Storytelling and Role-Playing are Incompatible

[@Stijnl10071]

As a younger TTRPG player and DM (25) this is exactly the game type I would love to play in and run - however the current mainstream culture and my peers seem completely anathematic to this style of play. I think Questing Beast made a video about 6 different RPG cultures that have occurred throughout the hobby's history - and the new 5e strain was characterised as focusing on GM storytelling with particular focus on character backstory; that is to say, daddy GM goes woo with the aeroplane filled with half guessed backstory slop into the gullet of passive yet greedy players. I had this experience with a group of 5 players my age - it was set in an enchanted forest were the borders between reality and dreamlike chaos frayed, and for the fucking life of me I could not get the players to engage with the world at all. No initiative at all, and that would be fine if it's one or two players - but all five? Maddening. I don't think Critical Role/Dimension 20 are at fault - I think the culture's interpretation of what they do at their tables and how the sausage being made is flawed. Anyway, top video, really enjoying the topics being discussed here.

[@Ritten_Lies]

Make a process a key feature in your next game...its harder than the normal way but...results are undeniably better. Vet your players. These players may not be your best friends but the sacrifice should outweigh the infringement in comfort. These players want what you want. Easy to say...but "they will" engage with the world...i promise you. Good luck.

[@Stijnl10071]

@@Ritten_Lies Good advice, thanks chief

[@leonardorossi998]

Ok, I have experience as a player right now (working on a campaign) and I've run into the "not knowing what to do problem". One thing that might cause this is not giving players enough information about the world. Sometimes, when you need to make decision, more information is better than more mistery. When it happened to me, it is usually because we aren't given much in terms of information about the world that we can actually use, like how the society around us worked, what was our place in it before, and so on. One time when this didn't happen was in a Shadowrun campaign, which was always centered around a single city and every single character was a member of a faction inside that city with its own history, ideals and goals, and everyone recognized them as such. When we played like that, the slightest hooks were enough for us to react and set goals for ourselves for the next months of play, to the point we had TOO MUCH stuff we wanted to do. So, this brings me to another thing you might try: work with the players to make their characters part of the world from moment 0. Help them choose or create a faction that they might like, and then they will do all of the work for you

[@Stijnl10071]

@@leonardorossi998 a fair point, but isn't it also a player's responsibility to find out what they do not know? Again, me as a DM have no idea what you want to/need to know - and sure getting them into the world day one is a sweet idea - but they don't seem to practice creativity, that too has felt like harassing them to make decisions for themselves. I've run a campaign with a far more fleshed out history and world, like a good 2 millennia of happenings, and that too did not lead to anything apart from me having to railroad. Because that's what they wanted, to be told a story, but that's not why I play the game. I think as DM and player both, the greatest power of this medium is suprise, not quite knowing how plans will go, what will effect what. This isn't to say that I don't believe you or that it can't be a DM side issue - but there's a reason why there's a DM shortage in 5e right now. It's because DMs take all the goddamn responsibility of the game, while players do not.

[@leonardorossi998]

@@Stijnl10071 Agreed, I never wanted to imply it was all on the DM. This is one of those cases where sometimes it's nobody's fault: you thought what you knew was enough, and then found out it wasn't. Even worse, sometimes it takes a lot of time to figure out what really went wrong. Of course though, there are also cases where the problem was actively ignored (and I'm not speaking of D&D 5e, I've surprisingly played very little of that). Those were the cases where I left the table or simply waited out the end of the experience. What I found was that starting from the idea of inserting the character in the world and have their context matter was the most effective way to make sure this did not happen. Of course, it is not a guarantee that players will actively engage, but I think it's one of your best bets.

[@Ritten_Lies]

Emphasized Role Play. The byproduct is the story.

[@lindybeige]

Yes. If you have written a scenario with a beginning, a middle, and an end, then what you should have written was a novel or a screenplay. If you have one cool idea for a really good bit in a story and want to put that in, then possibly you should have written a poem or a song.

[@drugmate9710]

Let's just completely ignore the existence of investigative games then like Call of Cthulthu, Delta Green and every gumshoe game ever.

[@lindybeige]

@@drugmate9710 Do you see those as railroaded? Are the PCs not free to solve the crime their way? Or fail to solve the crime?

[@drugmate9710]

@@lindybeige Those do have a beginning, middle and end though and the DM will create certain moments that he wants the players to experience. A good mystery cannot be created on the fly and without any thought put into it. My comment wasn't about railroadiness, but how the comment makes it seem like any sort of planning on the DMs part is a sin.

[@szymonlechdzieciol]

@@drugmate9710 I mean most published scenarios has beginning middle and end, but that's more bug/feature of Trad School of Writing Adventures. But while investigating mystery is quite solid narrative backbone - there is no reason to treat whole shtick in very sandboxy way - and if players by accident gonna kill head sorcerer of cult in anticlimactic way, causing whole ritual to stop now, instead of climactic confrontation week later - SO BE IT.

[@perunyara2919]

Just because you have something written does not mean that you can not rewrite it. If your players did some out of pocket shit, improvise, give yourself time and rewrite

[@KittyLover9000Z]

I started hosting D&D for friends long ago then slowly learned more systems as I could feel D&D was too simple. Then I found Pathfinder and thought it too complex. I tried a smaller system called City of Mist which is entirely narrative focused and a very bare bones system. It made me realize that D&D wasn't too simple, it didn't use what it has effectively. Pathfinder wasn't too complicated, it was a lot of pointless rules. I started Cyberpunk RED more recently to find it very different from all the others, the first thing it tells you is to focus on the players, not the story or narrative. The character creation for Cyberpunk RED involves rolling/choosing your characters entire life story up until you play them. Cyberpunk RED is meant to ignore all the pointless things and make campaigns with the player characters at the core with a unique setting to guide them, regardless if the system works smoothly that is the obvious intention. Now I always question if a rule is to help or be filler. I now make my sessions after character creation so I can make it all about them and the future sessions about their choices. I have greatly improved as a host but it's hard to find players that think the same. Most players are expecting a video game but find it boring if that's how you really run it. Most players will find it boring if you make a real sandbox as they get choice paralysis. It needs to be clearly understood with the players and host what kind of game you are running, or they will have false expectations and blame others for not confirming or denying them sooner. From my experience, the perfect session is a blend of both player focus and the setting guiding players to question their own choices, which always leads to more events.

[@queenannsrevenge100]

I’ve always felt Storytelling complemented Role-playing, not the other way around. The best session to me is the ones where you role-play, and story arises out of what happens, as you mention. But I don’t call them antithetical.

[@VengerSatanis]

The energy producing interplay between the two is where the best RPG sessions come from.

[@katzeexmachina]

I continually can't believe how insightful these videos are

[@theeyewizard8288]

Total Character Agency and meaningful consequences short, medium and long term are the exclusive features of the medium. And being exclusive to it, it defines it. And what doesn’t match the definition shouldn’t be called RPG but Narrative Games or else. We’re too few to say it. Every story is a backstory by definition. As it’s the recollection of events that have already happened. For the referee who wants to write stories there are plenty of room with the lore, NPCs backstories and plans, goals, rumors, myths, legends and such. But when the players reach the table it stops. Now everything is moving from there, at the same pace, and no one knows what’s going to happen next.

[@duckdialectics8810]

I am very curious to how you would comment games like Dwarf Fortress and Caves of Qud. All your remarks, I agree 100%. I am pushing the weird fringes because I want more material. Great channel man, keep up the good work.

[@pedrop676]

Fantastic essay! Barely anything you've said is new, but I've never seen anyone saying it the way you did. Instead of presenting what worked for you, you presented a theory (or theories) on how we experience stories and the conclusion of how RPGs should be ran followed naturaly. I loved it!

[@samanthaash3944]

Something that helps me, the DM be more immersed in the story is playing the setting itself like a character. Characters grow and develop throughout time and they have their own agendas. It's a living world and is constantly moving around in the background even in parts the characters aren't in right now. When you treat the setting itself like a living entity, something for the players to do or ways to get involved with the players just kind of happens organically.

[@DBArtsCreators]

There is nothing a player can contribute that the GM could do better, technically, no matter what the players or GM does. All storytelling amounts to is making settings, characters and scenarios. All role-playing does is (if I may be allowed a metaphor) "add extra cooks to the broth"; it is collaborative storytelling, where the "main writer" (the GM) is able to react to the "side writers" (the players). To act like it and role-playing are different, let alone incompatible, is wrong & inaccurate at best. (An alternative way to look at it is that the act of writing a story is just one person role-playing alone with themselves). Some stories are easier with one method or another (easier to get something more mundane or episodic told when you got multiple people slamming ideas together instead of just one person coming up with all the ideas, for instance), but it's all still storytelling.

[@vitotamito]

It took me 10 mins and 40 seconds to finally realize this video is not talking to me and that I am already in the presenter’s shoes 😅

[@Primaeval]

Good presentation, Matt.

[@phaedruslive]

The way that I've been explaining the change from TSR's D&D and the WotC editions is that there was a cultural feedback loop for the first 25 or so years of ttrpgs. Where Videogames were trying to implement some of the immersion and mechanics to hopefully replicate the excitement of a good session. After the advent of the MMORPG a new kind of designer entered the space and reversed the feedback loop. No longer were the primary influences Fritz Lieber and Tolkien, they became Everquest and Ultima and WoW, and more recently the influence of jrpg's and korean mmos. But ultimately a shift happened that made D&D less like itself and more like something else, and people not exposed to the 'old school' style wouldn't be able to identify the difference. Instead they gloss over the books and tell us "There really aren't many options. Seems pretty shallow' Not understanding the incomprehensible freedom that fewer rules allow for.

[@diegotartaglia]

Great one mate. Loving your channel already.

