Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase

[Darth Ultron]

Writing about something in another thread, and realized that it made for a good example here too.

There's a TV series I used to love, a crime drama/comedy... but it got to the point where I could predict the outcome of each episode based not on the evidence at hand or the behavior of the characters, but on "story writing elements", on the tropes the writers liked to hit, on the patterns established, etc.

To understand what was happening and would happen next, the things going on within the "world" of the show mattered less than the things going on at "story level"... and it kinda ruined the series for me.

Yet another good point from Max.

And to put it in game terms, for a lot of Players, it is no fun for them to understand what was happening and would happen next....and worse for them to have narrative control to just make things happen next.

Of course, this is also an example of bad show creation, and for an RPG a bad DM. A lot of TV shows do this a lot. It is easy and simple and it works.....and best of all ''the masses'' love it. A huge amount of viewers love watching the same thing week after week after week with only tiny token changes.

[Florian]

Writing about something in another thread, and realized that it made for a good example here too.

There's a TV series I used to love, a crime drama/comedy... but it got to the point where I could predict the outcome of each episode based not on the evidence at hand or the behavior of the characters, but on "story writing elements", on the tropes the writers liked to hit, on the patterns established, etc.

To understand what was happening and would happen next, the things going on within the "world" of the show mattered less than the things going on at "story level"... and it kinda ruined the series for me.

The ups and downs of working with time-tested and reliable tools, once pople start spotting the tell-tale signs, the result is less "magical" but more "lackluster, as expected". Yes, that makes it pretty obvious that the "world" is just the backdrop to the "story" and that follows certain narrative paths the authors think will be great for the audience.

Still, you'd also be very bored with just "slice of life" stuff, admit it.

[Max_Killjoy]

The ups and downs of working with time-tested and reliable tools, once pople start spotting the tell-tale signs, the result is less "magical" but more "lackluster, as expected". Yes, that makes it pretty obvious that the "world" is just the backdrop to the "story" and that follows certain narrative paths the authors think will be great for the audience.

Still, you'd also be very bored with just "slice of life" stuff, admit it.

I'd prefer it if what happens next makes sense based on what's going on in the world of the story, with the characters, with the facts at hand, etc... rather than what's going on in the writer's room.

[Florian]

I'd prefer it if what happens next makes sense based on what's going on in the world of the story, with the characters, with the facts at hand, etc... rather than what's going on in the writer's room.

Basic problem with the human psyche. We're geared towards pattern recognition and that's tied to our emotions: We feel suspense, fear and so on when we recognize there is a pattern but can't solve it, we feel joy or "clever" when we can solve it before it fully formed. That's also why we enjoy recurring patterns, like insider jokes, characters or recurring themes. We also feel cheated and manipulated when it becomes too obvious that certain techniques are used. But we also feel bored wen things are random and no pattern emerges.

That's both strength and weakness of the tv serial format. You have the time to build up the greater pattern (ex: True Detectives), but you still must entertain the casual viewer with each episode.

In context of this discussion, you always mention the passive, the consumer side. Why is that?

[Segev]

Writing about something in another thread, and realized that it made for a good example here too.

There's a TV series I used to love, a crime drama/comedy... but it got to the point where I could predict the outcome of each episode based not on the evidence at hand or the behavior of the characters, but on "story writing elements", on the tropes the writers liked to hit, on the patterns established, etc.

To understand what was happening and would happen next, the things going on within the "world" of the show mattered less than the things going on at "story level"... and it kinda ruined the series for me.

I am just guessing, but... Law & Order?

I know that it got to the point where I could tell based on ethnicity and social class of a character whether they were the red herring or real villain of the episode.

[Max_Killjoy]

I am just guessing, but... Law & Order?

I know that it got to the point where I could tell based on ethnicity and social class of a character whether they were the red herring or real villain of the episode.

Castle, actually.

If there was one thing that the original L&O had going for it... it was that the show was far more about the cases than it was about "personal drama" and delving into the lives the characters.

[Florian]

Castle, actually.

Castle? Ouch.

[Max_Killjoy]

Castle? Ouch.

Gee, thanks. I should have gone with my first instinct and not named the show regardless of what it was.

[Florian]

Gee, thanks. I should have gone with my first instinct and not named the show regardless of what it was.

*Laugh*

That wasn't directed at you, but at the series. Like Monk and some others, that has really gone formulaic and self-centered fast.

[Segev]

Castle, actually.

