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Quertus
2017-01-25, 07:48 PM
I've only just started to develop words for this idea, but... there is a lot of talk about what kinds of stories one can tell with a system, but what about the kinds of stories one can wall away with from using a system?

For example, I can tell stories about times when players wanted to play at anti-social power levels, so I built characters who completely overshadowed theirs, then asked if they'd care to drop back to the level of the rest of the party.

Or in Warhammer Fantasy, I can tell the story of the character with a sentient tumor that was smarter than the PC, so the player played the tumor instead. (Similar stories could be told in D&D of playing sentient items instead of their weilder).

But you also walk away with the "normal" sorts of stories, that focus on the character. Like this one time, I had a starting character survive starting a combat alone, unarmed, and surrounded by 6 minotaurs.

Ultimately, I believe it is these various types of stories that stick with us. But I've never seen anyone really have a discussion about gaming or systems in terms of these important moments.

So, I think my question is, when told at the same level of terse simplicity, what kinds of stories can one walk away with from various styles of games?

ImNotTrevor
2017-01-25, 10:46 PM
This is indeed a very odd question. Because most of these things are fairly universal across many games. A lot of these are stories of achievement. They're stories of "Cool stuff that happened." And different games will flavor these differently, but mostly they'll be of a similar cadence and purpose:
"(I/A Friend/The Party) did a cool thing where (I/They/We) (Overcame/Avoided/Creatively Eliminated) (Insert challenge here)."

What changes by system are the setpieces and viable methodolgies characters can employ, as well as the likelihood of such things working.

For instance, in Apocalypse World I have stories about my players killing a bunch of slavers, uncovering the secrets of the apocalypse, and playing fantastically weird and creepy characters.

In Dungeons and Dragons my stories are mostly of daring exploits in dungeons, really well-timed 20's, and neat environments I've come up with.

In Stars Without Number my stories sound like scenes from a sci-fi version of Ocean's Eleven, or a sci-fi Godfather.

But they all have common threads:
RNG worked out just right
Excellent fictional positioning
Humorous failures
Big victories
Memorable In-Character moments

Etc.

Those individual moments might change a bit thematically, but I don't think they fundamentally change much, if at all.

daniel_ream
2017-01-25, 11:14 PM
Inasmuch as nearly all RPGs are combat-focused "adventure games", you're going to get very similar stories out of all of them.

Out of a game like, say, Smallville, which basically has no combat rules and tends to encourage all conflict to be PC vs. PC, you're going to get very different kinds of stories. Whatever the game's default play structure is, that's what you're going to get stories about.

Amphetryon
2017-01-26, 12:13 AM
"A person goes on a journey"

or

"A stranger comes to town"

kyoryu
2017-01-26, 12:29 AM
But they all have common threads:
RNG worked out just right

One of the cool things about Fate is that the RNG working out just right isn't as necessary - the big cool moments often come from timely expenditures of Fate Points:

The character getting his attack stopped cold, then looking at the girl he's crushing on, seeing the guy that stopped him flex to impress her, and then headbutting the snot out of him.

The characters being locked in a High School gym with the town they're trying to rally against the giant monster on the loose, only to have the townspeople panic and riot - which is then interrupted by the giant monster taking off a chunk of the roof.

The PCs successfully talking down the "infected" girl and get take her home without her turning into a horrendous killbeast.

The golem crimelord helping out the other PC that's been in trouble for disrupting a black market supply of human organs for ghouls - only to have his contact call him because that was HER operation.

Fri
2017-01-26, 02:51 AM
Generic games will make generic stories, but there are games with more specific stories in mid.

I remember someone designing an 80s buddy cop movie game. Each sessions are designed to emulate a buddy cop movie/episode of buddy cop tv series like miami vice. At character creation, each players basically take turn giving a characteristic to their character (say: computer savvy) then the next player take the relative opposite characteristic, then another characteristic, and the next character take the relative opposite, and so on (a don't understand technology, but crackshot. next character take can't shoot, but trained martial artist) to make the typical buddy cop party.

The players then start with limited meta resource, but while they stumble around and failing, they start to hoard "cool point" or whatever the resource is named. Then at the climax, they could spend their cool point to jump a bridge with their speedboat or whatever.

In Ryuutama, it's about heartwarming adventures and dangerous journeys. Combat might be simpler than DnD, but travels can easily spiral to a Scott's Antartic Campaign style of disaster.

Jay R
2017-01-26, 10:35 AM
The story-teller is far more relevant than the source material.

The people who entertain you with funny, heartwarming, or intriguing anecdotes about their real life will entertain you with funny, heartwarming, or intriguing anecdotes about their characters, and the people who bore you with long, pointless stories about their real life will bore you with long, pointless stories about their characters.