[@arttabletalk32]

I've seen several of these videos now, all working along one basic line, and I want to push back a bit as someone who's roleplayed and written stories for over twenty years. The process of roleplaying and the process of telling a story are not antithetical. They're different points along a process. There's no one way to do anything, of course, and arguments between so-called "pantsers" and "plotters" are widespread in writing spheres. (Also kind of silly, as both flavors of writers do both.) However, at some point storytellers are inhabiting the minds of their characters, are trying to make decisions from their points of view and are trying to have them make decisions in the moment rather than serving a wider narrative. They don't always succeed in this and there are books or movies or comics that are as badly written and unenjoyable as a badly run, railroading gamemaster can be. At that point in the process, the only real difference between the writer and a group of roleplayers playing their characters is that the writer is a single person and the roleplayers are many people. That does change the math a bit, but there are plenty of writers who write one characters and then another, then stitch things together so as to better inhabit the characters they are writing. And it's not like gamemasters and even roleplayers don't often have to portray multiple characters in one session. Now it's true that a story does not contain many of the bits that turn up in a roleplay session and if it did that would badly impact the flow of the ultimate story. This is because of a process separate from the writing phase of storytelling. A horrible, terrible, grueling phase of storytelling known as "editing" for writers or "rehearsal" for performers. This part of the process is the later part that I think many immersion style players think of when they think of telling a story, where roleplay occupies an earlier part of the process. However these are both parts of telling a story. See, if you just sit down with a set of plot points and try to cram them into a narrative any which way without inhabiting your characters at all you don't just get mediocre to bad roleplay. You get mediocre to bad storytelling.

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

Yes! A lot of good stuff here. It is always great when a writer manages to juggle consistency of character and their overarching narrative. You love to see it. But I think the main difference between the storytellers (the writers) and role-players is that telling a good story is the superordinate goal of the storyteller, which means if one of either story or character must get sacrificed for the sake of the other, the character will bend to the story’s will rather than the other way around. Which means try as they might, role-play and storytelling will never be on even footing, will never be totally compatible. But that’s ok, because we have great storytelling mediums and we have a great role-playing medium, and I think we can work to the strengths of both in their seperate ways.

[@arttabletalk32]

@@TheTombofLimeGaming I disagree. First, the telos of storytelling is not a good story. You see if my purpose in telling a story is to tell a story the only way to judge whether I told a GOOD story is to see if I told a story and my purpose was story so... It's like defining a word with the word. It's incoherent. The purpose of storytelling must be something other than the story if we are to judge whether it is good or not. The same is true for roleplay or anything else we hope to assign a purpose to. There are many possible purposes for storytelling, including education, edification and entertainment, but the story itself is not the purpose so what part of the story takes precedence varies. You have to identify the telos of a story before you can say whether characters or events will bend to accommodate the other. If a story requires a strong character to fulfill its telos that character will warp the events of the story to suit. Every author can tell you of at least one time this has happened. Further, the idea that the medium dictates how to execute upon it puts on blinders. Let's take an example from an unrelated subject. When promoting Dune 2 Denis Villeneuve said he wanted to make a movie without dialog because he felt dialog was a holdover from theater, which he characterized as a spoken medium, whereas film was a visual medium. The problem with his statement is that he took a true statement about film's strengths and made it the totality. Visuals are the strongest point film has, no doubt, and to take full advantage of the medium you would want to make the most of the visuals but film is a multimedia format. Sound in general is a huge part of how we experience the world. Spoken words are very memorable as well. To cite just one example, Arnie's famous "I'll be back" line in Terminator is as much a product of the line and the way it's delivered as it is the composition of the shot when he says it. The dialog synergistically enhances the scene, it does not detract from it. I doubt many people would remember the scene if Arnie hadn't spoken in it. A strong understanding of story enhances immersion in a similar way. I am often told the core strength of the RPG is the ability to explore the consequences for the decisions of characters in the short, medium and long term, or words to that effect. That is the exact formula for several genres of stories (horror, thriller and scifi, to name three). It is a major component of several others. Exploring consequences requires a certain amount of story, especially from the gamemaster. Let me explain. Nothing breaks me out of my character more than discovering characters around me are not acting as well. If I have offended a vengeful noble and he does nothing to get even until we cross paths again that's contrary to good roleplay rather than constructive of it. He should take some active step to get even that I am unaware of. However the noble's scheming to get even with me is... well, a story. One I'm going to hear at least part of and probably put the ending to. On the other hand if he can't get even with me, if he actually has to come to me for help that's also a story... one I'm likely going to hear and decide what to do about at some point. In point of fact, I cannot even judge whether a character is consistent or strong without examining him through the lens of story. What did he do and were the actions consistent with each other and the nature of the character? If I hope to be a good roleplayer I have to be a good storyteller, because story is an important tool in judging how well the role has been played. But it's just that - a tool for understanding how well I've done. In short I don't see storytelling as a proscription for what has to happen, as so many roleplayers seem to, but as a set of skills that makes me more ready to engage with what will happen. It's an important part of the synergy that keeps the immersion together at the table but, more importantly to me, it's an unavoidable part of understanding the character I've played and how well I got into his mind.

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

These notions of 'story' and 'storytelling' are broader than what I'm critiquing, so I've inadvertently caught aspects of both in my net by using those terms the way I have. The _telling_ part of _storytelling_ suggests the dictatorial nature of the issue in RPGs specifically, so it makes a very apt term for the problem (and a striking video title). The reason that so many role-players see storytelling as proscriptive is because that's just how that word is used in the context of RPGs. Could I claim that in the context of RPGs, the things you describe as story and storytelling are actually role-play, and that although they might be used as tools to help tell stories (esp. in other mediums), they are not the telling itself? Is the noble's scheming to get even with you a story? Or it is it the GM role-playing? At what point does one become the other? Can you judge whether a real human being is consistent without examining them through the lens of a story, and if so, could you not apply the same metrics to a fictional character, negating the need for that lens? Is real life a story, even as we live it? Either way, thanks for your thoughts, this has been interesting to think about.

[@Wraithing]

Cheers for the thoughts, Matt. Saw this, watched the rest. Enjoying your channel. It's likely the answer is 42, but how we get there is the interesting part 🤘

[@squali1930]

Bro, you really spoke on the heart of the matter. If not the best video on the topic, def top 2.

[@Matt_Volk]

There's a balance needed, since the GM needs time ti prepare and ought not have their prep wasted on a regular basis. I like to see my game as a themepark rather than a sandbox. Yes, they can get on whichever "ride" they choose. But once strapped in to a dungoen or whathaveyou, it's a pretty linear for the next one or two sessions.

[@solomani5959]

Same (in fact my players have specifically asked me to run games this way whenever I try to be random with the meta plot). But I think both sides of the argument of story “vs” rp don’t like this view.

[@Smittumi]

I was recently reminded of another approach: asking the players, in character creation, to focus on motivation and personal goals. Then, the GM can create content with little risk of wasted prep.

[@AndrzejGieraltCreative]

@Matt_Volk I used to do this, but I realized now that I'm actually running a sandbox that it was a pretty counterproductive approach to take. As a GM, you should have locations full of characters with goals, and dungeons or whatever that might have monsters/villains/whatever with goals of their own there too, and whispers or rumors or jobs or whatever that will lead players to any of those places. There's never a need to take time beforehand to think "ok, let me think, so... they'll set out for the dungeon and naturally, they'll find it... first room will have some interesting thing, maybe a dead body suggesting others have been here recently... leading to x... in another room, another clue y... in another room, some villain doing z and it can generate a super impactful moment" -> no need. Have the dungeons ready, do the work, don't think about "events" -> think about "decisions" that have led up to this. At any time during the dungeons or whatever, players can choose to leave, it's too dangerous, too risky, they won't go down a side-path, or heck they don't HAVE to find the place either! Maybe that will lead them to decide that they need to hire a tracker. It's so much better for players to sit down and say "alright lads, we're in a tight spot here, let's fix this - I propose x solution" rather than to be like "alright, we've chosen to board this train ride, and now we're on a train, we're gonna be ok, we'll see some cool stuff, but ultimately you can just relax" No prep is wasted - you're building a "living breathing world", and it all contributes to your creation. If the events you had in mind didn't play out - guess what? Now YOU get to play dnd. What do the enemies do? What do they have access to? What are they going to go plan while the players go off on some nonsense tangents?

[@Matt_Volk]

@@AndrzejGieraltCreative That's "one" way... it's not the way I choose. I have a player who is very fast to call a retreat to go back to town and rest/recover... So, I've started implementing diegetic consequences for leaving. Sometimes a bigger, badder monster moves in. Or maybe another party takes advantage of the partial delve and clears out the loot. Most recently, I had the boss of the dungeon block their exit. To be fair to myself, I give my players a lot of leverage and freedom... We talk about what we want both above-table and via in-character planning sessions. But when they start "denying the premise" on purpose, I do not hesitate to pull out the quantum ogre. LOL

[@GeorgiaLambkin]

It really is the difference between role-playing games and roll-playing games.

[@markbaker465]

Yes! Or... no? Maybe? As Matt Colville says, sometimes you need to light a fire under your PCs to get them moving. The misconception that action heroes are proactive - they're actually reactive. But perhaps we're not trying to roleplay action heroes? Though I think a lot of RPGs are geared toward exactly that.

[@darthsonic4135]

I mean, you’re still telling a story. It’s just a collaborative one. You just have to let go of the instinct of turning your TTRPG into your next great novel.

[@lasharael]

When I'm GMing, I keep in mind that certain things are true about the world. If those things are true, then those truths have implications. The players and I are making decisions in a world of those truths and those implications. The players will supply you as the GM with 70 - 90% of those truths if you keep subtly asking them to develop the settings and NPCs they interact with, so the world continuously expands in detail and complexity. That allows me to think about events happening outside of the immediate sphere of knowledge and influence of the players, and then to look for opportunities for my players to interact with those events. It imposes constraints, as well, and then you and your players need to be creative in solving problems within the constraints and tools you've all created together. The appearance (or maybe illusion) of narrative is then created in hindsight, just like it is for us in the real world. And approaching roleplaying this way will make you a better storyteller, too, because it helps you as a writer flesh out a detailed world that feels real, and one in which you can change actions of characters without undermining the richness of the world. It sets you up to tell compelling stories with much less planning, because you don't have to have all the answers from the beginning.

[@ekurisona663]

other mediums... ...videogames...(active, varying degrees of interactivity but mostly low meaningful interaction, interpretive, illusion of choices) ...movies/tv...(passive, non-interactive, interpretative, no narrative choices) ...books...(active/engages the mind/visualizing, non-interactive, interpretative, no narrative choices) ...real life...(active, interactive, interpretative, mix of narrative choices/illusion of choice/no choice)

[@RPGPundit]

A very interesting video, and quite like views I put forward in my own channel. I just discovered your channel because someone recommended it in the comments to my latest video.

