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Tanarii
2017-12-28, 03:52 PM
It was getting majorly off topic, so starting a new thread based on:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?545613-Getting-off-the-treadmill/page4
And
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22703039&postcount=100

Whenever someone drops the line "RPGs are about collaborative storytelling" I sets me off on a rant. For a simple reason. It's a meaningless phrase.

The vast majority of people saying this, when asked what they mean, will come back with a variation on "sitting around with other people, doing stuff with our characters and having stuff happen". Which is otherwise known as "playing an RPG". In other words, they're using a circular definition. Playing an RPG is playing an RPG. It's a meaningless phrase.

Conversely, when I talk about storytelling in RPgs, I break it into two different things:

1) narrative resolution or narrative mechanics for resolution. Thing happen because they need to happen for the story, or are better for the story. This can be by GM fiat, player fiat, or a mechanic built into the game system. This is different from causal resolution, where things happen because they connect to what the PC is attempting to accomplish, and resonance outcomes for that, where "reasonable" is based on the assumptions of the system.

2) Emergent storytelling. This is where you're doing stuff with your characters, and then recounting the events after the fact. A story emerges from what has happened, but is distinct from the actual resolution to events occurring causally or narratively, whichever method is being used. In other words, emergent storytelling is the story that emerged, and you have once you are done, so it tells you that you're looking at the story that emerged.

Cooperative storytelling is meaningless because it nothing about how resolution of given events is handled, nor acknowledges that stories don't exist while events occur. All it does is sound meaningful, without providing any actual meaning.

(This one probably doesn't need a Fight Me! It's gonna happen anyway. :smallbiggrin: )

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-28, 04:08 PM
I would tend to agree.

Part of it is, I think, that said "RPGs are collaborative storytelling" assertion was made with a deliberate intent, by a certain sort, but was picked up as a general and fairly empty definition by the broader community.

There's a distinct difference between sitting down to tell a story, and having a story emerge. I can tell a story about what happened at work today, but I didn't go about my day making decisions based on what would make the best story; a sports journalist can tell a story after the fact about a football game, but the players don't deliberately play out a story. (I've known a couple people who make real-life decisions based on what amounts to "what would make the best story", and they tend to be the kind who need figurative or literal bailing out on a regular basis... ugh.)

Then there's the conflation of other elements with the actual "story" part. Character, setting, etc, do not depend on deliberate story, those are separate elements.

Some people associate good stories with in-character decisions, consistent characterizations, solid worldbuilding, meticulously uncontrived plots, etc, so when they say "what would make a good story", they're looking for the sorts of things that also make a good roleplaying game experience. Other people use the phrase "what would make a good story" as a call for Narrative Causality, which amounts to "things happen because the story I wanted to tell needed them to happen", and that almost always results in a BAD story, whether deliberate or emergent.

Knaight
2017-12-28, 04:29 PM
The vast majority of people saying this, when asked what they mean, will come back with a variation on "sitting around with other people, doing stuff with our characters and having stuff happen". Which is otherwise known as "playing an RPG". In other words, they're using a circular definition. Playing an RPG is playing an RPG. It's a meaningless phrase.

In attempting to demonstrate that the phrase is meaningless you've just assigned it a definition. There's also a difference between a synonym and a circular definition. If I use the term mixed liquor volatile suspended solid, and people ask what I mean I'll generally explain it as a measurement of the amount of biomass in wastewater*. By your argument, that is otherwise known as MLVSS, I'm using a circular definition, MLVSS is MLVSS, and thus it's a meaningless phrase.

*Its a bit more technical than that, but.

Tanarii
2017-12-28, 04:39 PM
Part of it is, I think, that said "RPGs are collaborative storytelling" assertion was made with a deliberate intent, by a certain sort, but was picked up as a general and fairly empty definition by the broader community.Indeed. It's possible it had a more specific meaning at some point, but I never see it used that way any more.


(I've known a couple people who make real-life decisions based on what amounts to "what would make the best story", and they tend to be the kind who need figurative or literal bailing out on a regular basis... ugh.)I'm always a little horrified when people talk about the story of their life.


Other people use the phrase "what would make a good story" as a call for Narrative Causality, which amounts to "things happen because the story I wanted to tell needed them to happen", and that almost always results in a BAD story, whether deliberate or emergent.I think it's likely to end in a bad story if the GM does it, and does it with a specific story in mind from the get go.

But some narrative resolution RPGs out there encourage the GM to make that decision without a specific story in mind. AW comes to mind. It doesn't actually have a narrative resolution system other than GM fiat, but the strong strictures / checklist it puts around GM fiat effectively make it system on the GM side of things.

Conversely, I know there are other RPGs out there that encourage the players to put a direct hand in narrative resolution, not just the GM. Now if someone were to use the term "cooperative storytelling" to mean "the DM and player cooperate in using narrative resolution", it'd have meaning. But that's not how it is typically used.

Tanarii
2017-12-28, 05:41 PM
In attempting to demonstrate that the phrase is meaningless you've just assigned it a definition.I've referenced how it is typically used. In a way that makes it meaningless. Having a definition doesn't make something meaningful. (Edit: for that matter, being a definition doesn't always make something meaningful.)


There's also a difference between a synonym and a circular definition.Fair. But using it synonymous for the thing it's being used to explain is circular and meaningless.


If I use the term mixed liquor volatile suspended solid, and people ask what I mean I'll generally explain it as a measurement of the amount of biomass in wastewater*. By your argument, that is otherwise known as MLVSS, I'm using a circular definition, MLVSS is MLVSS, and thus it's a meaningless phrase.

*Its a bit more technical than that, but.Not being familiar with what you're talking about, I can't really comment on if you're failing to explain the thing with the so-called explanation. But it sounds like you're doing it back to front to me. As in, to be analogous to what I'm talking about, it seems like it would be telling someone you measure the amount of biomass in wasterwater, then explaining that it's all about MLVSS. When asked what MLVSS is, you explain it's measuring the amount of biomass in wastewater. That would make MLVSS a meaningless phrase.

Similar to how various industries coin phrases for something else all the time, which are really meaningless in that they don't really add explain the underlying this, while giving the impression of it. Military and IT acronyms for example.

jayem
2017-12-28, 05:42 PM
Collaborative Storytelling clearly includes (at least) some RPG's but there is no need for the Collaborating storytellers to take on roles or for it to take the form of a game.
Going the other way, RPG's that aren't CS can also occur (though once choices are meaningful they almost certainly are - edit I'm now not so sure about that)

"sitting around with other people, doing stuff with our characters and having [story] stuff happen" matches the definition of C-S (with the bit in italics not being overly relevant) and justifies their version of RPG being an example of CS while still of course still being an RPG.

Tanarii
2017-12-28, 05:44 PM
"sitting around with other people, doing stuff with our characters and having [story] stuff happen" matches the definition of C-S (with the bit in italics not being overly relevant) and justifies their version of RPG being an example of CS while still of course still being an RPG.Adding the word [story] changes the meaning considerably. Now you're talking about narrative resolution.

(Edit: that's not a problem or anything. It just means you're one example of someone that doesn't agree with the way I say the phrase is most often used, and uses it differently.)

Grod_The_Giant
2017-12-28, 06:16 PM
"Collaborative storytelling" certainly exists as a thing-- something like Fiasco is a very different beast than even a narrative-oriented RPG like Fate. I'd argue that the crucial distinction is in how attached players are to their characters--not just emotionally, but mechanically, functionally. In an RPG, players take the role of one discrete individual, and can primarily shape the world at large through their direct actions. By contrast, in a collaborative storytelling game, there is a lot more freedom--players can take control of NPCs and random quirks of fate. But they're also not so much "games" as "guided brainstorming tools."

A secondary distinction might be player goals-- in an RPG, you're making choices mostly with success in mind, or at least what your character would percieve as being the "right" choice. By contrast, in a CSG you'll often screw your own "character" over in the name of creating a more interesting overall narrative.

...actually, the whole distinction of "player" verses "GM" is a pretty good indicator that you're playing an RPG, not a CSG.

jayem
2017-12-28, 06:20 PM
Adding the word [story] changes the meaning considerably. Now you're talking about narrative resolution.

Unless there's good reason to think otherwise assuming they didn't mean to include story stuff seems like running a risk of straw-manning. After all it's already your summary of the argument.
And while it does change the meaning (though quite what counts as story stuff I don't know*). I don't think I am directly going to narrative-resolution . Yes some story-stuff will need resolution.

*I think maybe character development, obstacle overcoming, and world reshaping would count.

Tanarii
2017-12-28, 06:44 PM
"Collaborative storytelling" certainly exists as a thing


Unless there's good reason to think otherwise assuming they didn't mean to include story stuff seems like running a risk of straw-manning. After all it's already your summary of the argument.
And while it does change the meaning (though quite what counts as story stuff I don't know*). I don't think I am directly going to narrative-resolution . Yes some story-stuff will need resolution.

In other words, both of you guys agree that if someone says "the point of D&D (or other RPG) is collaborative storytelling" or "roleplaying is collaborative storytelling", they're using the phrase meaninglessly, as opposed to talking about actually working on a narrative? Or do you believe these folks that trot out that trite phrase to describe D&D / RPGs / roleplaying really mean collaboratively working on the narrative?

(jayem narrative resolution doesn't need to be an all or nothing thing. It often is, but I'm not suggesting that it's required.)

Jormengand
2017-12-28, 07:14 PM
Collaborative storytelling is storytelling that's collaborative. Playing a game where you do nothing but fight things without thought for any kind of story is not that. Telling a story together is that, even if you're not playing an RPG.

So it's not a meaningless phrase - it's a phrase with a meaning which is almost strikingly obvious.

Tanarii
2017-12-28, 07:24 PM
Playing a game where you do nothing but fight things without thought for any kind of story is not that.Really? It's certainly an emergent story, at the minimum.

This sounds remarkably like the elitist and wrong-headed claims that doing nothing but fighting and dungeon-crawling isn't roleplaying.

Jormengand
2017-12-28, 07:31 PM
Really? It's certainly an emergent story, at the minimum.

This sounds remarkably like the elitist and wrong-headed claims that doing nothing but fighting and dungeon-crawling isn't roleplaying.

I mean, if you're just throwing random, dissociated encounters at a group, rather than having a specific location, story, or anything else. I mean, "The party fought a series of disconnected level-appropriate encounters without moving around much" may technically be a story on some overtly truth-by-stipulation level, but it's not a story in any real sense. So you can stop putting words in my mouth and taking other ones out (like the part where I specifically said fighting things without any thought for story is not storytelling).

Cluedrew
2017-12-28, 07:35 PM
In my mind: collaborative storytelling is multiple people (in the author position) working together to tell a story. This is a broader category than role-playing games, because it includes things like two people throwing ideas back and forth and writing a book with them.

NichG
2017-12-28, 08:16 PM
You can have collaborative storytelling without roleplaying or gaming. You can also have roleplaying + gaming without collaborative storytelling.

CS without RG: I will write a paragraph of a (text) story, then pass it to you. You add a paragraph, and pass it to the next person, ...

CS + R without G: We each choose characters to portray and write a (text) story, with each of us writing the scenes/parts of a specific character.

CS + G without R: Not so common, but sometimes I see this kind of thing in After-Action Reports for computer games like Dominions, Crusader Kings, or other nation-builders. The players play out a game, then after the fact someone writes a story post-hoc about why things went the way they did.

RG without CS: A prewritten module or railroaded campaign. Characterization is up to the players, but the story is fixed and isn't the object of the exercise.

I'd say there's a subset of roleplaying games which are specifically designed to aid in collaborative storytelling. Usually this involves some sort of explicit division system for narrative control - either through things like dramatic editing tokens, or through players having specific responsibility for different aspects of the story. Most mainstream RPGs don't actually directly try to support collaborative storytelling, but also don't particularly preclude it either, so there's nothing stopping a group of D&D players from having a table culture more along the lines of 'lets tell a cool story together' than 'abstract strategy game time!' or 'we're each going to have a power trip' or all sorts of different things. So the term is meaningful inasmuch as it defines a particular design direction you could try to push on, but not as a 'definition of RPGs'.

lunaticfringe
2017-12-28, 08:24 PM
Basically you don't agree with how people are using a term because you prefer phrasing/quantifying it differently. Also you are applying your personal experiences with ttrpgs to everyone's experiences with ttrpgs.

So Semantics & Pedantry. Huzzah! =P

Tanarii
2017-12-28, 09:05 PM
Basically you don't agree with how people are using a term because you prefer phrasing/quantifying it differently. Also you are applying your personal experiences with ttrpgs to everyone's experiences with ttrpgs.

So Semantics & Pedantry. Huzzah! =P

Actually, I was claiming that the people who use it are using it in a meaningless manner.

Every time someone responds to this thread saying no, actually, they use it to mean actually telling a story together, as in narrative resolution or something similar that's actually related to story, that's another person showing me I'm wrong about common usage.

Every time someone claims they're telling a story together, but not actually using narrative resolution or anything similar related to story, that's someone backing up my point.

Jormengand
2017-12-28, 09:07 PM
If you don't see how doing things with no story and no attempt at story doesn't create a story, that's on you. :smallannoyed:

MxKit
2017-12-28, 10:44 PM
Every time someone responds to this thread saying no, actually, they use it to mean actually telling a story together, as in narrative resolution or something similar that's actually related to story, that's another person showing me I'm wrong about common usage.

Every time someone claims they're telling a story together, but not actually using narrative resolution or anything similar related to story, that's someone backing up my point.

My thing is, even if you're not thinking in terms of "we're going to set up satisfying character arcs and a narrative resolution over the course of this campaign that wraps up the loose ends!" ...in many games that don't end prematurely, this happens.

If a character has a goal, and over the course of the game they either reach that goal or fail at it, that's a character arc. If trouble is brewing in the kingdom and it eventually turns out that devils are behind it and the characters head to the Nine Hells, manage to defeat the demons, and save the day by the end of the game... That's a narrative resolution. The overarching plot of the game has been resolved.

No one at the table might be actively thinking in those terms, but games that have a decent amount of roleplay and a plot wrt what's actually happening in the game, rather than just "this is a dungeon crawl," wind up having... well, plots. Characters moving through plot makes a story. And in a good game, it's not just the DM putting the entire thing on rails, hence saying that it's not just the DM's story (and hence the fairly common DM advice that if he just wants the players to be on rails to tell the story he wants to tell, he should write a book rather than trying to DM it)—everyone is collaborating on telling it because the players are making decisions for their own characters, and those decisions impact what happens and especially at higher levels impact the game world itself.

Story emerges from characters interacting with and moving through plot. And because everyone is working together rather than the player's decisions not having any impact at all—at least, in a good game—that's why it gets called a collaborative story. I'm just not seeing the confusion here or the "well if you use this phrase you obviously just don't know what it means and want to sound smart while saying nothing." Or, to be honest, you repeated insistence that you can't actually have a story until after the fact. If people get up on a stage and improv a full narrative, with character arcs and narrative resolution, and people go "wow, that wound up being a pretty incredible story!" it's just weird to insist that, no, it was NOT a story, because while the events are emerging there's not actually a story, it's only a story when recounted after the fact.

ImNotTrevor
2017-12-28, 11:44 PM
Roleplaying is a conversation.
Sometimes we interrupt this conversation to roll some dice and see where the conversation goes next.
The same skills that make a person good at conversation make them an ideal player in all of the ways that are not purely mechanics-based.
Over the course of this conversation, a story is developed. Whether on purpose or as a byproduct, it happens.

Conversations require multiple people and since rpgs are usually noncompetitive they can be described as Collaborative without being a stretch.

Storytelling is literally just the telling of stories, even if made up on the fly. Improvised storytelling is still storytelling. We are all telling the stories of our individual characters within the context of the greater story of what happens around them, anyways. Stories are frequently made of smaller stories. We often call these Subplots.

So when someone says Collaborative Storytelling, they're using two words to encapsulate a lot.

In essence:
Collaborative Storytelling easily contains both of your definitions, and if they don't feel the need to expand on that, it can be left there.

To review:
Collaborative because everyone at the table is invested (ideally) and helps make it what we decide it should be. (Emergent, narrative, neither, whichever)

Storytelling because we all assume the role of storyteller for our own subplots (the characters) and contribute to the overall whole, whether purposefully or not.

It's wide-reaching and people struggle to explain what they mean by it. That doesn't make it meaningless. Just poorly explained.

jayem
2017-12-29, 06:58 AM
In other words, both of you guys agree that if someone says "the point of D&D (or other RPG) is collaborative storytelling" or "roleplaying is collaborative storytelling", they're using the phrase meaninglessly, as opposed to talking about actually working on a narrative? Or do you believe these folks that trot out that trite phrase to describe D&D / RPGs / roleplaying really mean collaboratively working on the narrative?

(jayem narrative resolution doesn't need to be an all or nothing thing. It often is, but I'm not suggesting that it's required.)
Yes in the sense that it's a different activity from Pratchett and Gaiman co-authoring Good Omen's.

No, because if they said "Football is collaborative storytelling" or even "Monopoly is collaborative storytelling" they'd be wrong. There's something different about the stuff that happens in many RPG's that is different. And it's important. Because of all their inputs stuff happens.

I chose Terry&Neill as an easy example of collaboration in authorship, but as both of them dwell on the importance, ubiquity and togetherness of story, it is quite fitting.

Darth Ultron
2017-12-29, 07:32 AM
In my mind: collaborative storytelling is multiple people (in the author position) working together to tell a story. This is a broader category than role-playing games, because it includes things like two people throwing ideas back and forth and writing a book with them.

This fits my definition.

But this means that most RPGs, like D&D and most D20 ones, are NOT collaborative storytelling games. Collaborative storytelling has several authors, RPGs like D&D only have one author: The DM.

Now sure, people cry that players as they do like 5% or so of the creative game play are authors too....like if someone writes one page of a novel, sure they are an ''author''...though really a ''co-author''.

In the RPGs, like D&D the DM is doing at least 95% of everything....with the players doing maybe 5%. It is not an even split. Dm: Creates a whole world, Player: Makes one character.

Cluedrew
2017-12-29, 08:22 AM
RG without CS: A prewritten module or railroaded campaign. Characterization is up to the players, but the story is fixed and isn't the object of the exercise.
But this means that most RPGs, like D&D and most D20 ones, are NOT collaborative storytelling games. Collaborative storytelling has several authors, RPGs like D&D only have one author: The DM.You know what, I spoke as if role-playing games were a strict subset of collaborative storytelling. I am going to have to resend that because yes, not all role-playing games are collaborative, or even storytelling. Mind you all the best ones are. OK, my favourite ones are designed with the intention of also being collaborative storytelling, most systems you can actually run with or without that.

For instance, D&D often does have the assumption the players are just along for the ride. But there have been plenty of moments of collaborative storytelling. In my last session I ended up writing an NPC contact because the GM forgot to fill it in. Now this was ultimately flavour text, I did say this was but a moment, but we got a scene about buying bread at a bakery that we wouldn't have otherwise.

On the other hand, I have played systems where setting is an explicate part of game set up and is collaborative. The GM has most of the control over it once play starts, but by then the shape of it has already been decided by the group as a whole. Also games with proactive PCs shifts things as well because that shifts more of shaping the narrative to the players. The world reacts to them and not the other way around.

Jormengand
2017-12-29, 09:15 AM
This fits my definition.

But this means that most RPGs, like D&D and most D20 ones, are NOT collaborative storytelling games. Collaborative storytelling has several authors, RPGs like D&D only have one author: The DM.

Now sure, people cry that players as they do like 5% or so of the creative game play are authors too....like if someone writes one page of a novel, sure they are an ''author''...though really a ''co-author''.

In the RPGs, like D&D the DM is doing at least 95% of everything....with the players doing maybe 5%. It is not an even split. Dm: Creates a whole world, Player: Makes one character.

While the DM may be making quantatively more stuff, since everything that happens in D&D games (or at least everything that happens "On-screen") involves at least one player character, or at least the player characters are present, or using some kind of ability they have to do something. The players are, one hopes, participating as much in the actual doing of stuff as the DM, at the very least between them if not individually.

The Fury
2017-12-29, 04:06 PM
I'm guilty of using this phrase, though here's my excuse and reasoning for why I'll probably keep using it.

I've played in a lot of groups with one or more new players that are fully up front about not understanding what they should be doing. Telling them that we're telling a "collaborative story" is easy enough to understand and it gets across the basic point of what we're doing.

RazorChain
2017-12-29, 04:13 PM
In my mind: collaborative storytelling is multiple people (in the author position) working together to tell a story. This is a broader category than role-playing games, because it includes things like two people throwing ideas back and forth and writing a book with them.


I agree it's a broader term than roleplaying game. I've done a lot of collaborative storytelling with my kids as bedtime stories where they impact the story with their ideas, no roleplaying involved.

Mutazoia
2017-12-29, 05:59 PM
So, to be clear on your point: You do not consider 1 author setting the parameters for a story (i.e. "Let's tell a story set in Tolkiens Middle Earth, where Sauron recovered the One Ring"), and taking responsibility for writing the actions of several characters of said story, while other authors take responsibility for writing the actions of a single character each, to be "Collaborative Storytelling"? If they all write it down and (try to) get it published, does this count as CS, and it is no longer CS if they don't write it down, and use dice to generate some random content?

kyoryu
2017-12-29, 06:32 PM
Again, I go to my three interaction types in RPGs

1)
GM: "This is the situation"
Player: "I do this."
GM: "This is the new situation."

2)
Player 1: "I move my piece in accordance with the rules."
Player 2: "I move my piece in accordance with the rules."
Player 3: "I move my piece in accordance with the rules."

3)
Player 1: "This happens."
Player 2: "Then this happens."
Player 3: "Then this happens."

Few games are strictly one type or another, and most blend at least two. "Cooperative storytelling" is primarily when everyone is engaging in type 3 interactions for the majority of the game. Fiasco, Microscope, Penny For My Thoughts, Kingdom - these are all good examples.

My personal beef is the "it's all about storytelling." No, it's not, unless you stretch the definition of "storytelling" to the breaking point, and make it so expansive that any human activity can be "about storytelling."

It's also worth noting that most of the worst examples of "narrative causality" or the like do not happen in what are commonly termed "storygames" - that movement is all about *not knowing* what will happen, and finding out through play. "Narrative causality" is kind of the direct opposite of that. If you don't know what the story is in advance, the idea of things happening "because they have to" is rather silly. Most "narrative causality" in RPGs is a direct result of railroading, and "story games" or "narrative games" generally position themselves opposite of railroading.

Kaptin Keen
2017-12-29, 06:54 PM
Whenever someone drops the line "RPGs are about collaborative storytelling" I sets me off on a rant. For a simple reason. It's a meaningless phrase.

The vast majority of people saying this, when asked what they mean, will come back with a variation on "sitting around with other people, doing stuff with our characters and having stuff happen". Which is otherwise known as "playing an RPG". In other words, they're using a circular definition. Playing an RPG is playing an RPG. It's a meaningless phrase.

Nonsense.

RPG's consist of two things. Rolling dice and telling stories. Either of these things are possible without the other. If you're rpg'ing with the dice, there is an element of a game of chance in your collaborative storytelling. This is a variable: Sometimes it's more correct to state that there is an element of collaborative storytelling in your game of chance.

So at one extreme of the spectrum, you're all about the dice rolls, and at the other - all about the storytelling.

Mutazoia
2017-12-29, 06:54 PM
Again, I go to my three interaction types in RPGs

1)
GM: "This is the situation"
Player: "I do this."
GM: "This is the new situation."

3)
Player 1: "This happens."
Player 2: "Then this happens."
Player 3: "Then this happens."



I might argue that your 1 and 3 are essentially the same thing, but on different scales.
"This happens" is another form of "This is the situation"
"I do this" is just a more limited scope of "Then this happens", as the "this" in this case, applies to a singular reference point, rather than a broader one.

Furthermore, I might argue that "this is the situation" only occurs at the very beginning, everything that follows is "Then this happens". Action and reaction. The situation itself may not change do to action, but there will always be some form of reaction. Ultimately, changing the situation is (usually) the end goal...unless you refer to the immediate situation, i.e.

GM: You wake up in bed. You hear screaming coming from outside.
Player: I get out of bed, and look outside.

The player has technically changed the immediate situation of "being in bed", and nothing else. If the overall situation is "A mad wizard is attempting to destroy the world", said player still has a long way to go towards establishing a new situation. To that point, the player has done nothing to change the "you hear screaming outside" situation yet.

kyoryu
2017-12-29, 07:00 PM
I might argue that your 1 and 3 are essentially the same thing, but on different scales.
"This happens" is another form of "This is the situation"
"I do this" is just a more limited scope of "Then this happens", as the "this" in this case, applies to a singular reference point, rather than a broader one.

The primary difference is the level of authority the individuals have.

In the type 1 interaction, the players (note that there's a separate GM role) are only given authority over their own character, and can only declare the actions of their character - and not even the result. Also, in Type 1 games, especially the more pure they get, the GM is in charge of the rules - the players say what their characters do, and the GM is primarily responsible for determining the result, be it by fiat, by rules, by rulings, etc. That's actually the biggest difference between Type 1 and 2.

In type 3 interactions, the boundary is not as strong, or completely nonexistent, and the players can narrate things outside of their own characters' actions.

That may not be a significant difference to you but it is to many people. And, yes, few games are "pure" on any axis, and so it's common to allow for some amount of incorporation of different types of the different interactions.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-29, 07:07 PM
Nonsense.

RPG's consist of two things. Rolling dice and telling stories. Either of these things are possible without the other. If you're rpg'ing with the dice, there is an element of a game of chance in your collaborative storytelling. This is a variable: Sometimes it's more correct to state that there is an element of collaborative storytelling in your game of chance.

So at one extreme of the spectrum, you're all about the dice rolls, and at the other - all about the storytelling.


And what about those of us who value in-character decisions, characters with depth, rich and robust settings... leave chance for when there's real uncertainty... and couldn't give a tinker's damn about "telling a story"?

Cluedrew
2017-12-29, 07:12 PM
To Max_Killjoy: What do you mean by "telling a story", because as I see it consistent characterization, detailed characters, good world building and... maybe not so much the last, are all part of telling a story. (The last item could be seen as unpredictable narrative, or the dice rolling part.)

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-29, 07:25 PM
To Max_Killjoy: What do you mean by "telling a story", because as I see it consistent characterization, detailed characters, good world building and... maybe not so much the last, are all part of telling a story. (The last item could be seen as unpredictable narrative, or the dice rolling part.)


Those things are useful, probably necessary, as tools for telling a good story -- but they do not belong to "telling a story".

kyoryu
2017-12-29, 07:34 PM
Nonsense.

RPG's consist of two things. Rolling dice and telling stories. Either of these things are possible without the other. If you're rpg'ing with the dice, there is an element of a game of chance in your collaborative storytelling. This is a variable: Sometimes it's more correct to state that there is an element of collaborative storytelling in your game of chance.

So at one extreme of the spectrum, you're all about the dice rolls, and at the other - all about the storytelling.

Just a suggestion - maybe you should listen to people and what they say instead of just telling them that their desires and preferences are factually wrong. You might learn something.

Florian
2017-12-29, 07:35 PM
And what about those of us who value in-character decisions, characters with depth, rich and robust settings... leave chance for when there's real uncertainty... and couldn't give a tinker's damn about "telling a story"?

You´re basically kidding yourself. We're humans, were prone to connecting the dots and everything will create a narrative in hindsight. What you do is outsourcing the dot-making, nothing else.

Millstone85
2017-12-29, 08:06 PM
Those things are useful, probably necessary, as tools for telling a good story -- but they do not belong to "telling a story".What does belong then? Identifiable beginning, middle and end? One or more ongoing plots? A moral?

Lord Raziere
2017-12-29, 08:11 PM
You´re basically kidding yourself. We're humans, were prone to connecting the dots and everything will create a narrative in hindsight. What you do is outsourcing the dot-making, nothing else.

Max has this narrow viewpoint where he thinks all storytelling is trodding out bad cliches for the sake of bad cliches. I wouldn't listen to him on that definition.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-29, 08:42 PM
You´re basically kidding yourself. We're humans, were prone to connecting the dots and everything will create a narrative in hindsight. What you do is outsourcing the dot-making, nothing else.


First, speak for yourself, don't pretend to know what's going in on other people's heads. "You're kidding yourself" as a response there is nothing but arrogant condescension. Whether you believe it or not, doesn't matter, some of us simply don't give a fig about "story" when we're "RPGing".

Second, making up a narrative in hindsight about things that already happened is not the same as sitting down to intentionally craft a work of fiction "from the beginning".




What does belong then? Identifiable beginning, middle and end? One or more ongoing plots? A moral?


