It’s probably about time we got around to nailing down what exactly we mean by “storyjamming.” This session introduces a short series we’ll do on what storyjamming entails. First, we need to back up a little bit and talk a bit about what we mean by “creativity.”
- 02:30 Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk on creativity
- 10:25 Willem Larsen from the College of Mythic Cartography
- 23:00 Mike’s D7amp;D 4E Eberron campaign, The Sleeping Dragon
- 30:34 The Green Lantern/Green Arrow crossovers
- 36:44 The quick-witted listener will recognize that Mike just made a Penny Arcade reference.
- 47:56 The RPG Pundit
- 51:11 I read two forums regularly: the GASP forum and the Story Games forum
« Session #8: PAX East 2010 Session #10: The Storyjammer’s Journey »
But can’t we have a traditional game that also creates a great story? When I run my Call of Cthulhu games, I rarely open the rule book and die rolls are more there to set the tone of the game and successes. I will never hinge the success of the story/scenario on a single roll – but I will kill a PC if bad choices are made.
I hear you saying that we can’t have a good story game without abandoning the traditional PC/GM narrative, and I couldn’t disagree more. While I see the value in the story-jamming games, they do not inherently undo the value of a traditional games.
In my games, the players must create interesting, vibrant PCs, and the party must gel and work together to contribute the story, and creative interactions are the bread and butter of our games. Our collective goal is to engage in creating a fun story that still relies on NPCs doing bad things behind the scenes. This does not mean that creativity is denied, just that there are rules for engagement.
I’m still not convinced that story jamming or GM-less games are the evolved state. Do they hold a great place in the evolution of RPGing? Absolutely! I herald their arrival and look forward to using them. But they are not the only solution.
I’ll finish by capitalizing on your own analogy – do you play music? Have you ever played in a jam session? In my many years of drumming, I’ve found that, while jam sessions offer a wonderful opportunity for creativity, performing still needs to serve the song. Otherwise it’s just mutual masturbation.
I’m sorry guys, but I’m going to have to take your podcast off my feed. I think you have a well-produced show and I really like the back and forth format between the two of you. But until you evolve into a better place, Jason, there is absolutely nothing to listen to here. I have never heard such an astounding package of inflexibility, condescension and misplaced superiority, even on message boards. The conversation went like this:
Jason: word-for-word forge dogma
Mike: reasonable question
Jason: (completely ignoring reasonable question) more forge dogma
Mike: another patient reasonable point or question
Jason: ignoring Mike`s point again and bringing up irrelevant word-for-word forge dogma mantra
and so on.
I don’t even mind you ignorantly and constantly belittling what you think are traditional games, but it’s that you do it without a single thought of your own.
Here’s a thought: You have a roll to get through a door. You fail. Why do you assume the story ends there? That failure is part of the story. It is now in the story. How much more story now can you get? And now that the players can’t get through the door, they find another way. And the story continues.
Here’s another thought: People are creative in different ways. If everyone in the group wants to participate in putting together a story at an active level, that is fine and it is awesome that there are systems that are allowing for that. But playing a game where one player is a facilitator and the other players participate in a way that is comfortable and fun for them is not a dictatorship. How about when a group sits down together and plans out a campaign collaboratively and then the GM starts running it? How about in between sessions when different players take the task of fleshing out the campaign world? You’ve basically decided that your way is the right way and you want to force everyone else to exercise their creativity using your way. Talk about a dictatorship.
Listen to your brother. He is the one who has the evolved mindset. There is a wide spectrum of approaches to how we play a game and different people appreciate different parts of that spectrum. You need to open your mind and try and recognize that.
Hi, Dave! Thanks for listening, and thanks for commenting! Can we get great stories out of “traditional” games? Absolutely! I certainly have! You heard Mike talk about his Eberron game in this session, and though he’s added some dashes of indie seasoning, it remains, at heart, a pretty “traditional” game, and I think it’s told a great story.
I think you yourself put it well. You said you rarely open the rule book, and die rolls are more to set the tone. Would you say that a good game “gets out of the way”? To me, statements like these indicate that a game has failed you. You talk about how you want to get a great story out of your game, but you only use die rolls to set the tone. Shouldn’t you look forward to die rolls, because you can rely on them to move the story in a new and interesting direction? Why don’t you use the rules more often?
Forgive me, but the situation you describe sounds less like getting a great story out of Call of Cthulhu than telling a great story with your friends, which is sometimes interrupted momentarily when you roll a die and a Call of Cthulhu game suddenly breaks out. Fortunately, you’ve learned to avoid those moments fairly well, so you can get back to the story that you enjoy. If that does describe your game (I know it described some of the games I played in years past), then why play the game at all? It seems you could set the tone in much more effective ways than the die roll, no? If you want a great story out of the game, then it seems to me that the game should help you tell a better story than you could come up with on your own. If it did that, it seems to me that you would look forward to rolling the die, because you could trust that when you did, it would move the story in a new and interesting direction.
