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hyphz posted:But another word has dripped in. A "storyline". What's a storyline and how is it different from a story and a plot? Let's go back to the root of the issue: hyphz posted:What I mean is that if you follow the advice “don’t prepare what will happen to the PCs, just decide what the fronts will do” to the letter, then you have a werewolf conspiracy that’s trying to gain power in the town. But the moment you say “and a PC notices one of them at a society party” you’ve broken the advice, you have prepared what will happen to the PC. You might then come up with an excellent reason for the werewolf and the PC to be there but if you are reverse engineering that from the decision that the noticing will happen, you’re still preparing story. No, it doesn't hit the four satisfying notes of a fun RPG plot-story-arc-line experience you laid out. Players are absolutely free to miss things, or only choose easy things, or choose to not oppose the things, or take the easy way out by shooting someone unprovoked, or try to fist-fight the werewolf and lose horribly. Tough. 
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Jul 2, 2021 21:56
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Yup like, OK, you decided "there are werewolves at the party" and you can do more things to confront the PCs with werewolves if you want, "the werwolves want to eat the PCs" is an option I guess. But the PCs can take an interest in Lady Turtle instead, a character you didn't even give a real name to, she's just in a turtle costume at this, oh, spur-of-the-moment, it's a costume party yup, you mentioned her entirely improvisationally when you were describing the scene. And if that's what happens, guess what, your game is now about Lady Turtle and not about werewolves. Unless Lady Turtle is a werewolf, which you can decide. Or not. Maybe a player establishes that Lady Turtle is actually a fairy before you get her werewolfness into play and now yep she's definitely not a werewolf. This is why you should not do much prep about the werewolves that are at the party. It takes one minute to write down on your napkin "the PCs are at a party, and there's werewolves there, and they have a reason to kill one of the PCs" and if you have to toss that napkin in the trash, you haven't lost much.
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Jul 2, 2021 22:58
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hyphz posted:I suspect we can blame this on Ron Edwards - GNS might be dead, but up until that the term "drama" was usually used in place of "story" for that aspect of gaming. As it is there's a weird conflation between a) "story" meaning the entire series of fictional events that in an RPG session, and b) the term "story" or "plot" from literature analysis. The problem is that a) and b) are very different, and that there are plenty of things that might influence how enjoyable a session is other than the emitted series of events. If you're going to blame things on Edwards, it might be worth reading the source. He'd be the first to say that his thinking has evolved in the last twenty or so years. Nevertheless, even then he was already addressing your first concern here in the sections titled "Story" and "Story Now". Under "Premise", he further emphasizes that he is specifically not focusing on the end product: "[i]n reading what follows, bear in mind that [The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri] is discussing the process of writing, not an existing playscript or a performance".
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Jul 2, 2021 23:10
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OtspIII posted:Create dynamic tactical situations -- Of course, you can also give combat and noncombat equal mechanical weight by simplifying the rules massively and going more narrative like Blades in the Dark (Black Seven is another game that's really good at this) but I'm not looking to simplify combat (or stealth or some other things) down to one or two rolls. The Snakes'n'Ladders chase chart is interesting, though I agree with hyphz that as-is it's too random and isn't flexible enough to accommodate every type of fiction. I'd like to have a ruleset that accommodates different rules modules for different types of action--including, for example, the difference between skirmish combat with small groups of people and combat where you're fighting a physically gigantic boss like a dragon or a Metal Gear, where the enemy and the arena are essentially one and the same. I'm also trying to think up general headings for common stuff that happens in action-adventure movies, like "this whole place is going down and we need to get out of here," "rescue people from imminent danger," etc. (I really admire the way OSE lays out all the different rules subsystems for everything the PCs will want to do in D&D, but of course I'm not aiming for AD&D's totally disparate mechanical subsystems.) I think I need to look at stuff like Let Thrones Beware, and consider how challenges that aren't physical combat can also contain multiple "enemies" that need to be defeated. I've also been looking at Fellowship and how "damaging" an enemy negates one of their attributes and thus takes away a player-facing danger.