Quertus
2017-01-26, 12:55 PM
The story-teller is far more relevant than the source material.

The people who entertain you with funny, heartwarming, or intriguing anecdotes about their real life will entertain you with funny, heartwarming, or intriguing anecdotes about their characters, and the people who bore you with long, pointless stories about their real life will bore you with long, pointless stories about their characters.

And I'm... bad at telling stories. Quite jealous of those with the skill to tell entertaining stories, in point of fact. Might even be a contributing factor in making this thread.


One of the cool things about Fate is that the RNG working out just right isn't as necessary - the big cool moments often come from timely expenditures of Fate Points:

Hmmm... for one with the appropriate skills, I can see, "I want to make this moment into a cool story" being advantageous. OTOH, for someone who wants to avoid the cliche moments, and this avoids gaining FATE points, I can see having your cool moments limited this way being a downside.


The PCs successfully talking down the "infected" girl and get take her home without her turning into a horrendous killbeast.

Maybe I just don't get the genre - this is a story of... successfully subduing a potential threat, without triggering them? This makes a good story why (I can think of several possible reasons, I'm just not sure which story you're telling)?


This is indeed a very odd question. Because most of these things are fairly universal across many games. A lot of these are stories of achievement. They're stories of "Cool stuff that happened." And different games will flavor these differently, but mostly they'll be of a similar cadence and purpose:
"(I/A Friend/The Party) did a cool thing where (I/They/We) (Overcame/Avoided/Creatively Eliminated) (Insert challenge here)."

What changes by system are the setpieces and viable methodolgies characters can employ, as well as the likelihood of such things working.

For instance, in Apocalypse World I have stories about my players killing a bunch of slavers, uncovering the secrets of the apocalypse, and playing fantastically weird and creepy characters.

In Dungeons and Dragons my stories are mostly of daring exploits in dungeons, really well-timed 20's, and neat environments I've come up with.

In Stars Without Number my stories sound like scenes from a sci-fi version of Ocean's Eleven, or a sci-fi Godfather.

But they all have common threads:
RNG worked out just right
Excellent fictional positioning
Humorous failures
Big victories
Memorable In-Character moments

Etc.

Those individual moments might change a bit thematically, but I don't think they fundamentally change much, if at all.

I think this touches on what I'm wrestling with. But, as has been pointed out, even "RNG worked out just right" isn't guaranteed to exist in all systems, and how systems handle the results of RNG determines what kinds of stories you can walk away with. For example, my first character in a homebrew, in his first combat, rolled percentiles: 03 - fumble, falls down, gets beaten. Stand back up, rolled percentiles: 03 - fumble, falls down, gets beaten to death. Watched a PC in a D&D game with house rule that you drop your weapon on a 1 lose a weapon every round. By the end of the battle, he was surrounded by a long sword, short sword, 3-5 daggers, and was down to wielding a rock and a pointy stick.

So... Hmmm... It appears that I care about evaluating games in terms of nor just the types of stories you can walk away with, but the odds of walking away with such a story.

"took down some slavers" does not, by itself, sound like much of a story. Unlike, "discovered the secrets of the apocalypse". Sure, playing through it could be fun, and a good story teller could doubtless spin a good yarn about it, but, to someone with my lack of skill, it doesn't sound like inherently story-worthy material.

This one time, Quertus fought a zombie? Not terribly interesting. This other time, the party encountered some "sticky bones": skeletal corpses where the individual bones magically could not be separated from the corpse. Really, it was just skeletons, "pretending" to be corpses, and the party a) failed to overcome their DR with their investigation attempts, and b) managed to avoid the trigger conditions to make them attack. But that story would be... Hmmm... "party didn't have knowledge: religion to recognize 'corpses' were actually skeletons".

Kudos on pointing out that neat environments can, themselves, make for cool stories.


Out of a game like, say, Smallville, which basically has no combat rules and tends to encourage all conflict to be PC vs. PC, you're going to get very different kinds of stories. Whatever the game's default play structure is, that's what you're going to get stories about.

And how are these stories better than, "and then there was the time I ****ed over the whole party"?


Generic games will make generic stories, but there are games with more specific stories in mid.

I remember someone designing an 80s buddy cop movie game. Each sessions are designed to emulate a buddy cop movie/episode of buddy cop tv series like miami vice. At character creation, each players basically take turn giving a characteristic to their character (say: computer savvy) then the next player take the relative opposite characteristic, then another characteristic, and the next character take the relative opposite, and so on (a don't understand technology, but crackshot. next character take can't shoot, but trained martial artist) to make the typical buddy cop party.