As with most things, storytelling requires intent -- and a story is more than a sequence of events that happened in some order.

Plot, structure, pacing, etc, are needed.

We could tell a story about my workday after the fact, but that doesn't mean I'm setting out to tell a story when I leave the house. My actions and reactions and decisions aren't being made with story in mind, they're just the things that happen.

Similarly, when I'm playing an RPG, a story could be told after the fact about what went on, but that doesn't mean any of the in-character decisions and actions are done with story in mind. If someone is doing what their character would do and saying what their character would say, and influencing the fictional world through their character, that's no more "telling a story" than it is for a real person to get out of the bed in the morning, get cleaned up, and go to work or whatever.

If I'm crafting a story, I care about actually creating a story that makes sense, that has some buildup, some tension, maybe some failures along the way if they work out, that sort of thing.

If I'm playing my character, then like my character, I don't give a fig about any of that. If my character has an opening to defeat the "BBEG" in the first five minutes with some cheap trick, then I'm taking it -- my character doesn't care if it's anti-climactic, or doesn't make for a good story (I mean, an actual genuinely good story, not "the good story" of Narrative Causality), they're in it to win it, just like a real person would be.




Max has this narrow viewpoint where he thinks all storytelling is trodding out bad cliches for the sake of bad cliches. I wouldn't listen to him on that definition.


I don't think you'll find anywhere I've actually said that about all storytelling.

When I say those things, I'm talking about Narrative Causality and various actual cliches and tropes, and my dislike of those elements in gaming.

Mutazoia
2017-12-29, 09:26 PM
Second, making up a narrative in hindsight about things that already happened is not the same as sitting down to intentionally craft a work of fiction "from the beginning".

Eh.

As someone who regularly participates in NaNoWriMo, and has been writing since middle school, I can say that starting with the ending and working backwards is not an uncommon practice.

Or, if you prefer, you can easily say that conspiracy theories are detailed works of fiction, that have been crafted by piecing together small events that have already happened, and filling in the (considerable) blanks with made up details and events, and become something completely different from the truth.

Or, if you prefer, anytime Hollywood has made a movie "based on real events", that have had little to nothing to do with the actual events, or assume quite a bit of events and dialog that may or may not have taken place (this is especially common with films based on historical events that pre-date any modern conception of record-keeping, and/or had any way of recording said events...such as Titanic).

PhoenixPhyre
2017-12-29, 09:39 PM
I find that playing an RPG is very much like writing an extremely short-segment serial fiction (with lots of participants and within a fixed framework of resolution mechanics).


At time T we establish the state of the world. This (in D&D-like games) leans heavily on the narrator.
We then loop through the participants (PCs and NPCs) and determine what they do in the next segment of time. This involves proposing an action and then resolving it using the mechanics. Important points:

Each character usually has a range of things that are "in character" for that person--virtually no circumstance has only one in-character response down to the details.
We must use something decide between whatever options remain.
Story considerations (character growth, keeping things fun for everyone, foreshadowing future events, etc) are perfectly good criteria here, as is random chance.

Once all simultaneously-moving actors (including NPCs and the world as a whole) have selected and resolved their actions, we advance the time counter to T = T0 + dT and continue from step 1. Depending on the situation, dT might be as small as 6 seconds (a D&D combat round) or as much as several months (during downtime or extended travel).


Character-based and story-based decision making are not mutually exclusive. They're both tools for deciding what a character attempts at step 2. Some games give players abilities to affect the situation beyond the actions of their character (FATE points, meta-currency in general) or explicitly ask players to consider the story. Those put a higher weight on the story-focused aspects. Only when you get as far as games like Microscope (where there are no distinctions between "my character" and "your character") do you remove the role-playing aspect. It's a sliding scale with lots of overlap in the middle.

RazorChain
2017-12-29, 09:47 PM
You´re basically kidding yourself. We're humans, were prone to connecting the dots and everything will create a narrative in hindsight. What you do is outsourcing the dot-making, nothing else.

But then most everything is collaborative storytelling. I played PLAYMO with my friend as a kid where we were the heroes assaulting an castle. We can connect the dots and make a story and now we weren't playing anymore but taking part in a collaborative storytelling!


When playing cops and robbers as a kid we can squeeze out a narrative where me and Joe were the cops chasing the robbers. We weren't playing, we were taking part in a collaborative storytelling.


I went skating with my wife the other day and I managed to fall on my ass, now I connect the dots to make a narrative and I wasn't skating with my wife anymore but collaborative storytelling with her.

Mutazoia
2017-12-29, 09:57 PM
Nothing is a story while it's happening. It becomes a story after all is said and done, when it is told to others.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-29, 09:57 PM
But then most everything is collaborative storytelling. I played PLAYMO with my friend as a kid where we were the heroes assaulting an castle. We can connect the dots and make a story and now we weren't playing anymore but taking part in a collaborative storytelling!


When playing cops and robbers as a kid we can squeeze out a narrative where me and Joe were the cops chasing the robbers. We weren't playing, we were taking part in a collaborative storytelling.


I went skating with my wife the other day and I managed to fall on my ass, now I connect the dots to make a narrative and I wasn't skating with my wife anymore but collaborative storytelling with her.



Yeap. It ends up with a really goofy definition of storytelling -- "anything you do that you could tell stories about later is storytelling". :smallconfused:

Knaight
2017-12-29, 10:50 PM
Nothing is a story while it's happening. It becomes a story after all is said and done, when it is told to others.
If you're writing a story, it's a story during the writing process. It's not a complete story, and you writing it isn't a story, but the actual text is a story. The same thing applies to speaking a story, whether or not you have an audience and whether or not you're finished.


Yeap. It ends up with a really goofy definition of storytelling -- "anything you do that you could tell stories about later is storytelling". :smallconfused:
On the other hand, using the term "storytelling" to describe the actions of people describing fictional characters interacting with fictional settings is hardly unreasonable, and it doesn't extent outwards nearly as far. It doesn't even extend to the PLAYMO (which appear to be themed LEGO sets or similar upon quick research) and cops and robbers example, where people are still pretending to be characters of a sort, but aren't necessarily meeting the "-telling" part of the word. It certainly doesn't fit the ice skating example.

The other requirement I'd make of storytelling within the specific sub-definition in use here is that you're deliberately presenting fiction as fiction. Knowingly describing fictional characters interacting with fictional settings as factual information is just lying.

Storytelling also doesn't necessarily preclude play, which is highly relevant to RPGs, PLAYMO, cops and robbers, and basically imaginative childhood play and related fields in general. Even if those were examples of storytelling (and PLAYMO might have been, if it came with description; that certainly can come up with imaginative play in other contexts and it's not like the little figures can do everything their characters can) they're still play, and all the rhetoric about how they're no longer play can be safely disregarded as a distraction.

ImNotTrevor
2017-12-30, 12:34 AM
There is nothing within any definition of Storytelling I've found that excludes improvisation. The whole thing could be improvised and still be a story.

Yes, as I play a game I hope cool things happen. I want to get to know the characters. I want to watch them change over time. I want to see then overcome challenges and have things happen to them, good and bad. I want to see them make decisions based on incomplete information or based on personal biases and see if those biases change over time.

I'd call all of the above storytelling.

Kaptin Keen
2017-12-30, 01:43 AM
And what about those of us who value in-character decisions, characters with depth, rich and robust settings... leave chance for when there's real uncertainty... and couldn't give a tinker's damn about "telling a story"?

That would be the story of your character.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-12-30, 02:21 AM
Merely picking a certain type of character is showing a desire to tell a certain type of story. You don't make your character take out of character decisions for the sake of "the story". You make a character who will do interesting things which will lead to an interesting story.

No one's character is perfectly fleshed out because, you know, they're not a real person and you haven't spent their entire life getting to know them. And that means that when there is some doubt as to what your character would do, it is usually a good thing to pick the more interesting of the options. And picking that interesting thing develops your character further in the process and you remember it for next time something similar comes up.

Also, interesting characters are flawed. These flaws don't need to be crippling, but they need to exist. Perfect people are unrealistic and boring.

jayem
2017-12-30, 07:38 AM
But then most everything is collaborative storytelling. I played PLAYMO with my friend as a kid where we were the heroes assaulting an castle. We can connect the dots and make a story and now we weren't playing anymore but taking part in a collaborative storytelling!


When playing cops and robbers as a kid we can squeeze out a narrative where me and Joe were the cops chasing the robbers. We weren't playing, we were taking part in a collaborative storytelling.

I said earlier that there was something different between RPG's and (effectively) these examples. And I think I'm starting getting a better handle on it and it's basically that a lot comes from, unsurprisingly, the RP element. And it's no surprise really, as theatrical RP similarly crosses the line. Also I suspect you can think of the one game of C&R that did cross the name, where the robbers had name's and ...



I went skating with my wife the other day and I managed to fall on my ass, now I connect the dots to make a narrative and I wasn't skating with my wife anymore but collaborative storytelling with her.
I think another feature comes in when you deliberately apply creativity and something else. So now you're storytelling, when you accidently fell you probably weren't (if you were doing your own improv version of Swan Lake and you built in in, that would be different).

So perhaps it's the act of building the narrative where it becomes Storytelling. In an RPG that happens more or less constantly (partly because you are already describing stuff), in other games that happens at the start or end (and is usually pre-done).

I'm fully aware that's not fully worked out. And need to say what in R/P makes it do stuff. I think Characterisation is a big part and a sufficiently complex virtual World.

Cluedrew
2017-12-30, 08:02 AM
Those things are useful, probably necessary, as tools for telling a good story -- but they do not belong to "telling a story".OK, but you lay out, in simple terms, what "telling a story" itself actually is?

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-30, 08:08 AM
That would be the story of your character.


No. A story is more than a sequence of decisions and events, and we can care about character without caring about story.

But hey, if anyone ever wonders why I get so cranky about "narrativism" and "story games", the attitude on display by the above poster, that self-serving attempt to claim anything remotely interesting about RPGs as part of "story", is a chunk of why.

Just because something is a useful tool or necessary element for your preferred type of RPG (or other game, some of these games leave the overlap area of the Venn diagram), that doesn't give your preferred type of RPG ownership of that element.

Just because YOU are deliberately crafting or telling a story when you game, that doesn't preclude others from playing without any storytelling at all -- including those who are deeply into character and setting.




Merely picking a certain type of character is showing a desire to tell a certain type of story. You don't make your character take out of character decisions for the sake of "the story". You make a character who will do interesting things which will lead to an interesting story.


And here we get into part of why I cringe at the notion of "archetypes" or "types of characters" in RPGs -- the inference some make that a certain character is selected for a certain type of story.

Because all this time, I've been selecting and building each character because I found the character interesting, not because of any desire to tell any stories of a certain type or not.




No one's character is perfectly fleshed out because, you know, they're not a real person and you haven't spent their entire life getting to know them. And that means that when there is some doubt as to what your character would do, it is usually a good thing to pick the more interesting of the options. And picking that interesting thing develops your character further in the process and you remember it for next time something similar comes up.


Meh.

I once took my character out of an entire arc of a campaign, like weeks worth of material, because it would have required her to violate multiple aspects of her code of honor. Luckily it was a game focused on a single city, so I could be around for some other things that were going on, but for those 4 or 5 sessions I was involved in less than an hour out of each 6+ hour session.




Also, interesting characters are flawed. These flaws don't need to be crippling, but they need to exist. Perfect people are unrealistic and boring.


Unfortunately, too many people don't understand that, have no sense of scale or nuance or subtlety, and only recognize crippling flaws as legitimate, and think their character has to be either terminally stupid or "perfect" with no middle ground.

Millstone85
2017-12-30, 08:26 AM
But hey, if anyone ever wonders why I get so cranky about "narrativism" and "story games", the attitude on display by the above poster, that self-serving attempt to claim anything remotely interesting about gaming, to claim as much as possible, as part of "story", is a chunk of why.Would you say that characters, the setting and other pieces of non-story-driven fiction are part of "simulationism"?

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-30, 08:38 AM
Would you say that characters, the setting and other pieces of non-story-driven fiction are part of "simulationism"?

Those elements can be part of that type of game/gaming, yes. Personally, I'd say that character and setting are essential elements for that sort of game.

But I would be just as mistaken to claim those elements as the exclusive property of "simulationism" as the "narrativists", "dramatists", or "gamists" would be to claim them for their own preferred sort of game.

(Scare-quotes used very deliberately here, because of all the baggage that got attached to those terms. If we're going to use them, I'd rather go back to GDS than deal with GNS's crap, and even then I think they needlessly divide things up along not-always-useful, not-always-accurate lines. For example, some try to put "genre emulation" in the "sim" category, but I think it's an odd edge case.)

Millstone85
2017-12-30, 08:55 AM
If we're going to use them, I'd rather go back to GDS than deal with GNS's crap, and even then I think they needlessly divide things up along not-always-useful, not-always-accurate lines.Well, some of the views expressed here also feel like hairsplitting to me.

Would "collaborative fictionmaking" be a more inclusive term for that part of the activity that isn't dice, tiles and spellcards?

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-30, 09:11 AM
Well, some of the views expressed here also feel like hairsplitting to me.

Would "collaborative fictionmaking" be a more inclusive term for that part of the activity that isn't dice, tiles and spellcards?

Does it need a specific name?

The whole thing is interconnected, and to me is defined by an overlapping space between having rules, having a fictional world and characters, and having causally connected events. This is directly opposite of the approach I've often seen that says "If X is what makes something an RPG, then more X equals more RPGish". I say if you go too far in any direction, you no longer have an RPG.

Go too far in the direction of the rules, or neglect character and setting and continuity too much, and you've left the RPG space of the Venn diagram and you have board game or the like.

Go too far in the direction of the "sim", and you have a literal simulation with no player agency, not an RPG.

Go too far in the direction of "story", abandoning the notion of specific attached PCs as the avenue of player agency in favor of trading off "what happens next in the story" for example, and you have a storytelling game, not an RPG.


I'm not against players factoring in "what's interesting" or "where do I want this story to go" in their decisions, as long as their decisions and actions are still things that their character would and could do. What I am against is this notion that sitting down to play an RPG is inherently an act of storytelling, as opposed to something from which story might emerge, and that all players are doing it whether they want to or not, whether they realize it or not, etc... this attempt to tell people what they're thinking and feeling as opposed to listening to them. It's exactly the sort of smug arrogant nonsense that turned so many people off when Edwards and his little cult did it.

ImNotTrevor
2017-12-30, 10:02 AM
Max still hasn't defined story.

Which, ironically, is making this take start to veer towards the inverse of what he accused another poster of doing:
Rather than claiming that everything interesting about an RPG is part of the Story conceptual space, he's attempting to claim that NOTHING he personally enjoys about an RPG falls under the Story conceptual space.

To theorize, Max finds some aspect of personality among storyteller type people annoying, and admitting any sort of interest in that aspect of rpgs is tantamount to drawing some interconnectivity with them. I make this theory because he has been doing a lot of Us and Them and defining people into tribe-like camps based on little evidence.

Is it accurate? I dunno. It's just a theory.

Kaptin Keen
2017-12-30, 10:38 AM
No. A story is more than a sequence of decisions and events, and we can care about character without caring about story.

But hey, if anyone ever wonders why I get so cranky about "narrativism" and "story games", the attitude on display by the above poster, that self-serving attempt to claim anything remotely interesting about RPGs as part of "story", is a chunk of why.

Just because something is a useful tool or necessary element for your preferred type of RPG (or other game, some of these games leave the overlap area of the Venn diagram), that doesn't give your preferred type of RPG ownership of that element.

Just because YOU are deliberately crafting or telling a story when you game, that doesn't preclude others from playing without any storytelling at all -- including those who are deeply into character and setting.

Hey - thanks for skipping all the tedious bits and going straight to the personal attacks =)

A story doesn't have to be anything other than a sequence of decisions and events. And we can care about .... all manner of things for all manner of reasons. RPG's are different things to different people, but what makes an rpg something different from a tactical or strategy game is the story. Customization is as big a part of (some) strategy games as rpg's.

But I think you misunderstand me. I'm not trying to tell you what you do or should enjoy - or defining your games, or putting you in a box you feel you don't belong in.

RPG's are, as I said, two things: System and story. Without the story, it's a tactics game. Conversely, if you add story to a tactics game, you generally get something akin to an rpg. Not always. Not every 'campaign mode' is the same as 'rpg elements'. But often enough to make the point.

I think I can safely say that if you dislike telling stories, you'd be terribly bored with any game I run - and vice versa. I care not a whit about systems, except in so far as they serve as tools to promote the story.

But that's the point: We don't need to enjoy the same thing, but denying that it's all part of the game feels just a little strained to me.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-30, 10:56 AM
OK, but you lay out, in simple terms, what "telling a story" itself actually is?


Are we talking about "what is a story?" or "what is telling a story?" Those can bet two different questions.

I don't know if there are "simple terms". I'm trying to come up with a definition that doesn't come across as self-serving, and doesn't start more needless nitpickery. It's more than just a sequence of events, or a recounting of what happened -- more than just "this happened, and then this happened, and then that happened, and..."

The problem is that many of the definitions given here in this thread by those who want all gaming to be "storytelling" is that they end up laying claim to the everyday lives of real people as "storytelling", which is both blatantly false, and wandering off into the mire of postmodernist nonsense.

If an RPG character decides to do something, and events result, and he reacts, and so on, and that's "storytelling", then if a real person decides to do something, and events result, and he reacts, and so on... then that would also be "storytelling" under that overbroad definition.

Jormengand
2017-12-30, 11:03 AM
If an RPG character decides to do something, and events result, and he reacts, and so on, and that's "storytelling", then if a real person decides to do something, and events result, and he reacts, and so on... then that would also be "storytelling" under that overbroad definition.

I mean, real people's actions are stories if you tell people about them. And in order for an RPG character to do something, usually, you have to tell everyone about what your RPG character's actions are.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-30, 11:10 AM
Hey - thanks for skipping all the tedious bits and going straight to the personal attacks =)


You're the one who's asserting that you know better than other people what they want, what they're thinking, and what they're doing... you don't get to play the "poor me, I've been insulted" card.




A story doesn't have to be anything other than a sequence of decisions and events. And we can care about .... all manner of things for all manner of reasons. RPG's are different things to different people, but what makes an rpg something different from a tactical or strategy game is the story. Customization is as big a part of (some) strategy games as rpg's.

But I think you misunderstand me. I'm not trying to tell you what you do or should enjoy - or defining your games, or putting you in a box you feel you don't belong in.

RPG's are, as I said, two things: System and story. Without the story, it's a tactics game. Conversely, if you add story to a tactics game, you generally get something akin to an rpg. Not always. Not every 'campaign mode' is the same as 'rpg elements'. But often enough to make the point.


If you restrict it to just system and story, you're assuming that elements such as setting and character belong to one of those two, when in fact they're independent of either one. I can build a character in more than one system, and have the same character in more than one story. The same setting can be used for many stories, or no stories at all.




I think I can safely say that if you dislike telling stories, you'd be terribly bored with any game I run - and vice versa. I care not a whit about systems, except in so far as they serve as tools to promote the story.

But that's the point: We don't need to enjoy the same thing, but denying that it's all part of the game feels just a little strained to me.


I don't dislike telling stories, I actually write (just for my own sake so far) and have tons of worldbuilding done for multiple settings. I have so many stories in my head that I don't know where to start.

What I dislike is "telling stories" as a deliberate act in my RPGs, or the assertion that I'm doing it when I keep saying that I'm not.




I mean, real people's actions are stories if you tell people about them. And in order for an RPG character to do something, usually, you have to tell everyone about what your RPG character's actions are.


There is a difference between something happening that a story could then be told about, and actually telling a story.

And just telling people "given the current circumstances, this is what my character does now, with the intention of the following results" is not telling a story, any more than me reacting to the car in front of me in traffic skidding to a halt is me telling a story.

Part of this goes right back to the verisimilitude and immersion issue. Too far into the "game" space on the Venn diagram, and the characters don't feel like people who could be real, they feel like plastic playing pieces. Too far into the "storytelling" space, and the characters don't feel like people who could be real, they feel like index cards being moved around on a storyboard to create a work of fiction.

Satinavian
2017-12-30, 11:45 AM
I have seen the phrase "collaborative storytelling" mostly invoked to emphasize the "collaborative" part. To contrast it with play styles where the GM tells his story and the PCs are supposed to play the part he imagined for them to do.

Blackjackg
2017-12-30, 12:22 PM
Personally, I use the phrase "collaborative storytelling" when I am describing roleplaying games to people who don't play them and know nothing about them. When people hear that I'm playing a game with friends, they usually ask some variation of "What's the object of the game?" "How do you win?" "How long does it take to play a whole game?" and I need a point of reference to describe how roleplaying games don't work that way. Sure, it's possible to create a story out of anything, but with roleplaying games the creation of a story is the point of the game.

To those who suggest that what D&D produces is not a story, I submit that you are being pedantic and obtuse. The term "story" has a broad definition that includes stories that are written down to tell over and over again, that are told to others or repeated among the group, or that are experienced once and then forgotten forever. Any narrative or imaginal experience can be a story if it has some semblance of plot.

So yeah, roleplaying games are different from other games in that they have no built-in objective, no specified endpoint, and no winners or losers. I suppose that this definition also includes many video game RPGs, and I'm comfortable with that. Yes, it's possible to create a story from any game, from board games to collectible card games. Heck, I could give names and backstories to all the checkers on my checkerboard. But those games have objectives beyond the creation and resolution of the narrative. With roleplaying games, the point is to create a story, either because you want an interesting story, because you enjoy the process of creating the story, or both.

Now if all I wanted was a story, I could just write it myself and not involve any other writers, any pre-existing system or setting, or any form of random chance. That would just be storytelling. And that's a fine way to express yourself. If I understand Tanarii's definitions from the OP correctly, then this is just narrative resolution without emergent storytelling.

Most tabletop RPGs I'm aware of exist at the central overlap of a four-set Venn diagram representing the contribution of the primary storyteller (e.g., the DM), the contributions of other active storytellers (players), the contributions of the setting and system authors, and the contribution of random chance (traditionally represented by die rolls). If we really wanted to nitpick, we could break down which of the many possible junctions count as "collaborative" and which count as "games," but as long as the object is the creation of a story, then they're all forms of storytelling.

When I choose to play a tabletop RPG instead of just sitting down and writing a story by myself, it's because I'm interested in the ways the story changes when we include other storytellers and random chance; or because I enjoy the process of creating the story collaboratively; or both (usually both). This (again, if I understand Tanarii's definitions accurately) is the process of emergent story that makes collaborative storytelling different from writing a novel.

So, yeah. Storytelling because it's an activity in generating narrative; collaborative because it involves more than one person. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Millstone85
2017-12-30, 12:35 PM
I agree with Blackjackg.

When I told my old mother about roleplaying, the first thing she thought about was a part of her administrative/medical training where you simulate a discussion with a patient.

Not the worst "roleplaying" she could have heard about, of course.

And yeah, I said this one was about stories of magic and such.

Kaptin Keen
2017-12-30, 12:39 PM
You're the one who's asserting that you know better than other people what they want, what they're thinking, and what they're doing... you don't get to play the "poor me, I've been insulted" card.

The problem with internet debate is that everyone tries - deliberately - to misunderstand. Now, if you wanna reread my post and try to deliberately understand - rather than the opposite - then maybe we can talk.

Otherwise, thanks for your insights. Happy new year. CYA =D

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-30, 12:52 PM
The problem with internet debate is that everyone tries - deliberately - to misunderstand. Now, if you wanna reread my post and try to deliberately understand - rather than the opposite - then maybe we can talk.


No, I'm pretty sure I understood just fine the first time.




Nonsense.

RPG's consist of two things. Rolling dice and telling stories. Either of these things are possible without the other. If you're rpg'ing with the dice, there is an element of a game of chance in your collaborative storytelling. This is a variable: Sometimes it's more correct to state that there is an element of collaborative storytelling in your game of chance.

So at one extreme of the spectrum, you're all about the dice rolls, and at the other - all about the storytelling.



And what about those of us who value in-character decisions, characters with depth, rich and robust settings... leave chance for when there's real uncertainty... and couldn't give a tinker's damn about "telling a story"?


That would be the story of your character.



"What if I don't care about telling a story, but care about this other non-dice-rolling stuff specifically?"

"That's just story, you care about telling a story whether you realize it or not."

PhoenixPhyre
2017-12-30, 12:54 PM
Count me too as agreeing with Blackjacg. I end up explaining role play (especially trying to distinguish the tabletop version from the computer version) and use the collective storytelling explanation.

CRPGs are interactive, branching novels with better graphics. Fundamentally they’re being told a story, not telling your own story. “Open world” games get closer, but even those have a fixed set of interactions.

On the other hand, TTRPGs are only as fixed as your imagination. As a group, you’re creating the story as you go. Each player (including DM) has responsibility for a section of the game world, for which they act as decision maker and voice. The mechanics adjudicate conflicts between game entities and add randomness. This is both telling a story (deciding how the events will unfold, subject to uncertainty constraints) and playing a role (making decisions based on the pre-established characteristics of a character).

It takes a particularly narrow definition of both role play and storytelling to not have substantial overlap between the two.

Darth Ultron
2017-12-30, 02:28 PM
For instance, D&D often does have the assumption the players are just along for the ride. But there have been plenty of moments of collaborative storytelling. In my last session I ended up writing an NPC contact because the GM forgot to fill it in. Now this was ultimately flavour text, I did say this was but a moment, but we got a scene about buying bread at a bakery that we wouldn't have otherwise.

But this just proves my point. The DM does 100 things, you as a player did one.


While the DM may be making quantatively more stuff, since everything that happens in D&D games (or at least everything that happens "On-screen") involves at least one player character, or at least the player characters are present, or using some kind of ability they have to do something. The players are, one hopes, participating as much in the actual doing of stuff as the DM, at the very least between them if not individually.

Sure, there is at least one player there doing their 5% or less of involvement and storytelling or such. But again, that is my point.



1)
GM: "This is the situation"
Player: "I do this."
GM: "This is the new situation."

This is the classic way here, the type you find in games like D&D. The DM is doing just about everything, and each player plays a single character.



3)
Player 1: "This happens."
Player 2: "Then this happens."
Player 3: "Then this happens."

Now this is the other type of RPG, the anti-D&D type. Made to not be like D&D. And if you want to have a game with a group of players that all just tell a story together...this game is for you.


I might argue that your 1 and 3 are essentially the same thing, but on different scales.
"This happens" is another form of "This is the situation"
"I do this" is just a more limited scope of "Then this happens", as the "this" in this case, applies to a singular reference point, rather than a broader one.


The 1 and 3 are vastly different and not the game.

1.The DM is in total control and can say and do what they want. The players agree to this, not that it stops them from whining and crying later if they don't like something. And sure you can say the DM ''has to follow the rules''(they don't) and they ''have to do things that make sense''(they don't) or even the far wacky ''the DM can only do things the players agree with" (whatever). BUT, ok, lets just say all of that is true, the DM is following the rules, doing things that make sense and things the players agree with.....even then, the DM can still do whatever they want.

3.Is the random game of all players. Each player just says whatever and whatever happens and each other player just says whatever and whatever happens and on and on and on. And sure, the players have to follow the game rules....but otherwise they can just randomly do whatever they want.

Knaight
2017-12-30, 02:42 PM
If an RPG character decides to do something, and events result, and he reacts, and so on, and that's "storytelling", then if a real person decides to do something, and events result, and he reacts, and so on... then that would also be "storytelling" under that overbroad definition.

RPG characters don't decide to do something, after which events result. People decide to describe them doing something, and then people describe events resulting. These descriptions didn't exist beforehand*, people had to make them on the spot. It's the part where people are describing the fictional interactions of characters and/or setting where the storytelling happens. That part doesn't exist when a real person decides to do something for most of what fits in the category "something".

*Absent certain highly restrictive modules with a lot of boxed text run in the most boring fashion possible.

ImNotTrevor
2017-12-30, 03:57 PM
I think I'd say that rather than Mechanics and STORY, the split is in the Mechanics and the Fiction.

This is a tad more clear and doesn't carry baggage that will trigger overly enthusiastic naysaying and insistence that suggesting a thing might actually be story is a personal offence to them. (Which is silly.)

Characters are 50/50 splits between mechanics and fiction. The character sheet is their mechanical portion and the rest is the fiction portion.
Basically, if it has a number attached to it and gas an effect on dice, it is probably mechanical.
If you don't need the sheet for it, it's fiction.

Setting also has a mechanics/fiction interface.
Mechanics can inform, break, or enhance a setting.

Fiction is what the setting PRIMARILY is. It's firmly in the fiction side, but it interacts with the mechanical portion.

ross
2017-12-30, 04:55 PM
Really? It's certainly an emergent story, at the minimum.

