Why haven't storygames enjoyed the same success as D&D?

>>96100895 (OP)
Brand recognition.

>>96100926
/thread

>>96100895 (OP)
Storygame? What's that, like Fighting Fantasy or something?

>>96100895 (OP)
DnD has dogshit mechanics but its ideas are in the right place for creating a sense of satisfying campaign. You gain levels, abilities, power, social influence, you complete quests and save the innocent, you meet NPCs, you delve dungeons and slay monsters, it feels like you're actually achieving something as a campaign goes along.
>DnD: Number go up good.
Story games don't offer that. They're obsessed with storytelling mechanics that are supposed to make storytelling more interesting and dynamic between the players and the GM... but you already have full freedom of actions in DnD. You can attack people on sight. You can side with one faction or another. All these story mechanics end up becoming cumbersome, and the lack of strong gameplay mechanics ends up biting these games in the ass because they rely entirely on imagination, too much on it, without tangible grounding in numbers and mechanics.

It's because D&D employs an intuitive combination of simulationist considerations and character expression.

While the system can't express literally any character you can think of, you can reliably create core archetypes and it's flexible enough to contain variants. Most people aren't trying to express their characters as those edge cases though, the average player keeps it simple. You can create a dumb musclehead barbarian. People who feel contrarian can still create a smart barbarian, or a dextrous barbarian instead.

>>96100895 (OP)
First post basically. But also as a forever DM that started just before Critical Role made it explode even more, even the loudest theatre kid saying they want a story driven roleplay game won't actually be proactive or make an effort, they're here to maybe say one two two "funny" things and roll click clack shiny math rocks while the DM does the vast majority of the work. They want a system that has a few set buttons to push to get rewarded, like they're playing a video game. They can't do that in actual story/narrative first systems that don't have those binary yes/no/you do Thing buttons.

>>96100895 (OP)
Players have a hard time wrapping their heads around the "shared narration" and editorial authority to the scene that's present in a lot of these games compared to piloting their PC in traditional RPGs like D&D, CoC, etc.

I dunno anon, what kinda movie sells more tickets any year? You think it's the best that you can see?

>>96100895 (OP)
>FATE
>MASKS
>sword Lesbians
Absolute dogshit. D&D is bad, but these are unironically someone worse.

>Blades in the Dark
Autism. This is not a game, it's a wiki entry on someone's failed book.

>>96100895 (OP)
Needed a break after your last few "storyshitters" threads didn't go your way, huh?

>>96100926
fpbp

>>96100895 (OP)
>fate
>storygame

Why the fuck are you posting this shit now?
What gets into your schizoid brain to just start making storygames threads three times a day?
I don't even have a horse in this race, but I am fascinated what causes an autist to start a personal crusade like this.
Did someone get you REAL asspained? Is this vengeance?

>>96101326
>FATE
>game

Fixed that for you.

>>96101345
I think you're addressing a guy who is a living cancer who's dug himself deep into the /osrg/.
His whole plan is "discourage anything but the shittiest version of outdated D&D in hopes that people finally stop making fun of him for sucking Gygax's rotting cock."

That requires a mix of attacking the most popular targets, which means 5e, and with just about every other game being too small to profitably target on an individual basis, just attacking any game that can handle something more complex than "How many torches do you have" and "you die." Hence his attack on "story games".

There's no way to get rid of him. He ban evades constantly, and even with all his posts deleted he still keeps coming back. He's the most stubborn bit of cancer on this site.

>>96100895 (OP)
But they do, we call It Call of Cthulhu

>>96100895 (OP)
Weird that you frame 2 and half PBTA games as "story games with novel mechanics" while also incorrectly using the 5e D&D logo with Gary's face and calling it a dungeon crawler, despite game abandoning nearly all of the Gygax era dungeon crawling focus. You're a very strange, confused little man.

>>96101536
>calling it a dungeon crawler, despite game abandoning nearly all of the Gygax era dungeon crawling focus.
Two of 5e's most popular modules, even to this date, are The Lost Mine of Phandelver and Curse of Strahd. The former describes itself as a dungeon crawl, which it is. The latter was originally penned in the 80s in the form of Ravenloft for ADND, and is as old school as it gets.

D&D will always be about Dungeons. And also, Dragons.

>>96100895 (OP)
forge group schlop compared to the memories of a great man who has been constantly been tarnished on for the past decade because the corpos who own the franchise are lugs who hate the roots of said franchise.

I'ld go with the old man.

though, I'ld go for the far east instead if given the option.

>>96101915
You could have have done a worse job establishing your old school cred, my guy. That's not what dungeon crawling means at all.

>>96100895 (OP)
D&D hasn't been about dungeon crawling for almost thirty years at this point. People don't want story games. They don't want dungeon crawlers. They don't want any kind of experience in particular. What people want is The Brand. Every other game in the industry is a distant runner-up to Dungeons & Dragons and it has absolutely nothing to do with mechanics..

>>96100895 (OP)
Crunchy autism simulators haven't had D&D's success either. Nobody can touch D&D's place in the market, it has too much cultural inertia to be killed by any external forces.

>>96101480
Both OSR and story games suck to be honest
But at least story games suck on their own merits, OSR is where you try to have fun and some smug neckbeard claims you don't understand what you're doing and that your fun is artificial

>>96102060
"Story games" are not a thing.
OP tried earlier to force "storyshit" as a concept, and when that backfired with everyone correctly and immediately identifying him as a troll every time he tried pushing it, he then decided to ease off a little, but still with the same bullshit.

He's a very simple minded troll. Calling games "Story games" like that's actually some kind of category or to try building it up as a pejorative is just him being a slimy little shit.

>>96102087
>"Story games" are not a thing
Something like BitD is absolutely a story game. Whether PbtA games are story games is up for debate but I tend to abhor games that use terms like Scene and Narration or meta mechanics that make it sound like a stage play rather than something that happens organically

Are any of the storygames actually any good at drivign a story?

Why the fuck do you post these threads?

>>96100895 (OP)
there is no such thing as a lesbian, all women are bisexual

>>96102087
Now this is some serious delusion. You really think there's only one guy using the term 'storygame' to (accurately) describe the genre of narrative-centric Forge crap? I'm split on whether there's really an anti-storygame troll, but there's definitely a pro-storygame troll trying to pretend his hobby is the same as RPGs.

>>96102153
Eh, I find the emergent stories produced by RPGs more entertaining by far since they aren't contrived, but I'll grant that Microscope is an excellent story... thing for collaborative setting/history building.

>>96102104
>>96102227
That's the resident DNDrone. Don't waste time trying to talk sense into him, he doesn't have the mental capacity to understand it and he'll just respond with logically incoherent walls of text.

>>96102153
Fiasco and Once Upon the Time.

>>96102265
D&D sucks too

>>96100926
As unfortunate as it is, I have to agree.

>>96100895 (OP)
Blades in the dark is pretty innovative to the point a lot of other games have borrowed mechanics from it.

>>96100895 (OP)
Too many all crowding for marketshare, and let's be real, the reason people are writing these storygames is because creating rules that are fun is actually difficult and requires thought, meanwhile for most people making these storygames, the point of it is as a portfolio for art and style. Being an RPG book is just a medium it exists within, like oil-on-canvas or a comic book. Storygames aren't meant to be played, you're meant to read them, imagine playing them in the world inspired by the art or whatever, and then you put it the fuck away and move on.

>>96102481
>Storygames aren't meant to be played, you're meant to read them, imagine playing them in the world inspired by the art or whatever, and then you put it the fuck away and move on.
This is as retarded as insisting that simulationism sucks. Of course you can play story games, I prefer not to but they're still games.

>>96100895 (OP)
Because they suck and don't work for tabletop.
/thread

The story part you want to keep fluid, let the DM and the players find their own schtick. The simulation part you want to keep within some boundaries.

>>96102509
You can play them as games, sure. But they're not designed to be played, not really. They're designed as a hypothetical experience attached to an art style.
That's pretty much as far as it goes. They're not really RPGs, they're artbooks with the aesthetic of RPGs and deliberately basic rules.
I wouldn't say you're getting scammed or anything, you just don't seem to really get the point. There's a reason nobody seriously plays those kinds of games for real.

>>96100895 (OP)
>Why a game by a bunch of randos can't compete with a 50 yo franchise that since day one was build entirely on extensive marketing and never went below 30% of share of the whole RPG market, all for a single brand
No idea anon. Absolutely no clue.
Must be magic.

>>96100979
>t. proponent of imperial as "natural" and "intuitive"
Besides, your argument boils down to "in DnD, you play game, and in other games, you don't play game", you daft retard.
Tell us how story games don't offer all the things you attributed as unique to DnD, you brain-dead retard

>>96102153
"Storygame" is a meaningless category on /tg/, a place where people will insist that a giant doorstopper is the same thing as a zine game that basically just tells you to imagine a goblin because it has a meta currency or something because they are incapable of good faith.

>>96102087
There are valid ways to use "storyshit" or "storygames", as long as you're talking about specific things on a somewhat common ground. The /osrg/ faggot just arbitrarily moves his goal post around to tell people they're having the wrong type of fun and has successfully stripped those words of their meaning.