The players then start with limited meta resource, but while they stumble around and failing, they start to hoard "cool point" or whatever the resource is named. Then at the climax, they could spend their cool point to jump a bridge with their speedboat or whatever.

In Ryuutama, it's about heartwarming adventures and dangerous journeys. Combat might be simpler than DnD, but travels can easily spiral to a Scott's Antartic Campaign style of disaster.

Hmmm... sounds like there are some definite character generation stories to be had there.

ImNotTrevor
2017-01-26, 03:24 PM
I think this touches on what I'm wrestling with. But, as has been pointed out, even "RNG worked out just right" isn't guaranteed to exist in all systems, and how systems handle the results of RNG determines what kinds of stories you can walk away with. For example, my first character in a homebrew, in his first combat, rolled percentiles: 03 - fumble, falls down, gets beaten. Stand back up, rolled percentiles: 03 - fumble, falls down, gets beaten to death. Watched a PC in a D&D game with house rule that you drop your weapon on a 1 lose a weapon every round. By the end of the battle, he was surrounded by a long sword, short sword, 3-5 daggers, and was down to wielding a rock and a pointy stick.
Including "RNG Worked Out Just Right" as a common thread doesn't mean it's universal to systems. Just a common thread. So is "RNG Went Exactly Wrong"



So... Hmmm... It appears that I care about evaluating games in terms of nor just the types of stories you can walk away with, but the odds of walking away with such a story.
That's only sorta in the hands of the system. The GM has a lot to do with it.



"took down some slavers" does not, by itself, sound like much of a story. Unlike, "discovered the secrets of the apocalypse". Sure, playing through it could be fun, and a good story teller could doubtless spin a good yarn about it, but, to someone with my lack of skill, it doesn't sound like inherently story-worthy material.
Post-apocalypse stories tend to lack some of the fantastical elements often used to buoy up weak storytelling. There is nothing wrong with using said buoys, hell I use them all the time.

Putting it tersely certainly makes it harder to imagine much of a story in the same way decribing Lord of the Rings as "A hobbit throws away a ring" will diminish a lot of the specifics.

With the slavers, they were engaged in kidnapping NPCs and had not only threatened a PC, but had burned her house down. The gunfight that followed led to the surviving slavers joining the gang led by one of the PCs since they had proved themselves to be the side worth fighting on.

In the other they succeeded at discovering alien machinery deep in the ground partially responsible for all but 1/10th% of the human population vanishing instantaneously.



This one time, Quertus fought a zombie? Not terribly interesting. This other time, the party encountered some "sticky bones": skeletal corpses where the individual bones magically could not be separated from the corpse. Really, it was just skeletons, "pretending" to be corpses, and the party a) failed to overcome their DR with their investigation attempts, and b) managed to avoid the trigger conditions to make them attack. But that story would be... Hmmm... "party didn't have knowledge: religion to recognize 'corpses' were actually skeletons".

That's entirely GM-side.

I had an Apocalypse World character lead her gang in a hunt for a skyscraper-tall Nautiloid mollusk that amounted to the Eldritch Realms equivalent of a gnat. And they killed it, ate its meat, and used its shell for storage space.



Kudos on pointing out that neat environments can, themselves, make for cool stories.

I can't remember if this was aimed at me or not, but yes. Environment will play a role.

Jay R
2017-01-26, 05:10 PM
And I'm... bad at telling stories. Quite jealous of those with the skill to tell entertaining stories, in point of fact. Might even be a contributing factor in making this thread.

Story-telling is a skill, like any other skill. Everybody's bad at it until they buy skill ranks, in the form of study and practice.

Amazon has hundreds of books on story-telling.

There is no point being jealous of people who have practiced and studied a skill. You can learn it if it's worth the time and focus and energy. You will not learn it if you don't practice and study.

Quertus
2017-01-26, 08:48 PM
Story-telling is a skill, like any other skill. Everybody's bad at it until they buy skill ranks, in the form of study and practice.

Amazon has hundreds of books on story-telling.

There is no point being jealous of people who have practiced and studied a skill. You can learn it if it's worth the time and focus and energy. You will not learn it if you don't practice and study.

Well, I'd contend that the point of me being jealous is to motivate me to learn the skill. :smalltongue:

One of the basic principles of economics (which, like my science, is decades old) is that it costs different people different amounts (in this case, of time and effort) to do the same thing. So, while, without putting terrible much effort into it, I published my own math theorem while still in high school, decades of effort later, and I'm still terrible at describing events that happened in a particularly entertaining fashion.

But I've never been much for book learning. Guess I could give it a try...


Post-apocalypse stories tend to lack some of the fantastical elements often used to buoy up weak storytelling. There is nothing wrong with using said buoys, hell I use them all the time.