This sounds remarkably like the elitist and wrong-headed claims that doing nothing but fighting and dungeon-crawling isn't roleplaying.

Correct, that isn't roleplaying.

Kaptin Keen
2017-12-30, 05:47 PM
...

You're so intent on picking a fight. I'm not going to give you one. Have a fantastic new years =)

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-30, 06:21 PM
You're so intent on picking a fight. I'm not going to give you one. Have a fantastic new years =)

Ah, the feign ignorance response.

If you don't want fights, don't go around randomly insulting people.

Jormengand
2017-12-31, 12:40 AM
Sure, there is at least one player there doing their 5% or less of involvement and storytelling or such. But again, that is my point.

Yes, that is your point, but it's not my point. My point is "The players are, one hopes, participating as much in the actual doing of stuff as the DM" and your point is "there is at least one player there doing their 5% or less of involvement" I'm sorry, but if I were in a 4-player party and less than 5% involved in the doing of stuff, I would walk. The whole point of D&D is that it's not just the DM telling his story of how the PCs went on the railroad all the way down to the DM's preplanned story. It's the players participating in the story, and actually doing meaningful things.

Kaptin Keen
2017-12-31, 02:55 AM
Ah, the feign ignorance response.

If you don't want fights, don't go around randomly insulting people.

I haven't insulted you. It's possible what I say can be read as an insult. That's not the intent, and I apologize. I should have phrased my reply more carefully.

Tanarii
2017-12-31, 09:45 AM
Yes in the sense that it's a different activity from Pratchett and Gaiman co-authoring Good Omen's.

No, because if they said "Football is collaborative storytelling" or even "Monopoly is collaborative storytelling" they'd be wrong. There's something different about the stuff that happens in many RPG's that is different. And it's important. Because of all their inputs stuff happens.

I chose Terry&Neill as an easy example of collaboration in authorship, but as both of them dwell on the importance, ubiquity and togetherness of story, it is quite fitting.Okay, there's a fair difference between games in general and role playing games. But that doesn't have to mean that RPGs are like stories. In can for ones with a narrative causality focus (meaning a focus on 'what would happen to make e best story'), but it doesn't have to. Instead it can be like real life: what would my character do in this situation. In fact, this summary by kyoryu breaks it down pretty well:


Again, I go to my three interaction types in RPGs

1)
GM: "This is the situation"
Player: "I do this."
GM: "This is the new situation."

2)
Player 1: "I move my piece in accordance with the rules."
Player 2: "I move my piece in accordance with the rules."
Player 3: "I move my piece in accordance with the rules."

3)
Player 1: "This happens."
Player 2: "Then this happens."
Player 3: "Then this happens."
---------------


I'm guilty of using this phrase, though here's my excuse and reasoning for why I'll probably keep using it.

I've played in a lot of groups with one or more new players that are fully up front about not understanding what they should be doing. Telling them that we're telling a "collaborative story" is easy enough to understand and it gets across the basic point of what we're doing.Yeah, I'd never do that, because it would lead to them thinking I primarily wanted #3 from kyoryu's list above.

I usually tell brand new players something like: the goal is to imagine if you were your character in the game world, with the special abilities the character has, and decide what you would do. This results in #1 from kyoryu's list above. Then as they become more accustomed to the game rules, I get into having them play more than an avatar of themselves, and imagining tweaking themselves a bit more by adding personality unique to the character, making it someone other than the self in distinct ways.

This results in what I think Roleplaying and RPGs are all about:
Tanarii's definition of roleplaying in a RPG:
Making decisions for your character in the fantasy environment.


Note I usually prefer "in-character decisions" (meaning the character is not just an avatar of the player's personality) but that is not required. What's required is a not-real & imagined ("fantasy") environment of some kind, and typically someone to imagine the environment to interact with & adjudicate the player decisions (DM, GM, ST, MC).


Just a suggestion - maybe you should listen to people and what they say instead of just telling them that their desires and preferences are factually wrong. You might learn something.This wasn't directed at me, but it probably applies in the case of this thread. :smallsmile: :smallbiggrin:

For starters, I'm learning there are some definitely people that mean actual storytelling when they say "collaborative storytelling", and not just "a story emerges, if we want to recall it or write it down the events after the fact". The latter being true for most any series of events, although certainly in the case of RPGs we create fertile ground for such emergent stories by seeding the starting environment appropriately. So some people aren't just regurgitating a specific phrase meaninglessly.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 10:02 AM
I haven't insulted you. It's possible what I say can be read as an insult. That's not the intent, and I apologize. I should have phrased my reply more carefully.


Kinda sucks to have someone insist that your thoughts and intentions are X, when you tell them plainly that your thoughts and intentions are NOT X... doesn't it?

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 10:08 AM
For starters, I'm learning there are some definitely people that mean actual storytelling when they say "collaborative storytelling", and not just "a story emerges, if we want to recall it or write it down the events after the fact". The latter being true for most any series of events, although certainly in the case of RPGs we create fertile ground for such emergent stories by seeding the starting environment appropriately. So some people aren't just regurgitating a specific phrase meaninglessly.


Then we have the flip side, where some gamers, including some who use the phrase to mean actual storytelling, insist that there's no other way to approach gaming and that it's always about actual storytelling -- and will even tell you that you're wrong about what's in your own head if you tell them that's not what you, personally, are doing.

"I'm not thinking of a story, I don't intend to tell a story, and I don't care if it becomes a good story."

"Yes you are, yes you do, and yes you do, even if you don't realize it."

:smallfurious::smallconfused:

Blackjackg
2017-12-31, 11:10 AM
Then we have the flip side, where some gamers, including some who use the phrase to mean actual storytelling, insist that there's no other way to approach gaming and that it's always about actual storytelling -- and will even tell you that you're wrong about what's in your own head if you tell them that's not what you, personally, are doing.

"I'm not thinking of a story, I don't intend to tell a story, and I don't care if it becomes a good story."

"Yes you are, yes you do, and yes you do, even if you don't realize it."

:smallfurious::smallconfused:

Have you considered the possibility that while you're insisting that you don't care about story, the parts of the game that you do claim to care about fall within the working definition of story that we are using?

Like if you said "I don't care about breakfast, I just want to eat waffles and bacon in the morning," one might be justified in saying that what you're describing sounds like breakfast.

I don't think anyone has been saying that the way you play the game is wrong, or that you're caring about the wrong things. I also like developing rich, interesting characters and vibrant settings, and making decisions for fictional persons. But those things are all part of the definition that I (and I think most of the other folks on this thread and in the world at large) have for storytelling.

Kaptin Keen
2017-12-31, 11:29 AM
Kinda sucks to have someone insist that your thoughts and intentions are X, when you tell them plainly that your thoughts and intentions are NOT X... doesn't it?

I've stated opinion. You've stated opinion. The difference is that I'm not insulted by yours. I haven't uttered even one word about any intention of yours.

And if that, once again, is insulting to you, then once again, I appologize. In advance.

Tanarii
2017-12-31, 11:34 AM
But those things are all part of the definition that I (and I think most of the other folks on this thread and in the world at large) have for storytelling.That's a great example of a meaningless definition for storytelling!

Those things are often part of storytelling, but they're also part of many things that are not at all storytelling. Thus, irrelevant to a less meaningless definition of storytelling.

For example, several times in my life I filled it with rich, interesting people and vibrant settings. But that didn't make living my life telling a story in any way.

Florian
2017-12-31, 11:40 AM
I find it hard to differentiate here, especially since some of the english terms don't transfer well to german.

As I see it, a "story" is a finished thing with a beginning and an end. It is about what happened to get from that beginning to that end, maybe also involving some narrative techniques, like an act structure along the way.

In plain mainstream roleplaying, it´s mostly the gm defining the adventure, which in turn will produce the story of how the heroes did x, y and z. What I wouldn't say, is that there is a marked collaborative element to it, because it´s simple the concept of the game to role-play a character (or troupe) thru it, using gaming elements to facilitate it.

To be considered collaborative, it must be a conscious effort to create a game that will lead to a certain story featuring a cast of characters, with the players also in the role of author and with tools to correct the ongoing happening or aimed for story / narrative structure.

Tanarii
2017-12-31, 11:58 AM
I find it hard to differentiate here, especially since some of the english terms don't transfer well to german.
IMO it's more a case of some people use English terms with specific meaning in a way that doesn't match the strict definition (one of which is closer to what you described), to other things. Which is fair enough, that's how language changes. The problem is the things they're being applied to are also things that aren't stories, so it can be confusing, meaningless, or actually inaccurate.

kitanas
2017-12-31, 12:03 PM
If, after you get home, someone asks you how your day went, and you tell them, are you telling them the story of how your day went? And if so, when was that story created?

Tanarii
2017-12-31, 12:06 PM
If, after you get home, someone asks you how your day went, and you tell them, are you telling them the story of how your day went? And if so, when was that story created?
Yes. It was created when I told it. That's a simple example of an emergent story.

kitanas
2017-12-31, 12:11 PM
Yes. It was created when I told it. That's a simple example of an emergent story.

Even if you are just recounting what you did and chose? Because I think that might be one of the divides here. Is a story of events created as the events happen, and simply retold later, or is the telling the creating?

EDIT: I don't mean to imply that there is a right or wrong answer here, just that these are different ways of looking at storytelling

Blackjackg
2017-12-31, 12:13 PM
That's a great example of a meaningless definition for storytelling!

Those things are often part of storytelling, but they're also part of many things that are not at all storytelling. Thus, irrelevant to a less meaningless definition of storytelling.

For example, several times in my life I filled it with rich, interesting people and vibrant settings. But that didn't make living my life telling a story in any way.

I disagree with the implication that because a definition is broadly applicable, it must be meaningless. Pretty much everything around us is matter, but that doesn't mean matter is a meaningless term. Maybe it doesn't bear mentioning all the time, but when someone says "I don't like matter," it's not unreasonable to remind them that all their favorite stuff is made out of it.

Ok, I can acknowledge that even with my fairly broad definition of story, it is possible to create settings and characters without it being a form of storytelling. I could paint a picture, or write a character synopsis; create a static work. But the moment that something happens in that scene, or the character does something, that is a story. It could be a good story, or a bad story, or a pointless story, but it is by any reasonable definition a story.

When I choose to share my characters and settings in the form of a tabletop roleplaying game instead of as a painting or synopsis, it is because the story is, on some level, the point. I feel that these things are most interesting when they are presented in a particular order, or interacted with in some way. If you can suggest another reason someone might choose the RPG medium over any other that does not describe the creation of some kind of narrative, I'd be interested to hear it, because I am wracking my brains trying to think of one.

Knaight
2017-12-31, 12:13 PM
That's a great example of a meaningless definition for storytelling!

Those things are often part of storytelling, but they're also part of many things that are not at all storytelling. Thus, irrelevant to a less meaningless definition of storytelling.

For example, several times in my life I filled it with rich, interesting people and vibrant settings. But that didn't make living my life telling a story in any way.

If you use only part of the given definition you can make a broader category that includes other terms, yes. In this case it comes from omitting the "developing" part and the making decisions for the characters, both of which are essential parts of the definition. Also omitted was the implication of fiction.

On top of that, you're applying an excessive requirement here. A word isn't meaningless if it has a definition that isn't perfectly precise, and outside of math definitions generally fail to meet that standard.

Aliquid
2017-12-31, 12:17 PM
That's a great example of a meaningless definition for storytelling!

Those things are often part of storytelling, but they're also part of many things that are not at all storytelling. Thus, irrelevant to a less meaningless definition of storytelling.

For example, several times in my life I filled it with rich, interesting people and vibrant settings. But that didn't make living my life telling a story in any way.So if I read a biography, I’m not reading a story?

Living your life isn’t “telling a story”. But it is a story waiting to be told.

The difference with the RPG and your life experiences is that with an RPG we are actively “telling” the entire time we play.

So, no those things don’t make a story in and of themselves. They become a story when you narrate them.

Tanarii
2017-12-31, 12:17 PM
Even if you are just recounting what you did and chose? Because I think that might be one of the divides here. Is a story of events created as the events happen, and simply retold later, or is the telling the creating?The telling is the creating. I assure you that as I live my life, I am neither living nor creating a story.


The difference with the RPG and your life experiences is that with an RPG we are actively “telling” the entire time we play.
Not necessarily. It's entirely possible to play an RPG by making decisions as your character, and not telling anything. However, I agree that's a major diffence between life and an RPG. It is possible to tell what happens directly, and it's also possible for the GM (or whatever) and even players to resolve with an eye to what will make a good story.

My argument is not that it's not possible to tell stories of life's or an RPG games events after the fact, clearly you can do that, it's emergent storytelling. Similarly, you can play with narrative resolution, the GM keeps an eye towards what will make a good story. Or narrative mechanics giving player control over things that would normally be the GMs realm of influence.

But those things are not required, nor are they, in my opinion, typically what people mean when they trot out "Collaborative storytelling" as a description on an RPG.

Blackjackg
2017-12-31, 12:25 PM
The telling is the creating. I assure you that as I live my life, I am neither living nor creating a story.

Ok, maybe I'm being the psychological nitpicker on this, but I can guarantee that you are. We all tell ourselves stories about our lives constantly. When I reflect on my past, or make predictions about how my future will go, I am creating a story, if only for myself. Seriously, there's a whole branch of psychotherapy built around this. Even that bit up there, where you say "as I live my life, I am neither living nor creating a story" is a story.

Tanarii
2017-12-31, 12:28 PM
Ok, maybe I'm being the psychological quibbler on this, but I can guarantee that you are. I am not. And don't you DARE try to tell me I am.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 12:40 PM
Have you considered the possibility that while you're insisting that you don't care about story, the parts of the game that you do claim to care about fall within the working definition of story that we are using?

Like if you said "I don't care about breakfast, I just want to eat waffles and bacon in the morning," one might be justified in saying that what you're describing sounds like breakfast.


What some on this thread are saying is "I eat waffles as part of my breakfast, therefore if you have chicken and waffles for dinner, you're actually having breakfast, even if you've been up for 12 hours and already ate twice."




I don't think anyone has been saying that the way you play the game is wrong, or that you're caring about the wrong things. I also like developing rich, interesting characters and vibrant settings, and making decisions for fictional persons. But those things are all part of the definition that I (and I think most of the other folks on this thread and in the world at large) have for storytelling.


Here's where I'm coming from:

There's no intention to tell a story.

There's no concern about the quality of story, even one that might emerge post-session or post-campaign.

There's no concern for plotting, pacing, structure, tension, "try-fail cycles", maintaining the validity of the antagonists as real threats, or other elements of story.

If the PC has a chance to accomplish their goal or defeat their enemy in the first session, they're going to take it, "story arc" and "drama" be damned.

And I really dislike "narrative" mechanics (might not even be fair to call them that, given all the discussion we've had about "narrative" vs "narrative") that attempt to emulate genre or give the players control of events outside their PCs' interaction with the setting and NPCs.



Ok, maybe I'm being the psychological nitpicker on this, but I can guarantee that you are. We all tell ourselves stories about our lives constantly. When I reflect on my past, or make predictions about how my future will go, I am creating a story, if only for myself. Seriously, there's a whole branch of psychotherapy built around this. Even that bit up there, where you say "as I live my life, I am neither living nor creating a story" is a story.

Nonsense.

And deeply, deeply insulting.

Blackjackg
2017-12-31, 12:40 PM
I am not. And don't you DARE try to tell me I am.

...Dang, you got scary there.

I'll refrain from commenting on your experience. How you perceive the living of your life is your business.

I can say that I, along with every other person I have ever met, am in a near-constant process of storytelling with myself.

So, to sum up my perspective on this before I bail and get on with my day:

1. Storytelling is a broadly defined process that exists in a great meany of the things that we do.
2. Tabletop RPGs are collaborative storytelling games not because they are the only form of collaborative storytelling that we do, nor because collaborative storytelling is their sole defining feature, but because that is their primary purpose and the category of games that they fall into.

I'll add to that that because the concept of collaborative storytelling is so broad, the phrase doesn't necessarily contain a whole lot of information. So there are many contexts in which it might be used, in which a listener would then be justified in asking "So What?" But that doesn't make it meaningless. Just unspecific.

Aliquid
2017-12-31, 12:40 PM
I am not. And don't you DARE try to tell me I am.first off, this has nothing to do with you personally, so I find it odd that you are affronted by the statement. It is about people’s definition of the word. By their definition everyone’s life is a story. You might as well say “how dare you suggest that I exist”

ImNotTrevor
2017-12-31, 12:42 PM
I am not. And don't you DARE try to tell me I am.

Wow. Needlessly hostile, much?

Let's do an experiment:

1. You are driving down the freeway, about to take an exit. Suddenly you are cut off by red truck with raised suspension and a confederate flag on the back. Why did they cut you off?

2. You are driving down the freeway, about to take an exit. Suddenly you are cut off by a lincoln sedan being driven by an old man. Why did he cut you off?

3. You are driving down the freeway, about to take an exit. Suddenly you are cut off by an ambulance with its lights off. Why did they cut you off?

Pleh
2017-12-31, 12:58 PM
What I don't get is why "collaborative storytelling" has no meaning as a phrase, while "narrative resolution" does.

Feels like a simple unjustified bias between terminology and itself seems to have no relevance or meaning.

"So what?"

Aliquid
2017-12-31, 01:01 PM
Here's where I'm coming from:

There's no intention to tell a story.

There's no concern about the quality of story, even one that might emerge post-session or post-campaign.

There's no concern for plotting, pacing, structure, tension, "try-fail cycles", maintaining the validity of the antagonists as real threats, or other elements of story.

If the PC has a chance to accomplish their goal or defeat their enemy in the first session, they're going to take it, "story arc" and "drama" be damned.

And I really dislike "narrative" mechanics (might not even be fair to call them that, given all the discussion we've had about "narrative" vs "narrative") that attempt to emulate genre or give the players control of events outside their PCs' interaction with the setting.
Sounds to me that maybe you have a certain concept of what makes for a good RPG “story” (using their definition of the word), and that concept differs strongly from what a nerdy thespian university course would dictate a “good story” should be.

A good RPG “story” doesn’t need any of that BS textbook stuff like “character arc”. And if the players are engaged with the events of the game, then there is drama, and good drama. (Even if it doesn’t fit the narrow definition of “good drama” in a literary textbook)

Blackjackg
2017-12-31, 01:08 PM
Alright, one last thing because I appreciate your clarifying where you're coming from.



Here's where I'm coming from:

There's no intention to tell a story.

There's no concern about the quality of story, even one that might emerge post-session or post-campaign.

There's no concern for plotting, pacing, structure, tension, "try-fail cycles", maintaining the validity of the antagonists as real threats, or other elements of story.

If the PC has a chance to accomplish their goal or defeat their enemy in the first session, they're going to take it, "story arc" and "drama" be damned.

And I really dislike "narrative" mechanics (might not even be fair to call them that, given all the discussion we've had about "narrative" vs "narrative") that attempt to emulate genre or give the players control of events outside their PCs' interaction with the setting and NPCs.

I would not call plotting, pacing, structure, tension, "try-fail cycles," or maintaining the validity of antagonists necessary elements of story. They can contribute to how good a story if you choose to use them as criteria for assessing quality, but they do not define what makes a story. A story, by a basic dictionary definition, is an account of real or imagined events. That's it. There's no spectrum of narrative quality on one end of which is "story," and on the other end of which is "non-story." Stories are the whole spectrum.

You describe a character having a goal and the opportunity to accomplish it. That's a story. Whether it takes one session or four hundred is immaterial. Whether everyone enjoys the story, or no one, or just the person who gets to accomplish their goal quickly, doesn't matter because it's all story. Narrative mechanics (which I think is a thoroughly apt term, well done) are just one way of directing the kind of story and the way it's told.



Nonsense.

And deeply, deeply insulting.

Is it, though? I'm talking about something that literally every conscious, sentient person does. This includes me and everyone I love. To say that one is not doing it is to invent one's own definitions.

Tanarii
2017-12-31, 01:15 PM
Nonsense.

And deeply, deeply insulting.
Indeed. Others can live their life any way they want. But don't try to tell me how I live mine.

Millstone85
2017-12-31, 01:17 PM
It's entirely possible to play an RPG by making decisions as your character, and not telling anything.My character says this. My character goes there and attempts that. All these things only "happen" as they are being told at a table.


We all tell ourselves stories about our lives constantly.Yeah, my shrink is having me write a short autobiography in an effort to break the loser glasses I am apparently looking at my life through.

But here I would agree that we are way beyond the common understanding of "a story".

Aliquid
2017-12-31, 01:21 PM
Indeed. Others can live their life any way they want. But don't try to tell me how I live mine.HOW you live your life is completely and totally irrelevant to this definition of “story”. If you are alive, your life creates a story, no matter what you do or don’t do. The only way to avoid this is to not exist in the first place.

Heck. Your posts on this thread are telling me a story about who you are.

Pleh
2017-12-31, 01:23 PM
Is it, though? I'm talking about something that literally every conscious, sentient person does. This includes me and everyone I love. To say that one is not doing it is to invent one's own definitions.

More than that. Every living and inanimate thing can have a story. Material and abstract.

A story can be a simple recollection of a series of events.

Usually conscious attempts to story-tell will be best served to carefully craft the narrative structure such that the story produces a very particular effect.

But that's an evolved method of story. The primordial elements of story just involve recounting things that allegedly have happened.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 01:24 PM
HOW you live your life is completely and totally irrelevant to this definition of “story”. If you are alive, your life creates a story, no matter what you do or don’t do. The only way to avoid this is to not exist in the first place.


A story is more than a sequence of events, and there's a difference between the story told about something, and the thing itself.

Tanarii
2017-12-31, 01:31 PM
HOW you live your life is completely and totally irrelevant to this definition of “story”. If you are alive, your life creates a story, no matter what you do or don’t do. The only way to avoid this is to not exist in the first place.Then the definition must be wrong. Because I exist (or believe I do if you want to get technical), and yet I personally do not create a story as I live my life. I can recount a story based on events in it, but that's not why, how, or the purpose of living my life. To claim otherwise is insulting.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-12-31, 01:33 PM
A story is more than a sequence of events.

Why?

I've yet to see you or Tanarii give any fixed definition of "story". You say what it isn't, you fight others' definitions (which are in line with how I've always used the term), but you provide none of your own. That's not productive discussion.

It seems that you two don't like the word as applied to RPGs due to bad associations with a certain, very limited application style of gaming and are trying to hedge out anything that even uses the same terms, as if those are the only uses of those terms. That's fine for personal use, but don't claim we're using the terms wrong (or that they're meaningless) because we use the unpoisoned meanings.

Knaight
2017-12-31, 01:35 PM
Indeed. Others can live their life any way they want. But don't try to tell me how I live mine.

So any comment about people in general should be thrown out then? One can't say that people breathe air, because that's telling you how you live your life? One can't say that people excrete waste, because that's telling you how you live your life? One can't say that people have blood flowing in their body, because that's telling you how you live your life?

That's ridiculous. It gets no less ridiculous for any host of psychological behaviors. People recognize patterns. People learn. People sort that new information into various models by recognizing patterns among that information. Bluster about how DARE people tell you how you live your life is irrelevant here.


Then the definition must be wrong. Because I exist (or believe I do if you want to get technical), and yet I personally do not create a story as I live my life. I can recount a story based on events in it, but that's not why, how, or the purpose of living my life. To claim otherwise is insulting.
Nobody is claiming that you create a single story as you live your life. Similarly nobody is claiming that creating a story is why, how, or the purpose of living your life. What has been said is that you create stories.

It's much the same way as saying that you breathe. You don't take a single long breath as you live your life. You can choose to take a breath, but breathing isn't why, how, or the purpose of living your life.

Aliquid
2017-12-31, 01:44 PM
Then the definition must be wrong. Because I exist (or believe I do if you want to get technical), and yet I personally do not create a story as I live my life. I can recount a story based on events in it, but that's not why, how, or the purpose of living my life. To claim otherwise is insulting.unless I am mistaken, nobody here is suggesting that “creating a story” is the purpose of anyone’s life. It is just something that happens as a result of living.

Deaxsa
2017-12-31, 03:01 PM
I may have lost some of the point while reading the thread, but... Why exactly does it bother you that other people use a different definition of the phrase "collaborative storytelling"? Is it because they are misrepresenting the meaning that you have inferred from that phrase?

Assuming it is, Isn't that kinda like, the nature of a difference of opinions? You're attacking people's opinions (with your own as ammunition) and wondering why they're not agreeing with you. This seems futile.
???
:smallsigh:

Hope I'm not derailing the conversation, I'm just lost as to the point of the op. Are you making an assertion, trying to convince folks, stating an opinion, or something else?

Edit: or are you trying to point out a hypocrisy? This seems like the most likely answer?

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 03:02 PM
Alright, one last thing because I appreciate your clarifying where you're coming from.

I would not call plotting, pacing, structure, tension, "try-fail cycles," or maintaining the validity of antagonists necessary elements of story. They can contribute to how good a story if you choose to use them as criteria for assessing quality, but they do not define what makes a story. A story, by a basic dictionary definition, is an account of real or imagined events. That's it. There's no spectrum of narrative quality on one end of which is "story," and on the other end of which is "non-story." Stories are the whole spectrum.


As sometimes happens with dictionary definitions, the rush to be thoroughly inclusive of all usages reduces the word "story" to meaninglessness. "Events that happened somewhere sometime involving some stuff and/or someone" makes the word useless and pointless as it includes all of existence at that point -- it's a word that ends up meaning nothing by trying to mean everything.

By that definition, an RPG is "a story"... because everything is supposedly "a story".




You describe a character having a goal and the opportunity to accomplish it. That's a story. Whether it takes one session or four hundred is immaterial. Whether everyone enjoys the story, or no one, or just the person who gets to accomplish their goal quickly, doesn't matter because it's all story. Narrative mechanics (which I think is a thoroughly apt term, well done) are just one way of directing the kind of story and the way it's told.


Yes, by the definition of story that amounts to "any sequence of events", any sequence of events is a story. Which I guess is a great victory by the "story uber alles" side of this, but doesn't provide anything useful to the actual attempt to understand or explain gaming.




Is it, though? I'm talking about something that literally every conscious, sentient person does. This includes me and everyone I love. To say that one is not doing it is to invent one's own definitions.


Yes, it is insulting, because people are telling you "I don't think that way", and you're saying "you don't even understand your own mind, obviously I know more about than you do."





Then the definition must be wrong. Because I exist (or believe I do if you want to get technical), and yet I personally do not create a story as I live my life. I can recount a story based on events in it, but that's not why, how, or the purpose of living my life. To claim otherwise is insulting.


EXACTLY.

Crafting and telling stories is about more than going through a sequence of events -- it requires intent. If someone is going through their day without intentionally crafting a story, then they're not "living a story", even if a story could be told after the fact.

Cluedrew
2017-12-31, 03:03 PM
... This thread got very toxic very fast. And if you quoted this statement to pin blame on someone, YOU'RE NOT HELPLING.

Still I would like to take a shot at clearing up what I mean by storytelling. (I think we are good on the collaborative part.)

So say I am playing a fighter and I attack a zombie and deal 9 damage and then manages to block the zombies counter attack. That is not a story* as I see it, nor is stating the damage roles and defence scores as we resolve this moment storytelling.

When it becomes a story/storytelling is when we "present" it (not a perfect word, but I don't have a better one) to someone, even ourselves. In the context of this moment, that just takes some flavour text. "I sweep my axe down and... {rolls, sees zombie has 3HP total} tear a massive hunk out of the side of its chest." "OK it claws at you. {rolls} And is so weak you can easily stop the attack." "I push its hands aside with my shield as I prepare for another blow."

So by that definition, role-playing games aren't collaborative storytelling in terms of equivalence, but they often contain quite a bit. The ones I enjoy at least.

* A little bit of irony (for after the rest of the post) here it technically is a story because I presented it to you, quite purposeful to create some context. A very try and short story.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 03:09 PM
... This thread got very toxic very fast.


That's what happens when people go around saying "Your own experience of your own life doesn't matter, here's what's actually going on inside your head".

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 03:20 PM
Why?

I've yet to see you or Tanarii give any fixed definition of "story". You say what it isn't, you fight others' definitions (which are in line with how I've always used the term), but you provide none of your own. That's not productive discussion.

It seems that you two don't like the word as applied to RPGs due to bad associations with a certain, very limited application style of gaming and are trying to hedge out anything that even uses the same terms, as if those are the only uses of those terms. That's fine for personal use, but don't claim we're using the terms wrong (or that they're meaningless) because we use the unpoisoned meanings.

