for the GMs, Capitalism for the players.
Yora@herrold Game is something you play.
Story is something you receive. Unless it's produced by playing a game.
@Yora or ya know making up a story, by yourself or with others
LexTenebris@Yora @herrold The problem is this is a false dichotomy. They are orthogonal axes and it is disingenuous to conflate them.
Story is a pattern of narrative. It may be externally imposed, as in a lot of traditional tabletop RPG architectures with strong centralized narrative power in the GM. It may be procedurally emergent with no central GM and mechanics which allow for all the players at the table to introduce new elements of setting and events so that the story per se is in the retelling of what happened, in the very process of being manufactured by play. "Play to find out entirely about story.
Game is about mechanics which isn't necessarily about narrative fiction first and foremost but about providing the buttons and levers and switches for players to manipulate to engage with the process of play.
I won't recapitulate the entire GNS Theory debate here (because I was there for the first time and still have nightmares), but there are elements of deconstructive truth in the idea.
You can have a very game-driven story. You can have storytelling without very much game. You can have a lot of game that generates the story. And you can have not very much of either by mostly having an excuse to hang out together with your friends.
Tissek> You can have a very game-driven story.
That screams Burning Wheel to me. Read it and thought "yup that is what BW does". It takes game incitaments (Artha) to push the players to drive the story and while driving the story they spend Artha making them want more.
@tissek @lextenebris @Yora it just doesn't feel that way in play... for me. And I believe Luke would say that rpgs don't create stories in the present tense, but only when described later(past tense).
I've never played in a role-playing game session that created a story as competent as the worst episode of The Love Boat.
@herrold @tissek @Yora I would say that a lot of very game-centric games generate a lot of story – but RPGs are not the platform that tend to do that very well because the last 20 years or so that has been ludo non gratta. Where you normally see it happening is in wargames or hybrid wargame/RPGs which often get called "adventure games" these days. 5 Parsecs from Home, for example. Personally, I don't think Burning Wheel is particularly game-that-drives-story so much as it is just a particularly crunchy story game.
Though I'm sorry to hear about your loss, Nathan. Maybe one day you'll find one where everybody at the table is at least as engaged in ongoing events, thus the story, as that episode of The Love Boat where the crew had to hook up those two hapless idiots. It sounds like a terrible world you must live in.
I've been at a lot of tables playing RPGs where some incredible stories happened and I got to experience and share in them. I've been at tables playing wargames where incredible stories happened and I got to experience and share in them. All better than any episode of The Love Boat.
Keep trying; you'll get there.
I think I remember reading or hearing something similar and I tend to agree. That "the story" is often something we tell after the events that created it. There are also two stories created. One of the fictional events that happens in game and the other of the game at the table. These often bleed into eachother, gets intertwined. And I find from that is where the "best" stories come.
@tissek @herrold @lextenebris Plenty of GMs and adventure writers try to write a story in advance that the players will then get to experience.
Which will be amazing because everything will be set up to be dramatic and properly described.
But I am convinced that this always leads to an inferior experience that has everyone missing out on why we want to play RPGs in the first place, and what makes them unique among all narrative media.
Emme Ci 🍉@Yora @tissek @herrold @lextenebris what do you reckon is the right balance of preparation and improvisation? Do you have good advice on how to prepare for a more freeform session?
@muzzle @tissek @herrold @lextenebris I would say it really depends a lot on what kind of things the PCs will be doing most of the time, and on what kind of situations you want to come up frequently.
@muzzle @Yora @herrold @lextenebris
You know the powers in the setting, what they want to do and how they do it.
Clear obstacles that are in the PCs way. If something that ties into the above allowing you to build on unfolding events while keeping it coherent.
Obstacles and problems that have solutions but none prescribed. Since you know they have solutions you can dole out the keys to them.
Powers thwarted so they make new plans.
Lots of random tables. I use from #IronswornStarforged
@muzzle play a game that already does this.
Listen. Ask questions. Answer those question or maybe just a question, in play. Don't be too judgemental when play is happening. You can judge and self-doubt all you want, but do it afterwards. Pretend you're 12. Say yes quite often.