[@RikThunder33]

this gives me things to think about...

[@jus4000kicks]

I think it depends on what sort of characters the players want to play. If they want to play themselves as their characters in the world then I would agree with your approach. That approach lends itself to more silly antics and meme worthy moments. However, if they want to role play as actual heroes who aren't like themselves that requires more help from the GM. That person isn't going to naturally think like their character but still wants to feel like they are for instance sherlock Holmes or batman. Being a character that actually acts like a hero is actually quite difficult and so it requires more assistance from the GM. It's the difference between pure role playing and serious dramatic storytelling. I've always preferred a good story over pure freedom in games. Open world games I often find boring. So I personally don't think I'd prefer your approach.

[@Josarifire18]

To everyone wondering how to pull this off, easy; Improv acting! You make rough character ideas but adjust them to how your players interact with them. Likewise, have a world premise, but when your characters give you character sheets adjust the world to their backstories. Have a big bad with a vague goal, and then adjust the execution of that goal to how your characters interact with the world. Been doing this for years, it’s easy, simple and brings lots of joy to new and veteran players. I’ve been seen to make story heavy games fall apart because the players want to do something out of GM bounds. Just improv. As a GM you are a servant to your players’ entertainment, the players are not characters for the GM to control.

[@rosefeather_]

God, I wish I could recommend you roleplaying videogames to check out (like Space Station 13) but they're all filled with people who have no interest in roleplay and just want to grief nowadays. So many stories told...

[@GundalfForHire]

This is an interesting idea, but it feels like this is lacking a little bit in tangible explanations? It all sounds very good and I agree with the principle but I don't know what it looks like compared to what I'm used to. As an example, any time the players care about roleplay, there's always going to be a question that comes up of, how do you keep the party together? Adventuring parties are not an organic concept, so generally speaking, your players either need to not care about that fact and just stick together because, or the GM has to build some kind of reason for them to stay together, whether it be shared motivations, working towards a common goal or for a common employer, etc. Part of the reason I'm interested is because I'm reflecting if this is what my GM style looks like. I just started a table for a game set in Fallout, and my way of approaching it has been, there is a meta plot going on, and there are backstory arcs to examine, but I'm planting them around in the world for them to discover if they pay attention rather than guiding them specifically to those details. I have a pretty good idea of what the long term plot will look like, but that's based off the backstories and the worldbuilding I've done, rather than the other way around.

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

Good questions. So, contriving an 'adventuring party' isn't actually necessary - your setting might be a small settlement and the game might be finding out how they all deal with something that affects the whole town, crossing paths with each other naturally - but if you _do_ want the party thing, then it's probably something you want to work out during character creation/session zero when you're working out what you want your game's premise to be. I don't think it should be all on your shoulders to come up with why the PCs should stick together! As part of writing your 'meta-plot' you've probably come up with various characters, factions and other stuff in the world that's moving toward certain 'plot points.' Rather than see them this way, you should frame it in terms of character motivations and goals, I will still build stuff like this, but it is setting only, if the players don't interact with a certain character, that character will carry on toward their goals and (maybe) achieve it, but if the players do interfere, then things might go a different way. For example, rather than a villain that the PCs have to defeat to prevent some cataclysm, if the players have other goals, let them pursue them, and see how much harder it makes their goals to achieve when the cataclysm happens and changes the world forever... or... the players might decide that the villain _is_ cross-purposes to their own goal and work to defeat them just like you imagined. 'Meta-plot,' should just be _stuff that's happening in the world,_ so make the world interesting with stuff like this, just don't marry the player's goals to them, and let them interfere with it if they want. Put your creativity into setting, not plot. I also let my players know that they can add to the world from their backstory if they like. If the players turn up to a town and one of them says 'hey, my brother lives here,' then great, their brother lives there. If in my setting this town was decimated and everyone there had died and become ghosts or whatever, then, oh dear, I guess that brother is a ghost now. Could be a great opportunity for role-play! The big takeaway is have a chat to your players and get them involved with their own motivations, and let the world breathe and live and not be stuck on some set path. There's still plenty of opportunity for great writing in setting and character without having a meta-plot _per se._ And the good news is, any writing you've done for plot, is now part of the setting instead!

[@GundalfForHire]

@@TheTombofLimeGaming Okay yeah, I appreciate the response. That is about exactly the sort of direction I've been trying to go, and I agree that it's better to emphasize the open world and the available roleplay rather than contriving a story. Even if you have a pretty good idea of what the story will be because of your characters' backstory, let them choose that route rather than pushing it on them

[@guywhotalksaboutthings]

I never understand this critique. What does the ideal game look like to you? Is it semi-connected random dungeon crawls or slice-of-life day to day living or "let's go look at the local job board" style stuff? Like I get the hate towards hard "don't ruin my story!" railroading stuff, but I rarely see other DMs actually do that. So these critiques always come off as "oh you want to run Curse of Strahd? You poor fool, never able to realize the full potential of your game." I don't think that's the impression you, or others who give this critique, want to give but I really can't see it any other way, especially with some of the language and word choice used. Is node based story not a legitimately fun, and meaningful choice-driven experience? Am I not utilizing the FULL potential of "player agency" by not planning on what happens when they get bored of an NPC and just murder them for whatever reason? Idk, I just don't really GET what these critiques aim at, aside from the very VERY small angle of hating against hardcore railroading in a game.

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

'...semi-connected random dungeon crawls or slice-of-life day to day living or "let's go look at the local job board" style stuff,' is definitely not what we're after! I think that style of thing only happens if the player characters are cardboard cut-outs and the world is static. If your players are the type to murder out of boredom, this could be why, and the solution, I think, is not guard rails, but players motivated to role-play interesting characters in an interesting dynamic world. Maybe node based can be fun, I mean, video games do it that way, but RPGs can be more than this, they offer us a unique and more personal way to generate story, something RPGs can do better than any other medium and to squander this while being a second rate version of a video game might be unsatisfying for some, and a reason they might give up on the hobby and go play _The Witcher 3_ again. The other side of this is the role-play angle, that a player who wants to immerse themselves in a character and see where that goes will be disappointed every time the GM decides to assume control of them for story purposes - the 'you can go here, or here,' feels like being coddled, it's limiting or video-game-y. From here at least, it feels like more than just not liking railroading. It feels like why play an RPG, if this is all it is?

[@magdalenavalentinastegaru8531]

Role Playing is not the main purpose either. The main purpose is Gaming. Somehow in the last decade gaming has become a mute word in the descrption of RPG . If one wants to roleplay only join drama classes or/and therapy sessions. And gaming in all animal kingdom means experiencing dangèr without dire quensequences.

[@jimmysisk4124]

Maybe this is me misunderstood your point, but it partially feels like you are disregarding the mystery and horror genres in this. Because in both of those types of games, the gm needs to be aware of all that is outside of player control so that they can continue the narrative as the players interacts with it. You can't have a mystery without writing what happened. And you can't have horror if the players choose the entire narrative.

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

Horror and mystery are very dear to my heart, and the RPG I'm writing _is_ investigative horror, so I'll definitely have more to say on the topic later. The players aren't deciding the narrative, and they aren't writing what has happened in the world already, they are just deciding their own goals within that world, and how they go about working towards them. Along that path may be many mysteries that require solving _in order for them to achieve their goals_ and many horrific things they might encounter. I do think the way mysteries are handled in RPGs should be different from the way it's done in the constructed post-Edgar Allan Poe style western mystery tradition, but I don't think that means we abandon them altogether. Perhaps look at some of your favourite mysteries and ask, how could this have gone differently if it weren't for the carefully metered information doled out by unreliable narrators? Or even how would this mystery have gone _in real life?_ and you'll be a lot closer to the idea.

[@michaelleue7594]

I don't particularly disagree that roleplay is essential to a good rpg experience, but I think it's leagues too far to say that roleplay is better than storytelling, or antithetical to it, or that players can't contribute to a pre-prepared story. That might be true if you're doing a one-shot, a little bit, but assuming you aren't, any story you prepare in advance is going to be built to take your players' choices in previous sessions into account. As ever, the truth lies in nuance, and absolutist stances like this put a ceiling on many people's enjoyment of the game that just plain doesn't need to be there.

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

Oh, I wouldn’t say that role-play is better than storytelling, just that we have so many other storytelling mediums that don’t have the capacity for the unique way the RPGs can handle it, and I’m trying to capitalise on RPG’s uniqueness and strengths. Antithetical _is_ a strong term, but if there’s ever a point that you have to choose between being a consistent character or having a good story, the storyteller will pick one and the role-player will pick the other. If you want to role-play, without compromise, a story cannot exist to override it.

[@michaelleue7594]

@@TheTombofLimeGaming "Without compromise" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. If you want RP without compromise, I don't think DnD is the best medium for that either. You should be LARPing.

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

Perhaps you're right, but the compromise in particular I'm getting at here is when the GM takes agency away from the player in order to fit their narrative. I find that the GM and the right mechanics can actually facilitate role-playing by creating a sort of verisimilitude that you don't get from something like LARP (not that I've ever done it), that reduces compromises created by swing the pendulum too far the other way. It's like I said, role-playing involves decisions, with real consequences, and I feel like TTRPGs are an amazing way to achieve this.

[@michaelleue7594]

@@TheTombofLimeGaming Role-playing is amazing. But honestly, so is storytelling. And so is compromise, for that matter.

[@soulclone6]

You seem like a nice guy and I'm sure your games are great but I disagree totally with everything you said. It couldn't work at all with the players I know and give out my favourite part of my work as a rpg writer (in French) and hobby. I will stay a storyteller, good luck for the others

[@Wheeler1717]

You're describing a sandbox game. Which almost never works well for most tables. There's an optimal grey area between lazy sandbox and predetermined story. DM's either have an instinct for that grey area or they don't. I only play games with DM's who know how to maneuver through that grey area.