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Jul 3, 2021 00:18
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Leperflesh posted:Yup like, OK, you decided "there are werewolves at the party" and you can do more things to confront the PCs with werewolves if you want, "the werwolves want to eat the PCs" is an option I guess. But the PCs can take an interest in Lady Turtle instead, a character you didn't even give a real name to, she's just in a turtle costume at this, oh, spur-of-the-moment, it's a costume party yup, you mentioned her entirely improvisationally when you were describing the scene. Well, in the game I actually played discovering the werewolves at the party was the initial bang before standard play began, so that wasn't actually appropriate in that case. quote:And if that's what happens, guess what, your game is now about Lady Turtle and not about werewolves. Unless Lady Turtle is a werewolf, which you can decide. Or not. Maybe a player establishes that Lady Turtle is actually a fairy before you get her werewolfness into play and now yep she's definitely not a werewolf. Cool. And what's going to happen? Either she's going to oppose the PCs doing something in the future, or she's going to be doing something herself that someone else is opposing and the PCs end up helping her... no matter what you do, Drosselmeyer gets you. You can't not have a story without not having a game. (And at a more prosaic level, crossing out "werewolves" on that napkin and writing in "wereturtles" or "fairies" or whatever doesn't constitute not having prepared a story.)
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Jul 3, 2021 01:13
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hyphz posted:Cool. And what's going to happen? Either she's going to oppose the PCs doing something in the future, or she's going to be doing something herself that someone else is opposing and the PCs end up helping her... no matter what you do, Drosselmeyer gets you. You can't not have a story without not having a game. Yes. Things will happen. We don't know what's going to happen because we didn't plan it, but something's definitely going to happen and we will find out what that is as we play this game that has a story in it. Glad you finally understand.
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Jul 3, 2021 04:09
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Yes. Things will happen. We don't know what's going to happen because we didn't plan it, but something's definitely going to happen and we will find out what that is as we play this game that has a story in it. Glad you finally understand. Except you do know what's going to happen. A story is going to happen. And sadly, there aren't that many viable stories. I mean, you can't go down the road to get the milk without learning that all the milk has been brought up to fuel the evil ritual of bovinity that the secret cult in the town has set up, oh look, it's another mystery to combat structure. And I'm pretty sure that structure, at least, was prepared - maybe years ago. I mean, don’t get me wrong, that can still be fun. But if I don’t want mystery to combat, maybe if I want to rebuild civilisation instead, it seems the games just say “tough”. hyphz fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Jul 3, 2021 |
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Jul 3, 2021 04:19
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KingKalamari posted:The idea of the rules of the game not existing as a means to facilitate play, but as a lens through which to interpret and classify things. Oh yes! Completely agreed. This is indeed a big problem that can poison the way many people think about RPGs and fiction in general. This idea is why so many people had such a hard time with 4E's minion rules. They just can't get around the idea that monsters only have stats when they interact with characters. This idea is one reason why people codify Force powers and complain about the competence of characters in horror films. They think Force must grant access to a discreet set of powers and protagonists must act rationally But I'm not sure this is a problem specific to D&D or a generation of its players. It wasn't AD&D players grogging out about minions, after all; it was 3E players. I think this is more a result of mechanically codifying reality in general. And I don't think I agree that the decision to make monstrous humanoids mechanically distinct from humans was an arbitrary one. I think the reasoning for it is right there in the term "monstrous humanoid". It was a decision made to emulate D&D's fictional influences, many of which involved some kinds of odious "race science" nonsense that went unexamined.
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Jul 3, 2021 04:29
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hyphz posted:Except you do know what's going to happen. A story is going to happen. And sadly, there aren't that many viable stories. I mean, you can't go down the road to get the milk without learning that all the milk has been brought up to fuel the evil ritual of bovinity that the secret cult in the town has set up, oh look, it's another mystery to combat structure. And I'm pretty sure that structure, at least, was prepared - maybe years ago. What?