If there was one thing that the original L&O had going for it... it was that the show was far more about the cases than it was about "personal drama" and delving into the lives the characters.

I've not seen much Castle; liked the few episodes I did see. Sorry to hear it got disappointing later.

And despite my ability to often pick the plot out based on stereotypes that are supposedly "twists" but have become their own tropes, I do appreciate L&O.

It actually is a pretty good show for trying to figure out how to structure a mystery, demonstrating ways false trails can be laid in such a way that the same evidence that points towards them still fits with the truth once those have been run out, turning various apparent dead ends into clues in their own right if thought about.

[Max_Killjoy]

Basic problem with the human psyche. We're geared towards pattern recognition and that's tied to our emotions: We feel suspense, fear and so on when we recognize there is a pattern but can't solve it, we feel joy or "clever" when we can solve it before it fully formed. That's also why we enjoy recurring patterns, like insider jokes, characters or recurring themes. We also feel cheated and manipulated when it becomes too obvious that certain techniques are used. But we also feel bored wen things are random and no pattern emerges.

That's both strength and weakness of the tv serial format. You have the time to build up the greater pattern (ex: True Detectives), but you still must entertain the casual viewer with each episode.

I see it in books, too, though... where you can plainly predict that a death or something is going to happen for a "storytelling reason"... or you can tell when something happened because it "had to" for "storytelling reasons". There's some structural thing or pattern or trope or archetype or theme that you can see driving things along at that point.

Personally, I'm not looking for patterns. "Patterns" here feels like another word for "cliche" or "tired overused trope" to me. But I also understand that I "am not normal", and this makes it hard for me to write stories, as much as I'd like to. It's a deep challenge for me to write such that it doesn't feel artificial or even contrived.

In context of this discussion, you always mention the passive, the consumer side. Why is that?

First, because in the context of this discussion I've been talking about the player side -- the GM is managing all or nearly all of the non-PC elements of the "secondary world", even when their approach isn't "narrative" at all, they have to think a bit more like a writer (in other parlance, take on additional stances) even if their approach isn't really what would could call "narrative" in nature.

Second, because there are parallels between the things that reduce my enjoyment as a player in an RPG and the things that reduce my enjoyment as a reader or viewer of fiction. With the current example, as a player in an RPG I don't want to have what's coming next telegraphed by story-driven factors outside my character's perceptions, while as a reader or viewer of fictions, I don't want what's coming next telegraphed by storytelling factors -- if I can tell what's going to happen next, I want it based on in-world things like character personalities, evidence and events we've been shown, etc.

It's not because I view both roles as "passive". Heck, "consuming" fiction isn't really passive for me, especially when reading... my brain has to work at building and maintaining the fictional world and events and characters in my head as I read the words on the page.

[Lord Raziere]

But I also understand that I "am not normal", and this makes it hard for me to write stories, as much as I'd like to. It's a deep challenge for me to write such that it doesn't feel artificial or even contrived.

Dude, I love stories, writing any stories not just rpgs, and I struggle with that sometimes. there are cliches I hate, even if I like other ones. like in my pokemon fan fic, I'm trying to write a determined hero who uses more than just force to defeat her foes and try to get tricks of guile and tactics in there as well, sometimes I have to let the force happen if I can't come up with anything else so I can move on and go against the cliche in a place thats better and suited when I make it good, because I've found that often if you can't avoid a cliche, its best to just execute it well and with as much thought as possible so that when it happens things play out realistically or believably because of it.

Edit: just realized after I posted this, it sounds like you like rational fiction. its a genre thats most common in sci-fi but is starting to spread through fan fiction. maybe go read some of those? its all about characters acting as smart as they can without any contrived stupidity.

[Lacuna Caster]

Okay. I'm gonna do something foolish and just jump into the discussion after only skimming the preceding thread-

And as repeating noted above, defining story as "any sequence of events" reduces the word to meaninglessness -- it makes EVERYTHING a story, which is total nonsense.

I agree with this. What I think people mean by the phrase 'Collaborative Storytelling' is that the role-playing either produces or includes a story with some critical merit: i.e, good. Then one has to solve for (A) what 'good story' means and (B) for whether the rules and text of play particularly facilitate that result.

To a certain extent, 'good story' is subjective. A lot of detective fiction and sci-fi is, if I might slip into an aspect of GNS jargon that seems to be largely accepted these days, aimed at Simulationists (itself a shorthand for 'individuals who incline toward, though not necessarily exclusively, a simulationist style of play'). But many, probably most, people seem to derive more excitement and interest from character development and emotional drama, which has a different set of demands.