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

Or a third way? A not-lazy sandbox? I think of my job as the GM as role-playing a country (or world, or whatever), the factions, the nations, the forces of nature, these are like characters that move and make decisions like the characters in a story might, not just waiting for the players to fill in a previously empty randomly generated map. The world changes and grand things happen, it’s just still up to the players what their character’s goals are in the midst of that and how they want to see them through. A good sandbox GM will put just as much thought into their world as a narratively focussed GM will into their story - I say it’s less work just because I don’t have to try to anticipate all the possible things the players might do, I just know my world and react accordingly. If it doesn’t work well for most tables, well, hopefully we can fix that!

[@robinmohamedally7587]

@@TheTombofLimeGaming I'm not going to lie, a sandbox game has always sounded extremely boring for me as a GM. Not something i'm interested in running. And please, nobody commit the false dilemma logical fallacy and presume i want to run a railroad game. A healthy guardrails game, a combination of the two, is what i like to run.

[@Wheeler1717]

@@TheTombofLimeGaming I don't disagree with this method at all. In fact, it sounds like it could be fun. I've just never experienced a DM who would be able to pull something like that off. Probably a rare personality that can...

[@yourseatatthetable]

There's something to be said about 'character impulse' in storytelling by way of the actor/actress if you will, being allowed to improvise; to role play their character. Here's a few examples of success when scripted characters go off script: Robert Downey Jr., “Iron Man” - “I am Iron Man.” Rutger Hauer, “Blade Runner” - “Like tears in the rain…” Meryl Streep, “The Devil Wears Prada” - “Everybody wants to be us.” Roy Scheider, “Jaws” - “You're gonna need a bigger boat.” None of these lines were written into the script, and yet, they either summed up a scene or established the character's depth. In essence, the player listening and/or reacting In Character, As Character (ICAC). My opinion of course.

[@GoodGarret777]

Survivorship bias at it's finest.

[@Tablerunner]

Letting go of the "storyteller impulse" gave me a much better experience as both a player and a GM.

[@eldurwargames]

I start every session by summarizing last session or sessions in a narrative way, trying to tell a story of the last game.

[@knightbender2]

An an old dm and new-ish player. I’ve played in a game recently that suffered from this same problem. Instead of the Dm letting the players interact with the world and building that sense of realism through organic interaction. We were shoehorned into the plot and interactions that felt so rushed and incoherent to the plot that it built a disconnect between the DM’s world and the player characters, myself included. Great commentary, I think a lot of what you said was constructive and good food-for-thought for DMs. Cheers 🍻

[@rafaelcupiael]

I really liked the vlog, but I have a few, hopefully constructive, comments: 1. From my perspective, your vlog would be more thorough if you included the fact that many play cultures have already found answers to these questions and devloped solutions to “not telling a pre-made story,” often through very different practices. On one hand, we have Story After, which you are actually talking about, so popular in OSR/Post-OSR/NSR: the story emerges from the interaction of our decisions (social input), the world's reactions, random resolutions, random tanles, oracles and game procedures. On the other hand, we have Ron Edwards' Story Now, where we take characters with very strong motivations and needs and place them in a situation where these needs will inevitably come into conflict with each other and with the motivations of NPCs and the world. Players will have to continuously make difficult, ambiguous choices, and unplanned answers to dramatic questions will emerge before our eyes. We also have the whole philosophy of Play to Find Out, strongly advocated in mainstream PbtA games but also practiced in freeforms, where through our improvisational acceptance of what happens in the fiction and building on it, an unique story "happens". 2. I get the impression that this recording is aimed at people who play more traditional/classic games, where the GM has a prepared story to act out by the table or where min-maxing and optimal mechanical choices are the main elements of the game. What about OSR, Story Games, freeforms and other play cultures? There is so much more variety in our hobby... 3. In fact, I would even take a step back, zoom out, and say that both playing a pre-made story in a traditional style, playing a very dramatic Story Now, and fully emergent story discovery are all legitimate settings for playing RPGs, assuming that everyone is aware of other available settings and the whole table consciously decides that they want to play in a way that achieves the chosen play goals in a chosen specific way. I've subscribed! :)

[@batchthirteen4324]

Please start your own channel! I need someone who understands what you just said to be releasing stuff.

[@rafaelcupiael]

​@@batchthirteen4324 Awww, thank you! :) 1. I record vlogs and podcasts but... in Polish ;) You can currently find them mainly on the channel Dobrze Rzuty Eksperymenty (my nick is Rafael Cupiael). 2. I'm slowly thinking about starting recording in English too! 3. I write on Substack in English - Play Affordance by Rafael Cupiael. At the moment, I've posted super niche articles about Trophy and The Between, but I'm preparing a long, more universal article about facilitation techniques in role-playing games. Once again, thank you, it's very motivating to see that my words resonated with someone!

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

You're right, of course 😄 'Story' and 'Storytelling' are far more broad than the way I'm using it here, it's just that _storytelling_ is such an apt word for the GM _telling_ the players what their characters do, ceding their ability to role-play, and using a notion of story to justify it.

[@KHJohan]

Story-telling is a monologue, Role-playing is a dialogue.

[@nikoteardrop4904]

You're talking about a very specific style of RPG in this. Games like D&D, Shadowrun, other traditional games that, to varying degrees, place the bulk of the narrative and prep on the GM. GMed hames like Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark create emergent stories by their nature. Basically doing your method by default. Nevermind GMless games like Dream Askew or Remember Tomorrow.

[@ruxlily]

PbtA games and their offshoots are still doing the steering you toward a set story thing, it's just the game designer doing it through gamified incentives instead of your GM doing it through narrative railroading. I think this is even worse than the D&D issue, because at least when the GM is subtly steering me in the direction they want to go I can see the human doing it in front of me instead of in a book they are the duolingo of roleplaying games

[@Pneumanon]

@@ruxlily I agree, I think a lot of people have swallowed the marketing of games like Blades and assert that somehow those kinds of are less railroaded because they suggest more emphasis on improvisation and collaboration. In my opinion they can be even more railroaded than a well GM'd game of D&D, they are just railroaded by design & structure than they are by narrative outcomes. The railroad has been shifted but there's still a railroad. There is less agency in a game of Blades than there is in a well GM'd game of D&D. In Blades I can use flashbacks to solve problems, and I can choose what that solution is, but whatever I choose, the solution has to be one with a fixed outcome, which is the heist I'm already playing. If I choose not to do the heist, I am presented with the game structure which tells me I have to do a heist. That's fine if you just want to do heists repeatedly, but it comes at the cost of player agency. I'm not a fan of D&D, but in D&D I have the option of doing dungeon crawls repeatedly, but if I get bored of that, I can actually decide to do other things.

[@reactionaryprinciplegaming]

What a great video! Everything is very well said. I hope we'll get the opportunity to chat on stream sometimes.

[@AndrzejGieraltCreative]

I'd love to see some live play to see how this should work from a DM's perspective. When I run games I really struggle to do simulationsim/sandbox while also trying really hard to set the mood/keep the RP at a high level.

[@SHONNER]

You just need proactive roleplayers is all.

[@tatuira93]

@@SHONNER This. You'd be surprised how much heavy lifting can be done by good players simply being good players. Best games I've been a part of had a diligent and competent DM, but what actually carried the games was the PC groups, I have also seen many tables crash and burn despite having a fantastic DM, all because the players wouldn't engage with anything. Don't take the burden of fun all on your shoulders as a DM, the players need to chip in as well.

[@batchthirteen4324]

Each group is unique and rarely contains great players in every seat. There are lots of these videos that just say, “scriptless sandbox for the win” and then offer no examples. 5e isn’t the most popular iteration of D&D for no reason. The story is many people’s favorite part. When I hear the “story” of a sandbox game I am usually turned off by what I perceive as chaos. Since there are not a lot of GM’s graduating from Second City or The Actor’s Studio, it is silly to assume one can just get rid of the guardrails of a loose storyline and be just fine.

[@SHONNER]

@@batchthirteen4324 You are clueless. Part of the mediocre general public that's taking up space in the hobby.

[@batchthirteen4324]

@@SHONNER thank you for recognizing the diverse player base of RPGs. You are a credit to us all.

[@28mmRPG]

You are such a great voice for 4D Roleplay, thank you!

[@dvklaveren]

Role-play is not like lived experiences. Role-play is conducted within a structural environment that filters valid and invalid ideation, and within a social contract that filters detrimental from non-detrimental and desirable ideation. That makes role-play much closer to social media than it does life. Twitter has a very active role-play scene and so does Discord. The difference between Twitter and Discord is like the difference between speed chess and chess by mail. The immediacy contracts the amount of time you can spend critically evaluating information and demands responsiveness in a way that is not actually very true to life, but is good for staying in a narrative.

[@mariooooo.o3404]

If there is no plan at all for a story (with branches) that means as a GM you have to improvise almost everything. I dont know about you but improvising stuff is super difficult. My brain cant handle all the things going on at a table and being creative at lightning speed. I can certainly come up with something but it will rarely be really good. Letting go sometimes is fine if it goes in a new direction but having no plan at all...idk...Do you have any actual play at hand for an example of that? I think what makes RPGs great is people playing characters according to their vision regardless of what the optimal outcome would be. And a GM that does not penalize that but is a fan of the characters.

[@freethrall]

Which system do you feel best facilitates immersive roleplay?

[@kmmcgreer]

Player “agency” has become a buzzword that has lost its meaning, its sting, because the focus has shifted to the non-examples of organized play. You know what set me on the right path again (besides drilling down on salient videos like this)? Playing with kids at an afterschool club (I’m a teacher). When they sit down to play, new players, especially ones that have never even touched a die with more than 6 sides, when they begin playing, there’s a moment where they’re confused or taken aback when an NPC speaks to them or a first fight breaks out where they ask, in one way or another: “What can I do?” My answer, simple as it sounds is almost always: “What do you want to do?” The expression on their faces when it dawns on them that the choice, the TRUE choice is theirs, is why I love running games. That thrill they feel, and the choices they make, regardless of what it is, isn’t just mere agency; it’s EPIC AGENCY (trademark pending, lol). That is the sensation that every DM/GM/WhateverM should endeavor to maintain. That is the game.