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Jul 3, 2021 04:54
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hyphz posted:Well, in the game I actually played discovering the werewolves at the party was the initial bang before standard play began, so that wasn't actually appropriate in that case. Right? I mean, the problem you first presented was, what if you had werewolves, but the PCs didn't notice. The answer is, there's still a game. quote:(And at a more prosaic level, crossing out "werewolves" on that napkin and writing in "wereturtles" or "fairies" or whatever doesn't constitute not having prepared a story.) Nonsense. You prepared a setting, and improvised a character. That's not "preparing a story." hyphz posted:Except you do know what's going to happen. A story is going to happen. And sadly, there aren't that many viable stories. I don't agree, and also, that's not what you were initially raising as a problem. And also it's not your responsibility in these games to cause the story to happen all by yourself. It turns out every day millions of people play RPGs and are pretty much happy with how the story plays out, a lot of the time.
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Jul 3, 2021 04:55
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As a note, if what you're looking for is a structure to build good game scenarios around, the best I've seen is probably The Alexandrian talking about Node-Based Scenario Design.
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Jul 3, 2021 07:01
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I can’t remember if it was Vincent Baker or Luke Crane who was speaking at a local convention years ago, but one of them mentioned that the story isn't present at the game table, it's in the memories we construct of that game. I find the idea kinda liberating. You can just sit down, make fictional trouble maybe roll some dice, and then just explore what the results mean in the fiction. Right now I'm very much a journey-focused gamer I guess.
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Jul 3, 2021 07:48
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Siivola posted:I can’t remember if it was Vincent Baker or Luke Crane who was speaking at a local convention years ago, but one of them mentioned that the story isn't present at the game table, it's in the memories we construct of that game. Yes. The gameplay creates the story. Even in a pre-written, railroaded, D&D module. The story the group ends up with isn't contained in the written material, it's produced when that material is used to play a game.
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Jul 3, 2021 09:36
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hyphz posted:Except you do know what's going to happen. A story is going to happen. When you go to the movies you know a story is going to happen. Doesn't mean Frozen and The Exorcist are the same, though. I think you were pointing vaguely in the direction of something when you said you wanted the rules of Legacy to create a story about the rebuilding of civilisation rather than one about mysteries and combat? But a story can hit all the same beats as another and still be about something completely different.
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Jul 3, 2021 10:13
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Leperflesh posted:Right? I mean, the problem you first presented was, what if you had werewolves, but the PCs didn't notice. The answer is, there's still a game. I think this is the issue about what’s actually meant by preparing a story. Does it mean specifically coming up with a sequence of events? Something along the lines of “agent X escapes with the formula, if the PCs got lucky and critted him then agent Y escapes with it instead” is generally considered unpleasant railroading. “The players learn something is wrong with Lord Grufwulf, or if they take an interest in him then they learn something is wrong with Lady Turtle” is not an obviously different structure. “Whatever the players do they will encounter mystery to combat” is enough of a story to define the sequence of events in at least abstract terms. In many ways this ties into the other discussion on the thread - that mystery to combat ends up having to be the structure because the game system only supports combat in detail, and mystery is the easiest thing to take OOC because being aware of information and making decisions based on it is the basic structure of gaming anyway. quote:I don't agree, and also, that's not what you were initially raising as a problem. And also it's not your responsibility in these games to cause the story to happen all by yourself. It turns out every day millions of people play RPGs and are pretty much happy with how the story plays out, a lot of the time. They’re also “pretty much happy” with the game design of D&D 5e..  While there’s nothing terribly wrong with mystery to combat, it was demoralising to me for two reasons. First that it tends to happen regardless of the genre. Again, that Legacy doesn’t actually make a story from the players playing out rebuilding civilisation. And second that it requires the GM to step out from playing the fronts and establish clues, which the fronts would presumably not want to leave.