Check out the book "Impro" by Keith Johnstone
@muzzle and to, i guess answer your question, the right amount is whatever you and your friends view as the right amount, not what some strangers ideas are. My experience is likely different than yours and thats okay.
But, i do have opinions.
Find the time and interest to answer your own questions.
But, if you are interested in rolling with the punches, "Impro" and "Impro for Storytellers" by Keith Johnstone are good reads.
@muzzle @Yora @tissek @herrold How much time do you have?
Don't waste it on preparation – at least not in the traditional sense. Watch some media related to the game genre that you like a lot. Think about what gets you excited. Think about what other people at the table have told you that they love.
Then come to the table and listen to what everybody else has to say – yes, even if you're the GM. They've probably written things down on their character sheet that they care about if it's any kind of modern game. Know what those things are and think about whether you've brought any attention to them in the last several sessions.
Then play the game. Or, as the phrase goes, "play to find out."
Improv is word jazz. As long as you know your instrument and you listen to what everybody else on stage is playing, you just jam. Don't step on their toes and they won't step on yours. Don't try to take anything over and they will give you everything.
That's it. That's the prep.
DEI Dungeon Explorers@deidungeon @lextenebris @Yora @tissek @herrold thank you everyone for your advice.
I have my own opinions on improvisation, informed by the fact that my players skew very young. They have plenty of fantasy, but they don't know the genre clichés. That requires flexibility, but also means I can steal ideas wholesale, as they've never heard of them.
Oh yes the adventure modules/campaign premises that would be better off as a novel. I've encountered GMs seeking advice on their campaign and then presenting several acts of how it should play out.
There is a reason "Story" often comes with negative connotations when it arrives with #ttrpg
@tissek @Yora @herrold Some people who go into GMing don't want to play a game with other people – they want an audience for their performance. What comes out is certainly a story – but it has nothing to do with everybody else at the table and isn't much of a game.
The real problem is if you ARE one of those people and suddenly realize it one day. And then you discover that all the people around you, all the people at your table, are just there to be entertained and expect you to do all the heavy lifting. You have no tools or experience to deal with that situation.
I've seen it way too many times. A goodly amount of "GM burnout" lies right there. It is absolutely avoidable.
But how to avoid it never seems to get a whole lot of play from the big players in the hobby because you don't make money from not selling modules, you don't get ego from telling people they can make their own entertainment. So there's this warring urge across the hobby between the people who know they want to play the game with the other people at their table and the people who just want to sell them on letting them tell them what they should be playing at their table.
It's all quite amusing.
@lextenebris I choose to disagree, but I get what you're saying.
I guess when you mention two things, you call forth a dichotomy, like saying Hastur three times.
I do think that the more game you have, the less story and vice versa. Keys, Artha, Fan Mail be damned.
There is only so much time and attention. Time for story and its form, or time for game and its. It's perfectly fine that you have a different opinion. I would expect nothing but.
I've just not seen it occur.
@herrold
> There is only so much time and attention. Time for story and its form, or time for game and its.
The problem for your argument is that's simply axiomaticly not true. It MIGHT be true if the only kind of story you can imagine is that imposed from above and not emergent from the experience happening at the table, but that's an extremely reductive and not terribly useful way to see it.
Again, I'm terribly sorry for your loss, that you've not had the experience of a story happening in front of you. A series of experiences which are connected narratively by character, theme, and causation.
The process of "telling a story" can be seen to happen in retrospect – but even that fails the test against reality where there are people who can sit down, campfire or not, lean in and tell you a story that no one has ever heard before. That they themselves don't know the facts before they recite them and you don't know the facts before you hear them doesn't keep the experience from being a story.
If you're going to use terminology, at has to at least agree with reality in order to create a shared form to discuss.
@Yora it still stands.
@Yora also millions, billions of folks watch games. Who knows whether or not its passive or active.
jendefer@herrold The game is the vehicle by which we produce a story. I care about the story. I care less about the game except for the ways in which it contributes to the story. If I don't feel in the mood for a story, I play a boardgame or a card game.
So while the game is necessary to produce the story of our PCs, and the game can have fun or gripping mechanics to further the story, the game is meaningless to me without the story it produces.
Therefore I voted for story.