Storytelling Games are not RPGs

They're something else

2023/11/9 edit: Changed Story Game to Storytelling game

This is a bit of an essay. I've given a lot of thought to this topic, written other essays, each time I try to distil the ideas and explain it better. It’s still not perfect, but it’s closer.
I’m going to start with an example.

Rugby is said to have been invented in 1823 when schoolboy William Webb Ellis picked up the ball during a game of soccer and decided to run with it.¹

When Rugby was invented, a game was already being played, Soccer (or football for you Europeans). When William W. Ellis picked up the ball, he violated the rules of the game, but he invented a new one, that new game was given a new name.
What he certainly did not do was insist that his new game was still Soccer. If he and fans of nascent sport had done so, nobody would have benefited from it. Players would have gone onto the pitch trying to play two different games. Imagine the frustration and confusion from the players and spectators.

But this is exactly what is happening to tabletop games.² A Role Playing Game is a game where you play the role of one or more characters in an imaginary world. Like wargames before them, there is a referee, which is also combined with a special player role of playing every other character in the game, creating the "Game Master" role: both player and referee.

Like I've alluded to, there must be some new type of game that has grown out of RPGs. There's even a name for this: Storytelling Games. Except that many people insist that Storytelling games are RPGs.

RPGs are not Storytelling Games

...and vice versa. I now have to say: If you think that this is a pejorative statement, that is your problem. This is not gatekeeping. This is the opposite of gatekeeping: I am signposting. I am putting up linguistic road signs so people can find their way. However, I am saying that someone rather important is wrong. Vincent Baker gave a definition roleplaying below. He was defining all RPGs this way.

John Harper in Blades in the Dark expands this with a small but vital point; what the dice are for in a storytelling game.

Blades in the Dark page 6

Vincent and John are dead wrong about RPGs. They may be however, defining something new; Storytelling games.

But if I’ve lost you already at “An RPG isn’t a Conversation”, try reading Dan’s explanation below. But there’s something more here; I think there’s more than a case of mistaken identity, or I wouldn’t be making this post.

A Roleplaying Game is Not a Conversation

Storytelling games do function like a conversation, a realization I had when I thought about how to explain my favourite storytelling game (Microscope) to a good friend.³

The sides of the RPG/Storytelling game Divide

I have continually seen people on both sides of this divide of RPGs and Storytelling games frustrated by the other side. RPG players are frustrated by storytelling gamers insisting that all their rules for representing the world are pointless. Or particularly insulting: Outdated design that we don't need any more because they get in the way of the storytelling.

Storytelling gamers are frustrated by RPG players insisting that there are all these rules you need for things they just want to narrate, and that they're "not really roleplaying" or "not playing a game."

This is made even worse by some game books such as D&D 5e and others defining RPGs as "collaborative storytelling," when they aren't actually such. It's hard to even talk about what RPGs are any more due to this confusion of terms. Others have spoken about this already. Here and more ranty here

Why don't we just all go our separate ways though, why does it matter, does it really affect anyone? Yes it does. Others have stated the social matter. I will add that it also affects the gameplay and game design in a negative way. The signposts of genre, and words that should tell us what’s what are all jumbled up, pointing to the wrong thing, or pointing to nothing at all.

Define Roleplaying

Now I must define roleplaying, not completely, but sufficiently. I am going to use some definitions by my good friend Durendal.

1. Roleplaying is categorically something you bring to the game. Participation in the game at all is, for that matter.

2. All actions with character rationale are roleplaying. Even those based on mechanics.

   1. Roleplaying doesn't inherently mean 'dialogue and play acting'.

   2. If the mechanics are so divorced in the player's minds from the fiction that acting on them doesn't represent a character's assessment of reality on any level, you are playing a categorically bad roleplaying game.

3. It's nearly impossible to avoid roleplaying while interacting with representative systems (such as combat), but the quality of it is based on how much of the character's perceptions and headspace you can integrate, like any other roleplaying.

Point two is especially important here. Many people think roleplaying is just dialogue and play acting, and not interacting with mechanics (especially combat). If you think mechanics, and combat isn't roleplaying, then you've probably never played an RPG with good mechanics; defined as the ability to make mechanical decisions based on character logic. Unfortunately I have to say that D&D 5e is one of these.