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Jul 3, 2021 15:02
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You prepare a story when, before the game happens, you lay down some set of story beats, scenes, clues, NPC discussions, whatever, that lead into one another, for the players to run into during the game. I can't tell whether you fundamentally don't understand what "improvisation" means, or if your obsession with the mystery to combat pipeline is blinding you to all the games that are just about doing things and seeing what happens. Siivola fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Jul 3, 2021 |
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Jul 3, 2021 20:06
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hyphz posted:I think this is the issue about what’s actually meant by preparing a story. Does it mean specifically coming up with a sequence of events? Something along the lines of “agent X escapes with the formula, if the PCs got lucky and critted him then agent Y escapes with it instead” is generally considered unpleasant railroading. “The players learn something is wrong with Lord Grufwulf, or if they take an interest in him then they learn something is wrong with Lady Turtle” is not an obviously different structure. Well, look. I have strong opinions, and I'm also ignorant in some key ways that is making this hard for me to address - that is, I haven't actually reviewed the rules of these storygames we're discussing. Nevertheless, I feel like I've picked up enough via osmosis to still be able to respond in some fashion, especially when I ignore the specifics of various storygame's rules and fall back on my understanding of both RPGs, and of stories and storytelling. So lemme do that a little. For me, "railroading" is only bad when the players object to some level of their choices not seeming to matter. There's many different places on that axis that the players might draw a line. I once played in a game where the DM had a detailed and complete plan for what we were gonna do, from level 1 through level 20, and it was pretty cool because their plan was really good. We still had choices to make, and they still affected things, but the way the story was supposed to go was still there in broad strokes and on rails the whole way. Another group might have hated it, but the GM was very very clear with us up-front about what they wanted to do, and we all signed on to that. On the other side, I've pulled out from (but politely and with no hard feelings) a group that wanted nothing less than a total sandbox, and actively undermined the GM's attempts to entice them to actually engage with planned material via signposted adventure hooks. What that group wanted was valid, but not for me, and probably not for that GM either. All that is just to say, “agent X escapes with the formula, if the PCs got lucky and critted him then agent Y escapes with it instead” on its face does not strike me as a level of railroading that most players would object to. Firstly because they may not even notice that their defeat of agent X was "irrelevant" because the formula was still stolen; and, second, because, if Agent Y is different in some meaningful way than Agent X, then they still affected the outcome in a meaningful way. I know you tend to be hyperfocused on this one specific problem. The impression one might get from the totality of your posts about it is that you have a near-crippling aversion to running into this problem. I don't think still more words about it is ever going to completely mollify you; I'll just have to say, look, actually most players are fine with "plot points" like "the formula is stolen" being a thing they can't actually prevent, early or midway through an adventure. The players' agency matters, but so does the GM's, and you seem to want to skew things so far that the GM isn't allowed to have any agency because that necessarily detracts from the players'. Even in storygames that's not true. The GM is one of the players, the GM gets to make some decisions about how the game is going, both ahead of time and during play. Different games provide different tools and expectations around this; but as far as I can tell, no game with a GM expects the GM to be completely subservient to all player decisions, such that any prep or thought the GM does in advance about the setting, characters, theme, mood, style, etc. is either disallowed, or can be trivially invalidated by any PC player choosing at any moment to focus on something else. If the game expects the GM to present the ballroom with werewolves, the game can't seriously also expect the GM to not think in advance about the ballroom, or the werewolves - what they look like, who they are, what they want, what's going on there when the PCs arrive. I, simply, do not agree with you that this could be a reasonable interpretation of the admonition not to pre-write the story. To wrap all that up more succinctly: yes if you decide there's werewolves at the party, as the GM, you have the ability and permission to make this game session contain werewolves. You don't completely lose that agency just because the game's rules admonish you to not pre-prepare a story. What they mean by that is obvious both from the context of the rules themselves, and from the numerous examples of play available for you to review. When they say "don't write the story in advance" that's a caution to people accustomed to writing out the beginning, middle, and end of an adventure, complete with the final climactic scene, notes on who will live and who will die, a specific pile of treasure the PCs will get, and how many XP they'll receive. People used to playing only in that mode need to be told "hey this game is different." I can tell just by the fact that this game has a GM, that there's an expectation that the GM has agency to affect what happens in the game, and if the GM struggles with improvising 100% of everything, it's still permissible within the rules and guidelines and spirit of these games for the GM to prepare some notes about certain people, places, and things - and their motivations and desires - and their backgrounds and events taking place leading up to and even dribbling through the beginnigns of the table play. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Jul 3, 2021 |
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Jul 3, 2021 20:31
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Leperflesh posted:Well, look. I have strong opinions, and I'm also ignorant in some key ways that is making this hard for me to address - that is, I haven't actually reviewed the rules of these storygames we're discussing.