>>96100895 (OP)
At this point mostly the network effect that's a few steps down from >>96100926, since TTRPGs need a playgroup so even those who actively loath the brand are likely to be stuck with nothing but D&D to play unless they can find a broader TTRPG community that plays other games.

>>96102050
Technically 3e was still "about" dungeon-crawling but the functional standardization and Rolemaster bleed-through opened a lot more narrative campaign doors than AD&D 2e.

>>96102059
Anyone who thinks 3.X is not a crunchy autism simulator is too uninformed on the subject to have a respectable opinion.

>>96102087
It is at the very least a sensible (sub)genre descriptor for TTRPGs focused on narrative mechanics, or as an antithesis to simulationist game design.

>>96100895 (OP)
Nobody wants to RP, that shit for freakshit wierdos.

I just want to be given a scenario and defeat it.

>>96102265
>this troll thinks anyone doesn't immediately identify that he's a troll
lol you really are a retard

>>96102884
>It is at the very least a sensible (sub)genre descriptor for TTRPGs focused on narrative mechanics, or as an antithesis to simulationist game design.
Man, shut the fuck up.
"Narrative" games, not "Storygames/storyshit" were already an outdated attempt at categorizing games two decades ago.

>>96102850
The only valid use of a troll phrase is to identify people as trolls.

Take this guy for instance.
>96103176
"Freakshit" is exclusively used only by trolls. You can safely and with complete accuracy assume he is nothing but a troll.

>>96103217
"Outdated"? Anon, there's a whole genre of "games" out there that adhere to narrativist principles as a result of that categorization. It may have been (definitely was) to invent that "category" in the first place, but we have to call the resulting trash *something*.

>>96103217
"Outdated"? Anon, there's a whole genre of "games" out there that adhere to narrativist principles as a result of that categorization. It may have been (definitely was) a mistake to invent that "category" in the first place, but we have to call the resulting trash *something*.

>>96103261
>If you talk about words I don't like you're a troll.

>>96103275
>>96103398
>thinks anyone can take him seriously
You're too obvious.

>>96100895 (OP)
People who want to exclusively roleplay will do so through formats that won't unnecessarily limit or hinder it through "roleplay/narrative systems". Unfortunately, storygames usually do the latter.

>>96100926
tsmt

>>96103408
The fact that you bunched me together with a completely different anon, says otherwise.

>>96102050
Yes, but that's not really what defines a storygame imo; what defines a storygame is a dilution of narrative authority from GM to player, which takes the form of mechanics like shared worlding like Beyond the Wall, or adding things to the scene like Fate.

Vampire and D&D limit the mechanical narrative authority of PCs to their characters, and heavily restrict their ability to co-GM.

>>96103217
>Narrative" games, not "Storygames/storyshit" were already an outdated attempt at categorizing games two decades ago.
That's simply not true, because whatever you can say about the taxonomy of GNS, it did produce a family of games that are mechanically distinct because of their approach to authority to control of the scene.

>>96103694
>but that's not really what defines a storygame imo
I wasn't aware this shit had a definition, it only eve seems to be used to bitch about Played by the Apocalypse games (valid enouughh) and anyone who plays D&D as more than a hexcrawler (subjective)

>>96103727
It's unformalized community jargon, pinning it down to just five definitions is probably impossible.

>>96103739
No, >>96103694 pretty much nails the essential difference: the more the players have direct authorial control over the world, the more of a storygame it is.

>>96103727
Well, yes. This hashing out of definition took place from like 98-2007 in places like The Forge. The lines are also somewhat blurred since a lot of traditional RPGs have incorporated a handful of storygame (I hate to use the term "narrativist" because I think the taxonomy fundamentally doesn't usefully describe anything other than the storygames s that came out of it).

It was at one point a meaningful debate, but that hasn't really been true for like 15 years since the people really invested in the philosophy kinda fucked off from internet arguments. And game designers tend to find frameworks like MDA more useful for actually making games than GNS. It's been somewhat sidestepped.

>>96100895 (OP)
The modern D&D logo belongs on the left though.

>>96103694
Usually when I see this retard bitching about "storyshitters" he's seething about the idea that other games can have plots or narratives brought to the table by the GM, instead of being a rigid dungeon crawl where the "story" is just dice rolls and reading outcomes off a list. Not that he ever seems to understand dungeon crawls, the way any older editions of D&D were played, or what a "story" actually is, either

>>96100895 (OP)
It's kind of incredible how some these narrative systems, where the gameplay is just "roll Xd6 to see how epicly you win", end up having stupidly bloated character sheets.

>>96104104
you're too stupid to understand what storyshitting is or what is wrong with it
>he's seething about the idea that other games can have plots or narratives brought to the table by the GM
No it's when you ignore game rules due to narrativist considerations.
> instead of being a rigid dungeon crawl where the "story" is just dice rolls and reading outcomes off a list.
Strawman

You have 4 anons disagreeing with you in >>96102087. Have you ever considered for a moment you're the one that is incorrect?

>>96105608
Hey.
>>96102087 here.
Not only are you wrong, you're going to be wrong no matter how many people or samefag posts say otherwise. You're forced shit is forced shit, no matter how hard you want to pretend it isn't (because of course you're going to try to pretend that).

And, I'm not >>96104104

Whoa! People recognizing obvious trolling? How could this happen?!

Now, quit being so slimey, you slimey little shit.

>>96100895 (OP)
No one has dungeon crawls in 5e, they explore gender identity though purple tieflings in a coffee shop.

>>96102639
>Besides, your argument boils down to "in DnD, you play game, and in other games, you don't play game", you daft retard.
Yes. That is correct. That is precisely why story games suck and DnD remains popular across decades. Gary Gygax wasn't interested in collaborative narratives, he wanted a game. A game people play.
>Tell us how story games don't offer all the things you attributed as unique to DnD, you brain-dead retard
Already covered that in my first post, illiterate retard. Most story games don't even have classes, levels, or detailed combat and skill mechanics. Some even abstract basic character stats as much as possible.
P.S.: Imperial is indeed better because it's natural and intuitive.

>>96100895 (OP)

Storychads conquered DND in the early 80's. Here's Gygax whining about it 40 years ago.

>>96100895 (OP)
>5e logo
>Gygaxian dungeon crawler

>>96102639
much, much less dice rolling.
many, many fewer things to invoke, for both players and DMs.

>>96105996
>many, many fewer things to invoke
This is an insane idea coming from an insane person.

>much, much less dice rolling.
Oh my god, we found one.
We found the kind of genuine idiot who thinks "more dice rolls = better game" with no upper limit.
Someone take a picture, I thought this level of stupidity was a myth.

>>96106031
More dice doesn't make better gameplay, but these games are pitched to young adults (or adults who have not grown up) and young adults generally need something to engage them beyond the narrative. Dice rolling is also one of the clearest mechanisms by which players can affect the narrative structure, which makes it much easier to get them interested in it.

>>96105608
>NUH UH
Buddy, give it up. Whatever orgasm you think you're going to earn from humping this dead horse, the post nut clarity you're going to get when you realize you wasted so much time arguing about imaginary players doing things you don't like will feel infinitely worse. The rules of D&D overtly state to prioritize "narrativist considerations" over the rest of the rules. It tells you not to waste time with dice rolls that might derail the story or interfere with the campaign's ability to move forward. They encourage handwaving tedious bookkeeping and fiddly realistic issues that would bog down the gameplay. Whatever the fuck you think D&D is these days, it really isn't, and you're a retarded faggot for pretending the be the one true gamer.

In other words: eat shit retard.

>>96106031
>>96106102
>Dice rolling is also one of the clearest mechanisms by which players can affect the narrative structure, which makes it much easier to get them interested in it.
That's true but the average Dungeonmasterfag is just fine with pulling meaningless magic numbers out of their ass for literally anything just so someone can make an arbitrary d20 roll

>>96106127
That brings up another point I'd like to make: eschewing the d20 is bad, because in the minds of normies tabletop games and 'weird dice' go hand-in-hand. Furthermore, subverting that expectation doesn't gain you any points with them, but telling the ttrpg players that there's no need for their cool d20 makes them less likely to play it.

>>96106125
5e sucks. What's your point? Overruling the mechanics for 'narrative considerations'* is the opposite of Gygaxian D&D, and, indeed, the antithesis of roleplaying in general.

*This does not mean the rules shouldn't ever be overridden, but that it should be for cases in which they lead to nonsensical outcomes, not just whenever the GM thinks it would be cool for 'his story'.

>>96100979
>You gain levels, abilities, power, social influence, you complete quests and save the innocent, you meet NPCs, you delve dungeons and slay monsters, it feels like you're actually achieving something as a campaign goes along.
That has nothing to do with D&D-specific mechanics. You don't need D&D to have literally all of those things. It's just a genre of story architecture called sword-and-sorcery.
And you can do all those things better in systems that are not D&D.

>>96100895 (OP)
Like >>96100926 , the common folk and big part of the role community dont know and dont give a shit about other things except D&D.