I've given elements required beyond "stuff happened", and I've explained why the "stuff happened" makes the word useless.

If anything, the poisoned meaning is the one being thrown around that includes anything that ever happened anywhere involving anything or nothing.


The problem isn't their definition -- the problem is that they're using a broad definition of "story" to claim that everyone who ever played an RPG was actively and intentionally telling a story.

Cluedrew
2017-12-31, 03:27 PM
I thought it was more "no when I say storytelling, it does include that" than "your brain doesn't work the way you think it does". I'm all for "Never blame on malice what can be blamed on stupidity, never blame on stupidity what can be blamed on bad communication" and since I can see what both sides are trying to say, and agree with what they are trying to say, depending on how I read what is happening, I would say it is mostly the third here.

Also, yes English tends to be very vague and often overly flexible when it comes to assigning words meaning. I word argue against this in a number of cases myself, but that doesn't change the fact that is how it works.

Knaight
2017-12-31, 03:32 PM
As sometimes happens with dictionary definitions, the rush to be thoroughly inclusive of all usages reduces the word "story" to meaninglessness. "Events that happened somewhere sometime involving some stuff and/or someone" makes the word useless and pointless as it includes all of existence at that point -- it's a word that ends up meaning nothing by trying to mean everything.

...

Crafting and telling stories is about more than going through a sequence of events -- it requires intent. If someone is going through their day without intentionally crafting a story, then they're not "living a story", even if a story could be told after the fact.

"An account of" is right there in the definition. It's the first few words. Something like it has consistently appeared in every definition given, and yet every time you two try to repudiate the definition it mysteriously vanishes from the definition being repudiated.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 03:50 PM
I thought it was more "no when I say storytelling, it does include that" than "your brain doesn't work the way you think it does". I'm all for "Never blame on malice what can be blamed on stupidity, never blame on stupidity what can be blamed on bad communication" and since I can see what both sides are trying to say, and agree with what they are trying to say, depending on how I read what is happening, I would say it is mostly the third here.

Also, yes English tends to be very vague and often overly flexible when it comes to assigning words meaning. I word argue against this in a number of cases myself, but that doesn't change the fact that is how it works.

It doesn't help that there's a serious conflation from one side of "things happening that a story could be told about" and "telling a story".

Darth Ultron
2017-12-31, 04:03 PM
Yes, that is your point, but it's not my point. My point is "The players are, one hopes, participating as much in the actual doing of stuff as the DM" and your point is "there is at least one player there doing their 5% or less of involvement" I'm sorry, but if I were in a 4-player party and less than 5% involved in the doing of stuff, I would walk. The whole point of D&D is that it's not just the DM telling his story of how the PCs went on the railroad all the way down to the DM's preplanned story. It's the players participating in the story, and actually doing meaningful things.

I don't think you get it.

Ok, the DM creates and controls the game reality, the setting, the game world, everything in the game world and really, just to say it again: Everything: Except a couple characters. So does that kinda of show you the 95% vs 5% split?


It's entirely possible to play an RPG by making decisions as your character, and not telling anything.

I do wonder what ''story'' everyone is telling with their characters? The DM makes an Adventure Story: The princess is grabbed by a dragon. The players choose to follow that story and save the princess. So that is the Story. So the story starts at ''the characters talking the job'' and stops at ''the characters do the job....or die".

Now as it is an RPG the players can..try..to do anything the characters can do. If the players are like ''Wez charge the dragon's lair! Attackz!" Then the story will (most likely) be about how the dragon killed the characters. If the players come up with a plan to sneak the princess out of the lair...and play through the game world and pull it off..then the story is ''how the characters saved the princess by sneaking her out of the dragon's lair."

Is everyone counting things like ''my character Joz attacks the kobold with a club before the kobold with a dagger'' as the player Storytelling? Is the player making in game decisions about their character suddenly ''a story''.

And sure, the tiny, tiny, tiny decisions each player makes to become part of the Big Adventure Story, the one made, controled and maintained by the DM.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 04:06 PM
"An account of" is right there in the definition. It's the first few words. Something like it has consistently appeared in every definition given, and yet every time you two try to repudiate the definition it mysteriously vanishes from the definition being repudiated.

That's not what several participants in this "discussion" are saying -- they are literally saying right here on the page that anything that happens, any sequence of events, is a "story".

Furthermore, some of them are asserting that everyone is always actively creating stories.




If you are alive, your life creates a story, no matter what you do or don’t do. The only way to avoid this is to not exist in the first place.



But the moment that something happens in that scene, or the character does something, that is a story



A story doesn't have to be anything other than a sequence of decisions and events.



A story can be a simple recollection of a series of events.



Ok, maybe I'm being the psychological nitpicker on this, but I can guarantee that you are. We all tell ourselves stories about our lives constantly.



I can say that I, along with every other person I have ever met, am in a near-constant process of storytelling with myself.



You´re basically kidding yourself. We're humans, were prone to connecting the dots and everything will create a narrative in hindsight.



That would be the story of your character.


So yeah, that's exactly what they're saying. "An account of" isn't entering into the story uber alles side of the discussion -- what they're asserting is that the very events are themselves are always a story, and that the very act of living is a story... that doing or saying or thinking anything is "a story". Which not only reduces "story" to near-meaninglessness, it also creates a backdoor to claim that all gaming is "storytelling" by conflating "a story" with "storytelling".

Furthermore, some are asserting that every person everyone is constantly in the act of storytelling, no matter what any one person actually experiences in their own heads.


~~~~



My personal beef is the "it's all about storytelling." No, it's not, unless you stretch the definition of "storytelling" to the breaking point, and make it so expansive that any human activity can be "about storytelling."


Exactly -- it's a definition without a distinction.

I'm starting to suspect that this whole "all human activity is a story" thing is getting into the postmodernist drivel that narratives supposedly matter more than facts, and that indeed we supposedly only have narratives and no facts at all.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 04:10 PM
I've stated opinion. You've stated opinion. The difference is that I'm not insulted by yours. I haven't uttered even one word about any intention of yours.


The insult is in someone saying "this is what's going on my head", and you replaying "No, you're wrong, you're kidding yourself, I know better than you do what's going on in your head".

Pleh
2017-12-31, 04:12 PM
It doesn't help that there's a serious conflation from one side of "things happening that a story could be told about" and "telling a story".

You keep assuming that a story must have a larger meaning in order to be a story.

This is not true. I can make up any number of meaningless stories you like. We can retroactively apply interpretive meanings to these meaningless stories and they will still be stories if we don't.

Saying this principle is universal is no judgment on anyone's life, just a consequence of the definition that story is a series of events.

"Everything can be related through story" is not the same statement as, "everything is story." Story is a means for communication and a person could choose to communicate nonsense rather than meaning. They're still telling a (nonsensical) story.


And human life has inherent meaning to humans, even if some people use that to guide their thoughts and actions while others don't. Therefore, human life naturally creates stories. It's part of why humans often struggle with the idea that nothing really matters.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-12-31, 04:16 PM
It doesn't help that there's a serious conflation from one side of "things happening that a story could be told about" and "telling a story".

That's just it. I, personally, don't see those as usefully different things in this context. As long as there is a connected series of events, there's a story being told. I see the universe as telling stories all the time--some fragmentary, some observed only in hind-sight, some more formal.

I don't understand why you believe that stories can only be told after, not during the events. Take serial fiction (probably the most widespread and popular form of fiction). In many cases, the end of the story (or even the later events!) are unknown to the writers when the series is first published. Or they're known in principle, but are changed based on feedback from others (readers/watchers/critics/etc).

Stories are almost fractal--there are layers of sub-stories in every story, going down several levels.

Take a long-running TV show, book, or manga series. There are multiple layers (starting at the smallest):

1a) The episode (chapter, etc). Often this is only a fragment of a scene, especially in anime, although it might also be many scenes. The time period covered is anywhere from a few seconds (Dragonball Z is a prime offender here) to thousands of years. In RPG terms, this is a session.

1b) The scene. Scenes too are of variable lengths, although unlike episodes they don't tend to start or stop in the middle. Multiple scenes might happen in an episode, or one scene might take multiple episodes. An encounter (social, combat, or otherwise) is the closest RPG equivalent.

2) An arc (character or plot). This is a set of scenes that all continue the narrative about either a plot point or a character's development. Multiple arcs might be in motion simultaneously. In RPG terms this is usually an objective or (sometimes) an adventure/module.

3) The sur-story--this is the entire narrative from start to finish. Includes multiple arcs. May or may not ever be finished (see canceled TV shows, unfinished book series, etc). The RPG equivalent is a campaign.

4) The setting meta-narrative--this is to the sur-story as an arc is to the sur-story. Each sur-story changes the setting; the meta-narrative sets the range of possible stories. Some settings lack this element (or only have it occasionally). RPGs call this the setting meta (OWoD, TDE, and L5R are notorious for having strong meta-narratives).

All of these are stories in every meaningful sense.

You're too caught up in formal definitions and can't see how the words are commonly (and rightfully!) used.

Kaptin Keen
2017-12-31, 04:18 PM
The insult is in someone saying "this is what's going on my head", and you replaying "No, you're wrong, you're kidding yourself, I know better than you do what's going on in your head".

Is that what I said, though? And once you assertain that, yes, it is - are you really sure? Do you get the impression, at this time, that I'm implying it is? Or could there conceivably be a chance of misunderstanding or miscommunication? Again, even in advance I'm willing to accept blame for any such things.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 04:19 PM
You keep assuming that a story must have a larger meaning in order to be a story.


I do? Where? I didn't say anything about meaning.




This is not true. I can make up any number of meaningless stories you like. We can retroactively apply interpretive meanings to these meaningless stories and they will still be stories if we don't.

Saying this principle is universal is no judgment on anyone's life, just a consequence of the definition that story is a series of events.


And as repeating noted above, defining story as "any sequence of events" reduces the word to meaninglessness -- it makes EVERYTHING a story, which is total nonsense.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 04:20 PM
Is that what I said, though?


Yes. It is. And you haven't been alone in doing it.

ImNotTrevor
2017-12-31, 04:38 PM
I do? Where? I didn't say anything about meaning.




And as repeating noted above, defining story as "any sequence of events" reduces the word to meaninglessness -- it makes EVERYTHING a story, which is total nonsense.

There are still many things that would not be a story. Here's a short list:
Flora
Fauna
Political systems
Colors
Science
Articles of clothing
Philosophies
Human bodies
Anything made of matter or energy.

Compared to EVERYTHING, Stories account for a teeny tiny fraction of what Everything encompasses.

Story is broad, yes. I'm sorry you dislike that the definition for Story is broad. But you'll need to deal with it. That's what it is. If you want to differentiate between sequences of events and other elements of Fiction, that's cool. We can do that. But we can't pretend that only the subdivided bits you like don't count as story if they still do.

I'm sorry Ron Edwards assertes dumb things a decade ago that nobody really uses anymore, but at some point you need tp let that old corpse stay in its grave for longer than 6 minutes before being dragged out as a boogeyman again.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-12-31, 04:40 PM
And as repeating noted above, defining story as "any sequence of events" reduces the word to meaninglessness -- it makes EVERYTHING a story, which is total nonsense.

@Max_Killjoy, since you've studiously not provided a definition, can I try to extrapolate one from what you've said? Correct me where I've gone wrong, please.

Define: Story, noun. A work containing the following elements:

retelling a sequence of connected events,
intentionally shaped into a coherent whole,
and containing one or more of plot, character development, setting, narrative, dialogue, or pacing.


Is this a fair (working) definition for your purposes? Please correct any mis-statements.

Aliquid
2017-12-31, 04:59 PM
If a series of events occurs and nobody records or recounts it... is it a story?

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Blackjackg
2017-12-31, 05:32 PM
If a series of events occurs and nobody records or recounts it... is it a story?

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Ha! I thought this exact thing.

A sequence of events is not in and of itself a story. It only becomes a story when there is a thinking entity there organizing it into a narrative.

A tree falls in the woods: Not a story.

I see a tree fall and say to myself "That tree is falling": Story.

I see a fallen tree and say to my friend "That tree fell": Story.

I see a tree and say "That tree is going to fall": Story.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 06:07 PM
That's just it. I, personally, don't see those as usefully different things in this context. As long as there is a connected series of events, there's a story being told. I see the universe as telling stories all the time--some fragmentary, some observed only in hind-sight, some more formal.

I don't understand why you believe that stories can only be told after, not during the events. Take serial fiction (probably the most widespread and popular form of fiction). In many cases, the end of the story (or even the later events!) are unknown to the writers when the series is first published. Or they're known in principle, but are changed based on feedback from others (readers/watchers/critics/etc).

Stories are almost fractal--there are layers of sub-stories in every story, going down several levels.

Take a long-running TV show, book, or manga series. There are multiple layers (starting at the smallest):

1a) The episode (chapter, etc). Often this is only a fragment of a scene, especially in anime, although it might also be many scenes. The time period covered is anywhere from a few seconds (Dragonball Z is a prime offender here) to thousands of years. In RPG terms, this is a session.

1b) The scene. Scenes too are of variable lengths, although unlike episodes they don't tend to start or stop in the middle. Multiple scenes might happen in an episode, or one scene might take multiple episodes. An encounter (social, combat, or otherwise) is the closest RPG equivalent.

2) An arc (character or plot). This is a set of scenes that all continue the narrative about either a plot point or a character's development. Multiple arcs might be in motion simultaneously. In RPG terms this is usually an objective or (sometimes) an adventure/module.

3) The sur-story--this is the entire narrative from start to finish. Includes multiple arcs. May or may not ever be finished (see canceled TV shows, unfinished book series, etc). The RPG equivalent is a campaign.

4) The setting meta-narrative--this is to the sur-story as an arc is to the sur-story. Each sur-story changes the setting; the meta-narrative sets the range of possible stories. Some settings lack this element (or only have it occasionally). RPGs call this the setting meta (OWoD, TDE, and L5R are notorious for having strong meta-narratives).

All of these are stories in every meaningful sense.

You're too caught up in formal definitions and can't see how the words are commonly (and rightfully!) used.

The issue isn't that I'm saying stories CANNOT be told during the events.

The issue is that others are saying ALL sequences of events MUST BE stories while / as soon as they occur, and I'm saying "No, they don't have to be, they only are if you're actively engaged in storytelling... and just playing your character in a game is not storytelling".

The reason I keep coming back to "there's a difference between events that stories can be told about, and actually telling a story" is because some are trying to use the (uselessly broad) definition of story, "any sequence of events", to then assert that anything with a sequence of events is active storytelling, by conflating "story" and "storytelling".



@Max_Killjoy, since you've studiously not provided a definition, can I try to extrapolate one from what you've said? Correct me where I've gone wrong, please.

Define: Story, noun. A work containing the following elements:

retelling a sequence of connected events,
intentionally shaped into a coherent whole,
and containing one or more of plot, character development, setting, narrative, dialogue, or pacing.


Is this a fair (working) definition for your purposes? Please correct any mis-statements.

It's getting there, and has the key elements of being more usefully constrained such that it doesn't just mean "everything that ever happened everywhere to anyone or anything" and including the intent to tell a story.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 06:09 PM
Ha! I thought this exact thing.

A sequence of events is not in and of itself a story. It only becomes a story when there is a thinking entity there organizing it into a narrative.

A tree falls in the woods: Not a story.

I see a tree fall and say to myself "That tree is falling": Story.

I see a fallen tree and say to my friend "That tree fell": Story.

I see a tree and say "That tree is going to fall": Story.


As far as I'm concerned none of those is a story, they're all direct or solidly inferred observations of fact.

Blackjackg
2017-12-31, 06:36 PM
I really am becoming curious, Max_Killjoy: Do you play tabletop RPGs? And if so, why?

You don't have to answer, of course. It's a personal question. But I'm curious.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-12-31, 06:50 PM
The issue isn't that I'm saying stories CANNOT be told during the events.

The issue is that others are saying ALL sequences of events MUST BE stories while / as soon as they occur, and I'm saying "No, they don't have to be, they only are if you're actively engaged in storytelling... and just playing your character in a game is not storytelling".

The reason I keep coming back to "there's a difference between events that stories can be told about, and actually telling a story" is because some are trying to use the (uselessly broad) definition of story, "any sequence of events", to then assert that anything with a sequence of events is active storytelling, by conflating "story" and "storytelling".


But you still haven't defined the key parts to your personal definition (which is very different than what everyone else seems to be using). You have a bad habit of doing this--you assert things without actually discussing them, while claiming that others are wrong by Max_Killjoy fiat. I'm trying to get you to actually commit to a definition that can be discussed.



It's getting there, and has the key elements of being more usefully constrained such that it doesn't just mean "everything that ever happened everywhere to anyone or anything" and including the intent to tell a story.

"Getting there" isn't good enough. Can we agree to analyze this definition, or should it change? And if it should, how, specifically. Without agreed on definitions, this is just a "I shot you!" "No you didn't!" back-and-forth.

Kaptin Keen
2017-12-31, 06:51 PM
Yes. It is. And you haven't been alone in doing it.

It's not though. And it's like, no matter how many times I tell you so, you're so locked down on feeling insulted, there's not convincing you otherwise. I just dunno what to tell you.

Seriously. You should try. Go back, and actually try to read what I'm saying in terms of what I'm saying, not what you're hearing. It's a basic trait of communication - sender/receiver. I promise you: I'm not trying to insult you. I swear.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 07:15 PM
But you still haven't defined the key parts to your personal definition (which is very different than what everyone else seems to be using). You have a bad habit of doing this--you assert things without actually discussing them, while claiming that others are wrong by Max_Killjoy fiat. I'm trying to get you to actually commit to a definition that can be discussed.



"Getting there" isn't good enough. Can we agree to analyze this definition, or should it change? And if it should, how, specifically. Without agreed on definitions, this is just a "I shot you!" "No you didn't!" back-and-forth.


This drives me crazy. I don't need to design a bridge to tell someone that an obviously flawed bridge is going to fail. I don't need to provide a definition to point out that a definition of "story" that includes the entire universe and everything that ever happened is a flawed definition that's not going to provide any utility and lead to nothing but miscommunication, etc.

Aliquid
2017-12-31, 07:17 PM
Can we agree to analyze this definition, or should it change? And if it should, how, specifically. Without agreed on definitions, this is just a "I shot you!" "No you didn't!" back-and-forth.Exactly

Unless we actually understand each definition of “story” being used and accept that people use different definitions... this conversation is as useful as a kid from Manchester arguing with a kid from Dallas about the shape of a football.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-12-31, 07:18 PM
I will contribute my (working) definition of "story":



Story (n): any set of one or more scenes that are causally or otherwise directly related to one another.

Scene (n): a set of one or more events with continuity of one or more of the following elements:

location
characters
narration
dialogue


Often contains a distinct beginning and end or a distinct transition between scenes.

Yes, this is a very broad definition. But it's a broad topic. Narrowing it further cuts out things that are clearly stories, in my opinion.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-12-31, 07:21 PM
This drives me crazy. I don't need to design a bridge to tell someone that an obviously flawed bridge is going to fail. I don't need to provide a definition to point out that a definition of "story" that includes the entire universe and everything that ever happened is a flawed definition that's not going to provide any utility and lead to nothing but miscommunication, etc.

But that's a huge strawman. No one's claiming that, for instance, a still-frame photograph is a story. It may be an element in a story, but it's not a stand-alone story. So you're being strongly hyperbolic. Which is another bad habit I've seen with you--it's all or nothing. Either people accept your (highly unclear and certainly unstated) definition or their being completely irrational and refusing to accept the "obviously flawed" (in ways you won't explain) nature of their definition.

This is exactly what happens when you discuss railroading with Darth Ultron. Just in more pleasant guise. But the same level of utility.

HIDDEN DEFINITIONS ARE USELESS FOR DISCUSSION.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 07:39 PM
I really am becoming curious, Max_Killjoy: Do you play tabletop RPGs? And if so, why?

You don't have to answer, of course. It's a personal question. But I'm curious.


I used to play in multiple campaigns, two or three days a week depending on what was going on. Then everyone I gamed with moved away, got married and had kids, just flaked completely out, or whatever.

Other than one session of Planet Mercenary at GenCon last year, I haven't played in almost a decade now.


Reasons for playing... exploring a character and their life, getting into their head and their motivations and reactions, seeing them do things I can't do and go places I can't go, immersion in other worlds... I love worldbuilding.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 07:43 PM
But that's a huge strawman. No one's claiming that, for instance, a still-frame photograph is a story.


I just posted a bunch of quotes from this thread with people saying exactly what you're accusing me of making up.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22710848&postcount=117

How are they not saying that everything that ever happened (which is the entire universe, since it's not a steady state) is "a story"?




So you're being strongly hyperbolic. Which is another bad habit I've seen with you--it's all or nothing.


Oh bullcrap. I'm not the one insisting that every person ever is always engaged in "telling stories", I'm not the one insisting that "story" means "universe", and I'm not the one calling people delusional for not thinking that everything is stories.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-12-31, 07:53 PM
I just posted a bunch of quotes from this thread with people saying exactly what you're accusing me of making up.


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22710848&postcount=117

Nope. They're saying that sequences of events can be a story (important distinguishing words in bold). That's not the entire universe and anything that has happened in it (which is your claim). That's not even close. None of those claim that facts are stories, only that stories can be created from facts (a very different claim).

I'm really really annoyed by attempts to make me shadow-box--to take the responsibility to analyze vague statements that change every time and are often naught but hyperbole and exaggeration.

There's a phrase that describes those who claim that a bridge is "obviously flawed" without actually showing their work (especially when other people with similar expertise claim it's just fine): ipse dixit. You have to show your work. Don't just say "no it's not" and dodge attempts to get you to clarify or even stake an actual firm position. That's bad discussion practice.

I can see that it is this discussion that is meaningless. Without a clear definition that both sides are willing to stipulate to, it's just a shouting match. Which is no way to enter a new year (if you haven't already).

Have a good evening and a happy New Year.

Pleh
2017-12-31, 08:16 PM
Everything that exists (at least as we understand it), even abstract ideas, have a cause for coming into existence. This cause and effect can always be related through story.

So everything is a story because everything has a story. This isn't meaningless at all, because it just says that everything has some minimal level of meaning, even if only that it exists (or else it wouldn't).

You can also say that everything that has physical form also has some finite amount of kinetic energy. That doesn't make kinetic energy useless or meaningless, but it doesn't also make it relevant or important to every application.

It's not that everything having story makes the idea of story meaningless. It makes the ubiquity of story elements trivial.

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 08:42 PM
Nope. They're saying that sequences of events can be a story (important distinguishing words in bold). That's not the entire universe and anything that has happened in it (which is your claim). That's not even close. None of those claim that facts are stories, only that stories can be created from facts (a very different claim).


If they'd said "can" from the start, we wouldn't be here.

But they didn't. They've insisted that it does and must -- that if you're roleplaying, you're storytelling. And some went so far as to say if you're alive and breathing, you're telling a story.

I've never said that no one is ever telling a story, or that an RPG session can't be a form of storytelling. I've said that I'm not telling a story... and the response has repeatedly been one form or another of "yes you are, even if you don't think you are." If it could have been accepted from the start that whether playing an RPG is also storytelling is a personal preference instead of some people trying to play amateur psychologist hour and assert that they know better than others what's going on in other's heads, we wouldn't be in this place.


I'll go back and actually quote the posts again if necessary, it's right here.

And oh hey, someone literally posted what you're telling me I'm making up right after you posted.

Emphasis added:



Everything that exists (at least as we understand it), even abstract ideas, have a cause for coming into existence. This cause and effect can always be related through story.

So everything is a story because everything has a story. This isn't meaningless at all, because it just says that everything has some minimal level of meaning, even if only that it exists (or else it wouldn't).

You can also say that everything that has physical form also has some finite amount of kinetic energy. That doesn't make kinetic energy useless or meaningless, but it doesn't also make it relevant or important to every application.

It's not that everything having story makes the idea of story meaningless. It makes the ubiquity of story elements trivial.




Ok, maybe I'm being the psychological nitpicker on this, but I can guarantee that you are. We all tell ourselves stories about our lives constantly. When I reflect on my past, or make predictions about how my future will go, I am creating a story, if only for myself. Seriously, there's a whole branch of psychotherapy built around this. Even that bit up there, where you say "as I live my life, I am neither living nor creating a story" is a story.



first off, this has nothing to do with you personally, so I find it odd that you are affronted by the statement. It is about people’s definition of the word. By their definition everyone’s life is a story. You might as well say “how dare you suggest that I exist”



Is it, though? I'm talking about something that literally every conscious, sentient person does. This includes me and everyone I love. To say that one is not doing it is to invent one's own definitions.



HOW you live your life is completely and totally irrelevant to this definition of “story”. If you are alive, your life creates a story, no matter what you do or don’t do. The only way to avoid this is to not exist in the first place.

Heck. Your posts on this thread are telling me a story about who you are.



More than that. Every living and inanimate thing can have a story. Material and abstract.

A story can be a simple recollection of a series of events.

Usually conscious attempts to story-tell will be best served to carefully craft the narrative structure such that the story produces a very particular effect.

But that's an evolved method of story. The primordial elements of story just involve recounting things that allegedly have happened.



I disagree with the implication that because a definition is broadly applicable, it must be meaningless. Pretty much everything around us is matter, but that doesn't mean matter is a meaningless term. Maybe it doesn't bear mentioning all the time, but when someone says "I don't like matter," it's not unreasonable to remind them that all their favorite stuff is made out of it.

Ok, I can acknowledge that even with my fairly broad definition of story, it is possible to create settings and characters without it being a form of storytelling. I could paint a picture, or write a character synopsis; create a static work. But the moment that something happens in that scene, or the character does something, that is a story. It could be a good story, or a bad story, or a pointless story, but it is by any reasonable definition a story.

When I choose to share my characters and settings in the form of a tabletop roleplaying game instead of as a painting or synopsis, it is because the story is, on some level, the point. I feel that these things are most interesting when they are presented in a particular order, or interacted with in some way. If you can suggest another reason someone might choose the RPG medium over any other that does not describe the creation of some kind of narrative, I'd be interested to hear it, because I am wracking my brains trying to think of one.



You´re basically kidding yourself. We're humans, were prone to connecting the dots and everything will create a narrative in hindsight. What you do is outsourcing the dot-making, nothing else.



Merely picking a certain type of character is showing a desire to tell a certain type of story. You don't make your character take out of character decisions for the sake of "the story". You make a character who will do interesting things which will lead to an interesting story.



A story doesn't have to be anything other than a sequence of decisions and events. And we can care about .... all manner of things for all manner of reasons. RPG's are different things to different people, but what makes an rpg something different from a tactical or strategy game is the story. Customization is as big a part of (some) strategy games as rpg's.

But I think you misunderstand me. I'm not trying to tell you what you do or should enjoy - or defining your games, or putting you in a box you feel you don't belong in.

RPG's are, as I said, two things: System and story. Without the story, it's a tactics game. Conversely, if you add story to a tactics game, you generally get something akin to an rpg. Not always. Not every 'campaign mode' is the same as 'rpg elements'. But often enough to make the point.

I think I can safely say that if you dislike telling stories, you'd be terribly bored with any game I run - and vice versa. I care not a whit about systems, except in so far as they serve as tools to promote the story.

But that's the point: We don't need to enjoy the same thing, but denying that it's all part of the game feels just a little strained to me.



I mean, real people's actions are stories if you tell people about them. And in order for an RPG character to do something, usually, you have to tell everyone about what your RPG character's actions are.



RPG characters don't decide to do something, after which events result. People decide to describe them doing something, and then people describe events resulting. These descriptions didn't exist beforehand*, people had to make them on the spot. It's the part where people are describing the fictional interactions of characters and/or setting where the storytelling happens. That part doesn't exist when a real person decides to do something for most of what fits in the category "something".

*Absent certain highly restrictive modules with a lot of boxed text run in the most boring fashion possible.



My thing is, even if you're not thinking in terms of "we're going to set up satisfying character arcs and a narrative resolution over the course of this campaign that wraps up the loose ends!" ...in many games that don't end prematurely, this happens.

If a character has a goal, and over the course of the game they either reach that goal or fail at it, that's a character arc. If trouble is brewing in the kingdom and it eventually turns out that devils are behind it and the characters head to the Nine Hells, manage to defeat the demons, and save the day by the end of the game... That's a narrative resolution. The overarching plot of the game has been resolved.

No one at the table might be actively thinking in those terms, but games that have a decent amount of roleplay and a plot wrt what's actually happening in the game, rather than just "this is a dungeon crawl," wind up having... well, plots. Characters moving through plot makes a story. And in a good game, it's not just the DM putting the entire thing on rails, hence saying that it's not just the DM's story (and hence the fairly common DM advice that if he just wants the players to be on rails to tell the story he wants to tell, he should write a book rather than trying to DM it)—everyone is collaborating on telling it because the players are making decisions for their own characters, and those decisions impact what happens and especially at higher levels impact the game world itself.

Story emerges from characters interacting with and moving through plot. And because everyone is working together rather than the player's decisions not having any impact at all—at least, in a good game—that's why it gets called a collaborative story. I'm just not seeing the confusion here or the "well if you use this phrase you obviously just don't know what it means and want to sound smart while saying nothing." Or, to be honest, you repeated insistence that you can't actually have a story until after the fact. If people get up on a stage and improv a full narrative, with character arcs and narrative resolution, and people go "wow, that wound up being a pretty incredible story!" it's just weird to insist that, no, it was NOT a story, because while the events are emerging there's not actually a story, it's only a story when recounted after the fact.



Nonsense.

RPG's consist of two things. Rolling dice and telling stories. Either of these things are possible without the other. If you're rpg'ing with the dice, there is an element of a game of chance in your collaborative storytelling. This is a variable: Sometimes it's more correct to state that there is an element of collaborative storytelling in your game of chance.

So at one extreme of the spectrum, you're all about the dice rolls, and at the other - all about the storytelling.



Don't tell me that it's not there when it's right where I can quote it back as thoroughly and as often as necessary.




I'm really really annoyed by attempts to make me shadow-box--to take the responsibility to analyze vague statements that change every time and are often naught but hyperbole and exaggeration.

There's a phrase that describes those who claim that a bridge is "obviously flawed" without actually showing their work (especially when other people with similar expertise claim it's just fine): ipse dixit. You have to show your work. Don't just say "no it's not" and dodge attempts to get you to clarify or even stake an actual firm position. That's bad discussion practice.

I can see that it is this discussion that is meaningless. Without a clear definition that both sides are willing to stipulate to, it's just a shouting match. Which is no way to enter a new year (if you haven't already).



I don't need to tell you what something is to tell you what it isn't. I don't need to provide an exacting and bullproof definition of "dog" to point to a tree and say "that is not a dog".

If the bridge is missing half its cables or is sagging in the middle, I don't need to "show my work" to point out that something is very wrong.

I've already explained why I think the "anything that every happens anywhere to anything or anyone" definition is bad -- because as one of its advocates just pointed it, includes everything and everyone ever -- I don't need to give you a definition to nitpick and attack in order to point out that other definition is useless.