Traditionally, many RPGs have outlined a procedure whereby you bring a story (or at least a sequence of events) to the table, and then you essentially act out the broad strokes of the script. But the fact that RPGs have generally supposed to involve substantial choice in declared actions and randomisation of outcomes meant that the baseline rules were always grinding against the structural format. It could work, either by socially-sanctioned fudging or exploiting the law of averages or manipulating the fictional environment or all of the above, but these were all potential breaking points that tended to leave a certain contingent of players unsatisfied.

I would say the 'character-driven drama' definition of 'good story' grinds against this format particularly hard. A character's personality is defined by their response to value-ambivalent cost/benefit stimuli- which is to say, their consequential moral/ethical choices, which is to say, drama. If there are no such choices to be made, either you learn nothing about the characters, in which case there's no development, or their choices don't matter, in which case the story isn't really about them, or the character's decisions have to uncoupled from the player's, in which case the player isn't playing.

So the question of whether you could get 'good story' without resorting to illusionism- or better yet, if the rules could actively promote that outcome- was a major topic of discussion and development since about the early-to-mid 90s. And that's when the phrase started to get so contentious, because people were bringing all these mutually-conflicting ideas of how story was supposed to be packaged within RPGs to the table.


I don't think it's a meaningless phrase, once you've usefully defined the component terms, but while the collaborative part is clear enough, and the story part can be explained with reasonable economy, I think the telling part is misleading. It suggests that you brought the story to the table with you and relate it on request, and how that's supposed to happen collaboratively is unclear. Story-authorship might be a better (if highfalutin) phrase.

If I'm playing my character, then like my character, I don't give a fig about any of that. If my character has an opening to defeat the "BBEG" in the first five minutes with some cheap trick, then I'm taking it -- my character doesn't care if it's anti-climactic, or doesn't make for a good story (I mean, an actual genuinely good story, not "the good story" of Narrative Causality), they're in it to win it, just like a real person would be.

I think we covered this in past discussions, but there's nothing in principle to stop you from extracting a good story from a comprehensive and detailed setting- it just means you lean heavily on the 'rigorous modelling of consequences' side of things in the Story = Choices X Consequences equation, and take care to plant the PCs along the fault-lines of some moral and ethical tensions embedded within the setting.

As in those previous discussions, however, I think 'metagame' of some form or another is almost impossible to exclude. The question is whether you can harness it for constructive purposes.

[Darth Ultron]

There's a TV series.....

This does make me think that Pop Culture maybe a big part of the blame, even more so the Mainstream. Starting in about the 90's there has been a slide to a very bland and dull place. And for whole generations this bland, dull popular mainstream culture is all most people have known.

I'd prefer it if what happens next makes sense based on what's going on in the world of the story, with the characters, with the facts at hand, etc... rather than what's going on in the writer's room.

Mainstream movies, and even more so TV shows, are very much written with a ''metaplot''. Things like the main characters can't die, innocents can't get hurt, peoples bodies must amazingly be covered at all times and so on. It's a huge list of bland and dull things.

But it is only one way to tell a fictional story...there are other ways. But if you watched only mainstream things you would likely just about always see only that one dull, bland way...and think that was the only way.

Castle, actually.

Yup, good example. I agree too.

there are parallels between the things that reduce my enjoyment as a player in an RPG and the things that reduce my enjoyment as a reader or viewer of fiction. With the current example, as a player in an RPG I don't want to have what's coming next telegraphed by story-driven factors outside my character's perceptions, while as a reader or viewer of fictions, I don't want what's coming next telegraphed by storytelling factors -- if I can tell what's going to happen next, I want it based on in-world things like character personalities, evidence and events we've been shown, etc.

I Agree here. It's why I hate that dumb big bad guy ''boss monster'' at the end of the level thing. They are not based on any Story reason, but the more horrible video game reason that the ''boss monster'' must show up and be ''X''.

[The Random NPC]

Yes, in a vague sense. Like the way the Janitor on the movie set collaborated with the Director to make a movie.

No, it's more like how the actors collaborated with the director to make a movie.

[Darth Ultron]

No, it's more like how the actors collaborated with the director to make a movie.

Except it does not exactly work that way?

First off a movie has a Story and a Plot, done by writer(s), and the actor agrees to follow this. It is the actors job.