>Say "role game" and people will "????"
>Say "Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, Fate, Blades in the Dark, etc" and peopple will "????"
>Say "Dungeons and Dragons" and people will "oooohh, yeeaah, i know that. Yeah that Dexter's Laboratory episode. Stranger Things. The cartoon serie, etc"

>>96106125
That's not narrativist as understood by Edwards and his acolytes on the Forge/storygames. You look like a dumbass misusing specific jargon.

What the fuck is wrong with you, OP? Why do you push this shit so hard?

>>96100979
>a sense of satisfying campaign. You gain levels, abilities, power, social influence, you complete quests and save the innocent, you meet NPCs, you delve dungeons and slay monsters, it feels like you're actually achieving something as a campaign goes along.
Sounds an awful lot like a story you got there, anon...

>>96109128
An emergent story, sure. Not a directed story (unless the GM is a railroading retard).

>>96102087
>Everyone
>It's just one autist mad about slang

>>96109128
Nethack, story game.

>>96109204
>An emergent story, sure. Not a directed story
The story emerges out of the elements put there by a specific person's choices.

>>96109268
Nope, RNG is used.

>>96100895 (OP)
D&D is a bad game.
Storygames aren't games at all.

>>96101480
Jesus christ, just let people enjoy games, you sound like an absolutely miserable little bitch

>>96101915
This is one of the most brain dead stupid fucking posts I have ever seen.

>>96102087
People have been using that term forever you ignoramus

>>96103261
It's used to call out trolls like yourself who play as freakshit

>>96109321
Some versions of D&D are okay games. Nothing WotC's made in the last 20 years tho

>>96109442
Considering nobody can properly define freakshit anymore, it's warranted

>>96109477
Playing any of the races outside of the core ones (human elf dwarf halfling), especially and specifically for the purpose of novelty and peacocking.

>>96109491
I've seen people bitching that playing an elf or a halfling is also "freakshit", so I don't think that works too well

>>96109518
You haven't but go off.

>>96109276
Games are not randomly generated. GM may choose to use some tools in the process, but a game that is completely controlled by dice and procedures created by the designer is called a board game.

>>96109521
Why? You apparently know what I've seen better than I do

>>96109571
Doesn't matter, your entire presupposition falls apart.

>>96109580
This post makes it seem like you were holding in tears while writing it.

>>96109606
Not sure this is the best place for projection, but go off man

>>96109621
>No u x3

>>96109621
>Not sure this is the best place for projection
Genuine question, did this make sense to you when you thought it up, or are you just throwing random words together like a malfunctioning AI?

>>96109635
Do you call everyone you disagree with an ai?

>>96109654
I didn't call you an AI or even say I disagreed with you, I was asking a question because your post was nonsensical.

>>96109660
Directly comparing someone to a malfunctioning AI isn't exactly what you call a subtle allusion

>>96109204
Okay, but that's not narrativist.

In a standard RPG, players "press buttons" whose effects on the game state are updated by the GM. In narrativist games, the game state is no longer solely maintained and updated by the GM - the players also have the ability to directly alter the game state, instead of pressing buttons and having the GM adjudicate and update the game state. It's the difference between asking if there's a chandelier to swing from, and having the unilateral authority able to update the game state to add a chandelier.

>>96109687
Ok, I accept the concession that you were incorrect, but can you answer the question as to why your post is worded in a manner only a retard would think achieves anything other than making the person posting it look like a neanderthal?

>>96109694
Yes, I completely agree. I'm not sure if you replied to the wrong post. I was arguing against the conflation of history/emergent story, which is the product of impartial observance of the rules and PC actions, and narrative/directed story, which is the product of direct authorial control over the game world.

>>96109518
Not my problem. Get a reign on your players

>>96109703
Given your choice of phrasing, nah. Not sure if you expected an actual answer, or just wanted to fellate yourself, but there you go.

>>96109654
He didn't call you an AI, he said you were acting like a malfunctioning one.

>>96108124
>Overruling the mechanics for 'narrative considerations'* is the opposite of Gygaxian D&D, and, indeed, the antithesis of roleplaying in general.
You making a joke here, buddy? Gygax made shit up all the time. Changed rules on the spot. Just changed his mind on rulings whenever it suited him. He said whatever he thought sounded coolest or most clever in the moment and constantly contradicted himself... And the funniest fucking thing of all is that Gygax copied the basic idea for D&D from Arneson who was running a plot and roleplay heavy campaign that would get retards like OP seething for being a "story game"

>>96109825
>having to make up rules for uncovered corner cases due to the nature of it being a pretend game is the same as pretending a monster missed or did less damage so a player character doesn't die
ok retard

>>96109844
We're not talking about making up rules. We're talking about overwriting rules and changing them again within the same session. The guy was an infamous bullshitter. You think he had some divine gift for game design? He was a retard.

>>96109853
that also happens when you make rulings to cover corner cases then players try to exploit it or you forgot the rule you made up
Again, it's not the same as cheesing dice rolls and lying to the players about the dice results.

>>96109870
Ok that's true it's not but how can I win this argument if I don't pretend they're the same thing huh faggot

>>96109870
Again, you're trying to weasel this into some situation where fucking up the rules the guy supposedly created with his blessed gift for perfect game design is totally okay, but when anyone else does it, or decides that a rule is getting in the way, it's somehow a heinous deviation from TRVE ROLEPLAYING

>>96101106
>MASKS
>bad
Shit taste.

>Blades
>Autism
This part is correct, but it is a game. If you've ever looked hard at Harper's work, what you find is that he designs luxurious characters sheets that a game has to be made to justify.

>>96109903
screwing up the rules or doing a hot patch to the rules while otherwise acting in good faith is not the same as cheating the rules to preserve a narrative.
this isn't hard to understand, even literal children understand this
that's why you have to lie about what is happening because if you told your players "well the dice says you die here but I'm going to ignore that because it would be lame if your character died here" it would instantly take the fun out of the game.

>>96109938
My guy, we're talking about Gary "A DM only rolls the dice because of the noise they make" Gygax. He wasn't patching the rules on the spot. He was bullshitting. He had no respect for the rules or the game as some inherently perfect ritual to be followed. You're saying that's somehow "not the same as cheating the rules to preserve a narrative" but that's exactly what Gygax was known to do ALL THE TIME.

Because everyone repping storygames looks like this

>>96109938
>>96109977
Gary made the rules how they were because he wanted a complete product to prevent the need of people buying third party supplements to fill the mechanical holes and thus risking the copywrite.
He personally wanted to "wing it" in his own games and held to rulings based ideals but D&D the Game Gary was playing and D&D the Product Gygax was selling were two separate things, and Gary was willing to put his beliefs aside to make sure he kept getting paid.

>>96100895 (OP)
D&D is fiction first (at least as it was designed by Gygax) and also includes some mixed success mechanics

>>96110432
Those aren't the hallmarks of storygames. All RPGs are supposed to be fiction first in the sense that the mechanics are meant to model a fictional world and should be overruled when they fail to model appropriately. I think most RPGs have some form of mixed success, too, though usually not the reality-warping type that storygames have.

>>96110280
The way he ran games was completely antithetical to this fictionalized version of him that cared about the game and the rules and the correct and intended way to play, above all else. Every time this distinction of "real Gygaxian D&D" or whatever is disproven, the definition and specific qualities of a story game miraculously change and a new factoid about what Gygax was actually doing the whole time suddenly manifests from the aether.

>>96110499
Exactly, he thought rules were dumb which is why DND never had any rules until Gygax left

>>96110499
Which is what I said, D&D the game which was sold to people and played from AD&D onward wasn't Gary's D&D which was much more fluid and changed over decades of rulings (the Gary who was playing with Dave is different from the Gary who was snorting coke whie running games in Hollywood, which was different from the Gary who had lived through ups and down and posted on forums), but it was the D&D that he wanted others to play because he wanted money and so put on a persona as this ultra rules enforcer till the moment he wasn't making any money to do so anymore.

I highly suggest anyone who is interested to check out "When we were Wizards" it covers the rise of TSR till Gary's ousting and has voiceover for Gary's old letters a ton of interviews with old guard TSR guys.

>>96110499
What Gary Gygax was doing shouldn't matter anyway because Dave Arneson is the real father of the TTRPG

I'm going to speak from raw experience.

Even if you are intent on never rolling dice, your freeform roleplay experience must be grounded in stats. The reason is very simple. It gives you a legitimate basis for the scope of the individual you are playing, and telling yourself you can fairly arbitrate such a thing without a box bounding you in misses the point of having those stats at all. That it stops you from making a god-man is low hanging fruit. The real point is forcing you to make a creature that is INTERESTING. By having clear a clear pool of resources to pick from, you have to make specific choices and compromises. Which then reflect on who your character is. It, ironically, helps encourage more frivolous character traits as well. This person solidifies in your mind more and has actual edges and purpose.