~~~~

If certain people had just said "hey I view what I'm doing when I play my character as telling a story" or "the approach to gaming that makes it the most enjoyable for me is as if I'm collaborating on a story", we all could have agreed to approach gaming our own way. But nope, when some of us said "we aren't storytelling when we game, we're just doing these other things"... the response from those certain people just had to be "Yes you are even if you don't think you are".

Aliquid
2017-12-31, 09:04 PM
But they didn't. They've insisted that it does and must -- that if you're roleplaying, you're storytelling. And some went so far as to say if you're alive and breathing, you're telling a story. You are misquoting.

If you are alive and breathing you are creating a story. You aren’t telling a story. Storytelling requires the telling part. A story can exist without the telling. And you can tell something that isn’t a story. “Storytelling” requires both parts.

With an rpg you are “telling” by communicating with your fellow players. And the thing you are “telling” is what characters are doing in a series of events. i.e. a story.

Darth Ultron
2017-12-31, 09:13 PM
The issue isn't that I'm saying stories CANNOT be told during the events.

The issue is that others are saying ALL sequences of events MUST BE stories while / as soon as they occur, and I'm saying "No, they don't have to be, they only are if you're actively engaged in storytelling... and just playing your character in a game is not storytelling".

The reason I keep coming back to "there's a difference between events that stories can be told about, and actually telling a story" is because some are trying to use the (uselessly broad) definition of story, "any sequence of events", to then assert that anything with a sequence of events is active storytelling, by conflating "story" and "storytelling".

Yea, I'm saying this too: you can't tell a story during the events. And this is even more so when your part of the events. And your part is small. And you have very limited control.

Everyone seems to be saying that if they have a single character in a game take a bite of an apple it is somehow some type of amazing story...when it's just an action.


This is exactly what happens when you discuss railroading with Darth Ultron. Just in more pleasant guise. But the same level of utility.


It does come back to the same problem: Everyone keeps saying Everything is Everything. Everything is Railroading. Everything is Optimzation. Everything is a Story.

A story has a start, middle and end....and a path that must be followed along from start to middle to end.

So in a classic RPG, like D&D, the DM is the one that makes the Story. This is a big part of the DM's job. The players, when they sit down to play the game, are playing though the story the DM made and the players have to stay on the story path to tell the story. The players can add details and spice to the story, but they are not creating anything, they are just adding to the story.

Cluedrew
2017-12-31, 09:15 PM
A story can exist without the telling. And you can tell something that isn’t a story. “Storytelling” requires both parts.I'm not sure if I agree with that. Is a story a story before it has been "told"? And by told I don't means told to someone else, but sort of formed into a chain by a mind who views them as a sequence. There are little stories I form in my head, and many of them never travel beyond there. And I am pretty sure those count as a story. But just things happening by themselves don't seem like enough.

I realized this basically comes down to "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" One of the answers I have heard is no, because sound is not the vibration in the air, but your perception of it.

The more correct answer is of course: does it matter?

Max_Killjoy
2017-12-31, 09:30 PM
You are misquoting.

If you are alive and breathing you are creating a story. You aren’t telling a story. Storytelling requires the telling part. A story can exist without the telling. And you can tell something that isn’t a story. “Storytelling” requires both parts.


Creating, telling, whatever, it still rests on the notion that any sequence of events is a "story"... or worse, the notion that our lives are somehow narrative in nature.




With an rpg you are “telling” by communicating with your fellow players. And the thing you are “telling” is what characters are doing in a series of events. i.e. a story.


And there's the core problem.

Sure, it's what you're doing... it is not however what some others are doing.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-12-31, 09:30 PM
I'm not sure if I agree with that. Is a story a story before it has been "told"? And by told I don't means told to someone else, but sort of formed into a chain by a mind who views them as a sequence. There are little stories I form in my head, and many of them never travel beyond there. And I am pretty sure those count as a story. But just things happening by themselves don't seem like enough.

I realized this basically comes down to "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" One of the answers I have heard is no, because sound is not the vibration in the air, but your perception of it.

The more correct answer is of course: does it matter?

That's the problem associated with inherent existence of intangibles. Like the number 4. Does it exist? In reality?

Stories exist. Of that I'm sure. When do they start counting as such? No clue.

Moving away from the more general topic, on the topic of stories and story-telling in fiction (specifically RPGs here), if I use my definition above of story, then story-telling must be something like


Story-telling--the act of forming stories by connecting events to form scenes.

Using this definition (and the definition of scene), participating in an RPG is participating in story-telling. Everyone is involved in connecting act with outcome--"he did this, I'm going try that. It worked. Yay!" or "he did that, I'm going to try this. It failed. Boo!" Scenes are formed collectively in the imaginations of the participants. Since the scenes are causally connected, a story is formed. Or, more precisely, many stories are formed. Because no story is single-valued. Unlike Euclidean geometry, through any set of causally-connected events one can draw an nigh infinite number of story-lines.

If you talk to little kids, they're constantly making up stories, even about jejune events. "I went to the store today! There were cars! The car went VROOOM!" is a grand story for a three-year-old. "I'm a dinosaur and I'm going to eat you!" is a common story told. As is "The floor is lava! We have to jump from chair to chair not to burn up!" In fact, often they can't not tell stories. They're hungrily connecting event to event, looking for patterns. Sometimes, I think we do ourselves a disservice as adults by crushing that sense of continual story-telling and making it much more formal and strait-jacketed than it needs to be.

kyoryu
2018-01-01, 02:21 AM
So, one thing people should be aware of is the fact that there's a subset of people (not saying anyone in this thread) that have decided that RPGs are "about" story and that all good RPGs should be "about" story in some way, whether that's the railroad-y type of predetermined GM path, or whether that's Forge-y storygamey kind of stuff.

And some people want nothing to do with either of those (or, in my case, recognize that they're valuable things that aren't all-encompassing, and games that *aren't* those things are still super awesome).

THe problem then is that a number of people use expansive definitions of "story" to "prove" that all games are "about story" and thus their style of gaming is superior, without making any attempt to understand what they're denigrating, or even accepting that enjoying other styles of elfgames is totally valid and cool.

So when you start talking about "everything being story", you run into that pushback from people that have dealt with that.

(Plus the fact that as soon as you say "everything is story" then saying that something "is story" becomes a meaningless statement.)

Koo Rehtorb
2018-01-01, 02:28 AM
Collaborative Storytelling as a term exists to differentiate games where everyone gets to contribute meaningfully to what happens from games where the DM aggressively dictates a story to the players who are supposed to follow it.

That's it, really.

Pleh
2018-01-01, 05:58 AM
Mathematics is a good parallel.

Everything is math, too, in exactly the same way. This is because math is just a way humans look at the universe to understand it and communicate what they see. It has little, if any, meaning independent from the things it is used to describe. That's all story is as well.

Everything has narrative because it exists and therefore has properties that can be described. At that point, it has the elements of a story or mathematical formula, regardless if anyone ever formalizes those elements or finds the communicable information useful or coherent.

Coming back to RPGs, what I've heard from the old guard sounds like original D&D focused much more on the dungeon grinding, where you didn't get too attached to characters because you expected most of them to never make it through from start to finish (I know plenty of people had different experience with the old ways, it just seems more common to be this way).

Inevitably, some players became inspired by an idea for a character that did have meaning. Like a pet, they named it and became emotionally invested in the story. Suddenly it wasn't okay for this character to be so expendable.

To me, the shift from crunchy rpG towards narrative CS is a natural evolution of the hobby. Blowing up adventurers is fun for a while, but eventually people tend to want to settle down and find a character who means more to them than that.

And again, these are indeed sweeping generalizations. They're directed at the apparent "average" scenario, if not any particular player. Much like the Far Side comic about the average family with literally 1.5 children.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-01, 10:47 AM
So, one thing people should be aware of is the fact that there's a subset of people (not saying anyone in this thread) that have decided that RPGs are "about" story and that all good RPGs should be "about" story in some way, whether that's the railroad-y type of predetermined GM path, or whether that's Forge-y storygamey kind of stuff.

And some people want nothing to do with either of those (or, in my case, recognize that they're valuable things that aren't all-encompassing, and games that *aren't* those things are still super awesome).

THe problem then is that a number of people use expansive definitions of "story" to "prove" that all games are "about story" and thus their style of gaming is superior, without making any attempt to understand what they're denigrating, or even accepting that enjoying other styles of elfgames is totally valid and cool.

So when you start talking about "everything being story", you run into that pushback from people that have dealt with that.

(Plus the fact that as soon as you say "everything is story" then saying that something "is story" becomes a meaningless statement.)


Thank you.

On both points.

Making RPGs "about story" is contrary to my enjoyment of gaming, and I've seen that argument-by-definition play out so many times over the years. I don't mind one bit if other players think of their gaming in terms of story, but I flat refuse to -- why should I if it makes the games less enjoyable for me?

It doesn't help that I've just realized this weekend that an RPG I so much wanted to love... was intentionally designed with a mechanic to incorporate "story structure" such as "try-fail cycles" (aka, "Yes, but...") directly into the core of the system, so that successful rolls sometimes pick up complications... so that if I really want to enjoy it, I'd have to game the system to get around that aspect, or just gut it out and not play the game as the designers intended.

Why the "it's story, you're doing story, you can't avoid doing story" thing, whether it's from the "Forge-y storygamers" you're talking about... or some of the participants in this thread?

OK, I kinda understand the older Edwardian push on that front, since "you promised me story" and "story is about exploring theme" were his bugbears... and they were largely a bunch of postmodernists who could only resort to quibbling over a bottomless spiral of obscurantist terminology. It was so important to them to make gaming "about story" that -- coincidentally or not -- they did exactly what some have been doing here, which is try to impose the broadest definition of "story" possible, and claim elements that aren't exclusive to "story" as inherently and unavoidably part of it (character, setting, etc). It went so far that Edwards at one point said that he wasn't sure simulationism even existed, and that it was probably just Game and Narrative.


What I don't get is why it's so important to some people here.


(And yes, once you say "everything is story", then it's meaningless to say that any one thing "is story"... because everything else is too.)

Blackjackg
2018-01-01, 11:08 AM
I think I've figured out at least part of where our problem is: We are using the term "collaborative storytelling" in at least two ways.

Some of the folks on this thread have been thinking of "collaborative storytelling" as a category of games (or category of activities that includes some games) which are largely based on the questions "Is the purpose and/or central mechanism of the game the production of a story?" and "Does it require contributions from two or more people to work?" If Story=Yes and Collaborative=Yes, then it's an exercise in collaborative storytelling.

I fall into this category, because I have needed to use the term "collaborative storytelling" to distinguish between tabletop RPGs and other kinds of games when describing them to those who don't have experience with them. From their replies, I gather at least Millstone85 and PhoenixPhyre use the term the same way. Probably a lot of other folks too.

Some other folks on this thread use "collaborative storytelling" to refer to a particular philosophy of or approach to tabletop RPGs, one which emphasizes high quality in specific (if not specified) elements of storytelling such as character arc, plot and pacing, &c, as well as requiring a level of equitability in collaboration (each person contributes approximately equally, each person's goals are equally important).

I gather the folks who use the term this way do so to differentiate games that are high in story quality and equitable collaboration from those that are bad at those things, or that emphasize different elements of the game. It seems like at least Darth Ultron, Max_Killjoy and Koo Rehtorb are using this definition, and probably a bunch of others.

I think this accounts for why we're getting so much malarkey and hostility around fairly basic things like the definition of "story": If one is trying to zero in on a definition of a play style and keeps getting definitions that explicitly and deliberately encompass the whole game, then those definitions will sound uselessly broad; whereas if you're trying to describe the whole game and someone is saying "but I don't play that way," then it will sound as though the person is being irrationally obstinate.

To state clearly my perspective, which may or may not be yours: A story is an account of real or imagined events. Yes, it's a very broad description, but it does not encompass the whole of the universe. I don't think anyone is trying to say that "everything in the universe" is a good definition of story. If you think that you are seeing that definition in anybody's posts on this thread, you can rest assured that you are misunderstanding their point. Pleh comes closest to actually saying that, and even he is only saying that everything has a history that could be understood as a story if anyone bothers to understand it (please correct me if I'm wrong about this, Pleh).

That being said, just because story is defined in a particular broad way, doesn't mean there's only one way to use it. "Storytelling" as a verb/gerund/adjective, as in the case of "collaborative storytelling game," can mean the simple act of creating or relating a story or it can mean the attempt at creating a story of quality. Collaboration can likewise mean simply working together, or it can mean working together in a fair and equitable manner. As Max_Killjoy pointed out, dictionary definitions can be so broad as to lead us away from common usage, and in this instance common usage is different depending on whether you're describing the category of game or the style of play.

I also wonder if this split is partly responsible for Tanarii's initial contention that collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase. If they are looking for a definition that isolates the style of play and keep getting definitions that only describe the game, it will feel like a pretty useless descriptor.

Ok, I'm making a lot of guesses about what folks have been trying to say here, so please correct me if I have misunderstood your intention. Or just shout out whether you're working on defining collaborative storytelling as a category of game, or whether you're trying to define it as a style of play.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-01-01, 12:04 PM
So, for me, collaborative storytelling needs two things:

1) It needs a game that's more than mechanics and stringing together a series of unexplained fights. It doesn't have to have nifty character arcs or pacing or any of that. It doesn't have to be a good story, but if you were to write the events down it would have to read as something more than a combat log.

2) It needs to have more than one person controlling what events happen in a way that's "meaningful". The DM does not get to dictate how the game will look to the group. It needs to involve meaningful choices from other players as well that change the game.


Or just shout out whether you're working on defining collaborative storytelling as a category of game, or whether you're trying to define it as a style of play.

It's a style of play. It's independent of system, you could do collaborative storytelling in Monopooly, if you really wanted to. That said, the system heavily impacts how likely that style of play is to occur. In practise you probably aren't going to see it in Monopoly. I think some RPG systems are better than others at encouraging it, but you certainly can do it in something like D&D as well, if you're so inclined.

Tanarii
2018-01-01, 12:11 PM
Sorry all about getting snappy. But when someone tells you how you're thinking, it's hard not to get that way, even if you're aware they don't believe that's what they are doing.


It doesn't help that there's a serious conflation from one side of "things happening that a story could be told about" and "telling a story".


And as repeating noted above, defining story as "any sequence of events" reduces the word to meaninglessness -- it makes EVERYTHING a story, which is total nonsense.


THe problem then is that a number of people use expansive definitions of "story" to "prove" that all games are "about story" and thus their style of gaming is superior, without making any attempt to understand what they're denigrating, or even accepting that enjoying other styles of elfgames is totally valid and cool.

So when you start talking about "everything being story", you run into that pushback from people that have dealt with that.

(Plus the fact that as soon as you say "everything is story" then saying that something "is story" becomes a meaningless statement.)
You guys are summing up my position very well. Thank you.

Although one thing I've learned is that in addition to those who push the meaningless "every sequence of events is a story" position, there are folks that use collaborative storytelling to use mean actual collaborative storytelling. And that's fine and dandy, especially if they're not using it to make a claim like "RPGs are about collaborative storytelling". Can be would be one thing, are is a totally different and wrong thing. Unless you're using a meaningless "encompass everything" definition for storytelling.

Cluedrew
2018-01-01, 12:27 PM
I think Blackjackg and Koo Rehtorb have hit some very good points, but there is one thing I would like to add, or focus on a bit. I don't think it should be viewed as a yes/no thing, and I think it is a bit more than that. Simply a game can contain some amount of collaborative storytelling, perhaps just an incidental amount as we provide the occasional bit of flavour text or perhaps the back-and-forth between people in the author role is the point of the game. The latter would be a collaborative storytelling game, the former could be almost any type of game.

Role-playing games fall into both (or either, depending on the system) groups. Old school dungeon crawls where not about telling a story. Questlandia (a random indie game I've heard of only once) definitely is, distributing the world building and character control decisions amongst players and it has rules for how the world is built.

To Tanarii: I continue to respect your ability to apologize. And I don't blame you for anything more than you apologized for.

Florian
2018-01-01, 12:42 PM
It might be easier when strictly separating the "what" and the "how". Less vitriol this way. I.e:

Can you:
- "Tactical Wargame" using "RPG"? Yes.
- "Collaborative Storytelling" and "RPG"? Yes.
- "Freestyle acting" and "RPG"? Yes.

I think it gets interesting to see what cannot be combined.

Pleh
2018-01-01, 01:22 PM
Yeah, I think you've got my point well.

Here's what I don't get:

"Stop telling me what I think."
"I didn't tell you what you think. I told you your thoughts matched a definition."
"Your definition is meaningless."

Let me get this straight, you're upset that this definition has somehow confined you... to an unlimited (or nearly limitless) space?

This would be a strawman if I were attempting to show what is wrong. I am trying to show what I do not understand. Your arguments sound silly because they have not been communicated clearly.

I believe this is why (wasn't it Pheonix Phyre?) was asking for a different definition from Max. We're looking for exactly where the breakdown is taking place.

"But I shouldn't have to."

Congratulations, you certainly don't have to do anything. But we're currently trying to converse with you and we are struggling to understand what you are trying to express. Refusing to do the work of elaborating your position leaves the whole discourse at an impass.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-01, 03:28 PM
Sorry all about getting snappy. But when someone tells you how you're thinking, it's hard not to get that way, even if you're aware they don't believe that's what they are doing.


And it actually makes it worse when the do not understand (or refuse to understand) why it's so deeply rude and insulting it is to keep insisting that they know more about what's going on in your head than you do.




You guys are summing up my position very well. Thank you.

Although one thing I've learned is that in addition to those who push the meaningless "every sequence of events is a story" position, there are folks that use collaborative storytelling to use mean actual collaborative storytelling. And that's fine and dandy, especially if they're not using it to make a claim like "RPGs are about collaborative storytelling". Can be would be one thing, are is a totally different and wrong thing. Unless you're using a meaningless "encompass everything" definition for storytelling.


One of the sticking points is that gulf between "can be" and "are" (that is, unavoidably must be).

I have no issue with someone saying that their gaming experience is like storytelling, or made more enjoyable by treating it like storytelling -- that gaming can be storytelling.

The issue is when I say "I am not engaged in storytelling when playing an RPG, and treating playing like storytelling makes the game less enjoyable for me"... and someone has to respond with "No, you're storytelling no matter what you say, even if you really think you're not".

Blackjackg
2018-01-01, 04:02 PM
The issue is when I say "I am not engaged in storytelling when playing an RPG, and treating playing like storytelling makes the game less enjoyable for me"... and someone has to respond with "No, you're storytelling no matter what you say, even if you really think you're not".

You can define words any way you like, but you must at least recognize that when you define storytelling in a way that doesn't include tabletop roleplaying games-- ALL tabletop roleplaying games-- you are using a definition that disagrees not only with the dictionary definition and many of your fellow gamers, but also the designers of the games themselves.

From the 4e Player's Handbook:
"A roleplaying game is a storytelling game that has elements of the games of make-believe that many of us played as children."

From the 5e Player's Handbook:
"Together, the DM and the players create an exciting story of bold adventurers who confront deadly perils."

From the Buffy the Vampire Slayer rulebook:
"Okay, in truth, a roleplaying game is about shared storytelling. You get together with several friends and create a tale."

The whole White Wolf/Onyx Path system uses the word storytelling interchangeably with roleplaying, as in the Chronicles of Darkness core book:
"Chances are you know what a storytelling — or roleplaying — game is already."

Do I need to pull out more books? Define whatever you like however you like. If it lessens your experience to think of your RPG playing as storytelling, you don't have to use that term. But surely you can recognize that all the things you do when you play RPGs fall into one common definition that people use of storytelling.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-01, 04:08 PM
You can define words any way you like, but you must at least recognize that when you define storytelling in a way that doesn't include tabletop roleplaying games-- ALL tabletop roleplaying games-- you are using a definition that disagrees not only with the dictionary definition and many of your fellow gamers, but also the designers of the games themselves.

From the 4e Player's Handbook:
"A roleplaying game is a storytelling game that has elements of the games of make-believe that many of us played as children."

From the 5e Player's Handbook:
"Together, the DM and the players create an exciting story of bold adventurers who confront deadly perils."

From the Buffy the Vampire Slayer rulebook:
"Okay, in truth, a roleplaying game is about shared storytelling. You get together with several friends and create a tale."

The whole White Wolf/Onyx Path system uses the word storytelling interchangeably with roleplaying, as in the Chronicles of Darkness core book:
"Chances are you know what a storytelling — or roleplaying — game is already."

Do I need to pull out more books? Define whatever you like however you like. If it lessens your experience to think of your RPG playing as storytelling, you don't have to use that term. But surely you can recognize that all the things you do when you play RPGs fall into one common definition that people use of storytelling.

No, the things I do when I play RPGs can be used in storytelling -- that doesn't make them storytelling, or make anything that's ever done with them automatically storytelling.

A hammer can be one of the tools used in building a house, that doesn't make anything ever done with a hammer "building a house". Throwing hammers at a target on a tree, or using them to put together a swingset, or to chase rats, is not "building a house".

Blackjackg
2018-01-01, 04:14 PM
No, the things I do when I play RPGs can be used in storytelling -- that doesn't make them storytelling, or make anything that's ever done with them storytelling.

A hammer can be one of the tools used in building a house, that doesn't make anything ever done with a hammer "building a house". Throwing hammers at a target on a tree, or to put together a swingset, or to chase rats, is not "building a house".

That analogy is not a valid argument. It is based on your definition of storytelling, which as we have established, is not the definition used by myself, by the dictionary, by a number of other people on this thread, or by the game designers I quoted above. I'm not asking you to explain your definition further; I understand it. I am telling you that my definition is different and valid, and encouraging you to accept that.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-01, 04:49 PM
That analogy is not a valid argument. It is based on your definition of storytelling, which as we have established, is not the definition used by myself, by the dictionary, by a number of other people on this thread, or by the game designers I quoted above. I'm not asking you to explain your definition further; I understand it. I am telling you that my definition is different and valid, and encouraging you to accept that.

I don't care.

If your definition of story leads you to insist that people who aren't engaged in "storytelling" when they're playing their character in an RPG are supposedly "in fact" storytelling, then it's wrong.

Simple as that.

It doesn't matter if some story or other might emerge from it what's going on.

It doesn't matter if your expansive-to-uselessness definition of "story" can be used, via conflation of "story" and "storytelling", to try to stake a claim to what we're doing, thinking, and feeling.

Some of us are not telling a story, or engaged in crafting a story, or playing out a story, or concerned with whatever story might emerge, when we play our PC in an RPG. No ifs, ands, or buts. We're not. That's all there is to it.

kitanas
2018-01-01, 05:16 PM
@ Max_Killjoy

I'm curious, what does the phrase "untold story" mean to you?

Blackjackg
2018-01-01, 06:51 PM
Some of us are not telling a story, or engaged in crafting a story, or playing out a story, or concerned with whatever story might emerge, when we play our PC in an RPG. No ifs, ands, or buts. We're not. That's all there is to it.

Go, Max, go. You just keep living your best life. Rock on.

Tanarii
2018-01-01, 06:56 PM
And we circle back around to the main point. Any definition of story or storytelling that is so broad that it says everything you do in an RPG, that the entire point of playing an RPG, must be part of storytelling, is effectively meaningless.

Just as any definition of it that says my living my life, or existing, is story or storytelling, must be meaningless.

If it's so broad it's universally applicable, you're using it in a way that doesn't actually define or communicate anything.


It might be easier when strictly separating the "what" and the "how". Less vitriol this way. I.e:

Can you:
- "Tactical Wargame" using "RPG"? Yes.
- "Collaborative Storytelling" and "RPG"? Yes.
- "Freestyle acting" and "RPG"? Yes.More to the point of this thread, another thing you can do:
- "decide what my character does in the fantasy environment" using "RPG"

There's a couple more there obviously.


I think it gets interesting to see what cannot be combined.Of the things you listed, and addition I made, I think you could combine a piece of all if you wanted to. Not necessarily at the same time.

kyoryu
2018-01-01, 07:14 PM
For example, the people talking about - with a straight face - the idea of driving as storytelling.

Now such an expansive definition of storytelling isn't necessarily "useless" or even false, however, if you're arguing that all human activity is, in some way, storytelling, that's more a statement about the human condition than it is about the specific activities you're talking about.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-01, 09:17 PM
Yeah, I think you've got my point well.

Here's what I don't get:

"Stop telling me what I think."
"I didn't tell you what you think. I told you your thoughts matched a definition."
"Your definition is meaningless."

Let me get this straight, you're upset that this definition has somehow confined you... to an unlimited (or nearly limitless) space?


No, your definition is meaningless because it doesn't convey any meaning. It makes no distinctions. It doesn't distinguish anything from anything else. If everything is "a story", then saying that something "is a story" doesn't tell us anything, it conveys no meaning, it fails to serve the purpose of communicating a distinct idea / concept.

It's aggravating because it looks for all the world like an attempt to invalidate what people are saying about their own experiences related to one word (storytelling, in RPG play) by using the broadest possible definition of a related word (story) -- it looks for all the world like some of us said "We're not storytelling, we're not 'doing story', when we're playing our PCs in an RPG", and the response was an immediate effort to find a broad enough definition of story to "prove" that what we're doing is "in fact" story, no matter what we think or what that means for our enjoyment of the game... until a definition so broad that it includes everything was introduced.

Hell, some of the posters even claimed that just being alive at all is "doing story" and proceeded to tell us how we think and how we experience the world, as if they have any effing clue in that regard.


Why is it so important to "prove" that anyone engaged in playing an RPG is "doing story"?

If that's not how some of us experience the world, let alone the act of playing a PC in an RPG in particular, why is it so important to some of you to "prove us wrong" about that?




This would be a strawman if I were attempting to show what is wrong. I am trying to show what I do not understand. Your arguments sound silly because they have not been communicated clearly.

I believe this is why (wasn't it Pheonix Phyre?) was asking for a different definition from Max. We're looking for exactly where the breakdown is taking place.

"But I shouldn't have to."

Congratulations, you certainly don't have to do anything. But we're currently trying to converse with you and we are struggling to understand what you are trying to express. Refusing to do the work of elaborating your position leaves the whole discourse at an impass.


I've elaborated my position plenty.

I even laid out elements beyond "any sequence of events" that are required for something to be a story (IMO, I guess), and the only response that got was "you're wrong".