Now sure can an actor ask to change something...sure, they do it often. But they don't have the power and control to just change the whole movie. In fact, the director can over rule the actor with no effort.

So again, it's the director telling the actor literately everything to do from where to stand, how to move, what to say and how to say it. And the actor can ask to say another word for one line.

Wow....collaboration there, right?

[Florian]

Lol, yeah. Actually, the actors have a huge influence on the script, going so far as to rewrite entire passages and alter major characters and locations. Experienced directors know this and can handle that well, as that makes great movies.

[The Random NPC]

Except it does not exactly work that way?

First off a movie has a Story and a Plot, done by writer(s), and the actor agrees to follow this. It is the actors job.

Now sure can an actor ask to change something...sure, they do it often. But they don't have the power and control to just change the whole movie. In fact, the director can over rule the actor with no effort.

So again, it's the director telling the actor literately everything to do from where to stand, how to move, what to say and how to say it. And the actor can ask to say another word for one line.

Wow....collaboration there, right?

First, that isn't how it works, actors ad lib all the time. That being said if the director doesn't like it they can force a reshoot, or edit the scene, or even fire the actor. Second, a movie isn't the best example anyways. A better one would be a play. Sure the director can tell the actors what to do all they want, but on opening night, if the actors start changing things the director has very little power to stop them.

[Darth Ultron]

A better one would be a play. Sure the director can tell the actors what to do all they want, but on opening night, if the actors start changing things the director has very little power to stop them.

That might even be a worse example. So everyone in a play rehearses a set story. Then on opening night an actor just changes things to whatever they want? But it's not like a director would be powerless....this is yet another reason why a play has a understudy/other non jerk person that knows the jerk actors part.

So the question of whether you could get 'good story' without resorting to illusionism

You can have a good reality story, but a good fictional story needs illusionism.

[The Random NPC]

That might even be a worse example. So everyone in a play rehearses a set story. Then on opening night an actor just changes things to whatever they want? But it's not like a director would be powerless....this is yet another reason why a play has a understudy/other non jerk person that knows the jerk actors part.



You can have a good reality story, but a good fictional story needs illusionism.

I said he had little power, not that he was powerless. The director would have to decide if the play was tanking hard enough justify canceling the showing or if they could work around the changes. And if the changes are minor enough, it's unlikely that the rest of the group would stand for benching the actor. And even if the actor was benched during a costume change or something, the director still needs to work around the changes that the original actor implemented.
All that being said, a player in a game has even more power to change the story than any actor. If the GM has a story about the epic heroes valiantly defeating the dragon in personal combat, but the players decide to just convince everyone to move out the dragon's territory, then you won't have a story about dragon fighting. Ideally, such a tonal mismatch won't exist, but mistakes happen. Perhaps the GM overestimated the player's interest in dragon slaying or their confidence in their fighting capability, but none of the changes the fact that the Players get to decide what the response is to the situation the GM laid out, thereby influencing the direction of the story. Hence they have collaborated with the GM on the story.

Addendum: I've always heard collaborative storytelling used as an aid to help people understand what roleplaying games are about. In those instances, it's a benefit that the definition is cyclical as most people understand what collaboration is, and what storytelling is, which helps them understand what roleplaying games are.

[Lacuna Caster]

You can have a good reality story, but a good fictional story needs illusionism.

You're going to have to elaborate on that for me. Maybe you understand 'illusionism' differently, but there's a vast range of 'story now' RPGs that either explicitly or implicitly reject that premise.

[Florian]

You're going to have to elaborate on that for me. Maybe you understand 'illusionism' differently, but there's a vast range of 'story now' RPGs that either explicitly or implicitly reject that premise.

I guess that the Quantum Ogre believes in DU.

[Lacuna Caster]

I guess that the Quantum Ogre believes in DU.

I can google 'the Quantum Ogre', but what's 'DU' in this context?

The solution to the Quantum Ogre problem is relatively simple- players state their actual medium-term intent (e.g, 'getting to the fortress') and negotiate up-front what challenges/dice-rolls are needed to get there and what the side effects of failure would be. Of course, to do that, you must abandon the idea that information hidden from the PCs must be hidden from the players. So it actually excludes conventional illusionism.

[Darth Ultron]

You're going to have to elaborate on that for me. Maybe you understand 'illusionism' differently, but there's a vast range of 'story now' RPGs that either explicitly or implicitly reject that premise.