Putting it tersely certainly makes it harder to imagine much of a story in the same way decribing Lord of the Rings as "A hobbit throws away a ring" will diminish a lot of the specifics.

With the slavers, they were engaged in kidnapping NPCs and had not only threatened a PC, but had burned her house down. The gunfight that followed led to the surviving slavers joining the gang led by one of the PCs since they had proved themselves to be the side worth fighting on.

In the other they succeeded at discovering alien machinery deep in the ground partially responsible for all but 1/10th% of the human population vanishing instantaneously.


That's entirely GM-side.

I had an Apocalypse World character lead her gang in a hunt for a skyscraper-tall Nautiloid mollusk that amounted to the Eldritch Realms equivalent of a gnat. And they killed it, ate its meat, and used its shell for storage space.


I can't remember if this was aimed at me or not, but yes. Environment will play a role.

LotR has many elements. One is "friendship overcomes the forces of evil". Another is the loss of innocence for those who have seen war. Another is the lure of power, and how it changes people. Any one of these is easy to tell a good story about.

I'm not interested, at least in this thread, about how to be a good story teller in a game, I'm trying to discuss what stories one can walk away from a game with.

For example, if I say I had a starting character single-handedly defeat 6 minotaurs... in the type of systems I'm accustomed to, that means something. There are stats for starting characters and for minotaurs. Anyone could attempt to reproduce the experience. It's... science. Depending on the system, they could respond with anything from, "of course" to "how?!". And then the details of the tactics / luck could be described, and also reproduced.

But not all systems have stats per se. So I'm not sure how one... Tells? Evaluates?... such a story in those systems.

Lots of the things my characters did were fun to play through, but don't make for good stories. Similarly, many of the things I hated actually make for good stories. The two - gameplay and stories - are not terribly closely related.

Contrary to my usual interests, I'm actually attempting to discuss the latter in this thread. But it's hard, because I've never seen a good discussion of the topic, and I lack both the vocabulary and the skill to readily get across what I'm trying to look at.

So, while I'm not sure if it applies, how do certain fantasy elements bouy up weak storytelling?

Jay R
2017-01-27, 10:03 AM
Well, I'd contend that the point of me being jealous is to motivate me to learn the skill. :smalltongue:

That's a healthy approach. Bravo!


One of the basic principles of economics (which, like my science, is decades old) is that it costs different people different amounts (in this case, of time and effort) to do the same thing. So, while, without putting terrible much effort into it, I published my own math theorem while still in high school, decades of effort later, and I'm still terrible at describing events that happened in a particularly entertaining fashion.

Oh, I certainly know about competitive advantages. I started with a speech impediment, inferiority complex, and fear of people. These are not assets for story-tellers. On the other hand, I have a fairly quick mind, which is.

Similarly, I'm cross-dominant, which leads to awkwardness. I also have short arms and legs. Most sports weren't worth the extra effort I'd have had to put in to get good. SCA fencing appealed to me, however, and so I spent the long, slow grind of doing it on a mediocre level until I got better. 40 years later, I'm still not great - but the great tourney-winners focus themselves when drawn against me.


But I've never been much for book learning. Guess I could give it a try...

I recommend a book, but that's just to get started. Watch good comedians when they tell stories, and think about their intonations, their timing, etc. Watch the audience carefully when you're speaking. When did they stop caring?

And believe in your stories.

I went from an awkward, funny-sounding, poor SCA bard to one of the most respected in the kingdom.

Jarawara
2017-01-27, 11:23 AM
Quertus,
I am still unsure of what you're actually asking.

It *sounds* like you are looking for examples in play, based on the rules of the particular game, that are both.... how shall I say it? Unusual, yet reasonably believable? Is that what you mean by "stories you can walk away with?"

If it's not that, then the rest of this post is probably off base, and I clearly am not following what you mean. After all, any game can probably make any story, if you play it well enough (or long enough?).

(I am also assuming you are meaning "In-game" stories, of the characters and their trial and tribulations, stories of their adventures and successes - and not "Out-of-game" stories, like who brought loaded dice and tricked the DM and broke his new game system with an over-optimized character.)

When I say "Unusual yet believable", I cite as example the new character surrounded by 6 Minotaurs. Yes, a 1st level character could win that fight - all he has to do is roll nothing but 20's while all 6 Minotaurs roll nothing but 1's, and not get a hand-cramp before finishing the fight. But reasonably that's not gonna happen. He's gonna be a grease-stain on the floor long before he hurts a single Mino. It is possible, of course, for the PC to win by trickery. He previously escaped, through good play and attentiveness, a deathtrap of fiendish severity. He then finds himself surrounded by Minotaurs, escapes with them hot on his heels (how, good roleplay or maybe some tumble/dodge mechanics, I dunno), and then in running led all six Minotaurs back into their own deathtrap. PC walks out of the dungeon with a silly grin on his face, dusts himself off, and asks the heavens above "Do I get full XP for all that?" But of course, that wasn't the game system that did that, that was good play by the player (and maybe bad play or at least epic forgetfulness by the DM).