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Jul 3, 2021 20:51
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Here's a couple particularly bad railroady examples from the official shadowrun modules: -PCs get shanghaied into doing a mission for some Big Important Plot Character (CEO of some important evil megacorp). At the end of the mission they actually get to meet with him personally, unless they attack him in which case he retroactively was a body double and the entire building was lined with C4 and explodes, killing the whole party (and the module is explicit that this is a retcon - it wasn't a body double until that point). -Multiple missions start with 'you all wake up having been suddenly knocked unconscious, you don't remember anything from the past hour, there is no evidence how or why, any recording equipment that you had is wiped clean, you will not detect any traces of any chemical or magical techniques, none of the spirits your mage has doing lookout know anything, et cetera'. Which I think are a lot more blatant than 'the villain has a backup plan for stealing the formula', and also shows a lot of lack of imagination - the premise of 'you just killed one of the 50 most important people in the world, now what', is enough to sustain an entire campaign, for instance.
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Jul 3, 2021 21:23
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Honestly, I dont mind the first one right up until the C4. Plenty of games pretty explicitly let PCs retcon stuff like BitD and I think the impulse that the GM has to work on scouts honor for that sort of thing if the alternative wouldn't be fun is a very silly one.
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Jul 3, 2021 21:28
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Siivola posted:You prepare a story when, before the game happens, you lay down some set of story beats, scenes, clues, NPC discussions, whatever, that lead into one another, for the players to run into during the game. Right, but in how much detail? I think it's pretty clear that having agent Y escape with the formula instead of agent X does not invalidate having predefined the story in which agent X did so. So, to try a thought experiment, what change does invalidate this? If agent X escapes with something other than the formula which plays the same narrative role - that is, it allows Doctor Q to continue his evil plan - then that also seems not to remove the predefinition. What if nobody escaped with anything, but Doctor Q was able to continue with his plan anyway having discovered a new option? That also seems not to have invalidated the predefinition of the story. Or what if Doctor Q's plan failed and he is no longer a threat, but now Doctor R has showed up with a different plan? Has that invalidated predestination? The issue is that ultimately when you go through this, the real underlying statement which needs to be removed to invalidate the predefinition here is "there will be an antagonist to whom the PCs are reactive." Does making that statement constitute "preparing a story"? It might seem that it does not, but the thought experiment suggests it does because stripping away every part of a prepared story except that principle did not seem to provide more freedom. quote:I can't tell whether you fundamentally don't understand what "improvisation" means, or if your obsession with the mystery to combat pipeline is blinding you to all the games that are just about doing things and seeing what happens. My "obsession with the pipeline" comes with the fact that every RPG I have played in - in narrative and tactical contexts - listened to, or seen running has ended up with that structure; with the exception only of some unusally structured one-shot games like Fiasco and Microscope. And even some newer games that aren't obviously about it have begun to revolve around it. The Yellow King RPG, for example, has four very different settings yet explicitly states that "weird mystery" would be the focus of play in all of them. Heck, Glitch with all its fascinating philosophy and internal gnostic logic still says that the GM should prepare "most importantly, mysteries". I'm increasingly believing that it's intrinsic to the medium. In order to "do things and see what happens", there has to be doubt about what happens, either proactively (we don't know what this will do) or retroactively (something had a surprising result and we don't know why). After all, otherwise you're just doing things where you already know what will happen! In a game where the question is "what do you do?" and a player or PC has a goal, the issue is always going to be to find the correct answer to that question. More importantly, the classic mystery plot beats are utilised in order to throttle the range of available PC actions down to something vagely manageable while avoiding Hobson's Choice.
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Jul 3, 2021 21:47
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I think ultimately what you're really saying is, roleplaying games require some kind of structure, which, yes.