A good fiction story needs things to happen and not happen as part of the story: If x does not happen then y can't happen or not happen. And I know everyone gets all bent out of shape about how the players must be side table DM demi gods and have to be able to control the story at all times....but lets just put that aside and talk about things happening in a story that are not things the player characters are doing directly in game. So the example would be if the characters rob a greedy/vengeful NPC, then that NPC will come after them. To make the story ''Revenge of the Mob Boss'' that character must oppose and come after the Pc's....or there is no story.

And fictional story needs such things to happen, and everyone knows this......but the players still take actions knowing that 'things will happen', often but not always obvious things. So that is the illusion....you know stuff will happen, but you don't overly think about it as the only alternative is not to even play the game. (And yes you can sometimes have nothing happen...but only sometimes, as if you do it all the time nothing ever happens ).

'Story now' makes just a weak Barley a Story Random Pile of Stuff....but then that is the intention. The Story Now does not want to use or have any of the normal Story elements. It's just a group of people doing the pile of ''and thens''. And it's a great type of game for the people that like that.

I can google 'the Quantum Ogre', but what's 'DU' in this context?

The solution to the Quantum Ogre problem is relatively simple- players state their actual medium-term intent (e.g, 'getting to the fortress') and negotiate up-front what challenges/dice-rolls are needed to get there and what the side effects of failure would be. Of course, to do that, you must abandon the idea that information hidden from the PCs must be hidden from the players. So it actually excludes conventional illusionism.

I call this the Acting Non-Game...and it's not even really role playing or a game....it's just acting out a preset script. Some players like this, but most don't. For all the players to know the treasure is buried under the old oak tree by the barn, but to have them have their characters search anywhere else is just silly at best and beyond boring at worst. "Sigh, ok, we know the treasure is under the old oak tree...but, sigh, we have a characters search the well and we don't find anything again." They can sit around for hours 'not' doing anything. It's even worse if the characters actions are scripted too: "ok, we walk over to the grove of pine trees and drop our weapons and surrender to the ambush of orcs there''.

I wonder what the Quantum Ogre is in my context too?

I don't use the that, my game has a plot and story, that my players...being good players that both want to play the game and want to play out the plot and story, follow: A classic game.

The Quantum Ogre is mostly used by Casual or Lazy DM's: no matter what the players have their characters do the plot and story stays right in front of them.

[Lacuna Caster]

A good fiction story needs things to happen and not happen as part of the story: If x does not happen then y can't happen or not happen. And I know everyone gets all bent out of shape about how the players must be side table DM demi gods and have to be able to control the story at all times...

I think you're defining Story as a sequence of fixed events that displays causality. But all you need for causality is an effort at simulation, and I don't personally define Story as a series of fixed events. I define it as moral/ethical choices having consequences.

I call this the Acting Non-Game...and it's not even really role playing or a game....it's just acting out a preset script.

Well, no. The effect is the exact opposite. There's nothing binding the players to a particular intent in the first place, but depending on how the dice rolls go, and whether attendant complications arise, the PCs might find themselves punted off in some radically different direction from their original intent. And because the dice are all rolled in the open, and the stakes have been negotiated in advance, you can't wriggle out of it.

For example: Player says, "I want to obtain some incriminating evidence on the magistrate." GM says, "okay, how?" Player says, "By picking the lock to his chambers during the banquet that's being thrown tomorrow night." GM and player negotiate what skills need to be tested for that to happen- social skills to get invited, stealth to slip away, lock-picking to enter his chambers, searching to find papers, etc. Standard stuff. The GM also gives the player some idea of what happens if those rolls fail- they don't get invited for months, get caught by guards, et cetera. If the player succeeds, boom, they have incriminating evidence on the magistrate. If not, they get caught by guards and have to either fight or face charges of their own.

Some players like this, but most don't. For all the players to know the treasure is buried under the old oak tree by the barn, but to have them have their characters search anywhere else is just silly at best and beyond boring at worst...

That's too fine-grained. The players wouldn't be rolling to search in places where the players know the treasure isn't buried. They'd be rolling to know where the treasure is buried. Or, if time really isn't a factor, you can just assume they keep digging until they stumble onto it by luck. If time is a factor, then you roll to see if they can dig well enough to find the treasure (by luck) before some other side-effects kick in.

[Koo Rehtorb]

As a bit of a side note. Certain people around here like to complain about the notion of doing things for the "sake of the story" and I've just had a nice simple example in one of my games.