[@rasjeff1]

well, I think that Role play and TTRPGs are just another medium for storytelling. The problem is that some GMs don't know how to tell the story in this medium, as you said. In here, the characters backstory should be the base of the story and masters should understand that. Let your players tell you what story they want to live and play in, your job as GM is to build the world that connects the story of the PCs together.

[@Pneumanon]

Stories revolve around conflict. Create a setting that has large scale conflict(s) inherent within it, e.g. an oppressive regime that the player characters are stuck living under and hate. At character creation, ask the players how this conflict has already impacted their characters in the past and what they intend to do about it in the future. Now you have player characters that are tied to the setting by conflict. You also have a set of player-generated goals that they have articulated to you, the GM. Having the players decide on an overall shared goal is also a good idea, because it keeps them working together, not splintering into pursuing their own individual goals. From there you need a structure that allows the players to determine their own course to achieving their own goals, but which will support you in planning games without either having to improvise everything on the fly or spend days prepping for each session. Factions can be a good way of doing this, but what most people do is treat factions like characters and focus on story, rather than focusing on the structure of factions, which creates very easy to plan progression hierarchies for the players to make their way through as they pursue their own goals. The important aspect to this is there is no pre-written narrative. You give the players conflicts to get them started, you ask them for their goals, then you facilitate them trying to achieve those goals. The story emerges from what happens around the table.

[@Sithoid]

As someone from a LARP background, I totally agree with the emergent approach, but not with the sentiment that roleplaying is incompatible with storytelling. It's rather that it's not a _single_ story. Good players often have this (temporary) multiple personality thing going on, with an "actor" and a "director" persona, and the latter can absolutely drive the former to more interesting plot points.

[@tomsgametable3936]

Great video! Lots of content within a short amount of time. Found myself pausing to slowly think about a sweeping point you made more than once. Look forward to seeing more content.

[@joaogabrielalves8781]

I absolutely loved the way you talked about this topic, really shows a lot of experience. You definitely gained a subscriber. The video clicked a lot for me personally, since i always hated having to prep narratives, and would let my players do what they wiled in my games. It freed a lot of my mind and made me refocus on making cool npcs and background info. That said, i can't wait for a video detailing this type of prepping, since it's not a style that i can say i have fully mastered, as much as i like playing this way.

[@Sanctum_of_Solos]

Great video mate! As soon as u make a story there is a structure(3 act usually) to it with a predetermined outcome. Players' free will and dice rolls will derail that structure. So the GM reduces players' agency or finds ways of re-routing their path back on track with the story. Dice rolls can be fudged or DCs/target numbers modified on the fly to suit the story's desired outcome. So if nothing the players do matters, then whats the point? Watch a movie instead lol

[@GuilhermeAnalisa]

So, no miniatures, no dice, no storytelling, and from what I could gather, no system... that's intriguing. I would really like if you could show us a session (or at least part of one) of this kind of pure RPG.

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

I didn't say 'no dice,' yet... But I will say this, there isn't a mechanic/system/concept/assumption that comes with RPGs that's above taking a critical look at and asking the question 'does this hinder, or facilitate, role-play?' If it's a mechanic or a system that holds up to that scrutiny, then it's fine with me.

[@GuilhermeAnalisa]

@@TheTombofLimeGaming I tend to agree, what I meant was that I would like to see what the type of RPG you talk about is like in practice (perhaps it already exists on a system I don't know). Or maybe I'm looking at this from the wrong perspective and you're just trying to talk about it for theoretical purposes only.

[@dukereg]

I also would like to see a real example of how such a system works in practice.

[@CheezMonsterCrazy]

That just sounds like collaborative literary role-play. From experience I can tell you it tends to break down quickly without the structure of rules and an arbiter, unless everyone participating has an excellent innate sense of narrative and are also on the completely same page as far as what they want the experience to be.

[@melancholyman369]

I disagree with the sentiment to an extent, as the DM you don't *need* to relinquish the reigns but rather loosen the grip and let the players control aspects of the adventure. What I like to think is that you give players boxes to put themselves in rather than putting them in a box, it might sound like your doing the same thing but nuance is that the player chooses how they relinquish control to a certain extent rather than being forced into one. This gives them something to think about in their role.

[@ItsNanino]

Oof, I mean yeah? This definitely good advise for Sandbox Games and more experienced GMs. And I feel like the direction most GMs drift towards over time. But honestly there is a lot if room for discussion. For newer GMs, especially the ones with limited Improv knowledge, this kind of approach would mean a lot more work when it comes to fleshing out the world. And I also just a had a lot of groups as a GM myself that rejected the kind of naturalistic storytelling that comes from letting them loose. I had players waiting for the story to come to them, players that expressed that they want to experience a movie like story and players that were really sad or mad at me because the story didn't end with them truly winning. And I don't want to blame them because that is whats fun about the game for them. If you see Roleplaying Games as truly just a Storytelling device, this might be the one way to do it, but in the end, for most it's a game and not and just an Improv Session. So yeah I enjoy this style of play more (because it actually challenges me at the table), but its not the pinnacle of play I think.

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

_If_ the thesis that _storytelling,_ rail-roading, node-roading(?) and so on prevent player decision consequence and thus prevent _Role-playing,_ is true, then I would rather support inexperienced GMs in running games with actual _Role-play_ in them with whatever tools and advice they needed (even if it's harder), rather than getting them to learn the ropes wrong from the get-go. But I'm also not necessarily committed to the idea that it _is_ harder... Maybe this is the problem, actually, that too much GM advice, aimed at new GMs, is centred around building the best rail-road and creating the illusion of agency that they never move past this, and basically learn that _this is the way the game is played._ Then this generation teaches the next one, perhaps even innovating on how best to rail-road and so on and the cycle continues. If your players were unhappy that they had to live with the consequences of their actions (instead of being led on a path to the win), it sounds like they value story over Role-play. If so, fine, I think there are games that facilitate that, but I wonder if _Role-Playing Game_ is the best description for that kind of thing.

[@ItsNanino]

@@TheTombofLimeGaming Ah, I see how my Comment could be read like that. I did not make my own opinion clear enough. My thesis is not that all of these things make player agency impossible. Quite the opposite. I think it's good practice to train a new GM to plan in a way that their Story is flexible and bendable...and I think that is the advice a lot of the big "DND-tubers" try to instill in new GMs. I still think it's bad faith to say that having a story structure is necessarily rail-roading. If it were basically a choose your own adventure kind of deal, then yeah I would agree that roleplaying games are capable of so much more. But mostly it is about providing a narrative boundary, for players to grip onto and make the story their own. I try to give the players opportunities to get a return on the fantasy they wished for when they gave me their character. So I create points in the story I am fairly certain will come up, but I won't force anything on them. Sometimes they play out like I imagined they might and sometimes I am surprised and the whole campaign might change its focus. These moments might (and do) happen on their own just by the players interacting with each other and the world, but it also might lead to them having a mediocre experience for a few games because there is no conflict or drama that really emerged naturally. Just like I feel you maybe misunderstood my example as me just wanting to stick the Novel I wrote when I sit down at the table, I might have the wrong idea of how loose of a game you are proposing. But I feel like when we play a game, with our very limited time, I don't want to sit down to let the players dig for a story they want to engage with in my world and force them to make their own fun in my Sandbox, when I can just point them towards something interesting, and then just run a Feedback loop of story around them, that keeps them engaged the whole time. Like giving them a shovel and a bucket...okay I think my metaphor breaks down here a bit. But you know Guide them through the game. Like a Gamemaster. And they still get to live the fantasy of their character through role-play. To me the way you talk about role-play it sounds less like inhabiting a character, then it sounds like you and your players watching them like you would an Ant Colony in a Terrarium. I respect my players decisions a lot. Some of them might be mad or sad at first, but over time they see, how it truly only mattered because there was always the possibility of things ending this way. And that the story in the end, was worth telling because of it. I also think I have to emphasize, that this is not representative of all my players. Most love it when a character dies through their own actions and decisions. Because they mattered. In the end RPGs exist on a spectrum. And I don't think talking about semantics leads to anything here. You never really and fully inhabit a character in another world with all that entails. Because that would be boring...and probably awkward. And as cheesy as that sounds by now, as long as you are having fun, you get out of the art form, what you need to get from it. Just as much as it is silly to tell someone, they are not listening to music right, because they only listen to pop, when music could be more. Sorry I feel like I am rambling at this point. I fear I can't make my argument as concise as you can. I don't want to come off as defensive about my game. I just feel like we're kind of on the same page, but I can't agree that this is a universally right way to play a RPG.

[@Bearwiffa228]

I tried doing the flowchart thing after watching a few videos. It seemed like too much work and felt rigid. Now I just have a single to two pages of notes for the session. With a handful of cool interactions/situations, places and npcs with their important information. Prewritten initiatives, etc. I feel like now it is much more exciting and free flowing. And allows me to seamlessly improv most situations at a snap of the fingers without a ton of prep or clunky charts. These days i wonder what the best title for a GM is. Referee isnt right, neither is storyteller, Dm and Gm are ok i guess depending on the game youre playing but dont really describe what they do. Same with Keeper or Handler, they sound cool but theres gotta be something better. Matrix? Game Runner?

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

I'm committed to GM just because it's convention and I don't really need every game to come up with their own name for it, but I think you're right, I haven't seen a term for it that really captures the role. Perhaps it'll never be summed up so succinctly because the things GMs do are too varied and disparate!

[@Bearwiffa228]

@@TheTombofLimeGaming I agree. And I'm fine with it. I tend to use GM too 👌🏽

[@sebastiankala1093]

This is must watch for every ttrpg player and gm.

[@maninalift]

How do you feel about Brennen Lee Milligan's analysis, which appears to slant much more to story telling but in an interesting way. He says that players should be able to inhabit their characters and try to achieve their goals in the most direct way possible. At the same time the players want a world where they face challenges that mean they cannot achieve their how goals easily and attempting to do so takes them on a journey and tells a story. He gives the analogy that the characters are like water flowing downhill while the players want to see an end result that is an interesting meandering river. He then says that the role of the GM is to throw down things on the players path that force them to take a more interesting path. What he prepares as a GM is a toolbox of obstacles to put in the the way of the players. The key difference here to your analysis is that the GM is thinking in story terms.