So the six Minotaur example seems to be a bust, either way. But I bet there are some stories that can arise from the rules creating unusual yet interesting dynamics.

I have more experience in wargames than I do with RPG's, so let me go off track for a moment, and maybe you can confirm that these are the type of stories you are looking for.

Some games rely on mathematically probability, and if you have the forces available, you can generate the auto-win. In Civilization, I was playing last night, there were 3 Parthian units in a territory, and if I have 5 Kushan units I could go in and destroy them all. If I didn't have enough, I wouldn't bother. Not much of a story there. But in other games, it relies more on the random with increased probability to the larger force - but that's still a chance of survival. As such, Leningrad has been under siege for 5 turns now, but try as I might I cannot seem to fight my way northeast of the city to cut their supply lines, nor breach the final defenses of the city. Being that we're playing the whole Russian Front campaign, this is only the far northern flank, but the battle of Leningrad is becoming the story of the game, one that we are talking about after every game session. I was supposed to just roll right through that area, seize the city, and turn my attention elsewhere. Instead it's become the pivotal battle of the whole war. And that's all because the game system allowed for an unusual, yet still totally believable result.

Another aspect of "stories you can walk away with", coming from wargames, is that wargames can sometimes be used as backdrops for an RPG (or even if not, one can still imagine how it might). In Dark Emperor, one player is the Necromancer trying to take over the world, the other is the kingdoms player, trying to rally humanity against this ancient evil. The Necromancer, as part of his global strategy, deploys a small contingent of undead into a mountain pass. It's a throwaway force, designed only to delay the humans from blitzing through the pass and thus inhibiting lateral reinforcement to the settlements on the other side. Still, it works, the human player tries at one point to take the pass but the battle goes sour, and then decides not to expend more forces at this time as he needs them for the main front. As the settlements on the far side fall completely, the human player decides that he just doesn't need to go there at all, he can win the game in the center of the map. Human player wins without ever trying to get across the pass again.

Now think about that as an RPG setting. The "story" that arose from just playing the mechanics of the game, is that now humankind is trying to recover and rebuild their world, but no-one goes near the mountains to the north, beware, the pass is overrun with the dead. Evil spirits lurk around every turn, behind every rock. And there is nothing beyond that, no reason to go, as all the settlements are long gone, lost to us. No reason to go at all...

...unless, of course, you're an adventurer. All that lost wealth just lying there, waiting to be claimed by those brave enough to face the remnants of the Necromancer's army!

I didn't write that story. I didn't create that scenario. It just kinda... happened, by the luck of the dice and the logical play of the game. The "result" of the game is that the human player won. The "story" of the game is how northern Loymarech has fallen, and all paths to it are only walked by the dead.

Now getting back to RPG's, I'm not sure how well this concept would translate - the "story you would walk away with". A story of "Party wipes out den of Kobolds" isn't much of a story. A story of "Party stupidly divides themselves into small groups, then each group gets wiped out by a den of Kobolds" is a bit more entertaining, but only in a morbid fascination kind of way. But a story of "Party stupidly divides themselves into small groups, falls into traps, then somehow by a string of good play, good tactics, and rewarding dice, survive their folly and reunite, escaping the clutches of the Kolbolds", is much more of a story (and a true one at that, I couldn't believe even as I saw it play out). But as inspirational and compelling as that story was, I still don't see how the mechanics of the game in particular made it happen.

In the end, it was not a "story one can walk away with" from using that particular system, it was a "story one can walk away with" from playing any RPG. In fact, you could probably get a compelling story from playing just about any game. Like that time my opponent failed to get any sets of properties anywhere on the board, except for Park Place and Broadway. Everywhere he went, he was bleeding - but I landed on Park Place and Broadway every go around the board no matter how hard I tried to avoid it, and it drained my resources to the point of bankruptcy.


So yeah, those are my stories, and I probably have more. If that's the kind of thing you were looking for, please tell me. If not, then I guess I still am not sure what exactly you were looking for. Thoughts?

ImNotTrevor
2017-01-27, 11:42 AM
LotR has many elements. One is "friendship overcomes the forces of evil". Another is the loss of innocence for those who have seen war. Another is the lure of power, and how it changes people. Any one of these is easy to tell a good story about.
Yes. But if you word it tersely, as I did with my stories, it might sound boring to someone who isn't familiar with it.