Beyond that, even if you aren't siming every moment of the game mechanics fully, having a general understanding of what your character can physically accomplish provides opportunities of their own. Don't have a way to directly accomplish your task? Find means within your limits. Get creative. Put in the effort. Similarly, your more niche traits might actually be more useful than you think once everyone can't just fiat their competency for every task. Helps contain autism too. Because tracking damage, and having real risk of character loss, makes people hesitate to do stupid things.

I've seen literally one time where having crunchy rules wouldn't have helped a situation.

>>96100895 (OP)
Simple, people only play storygames to meme and joke around in. It for those theater kids to be a diva cause they don't want to play the game but just act out their fantasies of being the star in some show. However that rarely last long without someone to rein them in and all. Where DnD and classic TTRPG all have set rules and guidelines to keep the game going and make it fun for everyone to play.

>>96110636
This was mentioned earlier, but the point being that the premise of D&D being some pure, ideal RPG, as decreed by Gygax, who himself was the truest, most sagely arbiter of what is or isn't a true RPG, ends up being complete fucking nonsense. The origin of D&D was more "storygame" than rigid rules ritual, and Gygax himself was loose and arbitrary with how he ran the game and expected it to be run.

OP is a fucking idiot because he's made up a fictional version of a guy who fudged, fake rolled, and pulled numbers out of his ass on a whim, and held him up as the ineffable final word on what an RPG should be.

I shouldn't be surprised that there are so many disingenuous takes on narrative-focused game systems, but here we are.

Contrasting "hundreds" of these games against Dungeons and Dragons is already going to tell you most of it in the first place. Those games are mostly coming from small companies or independent developers, while Dungeons and Dragons is a game with a decades-long legacy and various editions, and has the financial power behind its publication to be widely sold and played as a market leader with what is more or less first-mover advantage. No matter how you slice it, it's so easy to cherry pick against narrativist games without saying anything of actual substance regarding success in whatever metrics you're not going to bother to spell out anyway.

Financial success? Design success? Popularity? OP didn't particularly say, but many such metrics are already covered here >>96100926 and we may as well have just stopped the thread at that point.

>>96110754
Oh I agree that the "storygame" vs "real game" divide is 100% a modern fiction

>>96110816
Nah. There is a clear and obvious distinction. If the players interact with the game via their characters, it is an RPG. If the players exercise direct authorial control over the game world (whether freely or by means of some meta currency), it's a storygame. Simple as that.

>>96110842
Ok

>>96110708
>Where DnD and classic TTRPG all have set rules and guidelines to keep the game going and make it fun for everyone to play.

>>96110842
I think there is a scale, with many new editions of traditional RPGs borrowing 1-2 storygame mechanics, but a couple hero points here, a Devil's Bargain there does not a storygame make imo. You don't see as many storygames in there purer forms like FATE these days.

>>96110871
Admittedly, part of it comes down to whether the metacurrency is actually a metacurrency or a representation of a PC ability. If the PCs are explicitly chosen-by-destiny reality-warpers, then it becomes a PC-world interaction instead of a player-world interaction. I still think that has the same drawback as storygames in that it produces predictable, drama-driven narratives, but at least it makes sense and is genuinely "fiction first".

>>96100895 (OP)
One of my players started GMing blades in the dark recently so I could take a break between campaigns and the more we play the less I like it. A neverending downard spiral and gritty low power crime sounds interesting in concept, but it's a joyless drudge. I haven't played dnd in years (outside of replaying baldur's gate and icewind dale) but I'd love to save a village from some goblins at this point.

>>96111187
Blades is trying to be both a heist film, teamwork game, and crime drama all in the same TTRPG and it suffers because of that.
Really I think doing away with the baseline assumption that the party as to be in all scenes together detracts when one guy is mean to manage to goons during shootouts and another is meant to be a safecracking expert and tries to cover it up with the "promote your followers into PCs" concept that is underexplored in the rules and expects you to juggle multiple characters on a roster when most players don't have an interest in doing that.

If we had just gotten Oceans 11 the TTRPG or a Gang Manager Simulator board game it would of been cool. But instead we get this bloated mess trying to push in multiple directions.

>>96111255
It feels more like an attempt ttrpg version of darkest dungeon with how almost every roll has to have some negative side effect unless I roll 6 - at first I thought that's creative, but now it's just tiresome.

>>96109230
Nethack's story actually did inform SMT though

>>96111255
>the baseline assumption that the party as to be in all scenes together

Where does this exist in BitD?

>>96111187
In my usual groups, we find Blades to be pretty fun. It IS rough and tumble, but that also means that all the problems you get yourself into are cause and effect from shit you started. You have no one to blame but yourself for making enemies or putting yourself up against a hard bargain, because you chucklefucks decided you wanted to try to make a grab for the gold in a city that won't give. You have to take.

This is to say, Blades is extremely effective when played with a rebellious spirit. The system sucks, so you're gonna take what you want, and you're gonna grit your teeth through those hard times with the rest of your gang. This also applies for playing the Vigilante group type, but the selfish rebellion is even more about the ideology, rather than to come out on top in terms of making your lives better.

>>96111255
In the few games of Blades that I've been in, we have never made it so everyone has to be in the same place at the same time. Usually there is a general area to the heist, or whatever is going on, but more often, we are split up all over the damned place doing our individual parts to make the whole thing work. Sometimes we won't even all exit the location together, because we'll have bailed out through different exits. Hell, sometimes we won't even have all entered a location together, because we're using different disguises, because someone's infiltrating in some other way, etc.

D&D is a life brand. Most people that play it haven't tried other games, don't know they exist or are playing a different game right now while calling it D&D.

At this point it should be turned into a generic term like velcro or tissue

>>96101006
It takes different GMing to make other games work. You can't set things up the same way and be surprised different mechanics don't fix it.
I tried gming some PbtA and it was a pretty bad experience, but it was 4 sessions and I could notice how we all were slowly getting how the player is supposed to add shit to the story. It's a very different mindset and it makes sense it'd be as awful as your first time trying to run D&D.

>>96101915
5e takes efforts to eliminate dungeon crawling mechanics and replacing them with free or functionally free spells, it doesn't include anything to motivate that playstyle in the manuals.

5e is a Marvel superhero game with swords.

>>96111415
You meant "Kleenex" or the like for the genericized word for "tissues."

But, no. That's stupid. That would be like saying all video games are Nintendo, which isn't just defaulting to an assumed example, it's just not even close to correct. Dungeons and Dragons already comes from a legacy of tabletop gaming, and also too much time has passed. Using the name of this game as the generic word for games in its niche is basically just not going to happen.

>>96111438
As someone whose group really likes PbtA titles (but also a variety of other things), I'll say that it really does require you to grasp the right mindset and want to play the type of game that the system you're using specifically wants to be used for.

If you're playing MASKS, you better be on board for the premise of the game, or you're gonna have a bad time. Same for whatever other games there are. And that's not a fault, it's just making sure that you communicate and choose games properly for yourself and your players. Same as ever.

In my experience, the people who do best when introduced to PbtA systems are people who are good at improvising, and are prone to thinking outside of the box in situations. Think of your players who, in Dungeons and Dragons, would use a spell to throw a lever, or to knock down a chandelier, or that they would actually try something like knocking over barrels to make it hard for enemies to progress towards them through an alleyway. Players who came from freeform roleplay backgrounds do great here, because they're already used to thinking in doing the roleplay stuff first and foremost. Now that just triggers mechanics, and they can get in the headspace of their characters to toy with the interplay of those mechanics with the roleplay.

>>96109977
If that was the case, he wouldn't have made such autistically specific scenario modules if he was willing to actively bullshit them, which he wasn't at least in tourneys where parties were competing with each other on progress.
Like Island of the Ape's "What, you didn't roll cleric? You lose" simulator.

>>96110842
>If the players exercise direct authorial control over the game world (whether freely or by means of some meta currency), it's a storygame.
Alright, then. D&D is a storygame by that definition.

WoD was pretty culturally relevant(VtM Bloodlines, the Underworld movies etc) but was too tied to Gen X/90's vibes. I liked nWoD but even that just doesn't work with the current year.

I'd argue you can't really group all DnD players together. You have the OSR reactionaries, the tourists who just want to have some licensed products to show off their nerd cred, the freeform theatre kids who just want an escapistic fantasy, the people who play fleeting Discord campaigns because they don't have IRL friends to play with, etc.

>>96111467
I think a bigger issue is the time frame of action. In D&D, or even most game styles, player actions are small instant things. Long general actions like carousing or searching for rumors are either handwaved or you zoom in to one event where you roll. Meawhile in PbtA player actions, the moves, can take define hours of important eventos, or a series of actions, or a jump cut to a later time. You're playing on a bigger time frame. When you try to run it more taditionally, rolling multiple times for independent events inside a scene, it's a slog with barely any option for the players, because you kinda took them away.

>>96102226
TSL was written by a man, forgive him for not knowing about it.

>>96102226
If you can tell what that title is and want to discuss the words in it you clearly have your own hang ups to deal with. I hope you get over that girl, anon.

Is there a statblock structure for Monsters and NPCs w/player classes that people likes? one that showcases all needed numbers for smooth play in an organized way?
I don't want a template, as I can lay out that through scribus (want to experiment)

>>96112592
ups, wrong thread
how do you erase comments again?