My character has a big personal nemesis and also a somewhat self destructive streak. Certain events happened which meant that she had to go confront her nemesis at some point in the near future. As part of previous characterization it made perfect sense for her to go sneak off and confront him alone, and probably die in the process. But me doing a solo quest and then dying doesn't sound especially interesting so I said "She's going to try sneak off in the middle of the night but it sounds more interesting to me if she gets caught doing it if you want to." and didn't bother making a roll for it because it sounded like more fun for everyone involved.

That's all that playing with an eye towards the narrative really means. In other situations it might be more interesting for her to have a personal scene with an NPC without four other idiots crowding around. In other situations various outcomes might all be interesting so it might be worth a roll to see which one happens. It really depends on context.

[Max_Killjoy]

I agree with this. What I think people mean by the phrase 'Collaborative Storytelling' is that the role-playing either produces or includes a story with some critical merit: i.e, good. Then one has to solve for (A) what 'good story' means and (B) for whether the rules and text of play particularly facilitate that result.

To a certain extent, 'good story' is subjective. A lot of detective fiction and sci-fi is, if I might slip into an aspect of GNS jargon that seems to be largely accepted these days, aimed at Simulationists (itself a shorthand for 'individuals who incline toward, though not necessarily exclusively, a simulationist style of play'). But many, probably most, people seem to derive more excitement and interest from character development and emotional drama, which has a different set of demands.

Detective, "crime procedural", science fiction, certain fantasy works, tend to be up my alley.

One thing I keep pondering is whether a story can be "character driven" without being about (focused on, built around, whatever) character development. I know that roleplaying can be driven purely by a characters personality, goals, reactions, decisions, etc, with no regard to story, and thus be "character driven" / "character focused". Can a story revolve around character in that sense, without spending time/words on character development ?

Traditionally, many RPGs have outlined a procedure whereby you bring a story (or at least a sequence of events) to the table, and then you essentially act out the broad strokes of the script. But the fact that RPGs have generally supposed to involve substantial choice in declared actions and randomisation of outcomes meant that the baseline rules were always grinding against the structural format. It could work, either by socially-sanctioned fudging or exploiting the law of averages or manipulating the fictional environment or all of the above, but these were all potential breaking points that tended to leave a certain contingent of players unsatisfied.

I've only ever met one GM who could successfully and skillfully weave the PCs through a story he had in mind while maintaining full player agency and allowing the PC's choices and the consequences free effect, but he was a professional freelance "storyteller" and presenter, probably in the 99th or better percentile in ability to balance the two conflicting goals.

The rest were: trying to railroad their own predetermined story; trying to get the players to engage in deliberate "storymaking"; or were presenting a situation of known and unknown facts and allowing the interplay of PC and NPC actions to determine the course of events and a new set of facts, etc.

The later is my preference both as a GM and as a player. But, as a GM, I've occasionally found that some players seize the reigns with glee... and a few players feel a bit rudderless and keep waiting for events to come to them, because they've some to expect a bit of preplanned story from the GM based on past experiences.

I would say the 'character-driven drama' definition of 'good story' grinds against this format particularly hard. A character's personality is defined by their response to value-ambivalent cost/benefit stimuli- which is to say, their consequential moral/ethical choices, which is to say, drama. If there are no such choices to be made, either you learn nothing about the characters, in which case there's no development, or their choices don't matter, in which case the story isn't really about them, or the character's decisions have to uncoupled from the player's, in which case the player isn't playing.

I may have a narrower definition of "drama", or be less bothered by drama that arises from stuff happening than I am by "drama for its own sake". What I mean by that is, did we happen upon quote-unquote "drama" as a natural result of the conflicts and circumstances at hand (important NPC gets infected with disease based on probability, knowledge and skill rolls, etc, whatever, as they were trying to help the victims, and now they might die) rather than drama because someone wants to impose drama (important NPC gets infected with disease because GM wants to force "hard decisions" on the players/PCs, and now the NPC might die unless the PCs risk others dying to make sure the NPC gets the cure).

Even in authorial fiction, when the later occurs and is transparently hitting a well-worn trope, it doesn't make me feel for the characters or engage me in the events, it pushes me out of the story and makes me look at the story as a construct or even contrivance -- it's obvious that the writer did something because they want to show something about the characters or manipulate the audience's feelings.

I think character decisions can drive the story (authorial or emergent) without getting into "drama", and we can have a well-developed characters without getting into character development (the latter defined as characters changing / "growing").