I'm not interested, at least in this thread, about how to be a good story teller in a game, I'm trying to discuss what stories one can walk away from a game with.

For example, if I say I had a starting character single-handedly defeat 6 minotaurs... in the type of systems I'm accustomed to, that means something. There are stats for starting characters and for minotaurs. Anyone could attempt to reproduce the experience. It's... science. Depending on the system, they could respond with anything from, "of course" to "how?!". And then the details of the tactics / luck could be described, and also reproduced.

But not all systems have stats per se. So I'm not sure how one... Tells? Evaluates?... such a story in those systems.
Each system's stories will be evaluated differently, so I'm not much at liberty to detail every system's merits. In general, a good story is a good story.

For Apocalypse World it usually comes down to the ways things went crazy, or especially memorable PC-PC interactions. My group talks about how weird Marathon, our Brainer, was with the same enthusiasm they talk about their D&D achievements.

Generally, I guess you could say that what you get for stories out of the system will revolve around what the system deems important.



So, while I'm not sure if it applies, how do certain fantasy elements bouy up weak storytelling?

Fantastical elements are good for adding instantaneous interest and generating neat "What-if" scenarios. It's also easier to do crazy things like having animated piles of bones that chase people around in a fantastical setting than in a grungy, reality-based post-apocalypse.

It's neither a good nor bad thing to use fantastical elements in a story. But they definitely do serve as a buoy. You'll notice most novice storytellers don't know how to make a character interesting without giving them cool powers/abilities. It's a similar thing but broader. Once the fantastical elements become a tool for exploring themes that are hard to explore with strictly reality-based settings, things get REALLY good.

Quertus
2017-01-27, 06:43 PM
That's a healthy approach. Bravo!

Yeah, I do what I can. I even have a reasonably healthy response to envy.


Oh, I certainly know about competitive advantages. I started with a speech impediment, inferiority complex, and fear of people. These are not assets for story-tellers. On the other hand, I have a fairly quick mind, which is.

Similarly, I'm cross-dominant, which leads to awkwardness. I also have short arms and legs. Most sports weren't worth the extra effort I'd have had to put in to get good. SCA fencing appealed to me, however, and so I spent the long, slow grind of doing it on a mediocre level until I got better. 40 years later, I'm still not great - but the great tourney-winners focus themselves when drawn against me.



I recommend a book, but that's just to get started. Watch good comedians when they tell stories, and think about their intonations, their timing, etc. Watch the audience carefully when you're speaking. When did they stop caring?

And believe in your stories.

I went from an awkward, funny-sounding, poor SCA bard to one of the most respected in the kingdom.

Well, I have the "believe in my stories" part, at least. And, as bad as I am, it just gets worse when I try to write. Reading my stories is a true test of friendship.


Quertus,
I am still unsure of what you're actually asking.

It *sounds* like you are looking for examples in play, based on the rules of the particular game, that are both.... how shall I say it? Unusual, yet reasonably believable? Is that what you mean by "stories you can walk away with?"

If it's not that, then the rest of this post is probably off base, and I clearly am not following what you mean. After all, any game can probably make any story, if you play it well enough (or long enough?).

(I am also assuming you are meaning "In-game" stories, of the characters and their trial and tribulations, stories of their adventures and successes - and not "Out-of-game" stories, like who brought loaded dice and tricked the DM and broke his new game system with an over-optimized character.)



You have an interesting way of arriving at a similar place to where I am. Your cool stories, coupled with careful analysis, clearly demonstrates that you're touching on my quest. But I think you're only looking at a small subset.

First off, I absolutely do include OOC stories in what you walk away from the experience with. My focus is absolutely on the player here.

Unusual, yet believable... Hmmm... That category is probably some of the best stories from a system. But "my first old-school D&D character died in the first session" is fairly normal for old-school killer DMs, and thus is a part of the old-school D&D experience.

So, perhaps, one could view this as an attempt to scientifically catalogue and quantify the gaming experience.


Now getting back to RPG's, I'm not sure how well this concept would translate - the "story you would walk away with". A story of "Party wipes out den of Kobolds" isn't much of a story. A story of "Party stupidly divides themselves into small groups, then each group gets wiped out by a den of Kobolds" is a bit more entertaining, but only in a morbid fascination kind of way. But a story of "Party stupidly divides themselves into small groups, falls into traps, then somehow by a string of good play, good tactics, and rewarding dice, survive their folly and reunite, escaping the clutches of the Kolbolds", is much more of a story (and a true one at that, I couldn't believe even as I saw it play out). But as inspirational and compelling as that story was, I still don't see how the mechanics of the game in particular made it happen.