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

That all sounds pretty reasonable to me. I think an interesting sandbox is full of naturally occurring obstacles of all kinds, so it might be similar. I think the main difference will be that a story focussed GM will sacrifice character consistency (will sacrifice role-play) on the altar of story, whereas the role-play focussed GM will let character choices always flow to their natural conclusion rather than the most narratively satisfying. Because I think that ‘narratively satisfying,’ can often end up trite and formulaic, and just conforms to a certain modern sensibility around what a story ‘should,’ be, I prefer the gritty unpoetic consequences of consistent role-play over the neat narrative arc, and I think RPGs are uniquely suited to take advantage of this.

[@maninalift]

@@TheTombofLimeGaming yeah, yeah. I agree entirely. The attempt to put the narrative into the game can end up being more limiting.

[@TylerWaitt]

@@TheTombofLimeGamingis there a certain system you recommend ? Or is there a community around this? (I’m still going through your vids!, so I might hit it 😊)

[@josephcollins5998]

Hi Matt. Loving the videos. And the deep dive into the “what is art” debate with regard to TTRPGs. I have some questions and some theories (ye gads, don’t we all have theories?!). And (gulps) really, really sorry for the long message. - It sounds like you are equating "roleplaying" with "pretending to be someone else". Is that correct or have I misunderstood? - And I guess on that point, could you please give a clear definition of what you mean when you say “roleplaying”. - I only ask points 1 and 2 because ‘pretending to be them’ isn't the same as ‘momentarily being them’ - I enjoy both, but they are distinct. - I have no term for the latter so, for the sake of this commentary (to allow identification and discussion), I shall call it “shamanic immersion”. Apologies if that’s too silly or pretentious - I refer to those (all too brief) moments where (for example) you are handing your friend a pistol, telling them to shoot you if the torture-cannibals capture you, before dropping back to the story being told around your kitchen table. A caveat to all my following points - my gaming group of old, gnarly, veteran gamers have been watching your channel. You discuss the stuff we discuss but bring a sharp, bright, eloquent voice to the discussion. We’ve been playing weekly together for years - some of us about nine years now. So, I wrote my thoughts around your videos down and showed them to my group. I was all smugly glowing with self satisfaction at my own cleverness at having distilled everything into The Truth. Straight away we had to agree to disagree. Things I take as gospel simply didn’t chime with some players. My point being, I really feel that different people use the term “roleplaying” to mean different things. So, I view roleplaying as a mix of three equal, interconnected factors. - Shamanic immersion - Tactical battle fight - Telling the right story right While engaging in all three of these I am also “roleplaying” by my own interpretation of the term: - While telling the story, I am trying to think and act like an imaginary person. - While in a fight - our homebrew game has evolved over nine years and is probably low-crunch, high stakes - I am directing the actions of one of the pawns in the fight-game (my character) with a view to: - Do what my character would do (“is Bob really that important that I will fight 3 bandits to try and save him?”) - Feel the thrill of being in a deadly fight, where my avatar (and thus, the representative of many hours of emotional investment) is in real jeopardy, but is also able to react and respond to nuance and shifting fortunes within the ebb and flow of battle (this is pure adrenalin pumping rocket fuel to me, that actually aids my shamanic immersion, rather than acts as a meta barrier to it). - And the moments of shamanic immersion kind of come out of those - I haven’t actively planned for it as a GM, nor have I expressly chased it as a player. But when it happens, it creates unforgettable moments that are talked about for years. The muse of TTRPG, perhaps? And I value the three points of the shaman-story-tactics triangle equally, I think. You can tell the right story because you have inhabited their skin (shamanically). You can inhabit their skin because you have thrown them into a tactical fight simulator where death is just one wrong move away but they decided to fight anyway. You thrown them into the tactical fight simulator because the right-story-told-right says, "Betty means so much to Janice she will fight these thugs to save her". They are all connected in the way I want to play. They are all what I would class as being parts of roleplaying. But even at my small table, not everyone agrees! 😛 But I think roleplaying isn't just pretending to be someone. I would argue that the "pretending to be" is just the warm up. It's the preamble that awakens and enables the other three. Finally, I phrase it thusly - the magic of science, the science of art, and the art of magic. And conversely, the art of science, the science of magic, and the magic of art. Where: - art = telling the right story right - science = tactical battle fight - magic = shamanic immersion persona possession They all feed, and feed off of, each other. Science, magic, art - tactical, shamanic, story.

[@Pale_Mooncalf]

I think you're probably right but it's tough to swallow. You need a lot of trust in your players to be interesting, what's the stop them from avoiding everything interesting and just wanting to go fishing every time adventure calls? Also with the story crafting out of the DM'S hands I have to ask, what's the fun for them? Playing sounds great but attending to the whims of the players circling in a sandbox will get old quickly. Anyway I've never played a TTRPG so really don't know anything.

[@Tysto]

After I quit DMing in 1995, narrative adventures was just getting started, and I got super into movie narrative structure and wrote a bunch of stuff about creating stories for players to play out. No one ever read it, but it took me a long time to realize that my narratives had huge holes in them. How would I ensure the heroes would follow up on a clue in a certain way? I couldn't! I had to abandon the whole idea. When I got back into TTRPGs a few years ago, I realized that other people had carried out the idea of playing out pre-determined narratives, and a lot of players felt railroaded. It became obvious that OSR sandboxes were the way to have the most fun. Don't create a story; create a world with lots of potential stories.

[@Archaeo_Matt]

I think you’ve gone too far in presuming that there is a single narrative that is more important or prominent than any other, typically this would belong to the players’ characters, and the entrainment of events associated with times when the players were actually controlling their characters. The issue is with the number and loci of narratives being considered. You began your video by acknowledge the importance of folklore to the conduct of human affairs, including not just myths (origin stories), legends, and tall tales, but also oral history/tradition (the distinction being history being occurrences within the observers lifetime). That’s just as true for the non-player characters inhabiting the setting of play. You can, of course, just provide them with a personality type and set of goals, but you’ll just wind up with a semi-rounded character that reproduces the rapidly homogenizing cultural background of the industrialized West. Where people get themselves into trouble with story is trying to apply fixed diagetic points to the decisions of players on behalf of their characters. Regardless of their personality type and state goals, non-player characters and player characters must equally be subject to the vagaries of bounded rationality, based on only the imperfect understanding being available to them from the inputs of their sensoria; and, therefore, their decisions must be consonant with the apperceptions available to the perceiver within the limits of their prior socio-historical trajectory. Enter the need for abstraction, precisely because the sheer number of multi-threaded narratives required to simulate a living world would require more command and control capabilities than a single game master could hope to track and/or negotiate. So, perhaps instead of story, we would be better off conceptualizing this as “imaging” the setting for the players, with the provisio that by “image” we are including not only visual, but also tactile, olfactory, and auditory potential sensory inputs (effective sensory inputs being dependent on the “gating” associated with a particular individual’s enculturation, acculturation, and experiential web). Drawing from Barthes’ “Rhetoric of the Image,” I think we own the players a few things to guide the narrative choices they will make for their characters. First, the game master must provide a sense of “spatial immediacy and temporal anteriority.” By which I mean that there is a coherent and consistent approximation of a physical world bounding their choices for acting upon or interacting/communicating with the features of that world, and that spatio-temporal context is being established by the sublation of multiple causal factors, and the intersection of numerous agents’ actions (i.e., causality is overdetermined, and action is overtaken). Secondly, we owe the players adequate anchorages within the constructed image of the setting, to provide them with the capacity for making meaningful decisions within the game setting. This goes hand-in-hand with the third thing we owe the players: an understanding of the socio-culturally embedded “floating chain of signifieds” as a guide to interpreting signs generated within the setting; this is only a starting point, as the characters (guided by the players) will begin enchaining their own significations through their experiences with the setting’s posited physicality and historicity. However, we’re talking about the Peirce’s triadic theory of the sign, not Saussure’s simple dyadic reduction to sign and signified; so, whereas the player can fully deploy sign and signified on their own, the fully deployed array of interpretants must necessarily be shared between game master and players. We’re not talking about creating a single unified narrative that, but rather a single unified field or ground, upon which all narrative threads are draped. For me, the main purpose for wanting a unified ground for placing the various narrative threads is so that I’m not relegated to being a witness to each individual player’s production of a narrative cobbled out of whatever media they’ve consumed, and whatever escapist wish-fulfillment story they need to tell themselves through the vehicle of some fantasy character they’ve concocted. As I’ve told the 4D’ers, I don’t care about your characters as individuals, or about my non-player characters as individuals; I care about the setting/world being logically coherent, internally consistent, and approximating a plausible reality. As for agency, choice is always constrained, and we are hopelessly entangled in a heterogeneous web of human and non-human actants, both in game and out. All that matters there, for gaming purposes, it that agents have the capability to effect decisions that affect outcomes. The available choices are structured by what Giddens referred to as “rules and resource” (and, other people do count as resources, just not ones that should be used purely as a means to ones own ends).

[@jshud3]

I've heard it stated, RPGs are a happening and the story is what comes after the encounter, the session, the campaign. The story told comes after not before and it's collectively created during the encounter, session, campaign, etc.