Let me put it this way. You say that in your game, players must make interesting characters and work together. But do the rules of the game help them make interesting characters? What if you had a game that did precisely that? Right now, they can make characters as interesting as they can imagine, but what if you had a game that took that further?
Certainly, we can get great stories out of “traditional” games. We do it all the time. But it seems to me that most of the time, we get that because one player—the GM, generally—has the experience and skill to overcome the obstacle that the game presents. Such GM’s speak of good games in much the same terms you have used. They brag about how rarely they use the rules, and how rarely they roll the dice. I did this for years myself.
Imagine a child with feet clamped in tight, iron shoes. He can never take them off. He might, nonetheless, with enough perseverance, learn to dance. Indeed, he might become so accustomed to those tight, iron shoes that he gets used to them, and can hardly think of getting about in any other way. In fact, he’s learned to compensate for them, and even if he could get them off, he’d probably walk awkwardly for quite some time, until he adjusted once again. If he judged from his immediate experience, he might say that trying to dance without iron shoes is difficult and clumsy. To say that he might dance even more beautifully without those iron shoes is not to deny that he can dance already, anymore than pointing out that he can dance already denies the hindrance he’s overcome.
Likewise, pointing out the ways in which “traditional” games hinder spontaneous story does not deny the ways in which skilled, experience players have told great stories with them nonetheless. I don’t want to deny that this has happened. Rather, I want to suggest that if we are interested in spontaneous story, we should not presume that the ways we might have become accustomed to remain the best or only ways to do that.
You said, “…while jam sessions offer a wonderful opportunity for creativity, performing still needs to serve the song. Otherwise it’s just mutual masturbation.” I wonder what you mean by “serve the song”? In our first session, we talked a bit about what it means when the only audience consists of your fellow performers, and we intend to do a full episode on that in time. Does it matter if you have any other audience to hear the song? Does it matter if anyone has ever heard this song before, or will ever hear it again? Does a prepared song that other people know have more importance than one that you discover (and perhaps immediately lose forever) then and there?
I even find your image of “mutual masturbation” interesting. I know what you mean by it, but I also know the tradition it pulls its meaning from: namely, the Augustinian contention that sex serves the sole purpose of making babies, which makes masturbation meaningless and empty. It doesn’t go anywhere. But what if I don’t accept Augustine’s ideas about sex? What if I think that the bonobos have it right, and that things like creating social bonds, easing pressure, and simple delight give meaning to sex, too, and not just making babies? In that case, mutual masturbation might not seem empty or meaningless at all. So in that sense, I think I might agree with your statement, even on levels you might not have really meant by it!
Hi, Walker! I’m sorry you feel that way, but I thank you for giving us a chance, and I thank you for your comments.
I wish I could deny your characterization, but I think you have it right. Listening to the full recording this morning, I cringed as I listened to how poorly I made my case. I’ve never really spent much time on the Forge, really. I could never really get into the format for some reason.
“Getting through the door” has become a bit of a short-hand, and like most short-hands, it has lost something in its reiteration. I first used this in session #2, when we discussed what we want game mechanics to accomplish. I made the contention then that if you want to fudge a die roll, that means that the game has failed you. Because you care about the story that comes out of the game (or else you would not care if you got to the other side of the door or not), but you cannot rely on the game to deliver a good story (or else you could use either result of the die roll, and you wouldn’t need to fudge it one way or another). If you want to fudge a die roll, then that means that one of the outcomes of a die roll gives you what you want, but the other does not. So, the game hasn’t given you what you want. You should look for a game that will.
So, when you say, “You fail. Why do you assume the story ends there?” it’s not so much an assumption as a premise.
Now, you could respond with the stuck door by presenting a second door, and a third, and so on, until they manage to open one, and then that door becomes the one that has the rest of the story behind it. Personally, I don’t have much problem with Schrödinger’s dungeon, but I know that many people do. More to the present point, it’s not really adapting to the story in the moment, so much as finding a way to side-step player input. As I understand them, the people who take issue with this kind of play do so for precisely this reason; even though they never know, if they begin to suspect it, they feel that they’ve lost their agency in the game.
So, if we eliminate that possibility, and what you planned out had everything else on the other side of the door, what do you do? The door only presents one example; we’ve all had experiences where we didn’t really take into account the full possibilities of what players might do as fully as we should have. Those situations present so many other “blocked doors.” And of course, we all know dozens of tricks to skirt around these problems, and we all know the importance of planning ahead to avoid these problems, but in that session I made the argument that these tips and tricks do not amount to a real solution to the problem, and that the problem’s existence points to a mismatch between what the mechanics of the game do, and what the players want out of it.