In the end, it was not a "story one can walk away with" from using that particular system, it was a "story one can walk away with" from playing any RPG. In fact, you could probably get a compelling story from playing just about any game. Like that time my opponent failed to get any sets of properties anywhere on the board, except for Park Place and Broadway. Everywhere he went, he was bleeding - but I landed on Park Place and Broadway every go around the board no matter how hard I tried to avoid it, and it drained my resources to the point of bankruptcy.


So yeah, those are my stories, and I probably have more. If that's the kind of thing you were looking for, please tell me. If not, then I guess I still am not sure what exactly you were looking for. Thoughts?

I want to touch on this story in particular. I agree that the first example, while it could be fun to play, does not make for much of a story. And I agree that the third example makes for a good story, in part because of the "huh?" factor. But the second example? That one could really sick with one or more of the players, as the time they learned their lesson about splitting the party. It definitely has the potential to be a lasting memory, a good story.


Each system's stories will be evaluated differently, so I'm not much at liberty to detail every system's merits. In general, a good story is a good story.

Let me try again. You're not going to hear a story of how someone pulled out an obscure rule in a game of Risk. Because Risk doesn't have obscure rules. There is no "advanced system mastery" feature to Risk for stories about Risk to interact with. That limits the types of stories one can "walk away with" from playing Risk.

Looked at backwards, my quest could advantage those with personal horror stories they never want to repeat - if you're trying to avoid walking away with a particular type of story, try a system that does not facilitate such stories.


For Apocalypse World it usually comes down to the ways things went crazy, or especially memorable PC-PC interactions. My group talks about how weird Marathon, our Brainer, was with the same enthusiasm they talk about their D&D achievements.

This is a good example of ... Um... something related to my quest, at least. I find the way people talk about their characters, and the way they talk about their "PC-PC interactions" changes when you change systems. It feels like this would have been a better and easier quest for me to take on first, trying to discuss why the experience of "a character" seems so different in different systems. So, details about how these differ could either be their own answers, or fall under the larger umbrella of my question.

But having stories about "the way things went crazy" is very definitely an answer to my question.


Generally, I guess you could say that what you get for stories out of the system will revolve around what the system deems important.

I am not yet certain have absolutely no idea where this statement lies on the "irrelevant - heart of the issue" spectrum. And I feel like I should.


You'll notice most novice storytellers don't know how to make a character interesting without giving them cool powers/abilities. It's a similar thing but broader.

Well, I still remember picking my favorite superheroes based on their powers, and having a hard time communicating with older kids who had picked theirs based on personality. That disconnect suck with me. I imagine that fits under the same broad umbrella.

SimonMoon6
2017-01-27, 08:50 PM
Well, I still remember picking my favorite superheroes based on their powers, and having a hard time communicating with older kids who had picked theirs based on personality. That disconnect suck with me. I imagine that fits under the same broad umbrella.

Back in my day, superheroes didn't *need* personalities! :p

Well, at least, not many superheroes had personalities. The only ones that did were the "unusual" ones, like Ben Grimm (The Thing) was a grumpy guy with a heart of gold. And then later on, came people like Wolverine (the guy who wasn't as pure and noble as every other superhero). But mostly, heroes didn't have personalities (beyond small subtle differences, like "Green Arrow is a liberal and Hawkman is a conservative, so they argue"), just powers, so liking a character because of their powers would certainly have made sense.

But back to the main topic, which I'm not sure I understand... I think any game system that can't comfortably handle a variety of different kinds of stories is not a game system that I'm going to have much interest in using. For example, with a certain superhero RPG system, I can tell all kinds of stories: mysteries, fairy tales, fantasy quests, romantic comedies... and, oh yeah, straight-up superhero slugfests, I suppose. And yes, I have told all those kinds of stories and more, including various kinds of competitions, such as a martial arts tournament or a competition involving various beach-themed activities (sand-castle building, swimming, swimsuit competitions, etc).

I think the trap most people fall into is "Oh, we're playing Dungeons and Dragons. I guess the only story I can tell is one where you walk into a dungeon (or other fixed base of operations) and fight dragons (or other level-appropriate monsters) without any particular story beyond that being either necessary or even possible."

daniel_ream
2017-01-27, 09:46 PM
Well, at least, not many superheroes had personalities. [...] But mostly, heroes didn't have personalities (beyond small subtle differences, like "Green Arrow is a liberal and Hawkman is a conservative, so they argue"), just powers, so liking a character because of their powers would certainly have made sense.

<blink> <blink>

This has been trivially demonstrably untrue since at least 1961.