>>96100926
Cope. 90% of tabletop players are normies who don't want complex mechanics. They want to roll dice, not be a theater kid.

>>96112651
>90% of tabletop players are normies who don't want complex mechanics.
Then why are they playing D&D lmao? Literally the only game on there that's close to as complicated as D&D is Burning Wheel.

>>96102618
>But they're not designed to be played, not really.
That's every 5e adventure. Also most Pathfinder adventures.

Secondaries/nogames are a pollutant on the hobby and found far more often under D&D's skirts than in the """storygame""" community, where every game has mechanics, and a reader often can be struck by the cleverness of the carefully-chosen abstractions.

>>96110842
So how is Blades in the Dark a storygame, exactly?

Who could be better known?
Some personal self promoted crowd funded project or Hasbro?

I don't see why you'd feel personally proud that a toy company decided to use the game you like like a toy brand.

>>96110842
So GMs are not players? What are they then? Guests?

>>96112955
According to most of /tg/, unpaid storytellers who they both loathe for getting in the way of their fun and yet still need because they're too lazy to run the games without GMs shouldering the burden of running the boring parts of the game aka building one.

>>96113024
I saw the reply notification and assumed it'd be in the opposite direction, tha GMs are above players, world creators, thinking machines, gods in human flesh, this is not a game for me, and so on.

>>96110251
Stop trying to push retarded phrases.

>>96110251
are you defending pick up artists to own the libs?

>>96113110
worse, he's trying to own the libs to try to force a phrase.

>>96113072
Nah, as funny as it is to joke about, I personally see GMs as more like being picked as the banker role in Monopoly, kind of like a sidegrade or halfway upgrade. Not everyone wants to do it, but someone needs to be one in order for the game to be generally fair and smooth.

>>96113131
really?
I like GMing, generally more than playing a character. If anything I feel guilty that I'm not giving other people the chance to have that fun. But I don't run D&D, the few times I did it was misserable. Maybe that's the issue.

>>96113260
I like GMing myself, but some aspects get tiring overtime, like the prep work. I find myself oscillating to wanting to take a break from GMing to be a regular player, to having a sudden bout of inspiration for a campaign after being a player for a while.

>>96113310
I always find that just playing as a player for a one shot or really short campaign shake me out of this mindset.

>>96113260
>>96113310
I always found that DnD seems really hostile to the GM running the game. It does very little to support that role. I honestly think it one of the reasons why DnD has grown over the decades because it asks nothing of the players. Half the time they can't even be bothered to learn how to play their character, let alone learn the rules. Instead it offloads everything to a GM who is also expected to do everything to support and run the game.

Given how you need at least one invested person to get a game off the ground and how difficult it is to find people who are solidly invested in making a game work, it leads to groups forming where other systems might not. It's also a part of why DnD players are often not ttRPG players. They will only be willing to play DnD nothing else as other systems often ask the player to either contribute more or have some system mastery in order to have any impact at the table.

>>96112955
I'm may be abusing the analogy, but in a traditional rpg the GM is like a server and the Players are clients. While a GM is a player, he is not a Player. He occupies a unique role with special rules that don't apply to other players, like a Catcher or Goalkeeper.

>>96112802
Because you spend more time not playing the game than playing it, and a certain level of complexity means you have things to talk about outside the game.

>>96113408
Well if you think that a player's point of view is that they just show up and roll a few dice, letting the DM tell them everything that happens. It would be nice if they knew their characters, but when a new game starts, you have to anticipate the DM being on the hook for making it "Good". Not saying that's right, just saying you have a point, but it's not gonna change.

>>96113408
I personally think the issue is that 3e onwards does too much, so the players think they are interacting with pre-designed systems instead of the actual human being in front of them. With simpler systems, inclusing OSE, I've felt that players retain a cognitive level letting them see that the dungeon was made with a certain intention, that an NPC was made on the go to match what they were doing, that you're adjudicating rules as best as you can. Generally being more aware of the actual things happening.

>>96113416
so you'd say a pitcher isn't a baseball player because he has a unique role that is vital for the game to occur?
GMs are players. Storygames distribute some of the GM elements among the group to have a different experience some people like more and others less.

>>96113433
>>96113442
To make it simple: DnD enables and promotes bad players. The best GM will still run a dogshit game if the players are bad or the group interacts poorly. It's one of the things which has strongly turned me off DnD and why I won't let players who will only play DnD at my table.

>>96113451
I'm saying that a GM occupies a special role that operates on different rules than the rest of the play group, so is akin to a Goalkeeper or other position in a sport like that.

In traditional RPGs like D&D, CoC, etc the GM and Player distinct roles. That's why I'm trying to distinguish between "player" as in the plain definition of anyone participating in the game, and the Player as in the role of piloting one (and occasionally more) PCs. It's a semantic thing, but common RPG jargon does not help distinguish between the Player as in the game role, and player as in any participant.

>>96103176
>Nobody wants to RP, that shit for freakshit wierdos.
>I just want to be given a scenario and defeat it.

This, honestly. The hobby may be called "roleplaying games" but anyone who actually roleplays is frankly a weirdo. It's a misnomer. They should be called "imaginary problem-solving games" or something.

>>96113491
>It's a semantic thing, but common RPG jargon does not help distinguish between the Player as in the game role, and player as in any participant.

That's because they are the same thing. GM isn't a player in either sense of the word. He doesn't play in the game, he runs the game. He makes it work.

>taking part in a forced meme thread
Wow, tourists really did take over.

>>96113733
>he runs the game. He makes it work.
everyone makes the game work
If every player uses a different system you wouldn't have a game, the game works because the players use it. If you were playing with retards that can't remember a single rule you don't have to means to skip them applying them, they still need to roll the dice and interact in the prescribed way. Vidja have means to make even a retard play slot machines, humanity has discovered ways to force games on players, ttrpgs don't.

>>96113310
Everyone in this fucking hobby should be a player and a GM interchangeably. D&D fucked over so many people into thinking that running the game and playing the game are two incompatible hobbies, but worse is that being the GM is a thing that is often foisted on someone opportunistically where groups trick one of their friends into doing it, and then keep them as the forever GM because it's obvious TOO HARD to run the game and they don't know how! Guess the GM can just run every game forever! and by every game, they mean D&D and only D&D.

>>96100895 (OP)

Story game authors tend to be people who think they're too good to advertise, reach instinctively for "it's not for you," and are too lazy to actually personally promote at a professional level.

>>96113951
I think this is partially because d&d is unintuitive and poorly laid out and offers almost nothing by way of actually training newbie GMs. It's frustrating that the patient zero for RPGs is one of the worst to actually learn how to run RPGs from.

>>96113779
It's like 2-3 guys samefagging/spamming as hard as they can. Pay them no attention.

>>96111338
>>96111403
Its in the play example, the entire things is a heist where the gang are breaking into a mansion and all stick together for every single room and challenge they come across.
On top of that the language used in the book is that while you can break the members up that is not the baseline expectation.
Personally I ignored that almost immediately because I know how these kinds of scenarios actually play out but the expectation was there and it made the rules a bit awkward at points which I can see tripping up a less experienced GM who doesn't have the tweaking mindset.

>>96113951
and you have the opposite thing, the little tyrant so desperate for control over anything that they get a hard on for demanding you roll a dex save or force you to listen to their unpublished novel. The kind of stuff most people would never think of if they had experience on the player side.
Fuck it, how can you be a good GM if you havezer experience playing? It's like a virgin giving sex tips.

>>96113976
you just made up some bullshit and started speaking without considering you have no real life reference for this opinion.

>>96100895 (OP)
Honestly, I just really hate how narrative systems are written and worded. Wouldn't be surprised if that (and their books being like 800 pages long, but only 6 pages actually pertaining to rules) filters some people. Shit is written like
>When a STRIFE happens, every player must check their PREPAREDNESS. Each player must flip their READINESS coins, then discuss who will go first. When your time to act comes, you must choose to either DETOUR or TREND! When TRENDING, describe what you want to do to your SAGA VISCOUNT, and then decide on whether you want to commit your ALACRITY in either DETERMINATION, INTERFERENCE, GLAMOUR, or STREETSMARTS. Once decided upon, spin on the CAPABILITY WHEEL and refer to the provided table, which will determine the result of your TREND. Once all ACTORS have completed their DETOURS or TRENDS, all players and the SAGA VISCOUNT must move their TIMEKEEPER meeple on the TEMPORAL PASSING BOARD (refer to page 471, Temporal Timekeeping And Gender Identity), based on the result of their TREND.

>>96114715
This isn't a narrative system problem, this is an industry wide problem.

>>96114715
what are you talking about? Modiphius' 2d20? Narrative games usually have at most two meta currencies if you count a good roll adding to future rolls as one.

PbtAs have half a book of not rules because you have to play them differently. They have a different time frame and structure than a trad game. If you have a conversation on good terms with someone who run one you can instantly notice if they read the GM part of the manual or assumed everything is D&D and they're too smart to need advice on how to run a different game. It happened to me, and reading it after I realized I and not the system itself what was making things not work.