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Jul 3, 2021 22:51
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Leperflesh posted:I think ultimately what you're really saying is, roleplaying games require some kind of structure, which, yes. ... And that that structure has to be imposed deliberately by the GM (or possibly the players) rather than de facto arising as a result of the medium or system.
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Jul 4, 2021 01:25
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Yes. In addition to the structure provided by the rules, there's a component of the game that is structure provided by the players, with the GM as one of those players.
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Jul 4, 2021 01:59
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Has "games have a structure, which is provided by both rules and players" been under debate?
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Jul 4, 2021 02:09
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Has "games have a structure, which is provided by both rules and players" been under debate? Well, I think the relation is that you can't "not prepare a story" because you have to at least predetermine that you will provide that structure, or work out how that you fit whatever events happen into that structure. Likewise, you can't "just play the fronts" because providing that structure would not be achieved by doing that.
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Jul 4, 2021 02:54
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Preparing some characters, the setting, and background, isn't pre-writing the story. Agreeing that we're going to build a narrative in-play doesn't violate the admonition not to pre-write the story. Agreeing that we'll fit events that happen into a narrative structure likewise doesn't invalidate that. And "just playing the fronts" as far as I understand that term, again, does not invalidate that, because we're going to improvisationally fit playing the fronts into a sequence of events, which is what a story is, at least at some level. Like I think it's fair to ask at this point, are you really still disagreeing, or just unable to say "OK you guys are right"?
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Jul 4, 2021 03:04
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hyphz posted:Well, I think the relation is that you can't "not prepare a story" because you have to at least predetermine that you will provide that structure, or work out how that you fit whatever events happen into that structure. Likewise, you can't "just play the fronts" because providing that structure would not be achieved by doing that. Those aren't the same thing. The last time I ran WWWRPG, this is the total prep I did: 1) The player characters are wrestlers in a pro wrestling league in Melbourne, Australia, circa 1985. 2) The owner of the league is Sir Sydney Hobart (real name: Bruce Smith) who directs the company from his luxury yacht, the Straia III. 3) Chet or Brett or Chad or Brad or whoever is the soulless and interchangeable representative of a soulless interchangeable american TV company. 4) The main announcer is former heavyweight title holder "Big" Bill Blundstone. 5) The next scheduled show, and opening scene of the game, will be THE SUNDAY SUPER SLAM THIS SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAAAAAAAAAAY That's it, that's all, no story prepared, just that outline sketch of the fiction as it stands when we first view it. The structure came from the game's rules and from the player's own additions to the fiction (in the beginning, their characters, alliances, and rivalries as produced during the first session). The story happened as we played and found out what would happen next. Nobody had any idea what that would be.
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Jul 4, 2021 03:12
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That’s a decadent amount of prep compared to when I ran the werewolf game hyphz keeps mentioning, but that was for a second arc of a game. I literally had a list of possible NPC names and the vague thought of “everyone likes werewolves, right?” All made while having a smoke 5 minutes before the session. The 30YW AW game was specifically a demonstration of how prepping isn’t needed and while it had flaws they were just with my GMing.
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Jul 4, 2021 04:05
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Leperflesh posted:Preparing some characters, the setting, and background, isn't pre-writing the story. Agreeing that we're going to build a narrative in-play doesn't violate the admonition not to pre-write the story. Agreeing that we'll fit events that happen into a narrative structure likewise doesn't invalidate that. And "just playing the fronts" as far as I understand that term, again, does not invalidate that, because we're going to improvisationally fit playing the fronts into a sequence of events, which is what a story is, at least at some level. I think you are right about structure needing to exist. But even if we don't consider it not to be "pre-writing the story", there's still a substantial amount that is predefined. Elector_Nerdlingen posted:1) The player characters are wrestlers in a pro wrestling league in Melbourne, Australia, circa 1985. And: 6) Knowing pro wrestling and knowing that it has an intrinsically narrative structure and what that is. Xiahou Dun posted:I literally had a list of possible NPC names and the vague thought of “everyone likes werewolves, right?” All made while having a smoke 5 minutes before the session. The 30YW AW game was specifically a demonstration of how prepping isn’t needed and while it had flaws they were just with my GMing. And it was fun! And it was mystery to combat, which was fine and fun in that setting and system! But not what Legacy, for example, promises, which is problematic if that structure is mandatory for all RPGs. hyphz fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Jul 4, 2021 |
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Jul 4, 2021 04:19
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hyphz posted:And: What is the narrative structure of pro wrestling, and how does knowing it equate to pre-writing a story?