[@captainnolan5062]

In my opinion, DMs are not storytellers (and a roleplaying game is not best played as a storytelling game. If you want to play a storytelling game, there are games designed as storytelling games that do that much better). A GM places challenges in front of the players, the players try to solve the challenges, and after you are done playing, then you can tell the story (or stories) about what happened at the table. As a byproduct of play, a story may emerge. It occurred to me recently that, at some time in the past (maybe around 3rd edition of D&D?), professional writers took over the design and adventure making of D&D; as opposed to the original D&D material which was written by a shoe repairman and a security guard, and other wargaming hobbyists. Sometime around then the game became about telling stories (which is just what you would expect a writer to be interested in) rather than the exploration of maps by PCs and combat with fierce creatures to obtain treasure [in a hexcrawl or a dungeon delve]. Video game influences (which are much more linier and similar to chose your own adventures) also began to influence TTRPG design [for the worse in my opinion]. Modules began to be written as movement from plot point to plot point, rather than allowing characters to roam around in the sandbox pursuing their own ideas and motivations. It seems like this was around the time that the term "railroading" arose and was used as a derogatory term by those of us who had grown up playing the open world/sandbox type of campaign to describe these ‘plot driven’ 'straightjacket' type of adventures. The linked videos are a great example of this point of view (which I agree with): kzbin.info/www/bejne/apScc6KnepKdm7s and kzbin.info/www/bejne/hnq0oYmEl7Gqq6c The 'story' is what happens at [or away from] the table AFTER the GAME is finished for the evening, when tales are told of what happened during the game. When I hear GMs, game designers and players talking about the three-act structure, overlaid by the Shakespearian five act structure, and then talking about the 'realization moment' in screenplays [coming at approximately page 80], and the climax of the story, and [heaven help us] the denouement, etc., etc., I know that I am listening to someone who likely learned to play after the rise of the 'storytelling/video game' type of adventure. Back in 1974, when age 10 to 25 year old 'kids' were putting together their D&D worlds and building sandboxes for others to play in, we had little formal education about 'story structure' and the like [and wouldn't have thought about using it in the design of a 'dungeon' or wilderness adventure anyway], but we knew enough to create situations and challenges for players to overcome, which creates the environment for conflict (which is critical to drama), and with players having created motivated characters who were seeking fame and fortune, and were placed in such a sandbox environment, they organically created story through play. Look at things like the Judges Guild materials from the late 70s. They are filled with locations, creatures, NPCs, random tables and such and not plot points, a main narrative, etc. A DM is not a storyteller and RPGs are best used as role playing games (which creates an immersive experience), and not storytelling games.

[@robavie]

There are an exceptional number of ways that "stories" come out of tables. But I think there are a number of presentations that are not "storytelling" as Matt is penning that are still the DM/GM/Storyteller making effort. The biggest key to presenting is knowing your table. Matt eludes to this several times but doesn't out right say it enough. Some players just want to be put through a story. They don't what to have to think further than moment to moment and try and experience something different. These players often create characters that are versions of themself. Other players want to seek out the adventure for the character they made. Either through backstory, ambition, or the focus presented to them, they seek hooks and are active in the environment. And yet there are others who sit back and witness what is going on. They will interact with the mechanics and other players/characters at the table but do so in a passive way. They enjoy the ride/show/experience but really don't want to interact more than that. All of these individuals may be at the same table, and often are. It is up to the DM/GM/Storyeller to descern from them what type of presentation they need to take. They could define a particular situation that the characters are presented with and let the story unravel from there; where the NPCs have motivation and a vector but the characters actions change their trajectory. Or they could open a game in a discovery phase where the characters are exposed to various things only to allow a "plot" to develop; perhaps by giving them a space to invest in and them make it uncomfortable so change is necessary. And there are dozen more methods that could be implemented. But truly it comes down to either reading the table and knowing what you think will work or defining it before the players hit the table. Arc Doom sets the bar for the players well before the characters are created. They are aware the world is ending and that sets the framing for how long this will last. Other games, like Brindlewood Bay, is defined by the situation to have an opening (a murder) and and ending (solving it). Giving your players those definitions make the players understand what kind of story is being told but gives them agency within that framework. Does that make it "on rails", no. Is it Storytelling or Story Crafting, yes. Because as the said DM/GM/Storyteller you need to be creative and define all of that for the player, or guide them through building it themselves.

[@rickybrooks2971]

Roleplay without narrative sounds like a passive world to me, where the bad guys wait for you to come to them, where the dungeons are stocked and ready, etc. In other words it sounds like World of Warcraft. The second you make it so that an antagonist takes action in the world, you’ve just added plot. There’s no bonus points for doing that on the fly rather than preparing in advance. In my actual experience, every time I’ve tried to naively construct CYOA options, my players have inevitably done something I didn’t expect, and the story changes anyway. So unless a GM is railroading their players, storytelling is not the antithesis of RPGs, and is instead an essential element of it.

[@lewiswarburton1224]

Yes , yes yes! Role playing is its own thing. Neither story, movie, nor computer game. And potentially better than all three.

[@ericcheese7594]

Great video. Leaning into what ttrpg's do best, absolute player agency, requires so much less prep and leads to better emergent narratives. I did dnd5e for over half a year following modules. When I switched styles, the player group from one of my campaigns felt it was directionless. My other group were much more adaptable. I regret having groomed the former group with what I now consider poor rpg approaches. I eventually abandoned dnd for Cyberpunk Red since I mesh with the setting better. imo that game has a player base that is more capable of the play style I want, player driven stories where they make the action happen as they pursue their goals.

[@narutoxley]

Story telling is you telling your story to the world. Roleplaying is letting the world tell your story

[@qew_Nemo]

You say "videogames can't do this", but I think anyone who is creating any interactive narrative of any kind should at least keep this mentality in mind, even if they're not insanely idealistic in trying to capture this kind of experience in the videogame medium as much as possible, like some of us are. But yeah, I couldn't agree more about the merits and the appeal of this approach, and how brightly it can shine in tabletop gaming. I used to watch a lot of TV shows, and while I cherish a lot of them, these days I pretty much only watch other people's roleplaying campaigns for my storytelling fix, and the reasons for that are the exact reasons you're advocating for here.

[@eldurwargames]

I start every session by summarizing last session or sessions in a narrative way, trying to tell a story of the last game. My players like that.

[@PhaedrusAK]

I had to watch and like this, because I've been arguing this since the early 90's... but you do it better, with less swearing.

[@themagiciansmanse]

Awesome work. Seeing the thumbnail, first thought was “Excuse me?!” 😆 Your musing remind me of the mighty Hankerin. Subbed!

[@KenLives333]

+1

[@UltraTtrpger]

Roleplaying and storytelling go hand in hand. You literally cannot have one without the other.

[@MiguelAngelSanchezCogolludo]

Don't confuse the oral dynamic of play at the table with "telling stories". As Baron DeRopp suggested, it's better to say "game telling" rather than "story telling". There is too much knowledge and techniques to tell stories that are counter-productive for a roleplaying mindset.

[@sean9223]

Roleplay is a verb, a story is a noun. Roleplaying is the fluid thing you're doing from moment to moment at the table. The story is a solidified summarization of events that stuck in the table's collective memory. You can roleplay with the goal of creating story-worthy memories, but I don't think that contradicts what this video was about. The point raised here isn't that people shouldn't focus on storytelling, the point was that the GM should never rob players of their agency in service of storytelling. The title doesn't necessarily capture that idea, but it did capture your click, so it did its job I guess.

[@MiguelAngelSanchezCogolludo]

@@sean9223 Well exposed

[@AndyB-yv3zg]

I'm hoping to start a Knave 2E game with what you said in mind. I'd like to ask how much building up of the world do you commit to before starting an open-ended game? Do you make a few, or many NPC that you can use in the course of an adventure? Do you prepare locations and dungeons before hand, and in what detail? for me, I think I'll make a handful of npcs which have their own goals and problems. The players can choose to help with or exploit them, and the actions taken from there will give me direction on what I need to prep next.

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

I've had a little look at Knave and there's some cool stuff going on in there, but it does lend itself to a sort of 'dungeon delving' kind of play, so when it comes to dungeons I'm not sure how much prep you'd need based on what the system lends itself to (I will think a little harder about dungeons in the future). As for the world-building though, I would say that factions (with goals and problems) and regions I would put in place before detailing NPCs. I think individual NPCs you can leave to 'fill in,' as you play, kind of like how in real life we have quite superficial interactions with lots of people and we don't always know which people we meet that we'll actually get to know - leave most of the world's NPCs as two dimensional until it becomes necessary to flesh them out. A few key faction leaders or whoever is fine, of course, but other than that, maybe a list of names to choose from might be handy for creating on the fly! If you know what _kinds_ of people live in a region (because you've got your regions and factions done) you'll have an easier time with this. That said, there's probably plenty of different ways to do this, but over-prep is not only wasteful, but also leads to sunk cost problems. Oh, I would also say, don't be afraid to put BIG PROBLEMS in your world, like war, or a plague, or whatever. That'll help keep things in motion - don't think that a nice open world means nothing is happening until the players get there!

[@MiguelAngelSanchezCogolludo]

YEAH! I have not seen this video, yet, as I want to seel your earlier videos first, but I agree completely with the description of this video!. By the way, there is a little book named "Encounter Theory" that tries to define the minimum element of an RPG as the "encounter", and builds from that.

[@jonskowitz]

This is why I've become far more interested in mechanically simpler games in recent times. When you remove most of the mechanics, all that's left to prop-up the game is the roleplay.

[@aliciaantoniadis9100]

Absolutely wonderful! Thank you so much for this Matt. Sincerely, Alicia Antoniadis from Sweden.

[@squali1930]

Half way through the video and the insight here is insane. Like literally eye opening.

[@SalsaDoom1840]

Really enjoyed listening to your ideas. Thinking back often the most memorable moments in RPG's have been the outlier random events that seem to align with the moment. The player that rolls the 20 on their final death save. The most fun is had when I spend time creating an environment with lots of buttons to push and then the players try to figure out what is going to happen when they push that button. A bit like rats in a maze waiting for the next hit. The he risk / reward, the throw of the dice is really important. People love gambling. Roleplay helps raise the stakes but is it the be all and end all?

[@squali1930]

Nah bro, I need a longer video. This was not long enough.

[@giulianofebbrarino4651]

I feel that both Dungeon World's DM Section and Stars Without Number' Faction Rule changed me for the better as a DM trained on "traditional" D&D. Fronts, Soft Moves when players fail/partials fail a role etc... please keep doing what you are doing!

[@ViviBuchlaw]

I find this hilarious. In my culture, story is meant to walk in a character's shoes, not to be an artificial, clearly constructed plot machine that produces good drama. That is, in my opinion, like a TAS, a Tool Assisted Speedrun. An entirely seperate art from the one I am interested in. In a traditional story, having random character death is considered bad storytelling. Where Im from, its considered good, because nothing about death is dramatic, satasfying, or often telegraphed. RPGs are some of the only spaces I feel at ease in, as there is no expectation a "good story" by western standards, will be produced

[@tionodese8110]

Bro. Where you from and how can I move there?