>>96114728
It's a made up problem

>>96114715
You're just describing WoD, which is not narrativist

>>96114715
you're not even obligated to know the name of most actions in a pbta, you do stuff and the gm applies mechanics when needed.
I kinda wanna play whatever it is you though you were complaining about tho

>>96112493
Whether those things feel too slow for you or not is personal. I've never had an issue with it in Blades, nor have I heard any of the people that I play the game with suggest anything similar.

>>96114894
I don't know about blades, but I don't mean slow or fast paced, it's the amount of things each roll cover.
In a trad game you almost always roll for independent actions, in a narrative game you almost always roll for general events that include multiple actions. If you try to play it rolling for every action it's gonna suck because the mechanics aren't oriented to that, and people still do it.

>>96114828
Nah, he's exaggerating and misapplying, but there are plenty of games that make up weird terminology for basic things like rolls, skills and abilities, etc. It's not a new thing, games have been doing it since the 90s, and it's not specific to any one kind of game, but it does exist.

>>96115255
it was a thing in the 90's, it's no longer that much of an issue. I'm pretty sure anon was going off complains he heard about metacurrencies and he has never seen in practice or even read.

>>96100979
You are completely correct. DnD offers an easy campaign premise and inherent gameplay loop. The only game that comes close to that off the top of my head is Traveller. Maybe Blades in the Dark? I really can't think of any others with such an easy premise that doesn't even require much creative inspiration to run.

>>96116296
Comparing Blades and Dungeons and Dragons as games with an inherent gameplay loop is kind of silly. A game like Blades has a very explicit series of phases in which you play the game. DnD is a lot more freeform about what you do. You can go from downtime, to politicking to hunting, to dungeon delving, to politicking, to random encounters while you travel, to economic sabotage, on and on and on.

There is a sort of middle ground that exists in a lot of games that are designed to be episodic though, like MASKS and Avatar Legends. These games give you a gist for how to get rolling and how to wrap things up, but there's a lot of freedom between introducing the current problem and how the story resolves at the end.

>>96112269
What authorial control over the game world does D&D give to players?

>>96112885
Flashbacks are a prime example of storygame mechanics. They allow the players to retroactively invent a past action instead of needing to actually take that action in game at the appropriate time.

>>96112955
It's fine to say he (for lack of a better verb) plays the game, but he occupies a different role from the players. The GM is worldbuilder, judge, and adversary. Exercising authorial control over the world is part of his job. That's one of the many things that sets him apart from the players.

>>96116439
>What authorial control over the game world does D&D give to players?
There is an answer, but I think he'll miss it.

>>96116386
And DnD has next to no systems to support any of that except dungeon crawling. It literally does one thing. One thing. People who try to do things other than dungeon crawling or linked setpiece combat with DnD are doing themselves no favours when there are a dozen systems out there which could fit their game better.

>>96116439
>Flashbacks are a prime example of storygame mechanics. They allow the players to retroactively invent a past action instead of needing to actually take that action in game at the appropriate time.
Ideally flashbacks are there to add events that wouldn't make sense before, every heist movie has that stuff and it's part of the genre. It's also a very different experience in practice from planning for a million tiny things before the actual game starts, it makes sense to have different mechanics for different games focused on different experiences. It's not a one or the other.

In the particular case of BiD, a lot of people bring up how the creator plays the game differently from what they understood in the book. You have to play the game the game the right way to have fun and player guides trying to be as universal as possible may missrepresent stuff. Same way an adversarial DM can be a ton of fun if that's what you sat down for and they are playing within the rules, but if described poorly it can sound like some dude just saying no to whatever you wanted to do (and some manuals read that way, I remember a Star Wars one that gave awful advice about making up excuses to rail road players, keep them from using their class stuff and switch the rules on the go)

>>96116498
>Ideally flashbacks are there to add events that wouldn't make sense before, every heist movie has that stuff and it's part of the genre. It's also a very different experience in practice from planning for a million tiny things before the actual game starts, it makes sense to have different mechanics for different games focused on different experiences. It's not a one or the other.
Right... it's a mechanic designed to create a particular type of story. A narrative mechanic, if you will. The type found in storygames. I'm not saying you can't have fun with that, but that's what it is.

>>96116386
Blades does yeah but D&D also has one that is fairly explicit. You're just able to ignore it. You could probably ignore it in Blades, too, although "world events" would probably still happen. I'm not super familiar with the system I skimmed the book in a game store years ago. But you could probably ignore a lot of that procedure and do something else if you really wanted, there just wouldn't be rules for it. But I'd say Blades' heists and D&D's dungeon crawls are, in their own way, an easy-to-run gameplay loop type of thing that feeds back into itself and doesn't require the GM to actually do that much work, because the combat system / heist system provides a lot of entertainment on its own.

>>96116439
>Flashbacks are a prime example of storygame mechanics. They allow the players to retroactively invent a past action instead of needing to actually take that action in game at the appropriate time.
So they make a decision that their character would make? If a D&D game includes a flashback sequence at some point, does that mean it's a storygame?

>>96116496
It doesn't even have systems to support dungeon crawling anymore, not really. It has a combat system, you're meant to be ferried from fight to fight.

>>96116573
Do players have the mechanical authority to initiate and narrate a flashback? Does it mechanically impact the current game state?

No, and no. D&D has sprinkled in some storygame mechanics , but this is not one of them.

>>96112651
but that contradicts the post, storygames have simpler mechanics than d&d

>>96116542
oh, sorry, I misunderstood you.
I think it's a cool mechanic for a very specific thing so I'm a bit confused at the people saying a different game that aims for something different is better.

>>96116602
What would be the point of a flashback that DIDN'T impact the current game state? Just jerking yourself off?

>>96109694
this is why story games feel so empty
when you can actually modify the game state instead of just querying on it then all the exploration go away
imagination and creativity need bounds, pure story games are unbounded

>>96109926
blades in the dark blow up because was a osresque clone thing made by a woman
was a gamer gate 2.0 probably with blowjobs involved

>>96116825
You are retarded.

- You are thinking of Shadowdark, not Blades in the Dark
- Shadowdark was made by a married lesbian.

>>96116818
you have a roll and you describe your own failure.
It's not that different from having a regular GM as a player and letting them riff now and then, except that the system limits what aspects they can change and have a chance of failure. There are very few purely narrativist games, shit like Amber from the 90's

So the thing that makes them feel empty for you is just you missinterpreting how they work and assuming everyone but you is retarded and likes shit.

>>96113110
Pickup artists are fucking the woman instead of giving them unearned political power
so they are substantially better

>>96116842
no, they're not
they're just scamming kids who think there's this one magic trick to get laid

>>96116842
>Pickup artists are fucking the woman
Majority of them aren't
And the very few that do are convicted rapists. No not sjw rape, I mean literal rape.

Almost everything is minuscule compared to D&D
Why single out shit like PbtA which, no matter how much you hate it, does have an audience?

>>96116653
I don't know about that. People have a hard time wrapping their head around FATE, for example. They can be complex, just in a different way.

>>96116818
I don't know about that, but they are polarizing. But attempts to create a pure storygame are also not really a thing in the absence of the Forge's nerd clout feedback loop ratchetting things toward that paradigm.

>>96116932
>I don't know about that. People have a hard time wrapping their head around FATE, for example. They can be complex, just in a different way.
yeah, sure, would you say people don't have a hard time wrapping their head around 5e? You can always pick the people who are not trying and use them as an example of how complex things seem to be.

>>96117033
I think FATE is in a similar medium crunch space as 5e. It's not a simple game like some of the minimalist indy storygames

>>96116837
oh you are right
my bad

>>96100895 (OP)
Because despite people claiming they want more storygames, the reality is people really do just want to dungeon crawl all day.

>>96117081
I feel something that hits the middle better is Modiphious (I only know Conan 2d20 but I think everything they do shares the system). You get some narrative tokens with a very clear meta level of play, you can add to your dice pool if you add to the enemy dice pool (giving doom) or if all the players have been rolling above the target (having momentum). It's still roll under to hit the enemy and do your class skill or succeed in an action, but you have tools to manipulate the flow in a way that makes it feel closer to a pulp story than pure chance.

>>96117107
why would they play 5e to dungeon crawl?

People want power fantasies and numbers going up.

>>96117107
Dungeon crawling is so fucking far removed and absent in the generalized concept of D&D these days that a half-assed, rules lite OSR game that prioritizes dungeon crawling was seen as a complete revelation and the most impressive game of the year in 2024. D&D players who were looking for any excuse to get away from 5e after the OGL thing and went utterly fucking nuts for a game that's like
>you should track time and torches and do basic dungeon crawl shit

>>96117768
5e isn't even that bad for that "go in dungeon to fight monsters to take their stuff and get xp so you can fight bigger monsters" gameplay loop. There's just something about the culture of play where people don't do that, in spite of Wizards offering some decent dungeoncrawls for in printed adventures.