E: Given the same set of events, different people very often tell different stories. There's a movie playing with this that's so famous that it lends its name to it -- Rashomon. This would seem to indicate that a story is not a sequence of events, but rather about a sequence of events. And thus that a story is more than just a set of events.

kyoryu
2018-01-01, 09:55 PM
Though I really think this is mostly an argument about definitions, as I've seen, in this thread, about five different definitions of "collaborative storytelling." And everybody seems to think that theirs is universal and generally understood.

I don't think there'd be nearly as much actual contention.

That's why I like actually getting down to *what you do* at the table in most cases.

There's a whole bunch of terms in RPGs like that, sadly.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-01, 10:05 PM
Though I really think this is mostly an argument about definitions, as I've seen, in this thread, about five different definitions of "collaborative storytelling." And everybody seems to think that theirs is universal and generally understood.

I don't think there'd be nearly as much actual contention.

That's why I like actually getting down to *what you do* at the table in most cases.

There's a whole bunch of terms in RPGs like that, sadly.

We've had some very enlightening discussions about the word "narrative" that I've tried to keep in mind, and thus us more specific terms or include short explanations.

kyoryu
2018-01-01, 10:36 PM
We've had some very enlightening discussions about the word "narrative" that I've tried to keep in mind, and thus us more specific terms or include short explanations.

Thanks, man.

I don't always agree with you, but I do find you're usually willing to listen to other people, even the ones that disagree with you.

Pleh
2018-01-02, 06:39 AM
Why is it so important to "prove" that anyone engaged in playing an RPG is "doing story"?

I'm having trouble understanding what bothers you so much about the idea that it is.

Again, your language seems to be based around the complaint about being pigeonholed with a definition that is too broad to have meaning. So you're being confined to a limitless space. Exactly what is your complaint in that? You're being netted in a net so large you might as well not even be in a net to begin with. So what are you complaining about? How are you having anything forced on you if the thing being allegedly forced on you explicitly has no effectiveness on anything you say, think, or do?

I wasn't asking for rigorous proof of anything. I'm trying to communicate that so far your assertions up to this point seem incoherent, like you're jumping to emotional conclusions before thinking the whole scenario through.

You get stuck on the semantics: "Everything is Story" vs "Everything can have a story." I'm a big defender of meaningful semantics, but in this case I really doubt that there even is one between these two phrases. Sure, in exact, literal interpretation, they mean very different things, but in idiomatic use of our language, they often are simply synonymous.

Both statements are doing nothing more than observing the "Nature of Story" as opposed to the "Nature of Everything." Again, Story is like Mathematics in that it is a means by which humans Describe things (to be distinguished from Prescribing things), which you are correct in pointing out that this will be dependent on perspective. Everything that exists has information about it that can be described through Story or Math. You could easily say, "Everything is Math" and you'd find quite a few people who would understand what you were saying without having to nitpick at the semantics (a few people might actually believe the metaphysical implications of all of existence being some relationship between different sets of numbers).

I guess what I think I'm saying is, "You're technically right, but not meaningfully right. You're getting worked up over irrelevant minutia."

A large part of the reason for this is that, just like Mathematics, there are several different levels to Story. Stories can be as simple as relating a sequence of events (through the storyteller's unique perspective, if pedantry must needs be), but often in RPGs we use a much more focused form of storytelling, much in the same way as a chemist uses a different set of mathematical formulas than an economist does.

Back to the application specifically into RPGs: when roleplaying a character resolving conflict presented by a scenario, we typically solve these problems with either Game solutions or Story solutions. My favorite core example is the Locked Door scenario. Do you bypass the door through mechanical implementation of your character's skill (smashing or lockpicking), or do you simply knock on the door to elicit from the DM more information about the Story surrounding the door? This can make new Mechanical Game solutions available (e.g. diplomancing the person on the other side into opening the door), lose other Game solutions (stealth greatly loses viability), and at least provides the scenario with greater information (maybe no one was on the other side to begin with).

Now, I don't really employ much concept of Story when playing the Munchkin card game, even though I've got some great emergent stories from some of the games I've played. Those games are pretty much all about burning the Story elements of RPGs to just make hammy, tactical decisions to maximize profit.

RPGs can be played the same way and there's nothing wrong with them that do. But that doesn't make "collaborative storytelling" meaningless.

Sensate8
2018-01-02, 09:53 AM
Back to the application specifically into RPGs: when roleplaying a character resolving conflict presented by a scenario, we typically solve these problems with either Game solutions or Story solutions. My favorite core example is the Locked Door scenario. Do you bypass the door through mechanical implementation of your character's skill (smashing or lockpicking), or do you simply knock on the door to elicit from the DM more information about the Story surrounding the door? This can make new Mechanical Game solutions available (e.g. diplomancing the person on the other side into opening the door), lose other Game solutions (stealth greatly loses viability), and at least provides the scenario with greater information (maybe no one was on the other side to begin with).

I'm confused. How is knocking on a door different to smashing it down (other than the obvious result)? Both are an action taken by the character and both are interacting with the environment in a way that changes the reaction of people who hear it. Did you mean that one requires a dice roll and has an uncertain outcome whereas the other has a fixed outcome because someone knows what will happen? Or do you mean that one doesn't have 'knock on door' as a listed character skill - in which case why not add it to the character sheet?

Pleh
2018-01-02, 10:16 AM
Well, in RPGs, you're either RPing or Gaming. You're either rolling dice or interacting with the environment in character. One of these is pure mechanical, the other is pure story.

You don't have more or less character skill at knocking on a door, but you could have it for knocking the door down

Koo Rehtorb
2018-01-02, 10:35 AM
You don't have more or less character skill at knocking on a door, but you could have it for knocking the door down

Untrue, sir. It is entirely plausible to have a character with more skill at knocking on doors.

In the Stulian Empire there are many different ways to knock on a door, all of which convey subtle information on the person's social rank and purpose in seeking entry. Knocking on this door in an incorrect manner will sour the man you wish to speak with's mood and make it much harder to gain needed concessions from him. Roll Etiquette.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-01-02, 10:41 AM
Well, in RPGs, you're either RPing or Gaming. You're either rolling dice or interacting with the environment in character. One of these is pure mechanical, the other is pure story.

You don't have more or less character skill at knocking on a door, but you could have it for knocking the door down

I personally don't see those two as dichotomous. The mechanical elements are merely the interface between the player and the fiction. It's how we translate from our world to the game world. You can do both at the same time (and usually do).

That's why I don't feel that storytelling and roleplaying are mutually exclusive. I know I'm constantly doing both--every decision made for a character involves both "what would this character do" and "would this decision enhance the story being told, or is it boring?" It's why I'll often (as DM) have characters make substantially unoptimal decisions. A furious charge rather than a careful withdrawal.

The narrative side also influences what characters get built. As a DM, I'm not going to build characters that are perfectly paranoid (a la the stereotypes of 3e wizards)--5D chess bores me (and my players). As a player, I'm not going to choose to build an incompetent, cowardly shopkeeper in a D&D game--it's bad for the narrative and the fun of the game.

For me, "story" elements play the largest role on what characters do at the large scale--what their goals are, what their broad-brush characteristics are, etc. Characters I make, whether as a player or as a DM, are going to have goals, plans, and character traits that contribute to telling a fun story/creating fun scenes. If my players want to fight dragons (and dragons plausibly exist in the setting), I'm going to make sure they get some dragons to fight. If they'd rather talk down the dragons and negotiate with them, I'm going to make sure at least some of those dragons are amenable to such negotiation. It's why I won't play a coward who just wants to go home and has to be dragged kicking and screaming (or bribed) to come along. That works in single-author fiction (the Hobbit), but is annoying at the game table.

The "roleplaying" elements are strongest when dealing with specifics--how would this character (based on established traits) react to specific situation X? But even then, there's usually a range of actions/reactions that would be "in character." Picking between that set is done based on story/narrative considerations.

This is modified by the knowledge that real people act "out of perceived character" quite a lot. One of the most startling moments for me was realizing that my freshman Calc II professor (a gnomish man that was the spitting image of Fidel Castro, but shorter), who seemed to be the type that would read complex philosophical works or solve math problems in his spare time, was an avid video gamer. Same with one of my colleagues (a rather refined older gentleman)--he plays Call of Duty and other FPSs. This is something that seems "out of character," but is really an indication that the true character has been obscured or concealed or is broader/more nuanced than previously thought.

Pleh
2018-01-02, 10:41 AM
Untrue, sir. It is entirely plausible to have a character with more skill at knocking on doors.

In the Stulian Empire there are many different ways to knock on a door, all of which convey subtle information on the person's social rank and purpose in seeking entry. Knocking on this door in an incorrect manner will sour the man you wish to speak with's mood and make it much harder to gain needed concessions from him. Roll Etiquette.

Ok, but you created more mechanical game by extrapolating with story elements.

You didn't bypass story with game. You created more story that justified the addition of more game material.

Tanarii
2018-01-02, 11:02 AM
I'm having trouble understanding what bothers you so much about the idea that it is.Like Max_Killjoy, I'm having trouble understanding why you feel the need to try and prove everything is story, especially when that's a meaningless and pointless definition, since it fails to distinguish anything.

The rest of your post seems to be an attempt to conflate "everything is a story" with "everything can be turned into a story by people", which aren't even remotely the same statement. Why do you feel the need to conflate those two concepts? One that is inaccurate and meaningless, with one that is an accurate statement about people's ability to create stories?



Well, in RPGs, you're either RPing or Gaming. You're either rolling dice or interacting with the environment in character. One of these is pure mechanical, the other is pure story.Interacting with the environment in character is not required to be story and any more than living life is.

You can do it in a way that is pure story, by making decisions for the character based on what will result in the best story. Or you can do it by making decisions as if you were that character with that personality in that environment, which has nothing to do with story and is instead 'method acting' roleplaying.

Or you can do PhoenixPhyre just said he does, and do both,

Cluedrew
2018-01-02, 11:57 AM
Like Max_Killjoy, I'm having trouble understanding why you feel the need to try and prove everything is story, especially when that's a meaningless and pointless definition, since it fails to distinguish anything.Probably the same reason you feel the need to push against that with your position. People* like to have there opinions recognized and, where possible**, vindicated. Especially considering the vitriol in the beginning of the thread and the aggressive tone which still lingers in some posts which tends to make people dig into their positions even more. I mean that is why I am here despite trying to stay away despite the negative atmosphere in this thread. I think with a polite "agree to disagree" this thread might have been over on page 2 or 3. Actually, considering this is Giant in the Playground, it could have just been more good natured pedantic arguing.

Well I already gave my opinions on the topic itself, so I will end here.

* Which is not to say any particular person, I am commenting only on a general trend I have observed in my life and people vary.
** Not that it being impossible stops some people from waving around a random thought they had like it already has been proven.

kitanas
2018-01-02, 12:01 PM
The rest of your post seems to be an attempt to conflate "everything is a story" with "everything can be turned into a story by people", which aren't even remotely the same statement. Why do you feel the need to conflate those two concepts? One that is inaccurate and meaningless, with one that is an accurate statement about people's ability to create stories?

As far as I can tell, the first is used as shorthand for the second. I personally think that "everything has a story" makes more sense, but I can't control the language people use.

Tanarii
2018-01-02, 12:25 PM
Probably the same reason you feel the need to push against that with your position.The entire purpose of this thread is a defense against people trying to use "story" to be everything and anything. Pushing back is normal when pushed.

Cluedrew
2018-01-02, 12:36 PM
Yes, it just seems to be part of human nature. And that was my point actually.

Sensate8
2018-01-02, 12:38 PM
Well, in RPGs, you're either RPing or Gaming. You're either rolling dice or interacting with the environment in character.

What happens if the GM plonks down the BBEG just after I move my mini round a corner. No need to say anything as he has the right mini; just some laughing. We roll initiative, then I roll my attack and announce damage. The GM does the same, back and forth we go until the BBEG has fallen and I have 1 hit point left. Lets assume the rest of the party are elsewhere. A major part of the plot has taken place and the adventure moves to phase 2 with the BBEG's boss accelerating his plans. In my minds eye my character was battling this mighty demon and vanquished it, but nearly at the cost of his own life. Nothing needed to be described because we both have vivid imaginations (and we've both memorised the Monster Manual :smallcool:).

Was that fight a story or game?

Tanarii
2018-01-02, 12:44 PM
Yes, it just seems to be part of human nature. And that was my point actually.
Also being aggressively offensive in a brand new thread and viewing it as defensively pushing back seems to be part of human nature on the internet. :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 01:00 PM
I'm having trouble understanding what bothers you so much about the idea that it is.

Again, your language seems to be based around the complaint about being pigeonholed with a definition that is too broad to have meaning. So you're being confined to a limitless space. Exactly what is your complaint in that? You're being netted in a net so large you might as well not even be in a net to begin with. So what are you complaining about? How are you having anything forced on you if the thing being allegedly forced on you explicitly has no effectiveness on anything you say, think, or do?


It's not about a pidgeonhole, or "identity", or whatever. It's simply because it's not factually true. And hey, fact matters more than narrative to some of us.




I wasn't asking for rigorous proof of anything. I'm trying to communicate that so far your assertions up to this point seem incoherent, like you're jumping to emotional conclusions before thinking the whole scenario through.


I'm starting with what I know to be factually true -- that some of us are not "doing story" when we play our characters -- and working from that.




You get stuck on the semantics: "Everything is Story" vs "Everything can have a story." I'm a big defender of meaningful semantics, but in this case I really doubt that there even is one between these two phrases. Sure, in exact, literal interpretation, they mean very different things, but in idiomatic use of our language, they often are simply synonymous.


In this case they have very different implications, both about reality, and about RPG play specifically.

One implies that story is an inherent aspect or property or whatever of all things, of reality itself. The other only implies that stories can be told about anything that exists or happens.

One implies that "doing story" is an inescapable part of how we play RPGs no matter what -- unless we resort to pure mechanistic resolution and a board-game-like approach, treating everything as the board or playing pieces in a detached or win-focused manner. The other only implies that story is something that can emerge, or can be a deliberate aspect of play if one chooses.

"Story" is subjective, "facts" are objective. There is a single set of factual events that occurred in the formation of the solar system. If one stretches "point of view" to include inanimate objects, then the "story" of the solar system's formation is different from the "PoVs" of the Sun, Jupiter, Earth, or some Kuiper Belt Object. Likewise, the same set of factual events can form a very different story from the PoVs of different people, or characters, involved in or observing the events.




Both statements are doing nothing more than observing the "Nature of Story" as opposed to the "Nature of Everything." Again, Story is like Mathematics in that it is a means by which humans Describe things (to be distinguished from Prescribing things), which you are correct in pointing out that this will be dependent on perspective. Everything that exists has information about it that can be described through Story or Math. You could easily say, "Everything is Math" and you'd find quite a few people who would understand what you were saying without having to nitpick at the semantics (a few people might actually believe the metaphysical implications of all of existence being some relationship between different sets of numbers).


This idea that "humans describe things via story" is not universally true... the idea that all things are "narrative" is a postmodernist conceit that has infested academia, politics, journalism, etc. Some people are most concerned with parsing out the facts than they are with forming or establishing or maintaining a narrative.




A large part of the reason for this is that, just like Mathematics, there are several different levels to Story. Stories can be as simple as relating a sequence of events (through the storyteller's unique perspective, if pedantry must needs be), but often in RPGs we use a much more focused form of storytelling, much in the same way as a chemist uses a different set of mathematical formulas than an economist does.

Back to the application specifically into RPGs: when roleplaying a character resolving conflict presented by a scenario, we typically solve these problems with either Game solutions or Story solutions. My favorite core example is the Locked Door scenario. Do you bypass the door through mechanical implementation of your character's skill (smashing or lockpicking), or do you simply knock on the door to elicit from the DM more information about the Story surrounding the door? This can make new Mechanical Game solutions available (e.g. diplomancing the person on the other side into opening the door), lose other Game solutions (stealth greatly loses viability), and at least provides the scenario with greater information (maybe no one was on the other side to begin with).

Now, I don't really employ much concept of Story when playing the Munchkin card game, even though I've got some great emergent stories from some of the games I've played. Those games are pretty much all about burning the Story elements of RPGs to just make hammy, tactical decisions to maximize profit.

RPGs can be played the same way and there's nothing wrong with them that do. But that doesn't make "collaborative storytelling" meaningless.




Well, in RPGs, you're either RPing or Gaming. You're either rolling dice or interacting with the environment in character. One of these is pure mechanical, the other is pure story.


That is a false dichotomy.

The two are not a binary. An in-character interaction with the environment can be also be mapped into a mechanical determination or resolution (automatic success, dice or other mechanic, automatic failure, spend some resource to succeed, whatever), and the result of a mechanical determination or resolution can in some/many instances include an in-character element.

The two should be (IMO, from my sim-leaning perspective) synchronous, not dichotomous.


Now, to bring this back to the question of "story" vs "character":



I personally don't see those two as dichotomous. The mechanical elements are merely the interface between the player and the fiction. It's how we translate from our world to the game world. You can do both at the same time (and usually do).

That's why I don't feel that storytelling and roleplaying are mutually exclusive. I know I'm constantly doing both--every decision made for a character involves both "what would this character do" and "would this decision enhance the story being told, or is it boring?" It's why I'll often (as DM) have characters make substantially unoptimal decisions. A furious charge rather than a careful withdrawal.

The narrative side also influences what characters get built. As a DM, I'm not going to build characters that are perfectly paranoid (a la the stereotypes of 3e wizards)--5D chess bores me (and my players). As a player, I'm not going to choose to build an incompetent, cowardly shopkeeper in a D&D game--it's bad for the narrative and the fun of the game.

For me, "story" elements play the largest role on what characters do at the large scale--what their goals are, what their broad-brush characteristics are, etc. Characters I make, whether as a player or as a DM, are going to have goals, plans, and character traits that contribute to telling a fun story/creating fun scenes. If my players want to fight dragons (and dragons plausibly exist in the setting), I'm going to make sure they get some dragons to fight. If they'd rather talk down the dragons and negotiate with them, I'm going to make sure at least some of those dragons are amenable to such negotiation. It's why I won't play a coward who just wants to go home and has to be dragged kicking and screaming (or bribed) to come along. That works in single-author fiction (the Hobbit), but is annoying at the game table.

The "roleplaying" elements are strongest when dealing with specifics--how would this character (based on established traits) react to specific situation X? But even then, there's usually a range of actions/reactions that would be "in character." Picking between that set is done based on story/narrative considerations.

This is modified by the knowledge that real people act "out of perceived character" quite a lot. One of the most startling moments for me was realizing that my freshman Calc II professor (a gnomish man that was the spitting image of Fidel Castro, but shorter), who seemed to be the type that would read complex philosophical works or solve math problems in his spare time, was an avid video gamer. Same with one of my colleagues (a rather refined older gentleman)--he plays Call of Duty and other FPSs. This is something that seems "out of character," but is really an indication that the true character has been obscured or concealed or is broader/more nuanced than previously thought.

That second paragraph briefly touches on what I mean when I say that I "don't do story", but then the subsequent paragraphs seems to conflate "narrative concerns" with "concen for the other players' enjoyment".

When I'm deciding what characters I might want to play and narrowing down to one, the limits I consider are things like the setting (which is not "owned by" story), and the power level, and what the other players are making, and what sort of challenges are likely, and so on... it has nothing to do with "what sort of story is going to be told" or "what theme do we want to explore" or "what sort of arc do I want this character to go through"...

Likelywise, when I'm deciding what the characters reactions will be be, what their decisions will be, etc, "what effect will this have on the story" has ZERO impact on my decisions. I'll avoid actions that actively ruin the game for other players, but that's it -- everything else is based strictly on the what I think the character would do. Let me be clear here -- "will this be more 'interesting'?" or "will this make for a better or worse 'character arc'?" NEVER come into consideration.

I don't even like to see those considerations in straight-up fiction -- if the author's decisions along "narrative" lines are ever transparent and not utterly obscured behind the character acting in-character, it runs an extremely high risk of kicking me out of the story completely. There are books I've never finished because of repeated instances of this occurring.

When it comes to playing an RPG (GMing is a bit different), "story" is absolutely outside my consideration or concern. I do what the character would do in that situation, bounded only by concern for the other players' enjoyment of the game. If a character acts on their honor instead of going for the greatest gain, for example, that's not because it makes for a better story or more drama, it's because it's what that character would do.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-01-02, 01:21 PM
That second paragraph briefly touches on what I mean when I say that I "don't do story", but then the subsequent paragraphs seems to conflate "narrative concerns" with "concen for the other players' enjoyment".

When I'm deciding what characters I might want to play and narrowing down to one, the limits I consider are things like the setting (which is not "owned by" story), and the power level, and what the other players are making, and what sort of challenges are likely, and so on... it has nothing to do with "what sort of story is going to be told" or "what theme do we want to explore" or "what sort of arc do I want this character to go through"...

Likelywise, when I'm deciding what the characters reactions will be be, what their decisions will be, etc, "what effect will this have on the story" has ZERO impact on my decisions. I'll avoid actions that actively ruin the game for other players, but that's it -- everything else is based strictly on the what I think the character would do. Let me be clear here -- "will this be more 'interesting'?" or "will this make for a better or worse 'character arc'?" NEVER come into consideration.

I don't even like to see those considerations in straight-up fiction -- if the author's decisions along "narrative" lines are ever transparent and not utterly obscured behind the character acting in-character, it runs an extremely high risk of kicking me out of the story completely. There are books I've never finished because of repeated instances of this occurring.

When it comes to playing an RPG (GMing is a bit different), "story" is absolutely outside my consideration or concern. I do what the character would do in that situation, bounded only by concern for the other players' enjoyment of the game. If a character acts on their honor instead of going for the greatest gain, for example, that's not because it makes for a better story or more drama, it's because it's what that character would do.

I've personally never seen a case where "what a character would do" is definitive and single-valued. There's always (in my experience) been a range of possible actions that would have all been "what the character might do and still be in character." That's how real life is. In fact, I consider characters that are so sharply drawn as to only ever have one choice to be symptomatic of bad writing, not good writing. Real people aren't that bright-line. They're...fuzzy. And so there has to be another criteria. Knowing what the character would do only goes so far, and it's rarely far enough.

"Not being a jerk" is also not far enough--I want to maximize the fun of the table. That requires me to think of actively promoting the fun of the rest of the group (while preserving my own fun). That, to me, is partially story-related. It speaks to how I'd like to see that scenario unfold. As a DM, do I want it to be a close thing? Do I want it to be a hard-fought victory? What consequences do I want to have to write into the world because of their actions? As a player, how do I want to change the setting? How do I want my character to see and be seen by others? It's a feedback cycle.

Not to mention that creating the character can't rely on the character to be built--that's circular. You have to have some non-character-based criteria to determine which out of the universe of all concepts you want to play.

Cluedrew
2018-01-02, 01:22 PM
To Tanarii: I guess it all comes down to perspective.


I'm starting with what I know to be factually true -- that some of us are not "doing story" when we play our characters -- and working from that.And that is the problem, you have taking the point people are trying to talk about as a truth without looking at why. Or maybe you have, but I don't think you have explained why you believe it to be true. Or maybe you did between some particularly heated posts that made my eyes glaze over, that happens.

So I suggest you take a step back, explain what you mean by doing story, storytelling and/or collaborative storytelling. Then explain what goes on when you play a game, your particular play style. Finally relate the two. Its up to you if you want to do that, but right now I have a very clear idea of what your position is, but only the foggiest about why you hold it.

Blackjackg
2018-01-02, 01:29 PM
I'm starting with what I know to be factually true -- that some of us are not "doing story" when we play our characters -- and working from that.


"Story" is subjective, "facts" are objective. There is a single set of factual events that occurred in the formation of the solar system. If one stretches "point of view" to include inanimate objects, then the "story" of the solar system's formation is different from the "PoVs" of the Sun, Jupiter, Earth, or some Kuiper Belt Object. Likewise, the same set of factual events can form a very different story from the PoVs of different people, or characters, involved in or observing the events.


Ahhhh, got it. "Story" is subjective, but "not story" is objective fact. Thanks for clearing that up.

Tanarii
2018-01-02, 01:45 PM
And that is the problem, you have taking the point people are trying to talk about as a truth without looking at why. Or maybe you have, but I don't think you have explained why you believe it to be true. Or maybe you did between some particularly heated posts that made my eyes glaze over, that happens.Because we're the ones playing the game, and we know what & why & how we're doing that.

Someone else coming along and telling us: No actually, you're doing it because story, when we know we are NOT doing that, is a problem on their part. We know this for a fact because it's us doing it, so we can speak to it factually.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 01:50 PM
I've personally never seen a case where "what a character would do" is definitive and single-valued. There's always (in my experience) been a range of possible actions that would have all been "what the character might do and still be in character." That's how real life is. In fact, I consider characters that are so sharply drawn as to only ever have one choice to be symptomatic of bad writing, not good writing. Real people aren't that bright-line. They're...fuzzy. And so there has to be another criteria. Knowing what the character would do only goes so far, and it's rarely far enough.


I agree that there's a range of possibility and that there's rarely "one true choice" for any one decision-point for the character, and other considerations can be taken into account.

And those other considerations CAN include "story". I'm not against other people taking that into consideration -- so long as it's not actively detrimental to things like the boundaries of the space of possible things the character would do in that situation, or the enjoyment of the rest of the group.

What I'm trying to get across is that they do not have to include story, and that for some players, they do not include story.




"Not being a jerk" is also not far enough--I want to maximize the fun of the table. That requires me to think of actively promoting the fun of the rest of the group (while preserving my own fun). That, to me, is partially story-related. It speaks to how I'd like to see that scenario unfold. As a DM, do I want it to be a close thing? Do I want it to be a hard-fought victory? What consequences do I want to have to write into the world because of their actions? As a player, how do I want to change the setting? How do I want my character to see and be seen by others? It's a feedback cycle.


As a GM, it's a bit different.

As a player, I don't care about the story part. The character may have goals and work towards them, but that's the character. As the player, I don't have a preconceived notion of how things will unfold. I'm not trying to set up an "arc". I'm not "exploring a theme". I'm not doing tragedy, or comedy, or drama, or "action". I'm not telling a story.

("Don't be a jerk" here is a bit colloquial, along the lines of "First, don't be a jerk" -- of course it takes more than that, but I really don't want to go a-quibbling down that rabbit hole.)




Not to mention that creating the character can't rely on the character to be built--that's circular. You have to have some non-character-based criteria to determine which out of the universe of all concepts you want to play.


Of course; I was only giving some examples of things that can constrain the choice space but aren't "story".

Blackjackg
2018-01-02, 01:51 PM
So, hypothetical question:

Two people sit down to play two separate roleplaying games. They each have the same intent (say, to develop interesting characters, explore interesting settings and make decisions for a character), and each does and says exactly the same things as the other. One of them calls what she is doing "collaborative storytelling," the other calls it "tactical wargaming."

Have they -factually- done the same thing?

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 02:00 PM
Ahhhh, got it. "Story" is subjective, but "not story" is objective fact. Thanks for clearing that up.

That's not what I said.

At all.

For anyone who doubts that, read the examples again. In both cases, it's about how the actual events -- the raw, factual, uninterpreted happenings -- and the narratives told about those events, are not the same thing.

Consider the classic example from crime dramas and real-life cases, of two witnesses who see the same events unfold and offer two different testimonies. Only one series of events can actually have happened, and that series of events is objective fact. The stories told about those events the witnesses can, in contrast, vary considerably, and be more or less factually accurate. The narratives are not the facts.

In an RPG session or campaign, a certain series of events will unfold. Two different players may tell very different stories about those events, but the events are inherently the stories told about them.

The map is not the territory.




So, hypothetical question:

Two people sit down to play two separate roleplaying games. They each have the same intent (say, to develop interesting characters, explore interesting settings and make decisions for a character), and each does and says exactly the same things as the other. One of them calls what she is doing "collaborative storytelling," the other calls it "tactical wargaming."

Have they -factually- done the same thing?


Possibly.

But that might then lead to the question of whether either of them is using the correct terminology, if that matters.

Blackjackg
2018-01-02, 02:09 PM
That's not what I said.

At all.

Sorry, was this not you?


I'm starting with what I know to be factually true -- that some of us are not "doing story" when we play our characters -- and working from that.

You claim your statement that you are not "doing story" is factually true. Objectively, not subject to debate.

But you also say that "story" is subjective. Two statements, by you, in a single post, that conflict in such a way that it is not actually possible for both to be true. How is it possible that you don't see that?

If "story" is subjective, then whether or not you are doing it is subjective.

Gee whiz.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-01-02, 02:18 PM
I agree that there's a range of possibility and that there's rarely "one true choice" for any one decision-point for the character, and other considerations can be taken into account.