All decisions made with character rationale are roleplaying. But don't storytelling gamers do that? They do! Just like Rugby players kick the ball. That doesn't mean they're playing soccer, which is the ball-kick game.

Rugby, and its variants like American Football add in a new element that fundamentally changes the game: picking up the ball with your hands. So what do storytelling games add? Story logic! How does that work? /u/Shekabolapanazabaloc has some great words on this:

Even in the most narrative driven game you're making character decisions, and even in the most character driven game you're ending up with a story. [...] My own criterion is that if the rules and writing style of the game encourage you to think "what would my character do in this situation" then it is an immersive game; but if the rules and writing style of the game encourage you to think "what would make for the best story in this situation" then it is a narrative game.

Emphasis mine. Ending up with a story, but you’re not collaborating to make a story in the moment. I also clarify on the “what would my character do” part. You still have to think that in a storytelling game that has characters. But in an RPG you are making decisions as that character, oriented towards the character’s goals, not your own.

Story logic and its manifestation is the design goal of a storytelling game, but how is this achieved?

Conversation (Finally)

I've spent a lot of words here to just get back to "conversation", but unfortunately due to the confusion in terms I need to do so to define what words means.

Vincent Baker says an RPG is a conversation. It's not. The conversation in an RPG communicates the state of the "Shared Imaginary Space", to use The Forge definition. This is "The Fiction." If the conversation is there to just communicate the Fiction, what is this fiction? It’s the imaginary world. It’s not the story. You can tell a story about the events afterwards, but you’re not writing a story together.

In a storytelling game like Blades in the Dark, the conversation is the game state.⁴

Game Rhythm and “Whole Conflict” resolution in BITD. Image source

Showing this to an RPG player who isn't a storytelling gamer makes them combust. They can't just state actions in the world, they can’t make decisions based on character goals within the world. They can only state goals (goals and obstacles drive conflict in a story). Actions are only responses to Threats. The back and forth of this is a conversation; with a flow of goal → threat → action response. That is the game of a storytelling game.

A Storytelling Game simulates a story about characters. The game state is the conversation (ie, a multi-narrator story).⁵ The whole conflict resolution is there to just provide the outcome of the narration. All other details are completely up to the players; these details —the world— do not affect the outcome.

A story obviously includes character logic, it takes into account what a character would do. Storytelling game players can get into character logic, but the experience of the game, what the game is, is not roleplaying. It is collaborative storytelling. To some (including the authors of some recent game books), collaborative storytelling equals roleplay. This is wrong; we had a different word for these two different things.
You can make a collaborative story without rules by simply discussing a story with people and then writing it down. A storytelling game gives you rules, and often produces better results for it. That's why I love Microscope.

The fantasy world does not exist in a storytelling game, the story does. The story is about events in a world but the world itself does not exist as part of the play structure; it is not instantiated. Nothing about it is concrete until it enters the conversation via the conversational structure laid out by the rules. This allows for incredible creative freedom; you don't have to worry about the rules saying "no, you can't do that." RPG players might look at this as a bug, but to story gamers, it's a feature. It's a vital part of the game; you're making a story, so you need to be able to bring in anything relevant to the story.

This is how an RPG player and a story gamer can both say "fiction first" and mean two different things.

A Role Playing Game simulates a fantasy world and the actions of characters. The game state is the fantasy world. It has rules, it has its own logic. It cannot (should not) be twisted for a story. In an RPG, the goal is to fully immerse yourself in your character's world, their logic, during play. The game state (the world) is inside everyone’s heads. The players, including the GM, constantly modify the state of the imaginary world with their actions & rules, and update everyone on the new game state through maps, conversation and other tools. When their rules-legal actions are prevented from impacting the game state, it's called railroading.⁶

What are the dice for?

In a storytelling game the point of the dice is to provide uncertainty, to resolve contingent narrations. The GM makes a 'threat' in the conversation of the game, and the players respond to it. The dice decide which outcome happens. In Microscope nobody gets to dictate contingent consequences for anyone else, thus dice are not even required.

In an RPG the of the dice mechanics is not direct uncertainty injection. It's an abstraction that takes all the little things too fiddly to simulate. The dice mechanics are more important in an RPG, because the dice directly impact the outcome of player agency. The shift in probabilities for one action over another need to directly reflect the risk-reward of the action in the fiction.

Why would you play a Storytelling game?