Now, I’ve never said that everyone needs to storyjam, and I’ve certainly never said that everyone should storyjam to the exclusion of all other types of play. Praising and talking about the advantages of one type of play does not equal disparagement of other types of play. I don’t think I’ve even disparaged “traditional” play. I’ve suggested that it fails to serve some of the things that I and others obviously value in play, and I’ve suggested that if we want more of those things out of our play, then we’d do well to look elsewhere. But, for instance, I’ve always held that for tactical play or a dungeon crawl, these games work very well. I prefer D&D 4E almost any time I want to play a game that I want to amount to an action movie. But I don’t think it does well for drama or intrigue. That doesn’t even come with an implication that I think action movies are superior to drama or intrigue.
I’ve done collaborative setting creation, both before the game starts and after. I’ve had a lot of fun with that. Notice, too, that I didn’t introduce the term “dictator.” Tim did, when he defended the GM as “a benevolent king or god.”
Now, I will say that few things are more withering to anyone’s sense of himself as a creative person, than having someone who must approve his input before it can happen. Even if that person generally does approve that input, the very fact that he must approve it first establishes a hierarchy that slowly poisons the whole affair. GM’s can contain this effect by accepting as much input as possible, but so long as they hold onto that control, they cannot eliminate it. You say that people are creative in different ways, and I think I generally agree with that, but I don’t think the person exists who wants to be shut down and blocked out. I recorded a session with my wife, Giuli, who has a lot of shyness and even depression to overcome. She has experienced a lot of that in her life, so if I took her at face value, I would say that she proves your point. She does not feel comfortable at all contributing creatively at the table. But not because she lacks for creativity. She has all the creativity she needs and more. She worries, even after all these years, whether we’ll judge her the way people in her past have judged her. She worries that what she says won’t be smart enough or clever enough. She has the creativity, but it gets drowned in her self-doubt. I must admit, if this person who simply does not want to contribute in the moment really does exist, I’ve never met her. The person I have met, over and over again, feels uncomfortable with it because her self-doubt overwhelms her, or because she’s become so used to abdicating her creativity to others that it has become atrophied. Should we take that discomfort as a sign that she shouldn’t do it? Should I take the discomfort I feel when I walk, overweight and out of shape, as a sign that I should stop exercising? In every case I’ve ever seen, the discomfort has provided the most clear and evident sign that this person needs to express himself or herself creatively, in the moment, more than anyone else.
My inner anthropologist rankles a bit at the way you use the term “evolved,” as if synonymously with “improved.” Evolution means a change in allele frequency over time, and can just as easily represent some “inferior” new feature as a “superior”. How do we even judge what makes an adaptation “inferior” or “superior,” except how well it suits a particular niche? “More evolved” just means “more changed.” It doesn’t mean better or worse, just changed. At first, I told my inner anthropologist to knock off his pedantry, but then I realized that this seems very relevant. We’re not talking about better games or worse games, we’re just talking about different games, and how well (or not) they suit a particular style of play, and what a particular group or person wants to get out of play. I apologize if I ever gave any other impression.
walkerp: Sorry to see you go. I do feel like we were kind of talking past each other at a few points in this episode. You get that sometimes in these kinds of debates. I think my opinions in general tend to be much more moderate than Jason’s, but I do think it’s a valid discussion to have.
I think the point here is that even though it’s possible to have a traditional game that tells a good story, they usually don’t help you tell a good story either. So if a good story happens, it’s entirely an act of will on the part of the GM and the players. Story games, on the other hand, usually have rules built around actively encouraging role-playing and storytelling mechanically. Unlike Jason, I won’t go as far as to call traditional games “broken” because you can still use them to play that kind of game. The rules may not do much to help you, but they don’t hinder you either. So it’s not “broken.” It just may not be the most optimized game for that particular style of play.
As far as the so-called “GM tyranny” is concerned, there are indeed ways to increase player participation. But I think the point is that even with player input, the GM still has the ultimate authority over what gets included and what doesn’t. So there is a valid distinction there.
Jason: “Listen to your brother. He is the one who has the evolved mindset.” You should listen to this man. I suspect he was just talking about the two of us, but I choose to interpret this statement more broadly. I am the one person IN THE WORLD with the evolved mindset.
But I’m claiming that they do hinder you at points; not just that they don’t help you, but that they often become active impediments to certain styles of play.
I cant help but agree with the points Jason makes on how some rules in the more traditional games impede “forward driving action”. If you want your game to HELP you advance the game forward then indeed i’d say that part of the game is broken.