Then I'm curious. What other, non-story criteria do you use if there are a range of possible in-character actions? We seem to agree that character-based decisions are insufficient--what else is there?

For me, juxtaposing "story" with "character" isn't productive at all--they're heavily correlated. Juxtaposing "story" with "mechanics" is a tiny bit better, but there's still overlap. "Story" is concerned with scenes and their resolution. Both "character" and "mechanics" are tools that inform "story."

Stories (using the definition I've provided up-thread) are a natural consequence of playing role-playing games (even if they're not intentionally sought). The sets of decisions by the characters and the style of description, etc, naturally fall into scenes (largely self-contained bundles of events) that flow causally into each other. To avoid this you'd have to give a high-granularity (both temporally and action-specific) account of what the character is doing. Anytime you "fast-forward" a part (even overnight while everyone is asleep) you're creating scene boundaries. Same goes for editing descriptions--are all attack descriptions purely mechanical and fact-based or are some described more floridly than others? That's scene creation.

This is different than a pure (unedited) 1:1 video record of a character's life--that's the closest analogue I can get that has no story elements. Of course one can always construct a story about that, but it's likely to be boring. But that's alien to my experience with TTRPGs (or RPGs in general). There's always a modulated flow of focus. Some things (going to the bathroom) are skipped over without comment. Heck, most of the time the characters' diet is barely mentioned. All of these are characteristics that I associate with "story."



As a player, I don't care about the story part. The character may have goals and work towards them, but that's the character. As the player, I don't have a preconceived notion of how things will unfold. I'm not trying to set up an "arc". I'm not "exploring a theme". I'm not doing tragedy, or comedy, or drama, or "action". I'm not telling a story.

This is a case where I still think we're using incompatible definitions of "story."

"Story" might include the intentional construction of arcs, themes, etc. Or it might not. Those are tools to tell better (or worse) stories, not an intrinsic part of the story itself. "Story" is about scenes and selective focus. Often things like arcs and themes arise naturally out of scenes, even when they weren't put there intentionally from the beginning. I've seen emergent themes and arcs in my games that I didn't see coming (and wasn't consciously working toward).

I posted my working definition up-thread, care to comment on it?

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 02:21 PM
Sorry, was this not you?



You claim your statement that you are not "doing story" is factually true. Objectively, not subject to debate.

But you also say that "story" is subjective. Two statements, by you, in a single post, that conflict in such a way that it is not actually possible for both to be true. How is it possible that you don't see that?


...

Really?

Are you that determined to "win the internet" that you're willing to take that gross misinterpretation and just run with it?


In one statement, I said that it's objective fact that I'm not "doing story" in my RPG gameplay. That's true. I'm not. And so far, the only way you have, ahem, "proven" otherwise is to assert a bloated definition of "story" that includes all events ever.

In the other statement, I said that the stories themselves are subjective, and that the factual events are objective. Not that whether one is doing story in an RPG is subjective -- the stories themselves.





If "story" is subjective, then whether or not you are doing it is subjective.


No.

Listen to a bad pop-science documentary (the sort of thing that has largely ruined what used to be Discovery Science since the change to The Science Channel), and note how often they anthropomorphize things like planets and stars, or subatomic particles, and use words that make it seem as if they have personalities or desires; note how often they present the course of events as an outright narrative. They're not presenting facts, they're telling a story.

Whether there's a story being told or not is a question with an objective answer, separate from subjective, narrative nature of the stories themselves.




Because we're the ones playing the game, and we know what & why & how we're doing that.

Someone else coming along and telling us: No actually, you're doing it because story, when we know we are NOT doing that, is a problem on their part. We know this for a fact because it's us doing it, so we can speak to it factually.


Exactly.

It's as if I'm saying "I don't like broccoli, it smells like hot garbage", and someone who doesn't have the receptor for that group of chemicals in the cultivars of Brassica oleracea tries to tell me that I'm wrong because they can't smell it. (It's a thing, look it up.)

Jama7301
2018-01-02, 02:33 PM
I just want to see if I'm getting this right. Semantic arguments seem to run like wildfire here.

The breakdown seems to be coming from the word "Story".

It appears that one definition of story is "A recollection of events that has passed or been completed". This seems to be one of the points behind the "RPGs are not collaborative storytelling" argument. Since the game itself is creating these points, it's not until the end can they be constructed into a story, right?

The other argument seems to be that the act of playing is creating an emergent story that's constantly evolving. The Collaborative part of it indicates that there are many authors (Players and GMs) working together to create it. Instead of compiling things at the end, or connecting threads, the story is seen as 'living' and crafted during play. Kind of like a journal showing the 'story so far'.

This may be a vast over-simplification, or missing the point entirely, but I just wanted to make sure I kind of understood exactly what's going on here for my own understanding.

Tinkerer
2018-01-02, 02:48 PM
I just want to see if I'm getting this right. Semantic arguments seem to run like wildfire here.

The breakdown seems to be coming from the word "Story".

It appears that one definition of story is "A recollection of events that has passed or been completed". This seems to be one of the points behind the "RPGs are not collaborative storytelling" argument. Since the game itself is creating these points, it's not until the end can they be constructed into a story, right?

The other argument seems to be that the act of playing is creating an emergent story that's constantly evolving. The Collaborative part of it indicates that there are many authors (Players and GMs) working together to create it. Instead of compiling things at the end, or connecting threads, the story is seen as 'living' and crafted during play. Kind of like a journal showing the 'story so far'.

This may be a vast over-simplification, or missing the point entirely, but I just wanted to make sure I kind of understood exactly what's going on here for my own understanding.

The definition that I tend to use in this context is as follows:

"an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment."

Mirriam Webster has a quite nice definition as well

"an account of incidents or events"

kyoryu
2018-01-02, 02:53 PM
So, hypothetical question:

Two people sit down to play two separate roleplaying games. They each have the same intent (say, to develop interesting characters, explore interesting settings and make decisions for a character), and each does and says exactly the same things as the other. One of them calls what she is doing "collaborative storytelling," the other calls it "tactical wargaming."

Have they -factually- done the same thing?

The same would be true if one of them called what they were doing "naked cliff-diving".

Tanarii
2018-01-02, 02:54 PM
The other argument seems to be that the act of playing is creating an emergent story that's constantly evolving. The Collaborative part of it indicates that there are many authors (Players and GMs) working together to create it. Instead of compiling things at the end, or connecting threads, the story is seen as 'living' and crafted during play. Kind of like a journal showing the 'story so far'.This is the argument that's effectively meaningless, if it's being defined in a way as to include all "act[s] of playing". Defining story in such a way as to include all acts of playing is both factually wrong (as some of us know we're not doing that), as well as effectively meaningless, as it's too broad to say anything meaningful about what's actually going on, about what a story actually is vs what it isn't.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-01-02, 02:58 PM
Defining story in such a way as to include all acts of playing is both factually wrong (as some of us know we're not doing that)

"Some of [you] know you're not doing what?" According to some definitions, you are participating in story creation, whether you intend to or want to or not. It's an inherent part of TTRPG game-play. According to the nebulous, unspoken definitions you seem to be using, you're not. But that's a conflict of definitions (two people using the same word to mean different things), not a factual conflict.

You can't say a definition is factually wrong--that's meaningless right there. A definition may not apply, or it may lead to undesirable results, but definitions can't be wrong. They can be preferred, or not, but not wrong.

Tinkerer
2018-01-02, 02:59 PM
Not terribly interested in getting sucked into this quagmire however in my book "collaborative storytelling" is to "RPG" as "sport" is to "soccer". Just my 2cp.

Tanarii
2018-01-02, 03:06 PM
According to some definitions, you are participating in story creation, whether you intend to or want to or not.then those definitions are wrong. Because we know we're not participating in story creation. This is a fact. It's a fact we know, because we're the ones doing it.

You can try to create a definition that says I'm doing something I know factually I am not doing, but that just makes the definition wrong.

Jama7301
2018-01-02, 03:10 PM
then those definitions are wrong. Because we know we're not participating in story creation. This is a fact. It's a fact we know, because we're the ones doing it.
If I may ask, as I may have overlooked this through the pages, what are you doing?

Or, if it's easier to illustrate the point, can you provide an/some example(s) of what constitutes story creation and what doesn't? I'm afraid I'm in the "by playing this game, we're creating a story" camp, so I'm unable to fathom what actions or behaviors wouldn't fall under that umbrella.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 03:11 PM
"Some of [you] know you're not doing what?" According to some definitions, you are participating in story creation, whether you intend to or want to or not. It's an inherent part of TTRPG game-play. According to the nebulous, unspoken definitions you seem to be using, you're not. But that's a conflict of definitions (two people using the same word to mean different things), not a factual conflict.

You can't say a definition is factually wrong--that's meaningless right there. A definition may not apply, or it may lead to undesirable results, but definitions can't be wrong. They can be preferred, or not, but not wrong.

Intent matters. Telling or creating stories is active and intentional, not passive. We're not creating a story, we're just creating a series of events about which a story might be told. A series of events is not identical to a narrative about that series of events. This is demonstrated by different subjective narratives being told about the same objective series of events.

I can create a definition of "dog" that includes trees and boulders. That doesn't make that definition just as valid as the one that does not include trees and boulders.

For a word to mean something, it has to also not mean other things, or it is a definition without a difference or distinction.

Tanarii
2018-01-02, 03:21 PM
If I may ask, as I may have overlooked this through the pages, what are you doing?

Or, if it's easier to illustrate the point, can you provide an/some example(s) of what constitutes story creation and what doesn't? I'm afraid I'm in the "by playing this game, we're creating a story" camp, so I'm unable to fathom what actions or behaviors wouldn't fall under that umbrella.
Making decisions for my character does, as if I were that personality, or more accurately my personality modified by the personality differences I've chosen to be different from mine for that character, in the fantasy environment.

That's no more storytelling than making decisions about what I do in real life is.

Jama7301
2018-01-02, 03:22 PM
Making decisions for my character does, as if I were that personality, or more accurately my personality modified by the personality differences I've chosen to be different from mine for that character, in the fantasy environment.

That's no more storytelling than making decisions about what I do in real life is.

Thank you.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-01-02, 03:23 PM
then those definitions are wrong. Because we know we're not participating in story creation. This is a fact. It's a fact we know, because we're the ones doing it.

You can try to create a definition that says I'm doing something I know factually I am not doing, but that just makes the definition wrong.

Honestly, this makes absolutely no sense to me. The following is a stylized analogy to show why it doesn't make sense--


[Removed portion that was inflammatory and way too harsh. My apologies]

I'll say it again. Definitions can be useful or not, but definitions are tautologies (inherently). By their own terms, they have no truth value (neither true nor false).


[1]Intent matters. Telling or creating stories is active and intentional, not passive. We're not creating a story, we're just creating a series of events about which a story might be told. A series of events is not identical to a narrative about that series of events.

[2]I can create a definition of "dog" that includes trees and boulders. That doesn't make that definition just as valid as the one that does not include trees and boulders.

[3]For a word to mean something, it has to also not mean other things, or it is a definition without a difference or distinction.

[1] That's one (partial) definition. But not the definition others are using. And your definition is not privileged--there is no "true" definition of any word.

[2] See above. Definitions are tautologies. None are valid or invalid, merely useful or not for a particular purpose. And since you've expressly declined to give one at all, you don't get to set the terms here. Private definitions of words that aren't shared by others are harmful--they only cause confusion.

[3]No. That's not how language works. Most words in the English language are polysemous and have multiple (sometimes contradictory!) meanings. Natural language is inherently ambiguous (given to multiple interpretations). Say what you like, this is a fact that cannot be changed. Trying to deny it makes communication very difficult and rather pointless.

Both you and Tanarii are playing Humpty-Dumpty here--"Words mean what I want them to mean." No, words mean what they're used to mean. The only important part is finding a meaning we can agree to stipulate on. And you guys have been expressly refusing to work toward that (essentially insisting that everyone agree with you or be wrong). That's highly unproductive.

Tanarii
2018-01-02, 03:27 PM
Alice: You're breathing.
Bob: <angry>NO I'M NOT! YOUR DEFINITION OF BREATHING IS WRONG!</angry>
Alice: ... I mean you're pulling air into your lungs, extracting oxygen from it, and releasing the waste products...
Bob: NO I'M NOT. I'M THE ONE DOING IT!
Way to flip it back to front, and make it not just insulting, but double so. You're not only telling us that what we we're doing isn't what we know we're doing, but you're intentionally doing it in a way to try and make us look stupid. We're done here.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-01-02, 04:05 PM
Way to flip it back to front, and make it not just insulting, but double so. You're not only telling us that what we we're doing isn't what we know we're doing, but you're intentionally doing it in a way to try and make us look stupid. We're done here.

I've gone back and edited that portion out of the post. It was way too harshly worded and needlessly inflammatory. My apologies. I'll try not to get that frustrated again. I respect your posts (on most other issues) and generally agree with you. I'm just struggling to comprehend here and getting frustrated at the lack of agreed-on definitions.

Pleh
2018-01-02, 04:20 PM
Like Max_Killjoy, I'm having trouble understanding why you feel the need to try and prove everything is story, especially when that's a meaningless and pointless definition, since it fails to distinguish anything.

First off, I'm not trying to prove anything. Proof is far too much work and wouldn't convince anyone of anything anyway, because this is all subjective opinions about definitions.

I completely disagree with Max that his position is objectively true.

What I "feel the need" to do is answer your confusion about the definition you do not understand.

"Don't try to tell us what is in our heads."
"But it clearly matches this definition we are using."
"That definition has no meaning."
"But if it has meaning to us and you tell us it has no meaning, aren't you just telling us what is in our heads and what is not?"


The rest of your post seems to be an attempt to conflate "everything is a story" with "everything can be turned into a story by people", which aren't even remotely the same statement. Why do you feel the need to conflate those two concepts?

Because I believe them to be actually, functionally synonymous? Lazy, perhaps, but we shouldn't vilify people for using idioms. We can just stop them when they say, "everything is story" and pedantically correct them by saying, "what you mean to say is that anything can have a story."

And then they will probably remind you that the distinction is not applicable to that conversation, but it would be a far more reasonable response than, "don't tell me what I think."


What happens if the GM plonks down the BBEG just after I move my mini round a corner. No need to say anything as he has the right mini; just some laughing. We roll initiative, then I roll my attack and announce damage. The GM does the same, back and forth we go until the BBEG has fallen and I have 1 hit point left. Lets assume the rest of the party are elsewhere. A major part of the plot has taken place and the adventure moves to phase 2 with the BBEG's boss accelerating his plans. In my minds eye my character was battling this mighty demon and vanquished it, but nearly at the cost of his own life. Nothing needed to be described because we both have vivid imaginations (and we've both memorised the Monster Manual :smallcool:).

Was that fight a story or game?

This is a bit of a loaded question, isn't it? "Consider this isolated scenario that has meaning whenever it isn't isolated in the manner in which it is being considered. Does it have meaning?"

I would say it is the intention and design of an RPG to make sure Mechanics and Story are synchronous, but some games (Munchkin comes to mind) rather intentionally subvert this expectation in order to mock the genre. The dichotomy (for lack of a better term) exists because not every game manages to make Story and Mechanics synchronous at every point in the game.

Sometimes the Mechanics create off the wall, really whacky Story implications that the table must either accept as a variance of the world they are in or Rule 0. Likewise, sometimes the Story doesn't mesh well with the system's design, sometimes leading to inconsistent mechanics (such as plot armor, but I don't want to limit it to poor implementations, since these can be tools for making a game better as well).

I would not call them synchronous, but related properties, like in thermodynamics. A change in Volume of a gas (if anyone is picky with their TD, let's say it's an Ideal Gas) will naturally affect Pressure and Temperature, but they aren't simply parts of the same whole. They are directly related so a change in one affects the other, but not to such an extent that you can't simply compensate for the changes.

I would say that the fact that some games can possess either one or the other demonstrates that they are not totally synchronous, while the fact that the presence of one easily accommodates the application of the other speaks to their not being mutually exclusive.

TL;DR I think the premise of the OP is greatly oversimplified so that it can throw out answers that are valid, but disliked.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 04:26 PM
I'll say it again. Definitions can be useful or not, but definitions are tautologies (inherently). By their own terms, they have no truth value (neither true nor false).


And the definition of story that Tanarii and I are objecting to is not useful. It doesn't clarify, it doesn't distinguish, it doesn't enhance communication. It doesn't separate "story" from "not story" because according to that definition -- in the words of multiple people who support that definition -- everything is a story.

E: And that broad definition also doesn't help understand RPGs, both because Mechanics and Story aren't mutually exclusive, and because there are things that aren't inherently Mechanics OR Story.




[1] That's one (partial) definition. But not the definition others are using. And your definition is not privileged--there is no "true" definition of any word.

[2] See above. Definitions are tautologies. None are valid or invalid, merely useful or not for a particular purpose. And since you've expressly declined to give one at all, you don't get to set the terms here. Private definitions of words that aren't shared by others are harmful--they only cause confusion.

[3]No. That's not how language works. Most words in the English language are polysemous and have multiple (sometimes contradictory!) meanings. Natural language is inherently ambiguous (given to multiple interpretations). Say what you like, this is a fact that cannot be changed. Trying to deny it makes communication very difficult and rather pointless.

Both you and Tanarii are playing Humpty-Dumpty here--"Words mean what I want them to mean." No, words mean what they're used to mean. The only important part is finding a meaning we can agree to stipulate on. And you guys have been expressly refusing to work toward that (essentially insisting that everyone agree with you or be wrong). That's highly unproductive.


[1] Intent matters. That's not stipulation of this particular definition alone.

If I'm walking down the sidewalk in the direction of where a candy store happens to be, but I have no intention of going into the candy store, then I am not going to the candy store. If I end up going into the candy store on a whim or because I realize I need to get change or whatever as I go by, but that was not my intention before that point, then I was not going to the candy store even though I ended up having went into the candy store. Intent matters.

If someone is driving down the street and accidentally hits a pedestrian, they might be guilty of negligent homicide, but not murder. If someone is driving down the street looking for their enemy with intent to run them over, and then does so, that's first-degree murder. Intent matters.

If I have no intention of creating a story, then I am not creating a story, even if a story happens to emerge or later be told. Intent matters.

[2] The broad definition at hand here is not useful, see above, and in prior posts.

[3] I'm not insisting that they agree with me. I'm insisting that I know my own mind better than they do, and that I understand my own experience of and enjoyment of RPGs better than they do.

E: I would also point out, as kyoryu has tried to, that "story" as relates to RPGs does not exist in a vacuum, and that you're dealing with a third definition out there that explicitly separated elements you're lumping together into "story" based on figuring out previously unspoken differences in why and how people play RPGS... AND fighting a fourth definition created by people who hijacked the third definition and warped it into a mutant beast with the agenda of drawing battle-lines and literally staking claim to hobby.

kyoryu
2018-01-02, 05:17 PM
One of the big issues with "all games are collaborative storytelling" is that it's very easy to turn it into a judgemental statement about some games.

A: "All games are collaborative storytelling."
B: "Not really. Old school games were just going into a dungeon, and seeing if you could get treasure."
A: "Exactly, it's still a story about people going into a dungeon."
B: "That's a lame story. And I guarantee we're not thinking about story when we're doing that."
A: "Yes, it's a horrible story. That's why you should play better games."

Again, I'm not saying that anyone here is saying that, but that is the historical context of the pushback you're seeing.

And a lot of it is rooted in this argument:

A: "Well, hey, look at what we're doing, it's got story! That's so cool!"
B: "Good for you. I still like what I'm doing, this old stuff that wasn't about story."
A: "But this is better!"
B: "I really don't think so. I like what I'm doing, you go ahead and do what you're doing, but I'm going to keep up my thing, mkay?"
A: "But what you're doing is really story, even if you don't think so, therefore all games are about story, and the new stuff is just better!"
B: "WTF?"

Again, any statement about "all games are story" has got to use such a broad definition of "story" that it's useless as a statement about games, and is mostly an interesting statement about the human condition. So if you're claiming all games are "about story", or are "storytelling", then I'd have to ask - what isn't? If driving can be "about story" or "storytelling", then what isn't? Saying that something is <label> is only interesting if there are things that you can say are <not label>.

SaintRidley
2018-01-02, 05:20 PM
If I have no intention of creating a story, then I am not creating a story, even if a story happens to emerge or later be told. Intent matters.

And that's where people are disagreeing. Intent does not matter in this case. If you aren't intending to create a story, but one emerges from your actions, you have created a story. Unintentionally, but yes, you did. Whether you want it to be a story or not doesn't stop it from being one.

I'd go into it more if I had the time right now, but it comes down to language and the relationship (or rather, the lack thereof) between intent and meaning.

kyoryu
2018-01-02, 05:30 PM
The Forge referred to the different relationships as

Story First: Someone, usually the GM, writes a story and then the players play through it

Story Now: The players collaborate together to create a story

Story After: The players do some things, which can be retold as a story after the fact.

While I'm no Forgite, I find the distinction reasonable, though I usually refer to it as "let me tell you a story", "let's make a story", and "hey, remember when?"

Blackjackg
2018-01-02, 05:35 PM
...

Really?

Are you that determined to "win the internet" that you're willing to take that gross misinterpretation and just run with it?

No, not really. As far as I can tell, I won a ways back. I just keep coming back because it's astonishing the contortions you go through to avoid acknowledging that you're working your logic backwards, defining your terms to fit your predetermined conclusions.

And before you go accusing more folks of gross misinterpretation, maybe go back and check the many, many times you have ignored people trying to tell you there is a difference between "an account of events," and "literally everything that ever happened in the universe."

Or don't, it doesn't really matter.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 05:37 PM
And that's where people are disagreeing. Intent does not matter in this case. If you aren't intending to create a story, but one emerges from your actions, you have created a story. Unintentionally, but yes, you did. Whether you want it to be a story or not doesn't stop it from being one.


That rests on an over-broad definition of "story" as "any sequence of events that ever did occur, might occur, or could be imagined to occur" (paraphrasing for brevity). I think kyoryu just posted what serves as a good response to that assertion (emphasis added):



Again, any statement about "all games are story" has got to use such a broad definition of "story" that it's useless as a statement about games, and is mostly an interesting statement about the human condition. So if you're claiming all games are "about story", or are "storytelling", then I'd have to ask - what isn't? If driving can be "about story" or "storytelling", then what isn't? Saying that something is <label> is only interesting if there are things that you can say are <not label>.





I'd go into it more if I had the time right now, but it comes down to language and the relationship (or rather, the lack thereof) between intent and meaning.


That sounds suspiciously deconstructionist/postmodernist.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 05:50 PM
No, not really. As far as I can tell, I won a ways back. I just keep coming back because it's astonishing the contortions you go through to avoid acknowledging that you're working your logic backwards, defining your terms to fit your predetermined conclusions.


I'm working from what I know. What I know is that I am not "doing story" when I play my PC in an RPG. End of story. That is not what I am thinking or experiencing when I engage in that activity. Things that are "story" (at least any meaning of "story" not so vague as to be useless) are not my motivation, intent, or thought process, when engaged in that activity.

And I'm not the one so determined to tell other people how their minds work, what they're thinking, and how they experience something, that it becomes supposedly acceptable to stretch definitions to uselessness to justify it.




And before you go accusing more folks of gross misinterpretation, maybe go back and check the many, many times you have ignored people trying to tell you there is a difference between "an account of events," and "literally everything that ever happened in the universe."


OK, so I guess I'm just imagining these statements:



Everything that exists (at least as we understand it), even abstract ideas, have a cause for coming into existence. This cause and effect can always be related through story.

So everything is a story because everything has a story. This isn't meaningless at all, because it just says that everything has some minimal level of meaning, even if only that it exists (or else it wouldn't).



Everything has narrative because it exists and therefore has properties that can be described. At that point, it has the elements of a story or mathematical formula, regardless if anyone ever formalizes those elements or finds the communicable information useful or coherent.


Take the log out of your own eye.

And be careful in accusing one person of lying, because you might end up catching someone else in the crossfire...



Again, any statement about "all games are story" has got to use such a broad definition of "story" that it's useless as a statement about games, and is mostly an interesting statement about the human condition. So if you're claiming all games are "about story", or are "storytelling", then I'd have to ask - what isn't? If driving can be "about story" or "storytelling", then what isn't? Saying that something is <label> is only interesting if there are things that you can say are <not label>.

Blackjackg
2018-01-02, 06:14 PM
OK, so I guess I'm just imagining these statements:


You're not imagining them, you're just selecting them from among many better definitions to be the ones that you argue against, and also ignoring later clarifications that made them into better definitions. It's a pretty transparent tactic to avoid debating honestly.

SaintRidley
2018-01-02, 06:45 PM
That sounds suspiciously deconstructionist/postmodernist.

It sounds like a good understanding of the nature of language informed by reading linguistic theorists like Agamben. In other words, yes, and get over it.

ImNotTrevor
2018-01-02, 06:51 PM
You're not imagining them, you're just selecting them from among many better definitions to be the ones that you argue against, and also ignoring later clarifications that made them into better definitions. It's a pretty transparent tactic to avoid debating honestly.

This is not unusual behavior. Next up in his bag of tricks is putting you on ignore for pointing that out. Just saying I called it now.


To correct Max's murder/manslaughter argument:

Story is a byproduct. It's a thing that just happens. Yes, you can make it happen on purpose, but it can happen unintentionally as well. Essentially, nobody is arguing that manslaughter and murder are the same. We're saying that in both cases A DEAD BODY IS PRODUCED.

Whether I intended to kill a pedestrian with my car or not, there is now -1 person in the world.

Byproducts exist for all kinds of things. If you make dinner, you also make dirty dishes. You might not have intended to make dirty dishes, but indeed they happened. Yes, you coule grab dishes and make them dirty on purpose. Lord knows my 2 year old does that, near as I can tell. But the intent does not change the existence of said dirty dishes.

Now, where people go wrong is in assuming the following:
Intentional stories > unintentional stories.
Blatantly not true. Have you ever read history? It's amazing and also not made intentionally. AND it comes from the same root word as Story. (Not a mistake.)

Or they make the blatantly untrue inverse mistake:
Unintentional story > intentional story.
Tell that to shakespeare.


Story being a thing that naturally occurs as a byproduct of playing an RPG has bum-all to do with you intent, and it is not more insulting to point out that story is produced as a byproducts pf play than it is to point out that you produce dirty dishes as a byproduct of making spaghetti.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 06:52 PM
It sounds like a good understanding of the nature of language informed by reading linguistic theorists like Agamben. In other words, yes, and get over it.

Postmodernism is toxic garbage.

I'd really like to go into detail and post links to others' thoughts as to why, but it would quickly go into verboten territory.

So if someone wants to accuse me of making unfounded / unsupported statements, feel free, I guess... I'm not going to break the rules and get banned to avoid it.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 06:56 PM
You're not imagining them, you're just selecting them from among many better definitions to be the ones that you argue against, and also ignoring later clarifications that made them into better definitions. It's a pretty transparent tactic to avoid debating honestly.


Ah, so now to "debate honestly" I must only respond to the statements and posts most convenient for your arguments, and ignore those that prove inconvenient for your position?

Interesting.

SaintRidley
2018-01-02, 07:02 PM
Postmodernism is toxic garbage.

I'd really like to go into detail and post links to others' thoughts as to why, but it would quickly go into verboten territory.

So if someone wants to accuse me of making unfounded / unsupported statements, feel free, I guess... I'm not going to break the rules and get banned to avoid it.


Go right ahead thinking that. I'll just note that this amounts to pretty much a concession that you also feel basically all current scholarship on the nature of language and storytelling is garbage, which looks to me like you don't have much of a compelling argument for why your understanding of the nature of stories is worth taking into consideration.

Blackjackg
2018-01-02, 07:06 PM
Ah, so now to "debate honestly" I have to only respond to the statements and posts most convenient for your arguments?

Prrrretty much, yeah. Is this surprising to you? If you want to defeat my argument (for instance), you have to actually argue against it. If you only respond to weaker arguments or arguments that you made up yourself, then you haven't really defeated mine, have you?

Ah, I just noticed that "only" that you stuck in there. No, you don't have to ONLY respond to the strongest arguments. You can respond to both weak ones and strong ones. But don't respond to the weak ones and then pretend you defeated the strong ones. That's dishonest debating.

(For the record, I don't really mean to call Pleh's arguments weak. I do think that they were poorly expressed to the point where they make an easy straw man for you and others, which is why they were clarified afterwards.)

Jormengand
2018-01-02, 07:28 PM
I don't think you get it.