>>96117874
5e's take on dungeons is a gauntlet. There is no resource management and the spell list is dedicated to eliminating it, which makes it more accesible in exchange of having less game.

5e is a game about killing stuff and gaining new powers. It's very videogame-y, which makes it feel natural for millenials and younger but it promotes a culture where the DM should be a bot. They are the audience seriously considering AI DMs, most people who enjoy any other game apreciate the work and style the GM brings to the experience.

>>96102226
bipolar, but yes

>>96117895
It just seems like 5e players (and tbf this is something I saw in 3.5) don't even want to try dungeoncrawls. They want to go straight to melodramatic story-based games punctuated with one tough, cinematic fight a session.

It's hard to say that they don't like it when they don't seem to have tried to engage with the style in the first place spite of stuff like the Sunless Citadel reprint and Tomb of Annihilation.

>>96118159
Tomb of Anihilation and Stradht are probably the best regarded modules for 5e, both focus on things that aren't supported by the system. You might as well be using Fighting Fantasy/Troika, the system doesn't do anything for them. A lot of people do their own stories and I have to imagine some of them are pretty decent, but even then having to balance encounters because that's all the system offers can't help too much with that.

5e's mechanical issues, the adventures it offers and the play culture are all independent issues that are kind of shit desu.

>>96117874
The "go in a dungeon" part is totally absent. """Dungeons""" in 5e are basically a series of final fantasy combat screens.

>>96118159
>>96118200
Another issue is that due to shorter attention spans sessions last a much shorter amount of time typically capping out at 4 hours.
I think this adds to the "one big fight trend" because when a single medium sized dungeon can take up to 4 weeks, multiple combats, pausing in the middle of a combat, mid-combat bookkeeping, and just the killing of a games flow, happen much more often and are bigger annoyances.

If anything bringing back the culture of clearing your slate Saturday and having a afternoon to late night gaming/pizza party session one or twice a month as a default outside of school would solve a lot of problems.

>>96118439
Anon, life is just different for people now. It's hard to feel like it's fine to commit to giving up the better part of an entire day to something when you already have to spend so much time and energy either working or maintaining your life.

This isn't a matter of attention spans or waffling, it's a matter of circumstance.

>>96118439
I'm no longer a teen. I might maybe do 5 hours, but after the third I'm running out of gas as a gm and getting sick of the other players. It's not that my attention span dies, it's that I no longer want that level of social interaction. Same reasson people don't regularly do slumber parties or road trips in their 30's.

I don't think tiktok and gatcha is good, but it's not the reasson you no longer want to have icecream for dinner.

>>96118439
>>96118200
>>96118159
DnDs entire combat system revolves around attrition, or at least it is meant to be balanced around that. You're meant to have 4-8 small fights or problems that lead up to a big fight and if you break that formula you break the engine.

But players do not want that. Slogging through several inconsequential fights or situations to get to the actual meat. The way people usually run it the small encounters are usually draining resources making them, from a systems point of view, pointless. And people will usually only have 1-3 situations or encounters before the end of the adventuring day.

>>96120632
5e is balanced theoretically around a rhythm of Challenge-Short Rest-Challenge-Short Rest-Final Challenge-Long Rest

It's just that for whatever reason, nobody plays it like that and quite a few classes have their power curve distorted as a result, if short rest classes don't benefit from short rests, you might as well play a long rest class and nova for the one challenge per session - which means that challenge has to be much tougher which makes it more of a slog. Accordingly, players assume every challenge is a slog, and don't want to play adventures with a high encounter density like a dungeon.

If you can't tell, I don't like this dynamic in practice and makes 5e feel much worse to play than it is.

>>96118452
>>96118471
These are both fair assessments but it still points to the issue where 5e combat is built to take a while and people do not have the time to play it as intended.

>>96110665
finally, someone else who gets that the rules aren't just arbitrary limits, but actually relate to things within the fiction and why it's important that they do that.

>>96116850
As an obese autistic man, those tricks do work, I've gotten my dick wetter than you ever will.
Basic hygiene and faux confidence is all the real work you need todo even if you're fat, ugly, and really really want to talk about Match from D&D comics.

>>96113718
People called them "adventure games" before "roleplaying games" was popularized by some magazines

>>96125607
Wait, really? I actually like that a lot. I don't think 'roleplaying' game is wrong, but people are so confused about what 'roleplaying' means in the context of RPGs (e.g. thinking it means dialogue and funny voices and not combat) that I think something like 'adventure games' would might work better.

>>96125607
>popularized by some magazines
Do I need to post gygax explaining how you won't be speaking as hank from accounting but interacting as Falstaff the wizard?

>>96114715
lol, storygamefag here and I thought this was funny.

>>96114715
Where can I buy your system? It sounds fun

>>96114836
Which is called "Storytelling System", sure

>>96136163
A lot of games can be run in ways that align with narrativism, but please don't conflate the word "storytelling" with it.

WoD does align have a lot of potential for narrativist gaming though, because it tends to examine human issues through player choice as they struggle with whatever supernatural thing is going on, or is a part of them. Remember, narrativism isn't about specific systems, it's about the freedom to tell narrative stories about the human experience, even through fictional lenses.

If the game isn't about exploring the human experience, it's not narrativism. If the game or system restricts players from expressing the agency of their characters within the world the game takes place in, or presupposes the choices or answers that they're exploring, then it's not narrativism.

>>96136782
>Remember, narrativism isn't about specific systems, it's about the freedom to tell narrative stories about the human experience, even through fictional lenses.
By that definition, every game is narrativist.

>If the game or system restricts players from expressing the agency of their characters within the world the game takes place in, or presupposes the choices or answers that they're exploring, then it's not narrativism.
Clarify what you mean about restricting agency. Does having rules restrict agency? or are you talking about railroad scenarios?

>>96138224
>Does having rules restrict agency? or are you talking about railroad scenarios?
Not that anon, but some days it feels like both are conflated into the same thing more and more by the day

>>96138244
There are definitely some RPGs that veer close to being board games with restrictive rules about how scenarios are to be conducted, making it almost like a scripted play. Those I would say restrict agency. On the other hand, rules that exist to give player actions on the world consistent and impartial results *enable* player agency.

>>96101010
Checked repeaters.
>shared narration
>editorial authority
This happened to my Exalted and Kids on Bikes game.

>>96136095
>She needs to ENGAGE an ACTANT, choosing from their STASH: COIN, CRED, FANS.
>If your WRAP(SHEET) has KICK you can PIVOT to ASTROTURF

>>96120739
>It's just that for whatever reason, nobody plays it like that
The reason is that nobody wants to play that style of game.

If you look at other TTRPGs, ~the only attrition-based games are games based on D&D. Most games will generally have an adventure feature a handful of fights, most of which are story relevant. Delta Green, Monsterhearts, Exalted 3e, Rogue Trader, DC Heroes, Nobilis - I've played all these games, not a single one expects you to slog through encounters that exist only to drain your resources, because players don't want to do that. I've been prepping to run Mythic Bastionland, and it's built around doing a hexcrawl with random encounters, and it also doesn't have chaff fights!

Even OSR grogs wouldn't buy a non-D&D attrition-based game, because the ones conservative enough to want it, are also conservative enough to only be interested in "D&D with the serial numbers filed off" (e.g. OSE, ACKS).

So why does D&D keep itself structured in this way? Because it's D&D, and that's how it worked originally. That's it. There's probably some alternate universe where 4e was better designed for a D&D feel and they didn't do away with the OGL, but we're living in the one where they fucked it up, so 5e became "3e, but without any mechanics that aren't combat," and now we're stuck with it.

>>96136163
Ron Edward and the Forge guys that coined narrativist hated WoD for its "incoherency" - basically that it wasn't a real storygame because players didn't have any real authority on the narrative outside of their characters. When the people that invented the category of storygames say "Fuck, WoD. It's not a narrativist games," they're probably right

>>96140072
The attritional gameplay loop works well in TSR D&D and retroclones, but there are several mechanical aspects of that family of games that makes running it less of a pain in the ass and make a traps and tricks more interesting.

Those aspects also detract from the out of game experience, where people like to theorycraft builds and combos, or "make X in D&D".

>>96112651
>90% of tabletop players are normies who don't want complex mechanics
And thus they are playing D&D, one of the more complex mainstream games out there...
... thanks to the sheer fucking brand recognition it has.

>>96116498
>every heist movie has that stuff and it's part of the genre
Except EHP, like always, completely missed the memo WHY this exists in heist movies and still inserted into their retarded game even more retarded mechanics. It's especially great when you fail the flashback task.
>Face obstacle
>Guys, I'm gonna flaaaash!
>Fail the flashback
>Reach stress threshold
>Die of heart attack for no real reason in the middle of a heist
Such great mechanic!

>>96138224
>By that definition, every game is narrativist.
They're not really, but many games could be. There are plenty of systems that are not really concerned with the themes that arise around people being people. The scale and focus are different.