Note that this is a very narrow standard to measure the whole of a game to, and it seems to be broken only in this regard. I don’t understand and i might be mistaken, but other people seem to neglect this very important context in which we propose the game is broken.
If you want A, but rules do not in any way encourage A, (and maybe instead encourage B) then yeah, broken.
But hey, you can measure a game to any other standard and find it does exactly what it set out to do, it has many other qualities. We dont get our fun from the same places after all.
Saying a game is broken in regards to a very specific kind of dynamic that Jason is clearly looking for doesn’t in any way mean that anyone else is delusional when having fun with a game. It isn’t in anyway saying anything about people playing and having fun with that game.
Oh, I’m sorry. I take back what I said then. You weren’t exaggerating. You’re just wrong.
For years now, the Forge ideas have already gone beyond the Forge. I also have never been there, but I recognize the arguments put forward by Jason. I knew these ideas would come together sooner or later and I’ve enjoyed this particular episode very much. It’s not really about hearing something new, but about having it presented intelligibly to you.
As a side note, I would like to say that I have my own podcast (in Portuguese) and, after fourteen episodes, I have planned to also talk about these ideas soon, but I do feel that maybe you have jumped the gun a bit. Talking about actual play and personal experience with games could have been a good stepping stone to reach these broader statements on later episodes. I loved this show #9, but I can understand that some people react as walkerp did.
My only problem with Storyjammers is that I mostly agree with everything that Jason and Mike are saying and I don’t feel that these ideas are being sufficiently challenged. I’m sorry, but, so far, there is no real debate between the both of you – discussing whether the use of the word “broken” is appropriate or not doesn’t count
I’m not sure if I can argue for the other side, but here’s a possible challenge: all GMs are awesome, so don’t interrupt the GM when he is being awesome. The man is weekly telling you a great story and you don’t even have to pay a ticket, so shut up, enjoy the show and forget about the dice. No, you don’t need to look at the rules of this game nor of any other game. This is not “RPG: the Game”, this is “RPG: your GM”. Appreciate him while you still have one. Save yourself the pain of a pointless exercise, this is just for fun anyway and the GM is already making sure you have fun. Help him, but don’t waste his efforts.
@Drummerdave:
But if you rarely open the books, and use the dice primarily to set the tone, are you really playing The Call of Cthulhu, or just your personalized, simplified homebrew horror game that is based on CoC? It seems a bit odd that you argue for the story-creation focus of a traditional game immediately after describing how unorthodox you’re playing it.
Even if Jason comes across as a little overzealous, the basic point is that there are now games that actively support creating a story at the table, instead of relying on the GM to either make up the plot beforehand and letting the players participate in a limited fashion, or playing “stuff happens” and then selectively editing events to make up a story afterward. It really has nothing to do with what was written on a website about 10 years ago. If you want to play a RPG story then you owe it to yourself to check out some of the games built to do that. Depending on the particular spin of horror story you like, I can recommend games like Don’t Rest Your Head, My Life With Master, Annalise or Dread.
Rick–so that’s why I recognize your name! Sorry, I’ve never listened to your show; I only speak English well, and I can only add German to the list if you even expand it to languages I speak poorly.
I don’t know if I ever planned this show as an argument exactly. Yes, Mike’s a good grounding influence on me, but it was never set up to be quite so adversarial. So I agree, I don’t think there has been a lot of contention. I don’t think that was ever our goal, though.
I realize you’re just trying to play the Devil’s Advocate in your last paragraph, but I have to say, I can’t help but find that scenario utterly repulsive! It’s a pretty explicit embrace of what I decried here: abdicating our creativity to fall, fawning, at the feet of the glorious GM, whose creativity so far outshines us all! Gah!
Well, I’m back to listen to episode 10 & check out the comments on #9.
I don’t know, Jason. Sometimes the players don’t have a lot to contribute and are just there to ride the GM’s wave.
About the “debate” aspect, I really hope we don’t become a show that’s just two guys arguing with each other all the time. That’s one of the things I’ve always hated about debate shows in general–it just becomes a contest of verbal chest-pounding with each side saying anything, regardless of how ridiculous it may sound, to prove that they’re right rather than having an actual exchange of ideas. If you really think about, it’s kind of silly that we think of conversations in terms of winning and losing.
And I really don’t think there’s that much of a disagreement between the two of us anyway. At least not on this point. I like D&D more than Jason does, and he likes Montesgur 1244 more than I do, but for the most part, we like a lot of the same stuff. And like I said in the episode, I’ve never heard any players complain about how they wish they had less control over the story. So I don’t think there’s really any disagreement on that front. It really seems to be more a question of how much of a problem this represents and how you go about dealing with that problem. And those are answers that may differ depending on your group.
But trust me, whenever I do disagree, you’ll know.