Play a storytelling game when you're going in with the type of story in mind, even if it’s just a sentence summary of a story. Or when creative freedom is paramount.

There are all sorts of storytelling games out there for all sorts of stories;
Blades in the Dark is about criminals creating their underworld empire against corrupt and wicked rulers in a city.
Agon is a storytelling game that tells stories of Greek heroes and their usual Greek hero shenanigans.
Both these games are utterly oriented towards this, they produce those stories. If you change what stories they tell, you make a new game.

On the creative freedom side; I love Microscope because the stories it generates are any sort of history you can imagine. It galvanises creativity like nothing else I’ve seen.

When is a storytelling game bad? When the structure of the game doesn't produce the story it purports to. When the narrative authority resolution doesn’t resolve properly. When the system makes you do a lot of number crunching that doesn't matter to the story. (I've seen this accusation thrown at Dungeon World). However the people who make storytelling games without RPG cruft seem to be very good at what they do.

Why would you play an RPGs?

RPGs are for total character immersion. Immersion in what? The world. My best RPG players do not want to play storygames. I can never convince them to play Microscope (but I can with others).

You can tell numerous stories with any good RPG system, but they tend to focus on some particular world or another, or a genre of world. The outcomes in these worlds are not determined by anyone except the world's on logic. This is seeing what happens to the world when you throw those characters in it. It's seeing what happens to the characters.

When is an RPG bad? This was alluded to already: If the mechanics are so disconnected from the fiction that acting on them doesn't represent a character's assessment of reality. Or if the mechanics frequently produce a result totally at odds with the internal logic of the imaginary world.⁷

Note that I didn't mention story much in my definitions of RPGs. This is both incidental and intentional. Proper play of an RPG has everyone playing. This is often neglected thanks to the expectation laid upon the GM to write a story or plot. This is incorrect; the GM should play the NPC and sometimes the world. It’s even better when they don’t have to play the world, thanks to tables and mechanics. Or appropriate preparation that makes the occasional of combat dependent on the strategic decisions of an enemy commander.

This is hard to intuit but easy to do once you have. The RPG players of the past, with wargame experience, already knew this; we call RPG campaigns, campaigns after all. If you do this, every RPG becomes better and easier to run because you're using it as intended. But that's a topic for another time.

Why are you like this?

Because I've spent years running into this difference and not understanding it. I've seen people get frustrated by it, and been frustrated by it too.
I also miss the past, when there was less confusion about these terms and I could connect with others over the shared interest of RPGs with in depth discussions that didn’t require doing a semantic dance to make sure we were both talking about the same things.
I want people to be able to see that there is a point to having different mechanics in an RPG, because the mechanics are there for the world; you can't just do everything in 5e. Systems must be suited for their settings.

I want to be able to gather players for my games without having to check that they actually understand what rules are for. I want to have conversations without just descending into semantic arguments.

RPGs and storytelling games are both tabletop games, but they’re not the same.
I want to make each distinct, so each can be the best expression of what they are.

1. While this claim is often said to have little evidence, what evidence would we have for such an event in 1823? Regardless, it serves as an example

2. I specifically used this term; RPGs and storytelling games are both Tabletop Games. Wargames are too. Wargames can even have roleplay in them! It’s just a very specific sort. I’ve yet to meet a 40k Orc player who doesn’t roleplay. Some tournament players even complain they can’t predict Orc players because they do what’s orky instead of what’s optimal.

3. While Microscope is called an "RPG" in the book, the author Ben Robbins has referred to it as a story game. In Microscope you create a world by a structured conversation that circumvents the usual design-by-committee and turns the discussion into the events of a fantastic history.

4. I had originally thought Apocalypse World functioned similarly to Blades but I can see it does not. Vincent might have wanted it to, but he probably made an RPG. John Harper though, his game is honest when it calls itself a conversation,

5. I called storytelling games a multi narrator story. Solo Journalling games are a subtype of storytelling game that are made for solo play, such as 1000 Year Old Vampire.

6. There are other cases where you might be prevented from something that aren't railroading. If players (including the GM) are violating the campaign premise, then they're also playing the game wrong: If you show up to campaign with a character unsuited for the premise of the adventure, you are playing the game wrong.

7. The occasional edge case is maybe acceptable, the GM is there to deal with that, but the more that is required, the worse the game is, or less suited for what it's being used for.