Quertus
2017-01-28, 02:42 PM
But back to the main topic, which I'm not sure I understand... I think any game system that can't comfortably handle a variety of different kinds of stories is not a game system that I'm going to have much interest in using. For example, with a certain superhero RPG system, I can tell all kinds of stories: mysteries, fairy tales, fantasy quests, romantic comedies... and, oh yeah, straight-up superhero slugfests, I suppose. And yes, I have told all those kinds of stories and more, including various kinds of competitions, such as a martial arts tournament or a competition involving various beach-themed activities (sand-castle building, swimming, swimsuit competitions, etc).

I think the trap most people fall into is "Oh, we're playing Dungeons and Dragons. I guess the only story I can tell is one where you walk into a dungeon (or other fixed base of operations) and fight dragons (or other level-appropriate monsters) without any particular story beyond that being either necessary or even possible."

Yeah, I don't have the vocabulary for this... It's not about the stories you can tell in a system, it's not about the game play, I'm trying to focus on the stories you walk away with.

Playing a dungeon crawl is great fun! But the story of "greedy foursome performed a murderous home invasion and stole stuff" is not the story you usually care about remembering / telling from early D&D.

No, the stories you tell are about awesome/horrible tactics/luck/build/players/DM/setting, to name a few.

If you've seen Inside Out, you could pretend that I'm talking about Core Memories, but, honestly, that isn't quite right, and could muddy the waters.

When people tell stories about experiences in systems I haven't played, sometimes, I can relate - they're telling the same kind of story I'm used to: fun exploration, character did awesome things, horrible players, etc. But, sometimes, I either cannot relate to the experience they had, or I cannot see why that experience would be story worthy. I suspect that, sometimes, it really isn't, but that, other times, because the system handles things differently, my "so what?" moment is actually something that will stick with them.

So I'm... Hmmm... It's difficult to honestly explain something you lack the vocabulary for... Trying to... Have a conversation about stories, in preparation for an attempt to catalogue different types of stories, in preparation for an attempt to analyze which games are more likely to produce which stories... in part as a way to approach a discussion on systems whose players often speak in tongues? Only replace the word "stories" with... "memories"?

Tanarii
2017-01-28, 05:35 PM
I've only just started to develop words for this idea, but... there is a lot of talk about what kinds of stories one can tell with a system, but what about the kinds of stories one can wall away with from using a system?

(Snip)

Ultimately, I believe it is these various types of stories that stick with us. But I've never seen anyone really have a discussion about gaming or systems in terms of these important moments.

So, I think my question is, when told at the same level of terse simplicity, what kinds of stories can one walk away with from various styles of games?
In my experience ... all of them. But I don't believe most RPGs are about telling stories at all. They're about 'living' the life of a character interacting with a fictional world. They're about experiencing. And that is the exact opposite of telling stories.

However, experiencing, which is inherently an anti-story thing while it is in the process of happening, results in stories after the fact. You make stories by selectively editing experiences, and you make good stories by giving those selectively edited experiences purpose ... be it entertainment, a moral (of the story), or plot and narrative structure. But all that stuff happens when looking back at experiences, not when they are happening.

So yeah ... most RPG systems are pretty good at creating stories to walk away with. And most of them are ruined by GMs who approach them with the mentality that RPGs are about telling stories.

Edit: there are systems that are intended to be about the players collaboratively building a story together. But they generally aren't the ones that people who talk about "RPGs are about collaborative storytelling" are talking about when they make that universal, and IMO totally incorrect, statement.

Quertus
2017-01-28, 05:54 PM
In my experience ... all of them. But I don't believe most RPGs are about telling stories at all. They're about 'living' the life of a character interacting with a fictional world. They're about experiencing. And that is the exact opposite of telling stories.

However, experiencing, which is inherently an anti-story thing while it is in the process of happening, results in stories after the fact. You make stories by selectively editing experiences, and you make good stories by giving those selectively edited experiences purpose ... be it entertainment, a moral (of the story), or plot and narrative structure. But all that stuff happens when looking back at experiences, not when they are happening.

So yeah ... most RPG systems are pretty good at creating stories to walk away with. And most of them are ruined by GMs who approach them with the mentality that RPGs are about telling stories.

That last paragraph very much strikes a chord with me. And while I'd love if everyone could learn that lesson, I'm hoping that there are more... subtle nuggets of wisdom to be mined here.

For example, some systems are more prone to stories of "extreme luck" than others. This is neither an inherently good thing or bad thing - although some people may, subjectively, like or dislike having such experiences.

Similarly, some systems have "builds" or "system mastery" as a thing. The extent to which system mastery plays a role largely determines the extent to which playing that system can lead to stories involving system mastery - for good and ill.

I imagine playing a GM-less game largely prevents GM horror stories, and any other experience that is GM-related. Although, listening to kids play make believe, it clearly doesn't make it impossible.