Ok, the DM creates and controls the game reality, the setting, the game world, everything in the game world and really, just to say it again: Everything: Except a couple characters. So does that kinda of show you the 95% vs 5% split?

Everything that's actually happening on the tabletop - "On-screen", as it were - is happening in the presence of the PCs, and if in general the NPCs are all doing stuff and the PCs are all doing stuff then unless there are 76 NPCs on the table the DM is not actually doing 95% of the actual story that's being told.

Tanarii
2018-01-02, 07:37 PM
Honestly, this makes absolutely no sense to me. The following is a stylized analogy to show why it doesn't make sense--


[Removed portion that was inflammatory and way too harsh. My apologies]

I'll say it again. Definitions can be useful or not, but definitions are tautologies (inherently). By their own terms, they have no truth value (neither true nor false). Revisiting this then.

Definitions can be correct or not correct. One thing that makes them not correct is attempting to expand an existing definition to cover previously uncovered territory. In this case, we have one group attempting to expand the definition of "story", or at least a sub-set of it pertaining to events, from "an account of events" to encompass "events". Which I'll point out, actually removes the most important part of "story", the narrative or account.

BTW if you want to understand why I object to the attitude, people claiming story are "events", regardless of narrative interpretation or recounting, are expanding an existing definition of something I might choose to do, to encompass anything I do. I am aware of the existence of that existing definition, so I'm quite aware of what they're trying to tell me I'm doing, just as I'm quite aware I'm not doing that. Making events happen is not the same thing as an account of events.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 07:47 PM
Go right ahead thinking that. I'll just note that this amounts to pretty much a concession that you also feel basically all current scholarship on the nature of language and storytelling is garbage, which looks to me like you don't have much of a compelling argument for why your understanding of the nature of stories is worth taking into consideration.

Typical postmodernist response. "Obviously you don't understand the brilliance of our work, you pleb." :smallbiggrin:

Meanwhile, I invite anyone interested to look up the Sokal Affair and work your way out from that, if they want to understand why someone would consider postmodernism a sick joke played on modern society by "philosophers" and "literary critics". Short form, postmodernism is the notion that there are no facts, there is no objective reality, there is only competing narratives to be manipulated; even science is just another worldview with no more validity than any other... for a good dose of irony, this attitude towards science is usually expressed via mediums of communication only possible because of the success of scientific inquiry.

Jormengand
2018-01-02, 07:58 PM
Okay, okay, so this is just a massive argument about whether a word with two definitions only means one of them or only means the other of them, right?

And either way, it doesn't impact the fact that "Collaborative storytelling" is quite clearly a phrase which means "Storytelling which is collaborative" and therefore has a meaning?"

Right, glad we sorted that out. Linguistic descriptivism saves the day again!

Lord Raziere
2018-01-02, 08:05 PM
Typical postmodernist response. "Obviously you don't understand the brilliance of our work, you pleb." :smallbiggrin:

Meanwhile, I invite anyone interested to look up the Sokal Affair and work your way out from that, if they want to understand why someone would consider postmodernism a sick joke played on modern society by "philosophers" and "literary critics". Short form, postmodernism is the notion that there are no facts, there is no objective reality, there is only competing narratives to be manipulated; even science is just another worldview with no more validity than any other... for a good dose of irony, this attitude towards science is usually expressed via mediums of communication only possible because of the success of scientific inquiry.

And by their own logic, shouldn't postmodernism itself be just another narrative? Their viewpoint that "no viewpoint is more valid than any other" wouldn't be more valid than any other. So they basically saying all viewpoints are equally meaningless and therefore that their own viewpoint is not worth considering, because it isn't useful for sorting out what to believe and what not to believe.

We do tell stories to ourselves, but the stories we tell ourselves have flaws that blind us to certain things, and often have underlying reasons why we tell ourselves them.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 08:18 PM
Prrrretty much, yeah. Is this surprising to you? If you want to defeat my argument (for instance), you have to actually argue against it. If you only respond to weaker arguments or arguments that you made up yourself, then you haven't really defeated mine, have you?

Ah, I just noticed that "only" that you stuck in there. No, you don't have to ONLY respond to the strongest arguments. You can respond to both weak ones and strong ones. But don't respond to the weak ones and then pretend you defeated the strong ones. That's dishonest debating.

(For the record, I don't really mean to call Pleh's arguments weak. I do think that they were poorly expressed to the point where they make an easy straw man for you and others, which is why they were clarified afterwards.)

No strawman, I've responded to exactly the words that he wrote in his posts on that matter, and if he's pulled back from those words in any significant way, I've not seen it. If he would like to pull back from the words I quoted a few posts ago, I welcome it and I will adjust my response accordingly.

Furthermore, if your position is in fact that storytelling is inevitable in any RPG, then it can only be true if it starts from the position that any sequence of events -- and thus everything, because nothing is static -- is "a story". It's not enough for that position to be true for any account of events to be "a story", because it is not an "account of events" simply to make in-character decisions and play the game.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 08:23 PM
Revisiting this then.

Definitions can be correct or not correct. One thing that makes them not correct is attempting to expand an existing definition to cover previously uncovered territory. In this case, we have one group attempting to expand the definition of "story", or at least a sub-set of it pertaining to events, from "an account of events" to encompass "events". Which I'll point out, actually removes the most important part of "story", the narrative or account.

BTW if you want to understand why I object to the attitude, people claiming story are "events", regardless of narrative interpretation or recounting, are expanding an existing definition of something I might choose to do, to encompass anything I do. I am aware of the existence of that existing definition, so I'm quite aware of what they're trying to tell me I'm doing, just as I'm quite aware I'm not doing that. Making events happen is not the same thing as an account of events.


Okay, okay, so this is just a massive argument about whether a word with two definitions only means one of them or only means the other of them, right?

And either way, it doesn't impact the fact that "Collaborative storytelling" is quite clearly a phrase which means "Storytelling which is collaborative" and therefore has a meaning?"

Right, glad we sorted that out. Linguistic descriptivism saves the day again!

From here, what this thread has looked like is Tanarii and I saying "we're not storytelling, we're not 'doing story', when we play our characters in RPGs", and several people trying out broader and broader definitions of what "story" is (not storytelling, story, note the shellgame there) until they could find one that "proved" that we were "lying" or "delusional" about how we play our characters in RPGs.

Jormengand
2018-01-02, 08:28 PM
From here, what this thread has looked like is Tanarii and I saying "we're not storytelling, we're not 'doing story', when we play our characters in RPGs", and several people trying out broader and broader definitions of what "story" is (not storytelling, story, note the shellgame there) until they could find one that "proved" that we were "lying" or "delusional" about how we play our characters in RPGs.

I mean, I'm afraid that if you're sitting around a table, dictating what your characters do, then by a certain definition of story (which is a perfectly viable one) you are telling a story, and you're even collaborating in doing so. That doesn't mean that it's true by other definitions of story, but it doesn't mean that they're "Lying" "Delusional" or even more ludicrously "Postmodernist" because they're wielding the divine might of different definitions. Saying "Describing how your fighter helps save the princess is part of the process of telling a story" is, to be quite frank, not even remotely on par with trying to argue that fluid dynamics is inextricably linked to feminism or whatever other crap postmodernists are coming up with this week.

flond
2018-01-02, 08:29 PM
And by their own logic, shouldn't postmodernism itself be just another narrative? Their viewpoint that "no viewpoint is more valid than any other" wouldn't be more valid than any other. So they basically saying all viewpoints are equally meaningless and therefore that their own viewpoint is not worth considering, because it isn't useful for sorting out what to believe and what not to believe.

We do tell stories to ourselves, but the stories we tell ourselves have flaws that blind us to certain things, and often have underlying reasons why we tell ourselves them.

In fairness, at least as I understand it, the argument tends to be (at least, the ones I bother with) less "no objective reality" and more "no perspective less analysis." That everything is always, a communication, a model. Especially science. Fundamentally, everything has a context. Everything has things omitted either intentionally, or non-intentionally, and that science is always, in part a product its creators.

(To give a dumb example, take a GameFAQ. How the author describes, and what they choose to describe is going to vary, and even though none of them will be lying, all of them might focus on very different things. Some of which may even miss entire sub sections. Likewise, while science is a set of tools that attempts to minimize bias, what is studied and who studies it will effect the map (i.e. the report), even if it is not false about the territory (i.e. the objective world.)

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 08:33 PM
And by their own logic, shouldn't postmodernism itself be just another narrative? Their viewpoint that "no viewpoint is more valid than any other" wouldn't be more valid than any other. So they basically saying all viewpoints are equally meaningless and therefore that their own viewpoint is not worth considering, because it isn't useful for sorting out what to believe and what not to believe.


Now now, it's not polite to tell the Emperor he's naked.

:smallwink:

Seriously though, you've nailed it... if everything is relative and subjective and equivalently valid narratives, then it's relative all the way down, and they can't escape that to ever establish the accuracy of their own position. Which is why you see so much self-referential, circular, obscurantist jargon and double-speak. Postmodernism is like the big red monster in the old Bugs Bunny cartoon -- in the end, it's nothing but hair and sneakers.

A deep dive for those who want more of the picture, and if I can manage to control my disgust, my last comment on this sidebar: https://areomagazine.com/2017/03/27/how-french-intellectuals-ruined-the-west-postmodernism-and-its-impact-explained/

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 08:45 PM
I mean, I'm afraid that if you're sitting around a table, dictating what your characters do, then by a certain definition of story (which is a perfectly viable one) you are telling a story, and you're even collaborating in doing so. That doesn't mean that it's true by other definitions of story, but it doesn't mean that they're "Lying" "Delusional" or even more ludicrously "Postmodernist" because they're wielding the divine might of different definitions. Saying "Describing how your fighter helps save the princess is part of the process of telling a story" is, to be quite frank, not even remotely on par with trying to argue that fluid dynamics is inextricably linked to feminism or whatever other crap postmodernists are coming up with this week.

To be clear, I am not saying that they're lying or delusional (for holding to that other definition or otherwise) -- Tanarii and I have been called, directly and through insinuation, "lying" and "delusional".

The connection to postmodernism comes from, first, the similarity between the postmodernist assertion that everything is competing narratives, and the assertion here that any sequence of events is a story, and second, the attempt to fastidiously ignore intent and the odd resemblance that has to "the death of the author".

Blackjackg
2018-01-02, 08:51 PM
Furthermore, if your position is in fact that storytelling is inevitable in any RPG, then it can only be true if it starts from the position that any sequence of events -- and thus everything, but nothing is static -- is "a story". It's not enough for that position to be true for any account of events to be "a story", because it is not an "account of events" simply to make in-character decisions and play the game.

How do you know what decision your character has to make? Because someone told you.

How do you make your decision known to the dungeon master? You tell them.

When you tell someone a sequence of events, that is an account. It's what the word means.

Jormengand
2018-01-02, 08:52 PM
To be clear, I am not saying that they're lying or delusional (for holding to that other definition or otherwise) -- Tanarii and I have been called, directly and through insinuation, "lying" and "delusional".

And to be clearer still, you have ALSO said that they are lying, "Pretending to know what goes on in other people's heads", "Asserting to know what other people want better than they do", and so forth up to "Postmodernists" when they say that you're telling a story when you sit around a table and tell people your characters actions which can be reasonably said to be contributing to a story, irrespective of whether you care that storytelling is taking place or not.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 08:59 PM
How do you know what decision your character has to make? Because someone told you.

How do you make your decision known to the dungeon master? You tell them.

When you tell someone a sequence of events, that is an account. It's what the word means.


And that would appear to be a claim that all communication is "giving an account" and therefore supposedly we can't even have a conversation without telling a story.




And to be clearer still, you have ALSO said that they are lying, "Pretending to know what goes on in other people's heads", "Asserting to know what other people want better than they do", and so forth up to "Postmodernists" when they say that you're telling a story when you sit around a table and tell people your characters actions which can be reasonably said to be contributing to a story, irrespective of whether you care that storytelling is taking place or not.


OK, yes, in that specific case, I can see it coming across that way... but what else am I supposed to say when I make it very clear that I'm not concerned with story, doing story, or storytelling; that story never comes into my mind and never gets a second of consideration; that nothing that feels like story or works like story is part of how I engage with the game, the character, or the setting; and that I dislike narrative mechanics quite a bit... and I'm immediately hit with "you're kidding yourself" and "your mind works on stories you can't help it" and "you can't play RPGs without story" from multiple sides?

Look, back when I actually had a gaming group for 15-20 years, before everyone had kids, moved away, and/or flaked out, something that the others learned when GMing was to save the story stuff for other players who ate it up, and not waste it on me. Put a mystery to solve, or an enemy infiltrator to uncover, or an artifact to recover, or whatever, in front of me, and I'm all over it, and I will roleplay my character to the best of my ability... but save the drama and tragedy and character development arcs and "try-fail cycles" and overcoming weaknesses and all that stuff for someone who enjoys it far more than I do. And if you're another player, never expect my character to be suddenly and inexplicably ignorant, or incompetent, or helpless, to prop up your "story".

Jormengand
2018-01-02, 09:08 PM
And that would appear to be a claim that all communication is "giving an account" and therefore supposedly we can't even have a conversation without telling a story.

We can talk about how magnetism or Black Body radiation or respiration or catalysis or the "Attacker wins" paradigm work without having to tell a story, but you can't really tell people what happened in the battle of Hastings without making it a story.

Blackjackg
2018-01-02, 09:10 PM
And that would appear to be a claim that all communication is "giving an account" and therefore supposedly we can't even have a conversation without telling a story.

Yeah, pretty much. All communication that includes giving accounts of events. And that's not even counting all the stories we tell ourselves in our own minds every time we reflect on series of events that we've experienced.

Lord Raziere
2018-01-02, 09:13 PM
In fairness, at least as I understand it, the argument tends to be (at least, the ones I bother with) less "no objective reality" and more "no perspective less analysis." That everything is always, a communication, a model. Especially science. Fundamentally, everything has a context. Everything has things omitted either intentionally, or non-intentionally, and that science is always, in part a product its creators.

(To give a dumb example, take a GameFAQ. How the author describes, and what they choose to describe is going to vary, and even though none of them will be lying, all of them might focus on very different things. Some of which may even miss entire sub sections. Likewise, while science is a set of tools that attempts to minimize bias, what is studied and who studies it will effect the map (i.e. the report), even if it is not false about the territory (i.e. the objective world.)

Eh.

even if your right (which I'm not sure of), that makes it sound that postmodernism doesn't really seem all that useful? Mostly because it just seems to be a long form way of saying "we still need to correct for self-bias" when we just haven't found all the biases yet. that seems to be something that science and everyone else is well aware of already, so I don't see the point of it either way. regardless, I'm not a big fan of "everything is subjective!!" philosophies anyways simply because they are used more to shut down discussion by saying that you can't criticize what doesn't have objective value or shut down a specific viewpoint by pointing out that its a viewpoint than to actually help anyone, its not something I can trust, rely on or buy into, because regardless of reality, people need to be able to clearly sort out what to believe in themselves psychologically speaking to be healthy, you muddy the waters too much by saying nothing has a value you can assign then it makes doing that very murky and difficult.

because people have things they value, and if you go around making it all too subjective, all that value starts to feel fake, in my experience. and feeling as if things don't have value generally leads down dark roads that I don't want to travel down. gazing into the abyss and all that.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-01-02, 09:13 PM
People seem to be getting excessively worked up over having a different definition of "story". That's really what this entire argument boils down to.

flond
2018-01-02, 09:19 PM
Eh.

even if your right (which I'm not sure of), that makes it sound that postmodernism doesn't really seem all that useful? Mostly because it just seems to be a long form way of saying "we still need to correct for self-bias" when we just haven't found all the biases yet. that seems to be something that science and everyone else is well aware of already, so I don't see the point of it either way. regardless, I'm not a big fan of "everything is subjective!!" philosophies anyways simply because they are used more to shut down discussion by saying that you can't criticize what doesn't have objective value or shut down a specific viewpoint by pointing out that its a viewpoint than to actually help anyone, its not something I can trust, rely on or buy into, because regardless of reality, people need to be able to clearly sort out what to believe in themselves psychologically speaking to be healthy, you muddy the waters too much by saying nothing has a value you can assign then it makes doing that very murky and difficult.

because people have things they value, and if you go around making it all too subjective, all that value starts to feel fake, in my experience. and feeling as if things don't have value generally leads down dark roads that I don't want to travel down. gazing into the abyss and all that.

Eh. Depends on what you're doing. It's useful to remind you your tools are just that, tools. (It also gets a lot of use in the social sciences where...well, it's sometimes important to remember "Easy to measure" is not the same as "important."

Mendicant
2018-01-02, 09:25 PM
We do tell stories to ourselves, but the stories we tell ourselves have flaws that blind us to certain things, and often have underlying reasons why we tell ourselves them.

...This contention is fundamentally all that postmodernism is. You can complain about any number of silly leaps postmodernists have taken, or how flabby and lazy any philosophical tradition can get, but real, useful things have been derived from postmodernist critiques.

Lord Raziere
2018-01-02, 09:49 PM
...This contention is fundamentally all that postmodernism is. You can complain about any number of silly leaps postmodernists have taken, or how flabby and lazy any philosophical tradition can get, but real, useful things have been derived from postmodernist critiques.

Exactly my point. I just said an entire philosophy much shorter and more reasonably while cutting out all the ridiculous parts without even realizing it. Its not needed.

flond
2018-01-02, 09:58 PM
Exactly my point. I just said an entire philosophy much shorter and more reasonably while cutting out all the ridiculous parts without even realizing it. Its not needed.

Except that the usefulness, like the devil, are in the details. Postmodernism is usually best used as a lens of critique about specific things.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-02, 10:00 PM
Yeah, pretty much. All communication that includes giving accounts of events. And that's not even counting all the stories we tell ourselves in our own minds every time we reflect on series of events that we've experienced.


And that's where we're never going to agree, and never come to a "stipulated definition", and never come to terms, because that "we" is presumptuous, and some people worry far more about digging out the facts than dealing in narratives. Some people get very frustrated when they see narrative trumping empirical examination.

Why do you think some people find at least as much satisfaction in worldbuilding as they do in writing a story, in putting together the city for a Vampire campaign as they do in running the campaign, etc? In part, because "digging up" the facts of the fictional setting scratches at least as deep an itch for them as "storytelling" in that setting does.

Feh. The problem with most psychological theories is that they're more belief systems than science, and they presume a universality of their beliefs that's completely unjustified in the face of human variation.


(E: for the settings I'm working on for use in actual fiction, I sometimes get so lost in the worldbuilding that I forget I'm doing it for the story... and I fully subscribe to the "iceberg theory" of worldbuilding that asserts that for every 1 part the reader sees, there should be 9 parts supporting it; whereas others prefer the "hollow world" approach where only what the reader or viewer or player can see is important to develop in full.)

Lord Raziere
2018-01-02, 10:06 PM
Except that the usefulness, like the devil, are in the details. Postmodernism is usually best used as a lens of critique about specific things.

and I don't care enough to find out or learn more, because it all sounds like murky nonsense I can't rely on to me, and I find it tiresome and annoying to argue semantics myself, which I sense is not far off in the conversation about whether or not I actually believe in postmodernism or not, because whether I do or do not, the fact that I dislike everything being subjective is what makes the most sense to me, and while I have that belief about narratives I stated above I still think what Max says makes sense to me.

Yes I can hold both beliefs and find they both make sense to me without contradiction. I don't care if it actually does or not. because again I'm not going to argue semantics, and there am getting out of this conversation before that starts happening to me.

jojo
2018-01-02, 10:14 PM
Whenever someone drops the line "RPGs are about collaborative storytelling" I sets me off on a rant. For a simple reason. It's a meaningless phrase.

The vast majority of people saying this, when asked what they mean, will come back with a variation on "sitting around with other people, doing stuff with our characters and having stuff happen". Which is otherwise known as "playing an RPG". In other words, they're using a circular definition. Playing an RPG is playing an RPG. It's a meaningless phrase.

I'm jumping into this late so forgive me if I double-tap any points that have already been made and take this from the top.

OP: An inability to understand the fundamentals of grammar is your own problem. Don't make your problems other people's problems.

To "Collaborate" is to "Work jointly on an activity or project." Insofar as any single component or group of components comprising said activity involves both story-telling and people, plural, then "Collaborative Story-telling" can be said to have occurred.

From the perspective of an observer "Playing an RPG" will result in the creation of an "Emergent Narrative" therefore "Collaborative Story-Telling," which; while only one facet of "Playing an RPG" is in fact inherent to the act of "Playing an RPG." Therefore it is entirely valid for someone to assert that "RPGs are about Collaborative Story-Telling" insofar as they place significant value on that facet of the activity.

I could go on but I worry that the result would become abusive.

Instead I think me and the rest of the kids are going to go have more of our bad fun wrong.

flond
2018-01-02, 10:42 PM
and I don't care enough to find out or learn more, because it all sounds like murky nonsense I can't rely on to me, and I find it tiresome and annoying to argue semantics myself, which I sense is not far off in the conversation about whether or not I actually believe in postmodernism or not, because whether I do or do not, the fact that I dislike everything being subjective is what makes the most sense to me, and while I have that belief about narratives I stated above I still think what Max says makes sense to me.

Yes I can hold both beliefs and find they both make sense to me without contradiction. I don't care if it actually does or not. because again I'm not going to argue semantics, and there am getting out of this conversation before that starts happening to me.

Eh. Fair enough. I'm mostly vexed about people arguing it's useless trash. If you don't find it a useful tool well...I don't actually...have an issue with that? (I won't try to bait you in or anything I was mostly just...IDK, trying to defend it as something that's gotten people decent results?)

Aliquid
2018-01-03, 12:15 AM
Why do you think some people find at least as much satisfaction in worldbuilding as they do in writing a story, in putting together the city for a Vampire campaign as they do in running the campaign, etc? In part, because "digging up" the facts of the fictional setting scratches at least as deep an itch for them as "storytelling" in that setting does.Ok, as much as I think your arguments are completely misinterpreting what people are trying to say... I can totally agree with you here.

I enjoy worldbuilding more than actually playing a RPG. I like character development and NPC development better. I like building cities and cultures. I love drawing maps.

This is why I have been playing RPGs for the last 30 some odd years. This is why I have built more games than I have actually played... actually I also like deconstructing rules mechanics more than playing too... I have read all sorts of game systems that I haven't played. Just to see how they handle the mechanics of gameplaying.

So, the "story" isn't the draw for me with RPGs. But I do acknowledge that when I am actually playing a RPG, I am communicating with people about a series of events, and as such we are telling a story. That might not be why we are playing, and it might not be our purpose, but it is the product of our actions.


The adventuring PCs save the village from the invading goblins. - STORY

The stealthy PC climbs the fence, skirts past security and sneaks into the building through the basement window - STORY

etc

When we were playing the game, we weren't thinking "I should do X. That would make a good story". We were thinking "What would my character realistically do when in this scenario". Even so, a story was created as a by-product of playing the game. AND since we were talking around the table to each other, actively telling each other what our characters were doing. I can say that not only was a story created, but storytelling was taking place.

Pleh
2018-01-03, 06:39 AM
No strawman, I've responded to exactly the words that he wrote in his posts on that matter, and if he's pulled back from those words in any significant way, I've not seen it. If he would like to pull back from the words I quoted a few posts ago, I welcome it and I will adjust my response accordingly.

Furthermore, if your position is in fact that storytelling is inevitable in any RPG, then it can only be true if it starts from the position that any sequence of events -- and thus everything, but nothing is static -- is "a story". It's not enough for that position to be true for any account of events to be "a story", because it is not an "account of events" simply to make in-character decisions and play the game.

I think I've pulled back in the sense that I feel like I understand better that this is really just a complaint that people are abusing language which makes what they are saying technically wrong.

I still feel like you and Tanarii are just way overboard and unnecessarily offended by this. The people you're upset with are only technically wrong, but you're fine with the essential point they're trying to make.

On the point about making In-Character decisions: when making such decisions, you take into account Character motivations, which are based in no small part on their Back-Story and HiStory. You could play a character who has no functional backstory and neglect to take any of the character's past into account, but it will diminish the breadth and the scope of what this kind of playing can call, "Roleplay."


if everything is relative and subjective and equivalently valid narratives, then it's relative all the way down, and they can't escape that to ever establish the accuracy of their own position.

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Just because everything is subjective doesn't mean it can't also happen to be accurate, it just means we can never be absolutely certain if it is or isn't. Of course, if it seems to be reliably true, then it can still be a Useful Approximation without having to be Absolutely Accurate. Essentially, we don't need it to be Absolutely Accurate to be Reliable. We only need it to be Accurate to Within Tolerances to be Useful, but that doesn't mean it won't still turn out to be Inaccurate.

You seem to be conflating Accuracy as a Sliding Scale of Degree with the Accuracy as a Boolean Value (which is where the Sliding Scale often falls out of Tolerances). Postmodernism, if it does anything, proves that no one can truly establish Absolute Accuracy, generally partial degrees of Accuracy are still quite attainable.

Postmodernism doesn't really preclude the existence of objective fact, it reminds us that there is an exceedingly strong likelihood that our subjective perceptions of objective fact are so intrinsically flawed and limited that our they may never be capable of perfectly imagining whatever the actual objective reality is.

I like to run with the example of Classical Mechanics (as I think a few of you have already heard me talk about, but I'll say again in case someone else reading this hasn't). We know for fact that it's wrong and that Quantum Mechanics must be closer to matching our Subjective Perceptions with Objective Reality. Classical Mechanics is still widely taught at universities, however, because it is still a powerfully useful approximation for applications in the daily life of humans. Quantum Mechanics could be used for all the same applications and produce more accurate results, but the amount of extra work required to do so far outweighs the minimal improvement in accuracy we'd get for doing it.

It's a less accurate model that is more useful in application to human life and society than the model that is more accurate on the cosmic scale.

Postmodernism isn't saying, "nothing is true." That statement misleads us into thinking that it's saying, "everything is meaningless" (I believe that would be Nihilism, so let's not conflate the terms). That is not what it's saying. It's saying, "everything has the potential for some unknown degree of inaccuracy that could be discovered at any moment." It's using the Sliding Scale Accuracy rather than the Boolean Value.

It's saying, "never take objective truth for granted, because the best we can ever have are useful approximations." Not, "nothing can be trusted," but "nothing should be trusted blindly, even things we thought we had already established as true."

How to determine if something is useful? Test it and see if it works. We'll refine the answers later. But when we start getting too comfortable with these approximations always being right, it can begin to make us biased against ever revising or replacing that approximation to increase its accuracy.


Eh.

even if your right (which I'm not sure of), that makes it sound that postmodernism doesn't really seem all that useful? Mostly because it just seems to be a long form way of saying "we still need to correct for self-bias" when we just haven't found all the biases yet. that seems to be something that science and everyone else is well aware of already, so I don't see the point of it either way. regardless, I'm not a big fan of "everything is subjective!!" philosophies anyways simply because they are used more to shut down discussion by saying that you can't criticize what doesn't have objective value or shut down a specific viewpoint by pointing out that its a viewpoint than to actually help anyone, its not something I can trust, rely on or buy into, because regardless of reality, people need to be able to clearly sort out what to believe in themselves psychologically speaking to be healthy, you muddy the waters too much by saying nothing has a value you can assign then it makes doing that very murky and difficult.

because people have things they value, and if you go around making it all too subjective, all that value starts to feel fake, in my experience. and feeling as if things don't have value generally leads down dark roads that I don't want to travel down. gazing into the abyss and all that.

Yes, I agree this is a dangerous and blatant abuse of Postmodernism. Postmodernism should be used to remind us to question everything, almost especially things that we feel comfortable taking for granted (because that is most likely where we are being the most blind and thoughtless about things). It should never be used to throw anything out into the garbage, it is intended to help us take Subjective Perspectives off of the pedestal of Objective Reality by reminding us how unlikely it is that our Subjective Representation of that Objective Reality is to be accurate (I'm talking about the sliding scale accuracy rather than the boolean value).

I am just as leery of trusting authoritative arguments that I know are far less certain about things than they claim to be, with proofs that are far less rigorous than they believe, purporting themselves to be above questioning (because "it's obvious").

Postmodernism is correct when it reminds us that we often conflate our perception of reality with reality itself, that often our perception of reality is inaccurate (if often only partly incorrect), and that we have a tendency to get emotionally defensive of our inaccurate ideas on a subconscious level.

I feel it is taken too far when it is used to start nuking every useful approximation we've been relying on up to this point.


People seem to be getting excessively worked up over having a different definition of "story". That's really what this entire argument boils down to.

Sure, but if reconciling this difference helps one side feel more comfortable with story elements in their RPGs or the other side more comfortable with less story based RPGs, then I think we'll have gained something valuable from the discussion.