So the question of whether you could get 'good story' without resorting to illusionism- or better yet, if the rules could actively promote that outcome- was a major topic of discussion and development since about the early-to-mid 90s. And that's when the phrase started to get so contentious, because people were bringing all these mutually-conflicting ideas of how story was supposed to be packaged within RPGs to the table.

I don't think it's a meaningless phrase, once you've usefully defined the component terms, but while the collaborative part is clear enough, and the story part can be explained with reasonable economy, I think the telling part is misleading. It suggests that you brought the story to the table with you and relate it on request, and how that's supposed to happen collaboratively is unclear. Story-authorship might be a better (if highfalutin) phrase.

For me, "collaborative storytelling" can be "story now" in a manner similar to how improv acting tells a story even though no one brought an existing story to the stage.

But for someone playing an RPG to be engaged in "collaborative storytelling", they must be actively and deliberately working with others to intentionally tell a story, whether that's a "story before" story or "story now" story (IMO, at least).

I think you're defining Story as a sequence of fixed events that displays causality. But all you need for causality is an effort at simulation, and I don't personally define Story as a series of fixed events. I define it as moral/ethical choices having consequences.

The above was directed at someone else, but if I can respond to the general subtopic, causality doesn't rely on a predetermined series of events. Causality (that is, cause-and-effect is cyclical and naturally flows from existing facts to new facts as a result of what's going on with characters and setting) is an independent issue, that might or might not be handled well -- whether the story is predetermined/prewritten (authorial fiction being read/watched, or an RPG campaign in "story before" style), deliberately created in the moment (improv theater or "story now" style in an RPG), or told after the fact based on events that already happened ("so on the way to work yesterday..." presented to be entertaining, or "story after" / emergent story that comes out of an RPG).

[Darth Ultron]

I think you're defining Story as a sequence of fixed events that displays causality. But all you need for causality is an effort at simulation, and I don't personally define Story as a series of fixed events. I define it as moral/ethical choices having consequences.

Morals and ethics? Ok...

Well, no. The effect is the exact opposite. There's nothing binding the players to a particular intent in the first place, but depending on how the dice rolls go, and whether attendant complications arise, the PCs might find themselves punted off in some radically different direction from their original intent. And because the dice are all rolled in the open, and the stakes have been negotiated in advance, you can't wriggle out of it.

For an Acting Story Non Game, all the people in the game get together and in detail lay out the whole story of the game. Everything from start to finish. Then they are just acting out what was agreed on. So the dice don't matter at all, everything happens as it was agreed on before the game.

That's too fine-grained. The players wouldn't be rolling to search in places where the players know the treasure isn't buried. They'd be rolling to know where the treasure is buried. Or, if time really isn't a factor, you can just assume they keep digging until they stumble onto it by luck. If time is a factor, then you roll to see if they can dig well enough to find the treasure (by luck) before some other side-effects kick in.

In the acting non game, the players know everything. Then they, a bit pointlessly, pretend their character's don't know and act that out. Just like acting in a play or movie.

Now in a normal, classic game the player does not want to know any more of the story then their character in the story knows. They want to willingly pretend to ''not know'' they are playing a game, and want to role play the character ''for real''(in the game).

And the very fact that the player knows nothing about the Game Story means they can't ''tell(or create or collaborate)'' that story at all...they can just play thought it and see what happens.

One thing I keep pondering is whether a story can be "character driven" without being about (focused on, built around, whatever) character development. I know that roleplaying can be driven purely by a characters personality, goals, reactions, decisions, etc, with no regard to story, and thus be "character driven" / "character focused". Can a story revolve around character in that sense, without spending time/words on character development ?

Sadly, I will say this answer is YES.

I love telling stories in games, simple ones, complex ones, controversial ones and so on. It works out great when a player asks for a story, but only from a very vague idea of ''I'd like this'' with the player knowing no details of the story and having no narrative god-like control over the story(just their character story control. ) Even if the player does not ask for a story, I will toss a couple in to ''tell/show'' the players something. Often I will tag it to a characters backstory or even a players personality.

The end goal is to have the character (and player) learn and grow and develop. But this only works and happens if the player is open minded enough to let it happen. Tons of players are ''set'' and will never change their mind, or will just always ''play'' their character as themselves. So no matter what happens in a story, the character will be totally unchanged...no development. Like a bad TV show, the player ''hits the reset button'' often.