[@ViviBuchlaw]

@@tionodese8110 Well, sorry, no. I'm a System, see. As many have an innerworld, indeed we do too. There's a place one of us calls Magicant. It's the only place I've known to be home. It's not perfect, but it's somehow less chaotic then here lol. From this place in Magicant called the 'Entry plug' (I didn't name it either lol) you control a body in this world, and thus how I'm communicating with you. I don't know how people get in here, but your odds aren't great

[@ViviBuchlaw]

@@tionodese8110 However, I would love to share stories with you if you're interested! I always love to have like-minded storytellers!

[@hfbdbsijenbd]

You spent this entire video talking about player agency, and then you end the video by telling us to take away our player's agency. By telling the player who just wants to listen and be told a story that they're doing it wrong. By telling the player who wants to live out a Hollywood blockbuster they're doing it wrong. By telling the player with a box of minis and a grasp of tactics they are doing it wrong. RPGs are co-op storytelling experiences where the outcomes are determined by dice rolls, and reducing them to that isn't pointing out a flaw. What you're doing is looking over our shoulder as gms and saying "well if you just did it that way it would be optimal based on these criteria I have set out." So I do that then? Why am I even here? This guy has already figured out the one way to play RPGs. Maybe you're doing it wrong?

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

I wouldn’t say they were doing it ‘wrong,’ just that it misses out on something that makes RPGs unique from other mediums. It’s only ‘wrong,’ if the goal is role-play without compromise, because storytelling takes precedent over role-play in a constructed narrative. If people want to just do the storyteller thing, that’s fine. I can still enjoy those games too, but I just wanted to say that if role-play without compromise is what you want to do - and that is what I’m into - then this is the better way to do it!

[@Ritten_Lies]

@TheTomeOfLimeGaming... I find it is very hard to have an opinion in this space. One now has to scream out after every statement..."IN MY OPINION"...to not be slammed as an expert of all things. Crazy. I, myself, have had great experiences with role play as the focus and am on board with content sharing this discussion. Please young traveller, tell me of what you have discovered thus far. I too am a part of the hunt. Together we become closer to the beast and may discover a weakness it possesses. I will share in its bounty if i am the one to defeat it.

[@rickybrooks2971]

Roleplay without narrative sounds like a passive world to me, where the bad guys wait for you to come to them, where the dungeons are stocked and ready, etc. In other words it sounds like World of Warcraft. The second you make it so that an antagonist takes action in the world, you’ve just added plot. There’s no bonus points for doing that on the fly rather than preparing in advance. In my actual experience, every time I’ve tried to naively construct CYOA options, my players have inevitably done something I didn’t expect, and the story changes anyway. So unless a GM is railroading their players, storytelling is not the antithesis of RPGs, and is instead an essential element of it.

[@Ritten_Lies]

@@rickybrooks2971 ...what if...the bad guys dont wait for the PCs to "come to them" but rather the GM can now inhabit the world in a way that is more as a player role vs the ultimate knower and decider of all things...? Now the GM can freestyle like the PCs all while making the world react coherently instead of trigger reations to put you back on track. Flow state. Will the story end with them saving the entire galaxy? Maybe. Maybe not. The story can now be the byproduct.

[@rickybrooks2971]

@@Ritten_Lies freestyle plot generation is not inherently superior to planning, and often comes off as shallow if done without real danger, and contrived if done with teeth.

[@NocturnalNick]

lil bro thinks he discovered emergent narrative (which is also fully possible in other media) Flatly wrong about the nature of decision and consequence, the consequence of murdering 10 people was written and decided before I was born. The decision to commit that crime and the consequences to me, and myriad other people cascading through time are still real and significant. I think a better way to think of this is whether or not the consequences are told or felt. And in that sense, the breadth, extent, timescale of the change itself, and the timescale of its effects are places we feel that significance. You do also tend to know, roughly, the significance of the moment you're in, and can essentially pre-author them. Right now, watching this video and leaving this comment will not be a part of the 'story' that is my life in any timeframe. If I was watching the birth of my child, I could reasonably say that would mark a significant moment. You could also say that moment was 'pre-written', being something I wanted to do since I was young, wholly contrived at a low-resolution

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

Correct about emergent narrative, of course they’re possible in other media, but certainly RPGs are a great medium for them. I’m actually surprised more determinists haven’t commented on this, but insofar as life doesn’t feel deterministic because the necessary information to see it that way is beyond human comprehension/senses, RPGs too can emulate that same feeling of freedom, agency and consequence - if the GM doesn’t railroad, if the imagined world has as much capacity for consequence variation as the real world, if the node-based decision tree is as complex as the one we live in (that is, beyond the capacity of the GM to have authored it beforehand). I don’t think all determinists would agree that the consequences of your actions are ‘significant,’ in any sense though, even if they feel that way. Because determinism affects life and RPGs equally, it’s kind of irrelevant to the discussion, and I’m happy to leave it to relevant spheres. You might guess that the birth of your child is a significant moment, but exactly how it might affect your life in the years to come would have to be something you find out, and I think moments for your characters during role-play would be fairly equivalent. Something you want to do, a goal, since you were young, might be argued to be ‘pre-written,’ only if it comes to pass, but there are plenty of people who have these desires that fail to author them at all, and there’s certainly a difference in the kind of game you have if you don’t know beforehand whether you’ll achieve your goals, or if you know that the GM really has pre-authored your success. As a matter of preference then, I don’t want a game with a GM authored consequence resolution - I want something more like life.

[@NocturnalNick]

@@TheTombofLimeGaming mostly agree (even cut a bit about philosophical determinism lol), I think I should have said 'impact' instead of 'significance'. I mean it in a more mechanical sense than a personal sense, as per the four metrics I gave. If your whole point is only about DMs using players like puppets acting out their script, I'm of course on board. My objection still is you saying the contrivance of a moment makes decisions and consequences 'not real', because I think that's just not true in life where a huge amount of experiences are contrived and the impact can be assumed. A DM can, and I think in a very lifelike way, write what would be nodes on a decision tree, same as setting (fallible) life goals. I agree though I don't know what the point of playing is if most of the play is DM-driven

[@ekurisona663]

what a great topic for a video! what i'm hearing is games can have creative input from the players that actually shapes the narrative of the game to which the gm reacts, and in this way, together, they create a story and a world - essentially, creative players instead of players just passive and consuming a pre-fab story and then 'choosing' from limited options of pre-fab outcomes (illusion of choice) i saw another youtuber (ginny di) talk about this and a book that deals with it... video search: This Dungeon Master strategy rewired my brain, ginny di book search: The Game Master's Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying: Guidelines and Strategies for Running Pc-Driven Narratives in 5e Adventures

[@Drudenfusz]

I think the premise of relatability through closeness to the audience is flawed. You even mention puppets, and say they are less effective, but I would argue they are actually more effective. I mean there is a reason why puppet theatre is around for a very long time, since it allows the audience to project themselves on the puppet. That is why I look at my characters in roleplaying games as dolls, even though imaginary ones, but I otherwise play with them just like I did when I was a little girl, by projecting onto them. And storytelling is the same way, the stories live in the retelling. Sure, in our modern age with the printing press and intellectual properties many stories got canonised, but that is not an intrinsic flaw of storytelling. That is why in older storytelling traditions that living through it was also prevalent and the story could change with every retelling, since there was no single true way of how to tell the story. Thus I think you are barking here at the wrong tree, instead of complaining about storytelling, you should complain about complain about plot and canon. Don't get me wrong, I think the goal you have is admirable, and that emergent story approach is very much the same that I want out of the hobby, but I already did so two decades ago when I was a rather new GM running my games of Vampire. And that was before I read the narrativist stuff on The Forge. I hate the Hero's Journey with a passion, it is too sexist and colonialist for my taste, but more important it never was meant as an outline for narratives. And that is again the issue in our modern age, people think there are formulae that they can follow to create great stories. That is also why I despise that Save the Cat book. No, storytelling is foremost the ability to enlist an emotional response in the audience, to pull them in. That is why in roleplay people always talk about immersion, players want to get transported into the fiction, and that is what storytelling is for. Not just from the GM, but the players are in the ideal case also storytellers, contributing to the fiction and thus reinforcing the immersion for everyone else around the table. For me the sandbox always falls flat, since no matter how much people put into it, it always lacks meaning. That is why I start with theme (or leitmotif, or a narrative promise, or whatever you want to call it), around which the players can create their characters and that drives them their exploration as well as the conflicts in the world. Again, don't confuse that with plot! That is the method that works well for me, it creates meaningful narratives in an interactive medium, which can lead to memorable scenes, just like people are fond of, because it will not just vainglory emulation of a fictional world, it will reveal aspects of the human condition that the players can discover in themselves.

[@arturb..]

I don't believe that sandbox campaigns must inherently lack in meaning, themes, and direction - there's just no predetermined story, and the job of the GM is to fill the world with factions, themes, and interesting things to get involved in. I think what you described in the last paragraph is perfectly in line with what can happen in a good sandbox. The problem is that you need tools and good practices (and hopefully a little bit of experience) to run one well, and most people will only have had the tools to run tight, linear campaigns at their disposal, because of what the RPG mainstream has looked like for the past few decades. When it finally comes out in full, Dolmenwood is going to be the gold standard for a sandbox module, filled to the brim with themes and potential directions the campaign could go in. Another one I really like, on a much smaller scale and with a sci-fi Western theme, is Desert Moon of Karth. I think reading materials like these is really useful (it certainly has been for my GMing) for instruction and inspiration.

[@TheTombofLimeGaming]

Ok! Yes I think that ‘blank slate,’ characters can be effective in storytelling, like the puppets, or ‘silent protagonists,’ in video games, but it’s also possible that this can go too far and characters can become bland to the point of not being relatable at all. There has to be some ‘humanity,’ so I think this is still an important factor. I think even in highly constructed narratives it’s still up to the viewer/reader to find meaning in something - people can even totally misinterpret the author’s intent and still find deep importance in that misunderstanding of, say, song lyrics. So sandboxes I don’t think are inherently any less meaningful than something with narrative promises, but I have no doubt it can done sub-optimally, making it harder for the players to find that meaning, so care should be taken either way. A narrative arc full of deep meaning can still be completely lost on certain players!

[@AydarBMSTU]

Laughs in Dragon Age Origins