>Clarify what you mean about restricting agency.
It links back to what I was talking about in terms of player choice. Assuming all of the things that you can about a character and how they live in the world, the rules that define abilities and reinforce bits of the fluff aren't taking away your agency. This is part of the buy-in to playing that system, after all. The issue with agency is when the story tries to answer what you should do, how you should do it, what is right to do, etc, for you rather than letting you explore those things for yourself. Railroad scenarios would be an example of this, as would those where you're told up front that X is objectively right (and it definitely is), or that Y is the only way to fix the problem (and no other options will be allowed or have any affect). This prevents you the ability to make choices that align with the kinds of people that the characters are, what they're going through, what they're thinking, etc. In narrativist games, there are always going to be consequences for your actions and how you chose to interact with the world, but at least those choices were yours.

>>96140097
It's a matter of definitions, and people online tends to make one up with no justification and jump to debate about it without expressing it.

For the people who have followed the trend narrativist means that you have mechanics to affect the story as a whole as main mechanic. You roll to define plot things, not single actions.

Mostly of WoD isn't like this, I tink Wraith had something that could be considered narrativist. You roll for actions. But this are social actions.

Some people decide that narrativist means social, and non-narrativist means action oriented. And in that sense WoD is narrativist. In a deeply reatarded way that is more common than you'd think.

>>96140455
bad implementation
most of the complains about failing rolls in a PbtA making no sense are bad implementation. Either the player wanted to use the wrong thing or everyone failed to propose an interesting interpretation of the fail state.

You can play the game in an unfun way, but you have to know that there are people enjoying it. When something isn't your type of game it doesn't mean it's shit and everyone is lying.

>>96140542
It's also just mechanically not how it works.

Harm - the thing that eventually kills you - is accrued by failing a roll. However, only when it's the logical consequence of failing the roll. Reaching the "stress threshold" enough times leads to your character getting written out, but explicitly NOT by dying, but by becoming too traumatized to keep going.

>>96140529
>It's a matter of definitions, and people online tends to make one up with no justification and jump to debate about it without expressing it.

I'm not saying you can't tell good stories with WoD. I like many of the games. I think the Forgefags back in the day were wrong in shitting on WoD for "muh incoherence".

I'm just telling you that Narrativist has a specific meaning, as part of Ron Edwards's threefold GNS model - the people that came up with the terminology you're using. And Ron Edwards and the community around him decided that World of Darkness wasn't a narrativist system, in no uncertain terms. They make the rules when it came to their own model.

>>96140483
>In narrativist games, there are always going to be consequences for your actions and how you chose to interact with the world, but at least those choices were yours.
So, I think what you're actually describing is simulationism. Actions and consequences are the domain of simulationism. Narrativism, the pet term of Ron Edwards, is defined as follows:

>Narrativism is expressed by the creation, via role-playing, of a story with a recognizable theme. The characters are formal protagonists in the classic Lit 101 sense, and the players are often considered co-authors. The listed elements provide the material for narrative conflict (again, in the specialized sense of literary analysis).

Unless you are working cooperatively with the GM and other players towards creating a story in the formal sense (and not just a history, that is, a sequences of choices and consequences), it's not narrativist. Moreover, the co-authorship idea has been taken to its logical conclusion in storygames that give players some direct control over the 'narrative' without reference to their characters.

Narrativism by the definition given above actually limits player agency. Because it is about building a story, everyone is obligated to cooperate toward acting out a mostly pre-determined story. The types of drama and themes will be enforced both by player agreement and narrativist rules. (ex: FATE requires you to have bad things happen to your characters in order to earn FATE points, thus forcing the "story" to proceed as an artificially-dramatic fluctuation between failure and success. Continued success due to appropriate decision-making is functionally impossible.)

>>96143653
>Narrativism is expressed by the creation, via role-playing, of a story with a recognizable theme.
Yes. This links back to what I was saying about exploring the human condition. This is most easily identifiable by looking at systems with narrativist intent that give characters a clear push and pull, exploring themes centered around internal conflict that they're going through. As one more specific example, Avatar Legends tears a character between two principles that are important to them and explores themes about whether balance can be found between the two.

But I do not think that the statement you highlighted is at conflict with narrativism here, even if it is not most specifically a trait used to define narrativism. I would actually suggest that it's still generally accurate within the common ways that such games and their mechanics play out, such as through the use of Moves that you see in Apocalypse World and games inspired by it. Your decisions as you act on the world beget consequences that are determined collaboratively, sometimes with the dice indicating direction in relation to that.

>>96143770
AW is a heavily inspired by GNS narrativist discourse from the Forge, dude. I don't know why you're pushing it as an example of traditional RPG, when it's much closer to the storygame column.

>>96143783
I'm not? I think we may have gotten our wires crossed somewhere.

>>96120739
You confirm my thoughts

2e ad&d is superior to 5e.

We need a 2.75e ad&d that takes some things from 5e and retroclone them back to 2e.

Even better, scrap 5e and take things from pathfinder like the 3 action economy.

In my experience newby players and GMs, especially with DND, will be doing a lot of mother may i questioning, trying to "outsmart the DM", and get bogged down in granularity that doesnt add to why 90% of people play ttrpgs. I actually still enjoy DND for what it is and enjoy solving problems within its confines, but the best campaigns i have been in were when the players had a big input on what the world is like and what the goal was and not be adversarial with the one running it

ive played through a whole campaign of blades and have ran two of my own now, to me it encourages a lot of the behavior that good GMs take for granted: expand on the things/characters/factions the players think are cool, let them decide how they want to pursue things but don't be afraid to give them consequences they won't enjoy for their actions etc. but it still has enough crunch to let players have clear mechanical progress that reinforces their advancement in the story

>>96102884
>3e was still about dungeon crawling

Amazingly, when played as a straight up dungeon crawler, pretty much every edition of D&D is a good game. In fact, they are pretty fucking stellar games.

Outside of dungeon crawling they start falling apart fast. Even dungeon crawling adjacent stuff like hex crawling has the games start turning to shit. Even OSR stuff like keep management, large battles and mercenary hiring was pretty clumsy.

Just straight up, a party of adventurers clearing out trap and monster populated dungeons in search of loot? From OD&D, to B/X, to AD&D, to 3e, 4e, and even 5e, D&D is solid choice.

>>96151642
So many player feel like they're above or embarrassed by this gameplay loop, but it genuinely works and is fun. I don't get it.

For GM's it's also a good warmup before stepping up into more abstract adventure designs.

>>96151642
The problem is that 5e (both versions) does fuck all to actually teach would be Gamemasters how to run a dungeon. I think that most people who think they don't like dungeons actually just don't like being railroaded between fights underground, which is what dungeons in 5e turn into. I didn't play 4e so I don't know if it started there.

>>96151642
>Amazingly, when played as a straight up dungeon crawler, pretty much every edition of D&D is a good game. In fact, they are pretty fucking stellar games.
No, 5e is still bad as a dungeon crawler. Combat is just way too sluggish for the amount of chaff fights you have in one. Every enemy has like 2x the HP of 3.5e without an equivalent increase in player damage.

>>96151642
What this really tells us is that DnD as a game has been somewhat outgrown by its audience. All creative areas change and evolve with time, and people want to explore different avenues. We've gone from roleplaying games being more like oldschool war games to being a lot more about the individual characters and the complexities of how they interact with and are affected by a story.

This is not to say that DnD is immature or bad for not facilitating these other things, just that it hasn't kept up with that change very effectively. Not a bad game, just not the kind of game that a lot of people want to be playing.

>>96100895 (OP)
d+d os a storygame at this point

>>96151642
>Outside of dungeon crawling they start falling apart fast.
AD&D 1E is to this day the only RPG I feel actually works at high levels where the players are actually powerful.
Everything else either just mechanically breaks down/requires excessive handwaving or ignores advancement furtively by making it so the players get little to nothing from advancement.

>>96151642
If you take modern D&D and tack on the dungeon crawling procedures from older editions (timekeeping, inventory tracking, roaming monsters, not 15 minute adventuring day, etc) then I guess you'd have an okay game, but a lot of this depends on the group's ability to run and play the game in a way that does not align with rules as written for 5e, which is also at odds with it's own monster math and it's own suggested guidelines for planning adventures in the DMG.

Wargames (Warhammer 40k)
"Simulationist" games (FFG's Dark Heresy and related lines)
"Narrative" games (using Fate to run a game set in W40k)
Storygames (using Microscope to set up the history of your Imperial sector)

I don't inherently hate "storygames", but when I think of them I think of something like Microscope, which isn't a game (no randomized chance of losing a conflict, or even facing one, unless a player chooses to) but a shared storytelling tool.

I do hate when Simulationist games decide to have bits and pieces of Storygaming baked in their systems though (looking at you Mutants & Masterminds 3ed).

>>96101915
An ai came to this conclusion for him.

>>96114683
Having everyone be able to GM for their table not only gives the GM a chance to take a break after a long game, not only makes everyone at the table a better players, but it also evens out the power dynamic entirely. Sometimes the GM is a prick and if no one else is willing to run, that means leaving your entire group and your valuable, minimal, hobby time at the mercy of some retarded cunt who thinks he's got all the social authority because everyone else at the table thinks it's too much of a chore, too much work, to run the damned game.