Even in authorial fiction, when the later occurs and is transparently hitting a well-worn trope, it doesn't make me feel for the characters or engage me in the events, it pushes me out of the story and makes me look at the story as a construct or even contrivance -- it's obvious that the writer did something because they want to show something about the characters or manipulate the audience's feelings.

I'd say you can't have a good fictional story without this. ''Stuff'' has to happen. And it must be ''adventure worthy'' stuff.

I think character decisions can drive the story (authorial or emergent) without getting into "drama", and we can have a well-developed characters without getting into character development (the latter defined as characters changing / "growing").

A character making decisions can never drive a story...after all, with no drama, there would not even be a story to drive and with no character development there is no reason for the character to do anything.

With no drama, why would a character do anything? The character could go after the bandits for just something to do? And would just do it to be good? And you can't have a well developed character that never develops.

[Florian]

@Max:

I think your understanding of "drama" is wrong in context of RPGs. Drama focuses heavily on the plot and the only matter is what happens "on stage" and with the actual actors in it. You will always have "drama for the sake of drama" because the game itself is about things happening and you having your character engage in that, ie. a dungeon is there to be explored, a monster to fight, and NPC to interact with.
You might try and sugar-coat that with a level of velrsimilutide, but that's more a matter of taste than an requirement for playing an RPG.

[Lacuna Caster]

One thing I keep pondering is whether a story can be "character driven" without being about (focused on, built around, whatever) character development. I know that roleplaying can be driven purely by a characters personality, goals, reactions, decisions, etc, with no regard to story, and thus be "character driven" / "character focused". Can a story revolve around character in that sense, without spending time/words on character development?

That essentially just requires that the characters be the primary agents of change within the story, and since the story is about what the characters do, that's fairly tautological. Again, the question is whether the story might be considered to have critical merit, for some particular definition of 'merit'.

Character development means hitting the characters with situations that reveal something new about their personality. A certain amount of that will happen 'organically' if they have both agency and there are moral/ethical tensions embedded in the local setting. If you want to do it in a more sustained, high-pressure fashion, then it can be helpful to keep the setting sketchy and invent locations, NPCs and situations that push the PCs' hot-buttons, but you would probably perceive that as "drama for it's own sake".

Since I think you're playing/designing with an ear toward simulation, and want the story to be about how the setting changes, I would just suggest it helps if the PCs are some of the more competent and/or high-ranking persons within it. Those individuals tend by default to have the most influence on events.

The later is my preference both as a GM and as a player. But, as a GM, I've occasionally found that some players seize the reigns with glee... and a few players feel a bit rudderless and keep waiting for events to come to them, because they've some to expect a bit of preplanned story from the GM based on past experiences...

...But for someone playing an RPG to be engaged in "collaborative storytelling", they must be actively and deliberately working with others to intentionally tell a story, whether that's a "story before" story or "story now" story (IMO, at least).

At least according to my understanding of GNS terminology, if the characters are clearly addressing moral/ethical questions through the lens of player agency and the consequences of those decisions are what determine long-range outcomes, then you are playing 'Narrativist'. I can certainly remember a few discussions on the Forge where this was patiently explained to players who had no particular intention of creating a story at all and certainly had no fixed plot in mind.

And yeah, 'Turtles' are apparently a thing.

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I have met dozens, perhaps over a hundred, very experienced role-players with this profile: a limited repertoire of games behind him and extremely defensive and turtle-like play tactics. Ask for a character background, and he resists, or if he gives you one, he never makes use of it or responds to cues about it. Ask for actions - he hunkers down and does nothing unless there's a totally unambiguous lead to follow or a foe to fight. His universal responses include "My guy doesn't want to," and, "I say nothing."

I haven't met anyone who met that exact description, but I think they're nextdoor to the players who creep along the corridor in ten-foot increments calling for spot/listen checks. I've bumped into a few of them.

For an Acting Story Non Game, all the people in the game get together and in detail lay out the whole story of the game. Everything from start to finish. Then they are just acting out what was agreed on. So the dice don't matter at all, everything happens as it was agreed on before the game...

Again, that's not what I'm describing. I don't really know how'd you infer that from what I was writing about, but to be clear- the action is resolved one conflict at at time by negotiating stakes- not actual outcomes- for that particular conflict. The shape that subsequent conflicts take is indeterminate, precisely because outcomes hinge on player choice and random events. There is no 'whole story' that you can lay out in advance and impose during play.