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Jul 4, 2021 04:38
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:What is the narrative structure of pro wrestling, and how does knowing it equate to pre-writing a story? I don’t know much about pro wrestling, but I know that “storylines” would literally be a thing that exists in character in a wrestling game. I imagine there are standards for them.
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Jul 4, 2021 04:56
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Well, in the big picture, it revolves around weekly episodes leading up to a special (PPV). Every episode is a card of wrestling matches, interspersed with skits (interviews, announcements, variety acts, and in media res live coverage of goings on, of wildly varying plausibility).
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Jul 4, 2021 05:00
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Right. So you’ve got a structure of combat to link to combat. And I’m sure that works fine in a game based on pro wrestling, just like it works fine in adventures for tactical combat games. Just like mystery to combat works fine in a fictional style detective game, or Monster of the Week, or searching the dungeon then killing the dragon. But what is the intrinsic narrative structure of building a city? Of overthrowing a government? Of surviving in the wasteland? Of being aware of a fundamental error in existence that makes the universe hate you? They don’t have one, and the games don’t create one for you. So the only option it seems is to push those interesting things into the background and tape things on top that do match one of the narrative structures, so that the Riders’ Abstinence Society becomes the Scooby Gang and exponentially less interesting as a result.
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Jul 4, 2021 05:39
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Do you genuinely believe that making a statement "we are going to play a game about X" is the same as pre-writing a story about X?
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Jul 4, 2021 05:50
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I’ve seen goalposts moved in my day, but this is probably the first time they seem to be transported via Stargate or something.
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Jul 4, 2021 06:35
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If it helps, I try to think of what I prep for games as 'situations', not stories. Like, you can totally plot out a ton of "this NPC is going to make this move" type stuff and it doesn't create railroading or anything--just as long as you aren't prepping how the PCs are going to react to it/making it impossible for them to affect/change it. (I think the question of why mysteries have so much gravity in RPGs is actually pretty interesting--I want to think about that a bit more, but it and combat are definitely the two big things RPGs have spent time getting good at)
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Jul 4, 2021 06:55
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Do you genuinely believe that making a statement "we are going to play a game about X" is the same as pre-writing a story about X? I believe that taping a narrative structure into a situation that doesn’t intrinsically have one is, in part, preparing a story about X. Saying “we are going to play Monster Of The Week and you are going to be investigating weird disappearances in a village” is not preparing a story because that story structure already existed in the premise of Monster Of The Week. Saying “we are going to play Spire and you are going to be scavenging the Vermissian for evidence of original Drow habitation” is preparing a story. You are taking what Spire is about, a revolution, and layering a more restrictive condition on it in order to more easily create a narrative structure. Since this was not there to begin with, you have prepared it.
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Jul 4, 2021 07:07
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hyphz posted:I believe that taping a narrative structure into a situation that doesn’t intrinsically have one is, in part, preparing a story about X. While this isn't entirely wrong, it's extremely not what people mean when they say "don't prep a story". Like, I'm not a mind-reader, so I can't be 100% certain on this, but I'm pretty much 95% certain that none of the people telling you not to prep a story meant "don't pick a genre". Typically, what they mean is way closer to "don't prep an ending"
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Jul 4, 2021 07:22
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hyphz posted:I believe that taping a narrative structure into a situation that doesn’t intrinsically have one is, in part, preparing a story about X. You're still wrong, but before I keep going I'd like to confirm that the goalposts have moved from "you can't play a game without preparing a story" to "restricting the kinds of stories that can be told is the same as preparing a story" and that they won't move any further.
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Jul 4, 2021 07:47
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