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2018-01-02, 05:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
If I have no intention of creating a story, then I am not creating a story, even if a story happens to emerge or later be told. Intent matters.
I'd go into it more if I had the time right now, but it comes down to language and the relationship (or rather, the lack thereof) between intent and meaning.
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2018-01-02, 05:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2010
Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
The Forge referred to the different relationships as
Story First: Someone, usually the GM, writes a story and then the players play through it
Story Now: The players collaborate together to create a story
Story After: The players do some things, which can be retold as a story after the fact.
While I'm no Forgite, I find the distinction reasonable, though I usually refer to it as "let me tell you a story", "let's make a story", and "hey, remember when?""Gosh 2D8HP, you are so very correct (and also good looking)"
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2018-01-02, 05:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
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- Victoria, BC
Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
No, not really. As far as I can tell, I won a ways back. I just keep coming back because it's astonishing the contortions you go through to avoid acknowledging that you're working your logic backwards, defining your terms to fit your predetermined conclusions.
And before you go accusing more folks of gross misinterpretation, maybe go back and check the many, many times you have ignored people trying to tell you there is a difference between "an account of events," and "literally everything that ever happened in the universe."
Or don't, it doesn't really matter.Awesome avatar courtesy of Dorian Soth.
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2018-01-02, 05:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
That rests on an over-broad definition of "story" as "any sequence of events that ever did occur, might occur, or could be imagined to occur" (paraphrasing for brevity). I think kyoryu just posted what serves as a good response to that assertion (emphasis added):
Again, any statement about "all games are story" has got to use such a broad definition of "story" that it's useless as a statement about games, and is mostly an interesting statement about the human condition. So if you're claiming all games are "about story", or are "storytelling", then I'd have to ask - what isn't? If driving can be "about story" or "storytelling", then what isn't? Saying that something is <label> is only interesting if there are things that you can say are <not label>.
That sounds suspiciously deconstructionist/postmodernist.Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2018-01-02 at 05:38 PM. Reason: missing /quote tag
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
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2018-01-02, 05:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
I'm working from what I know. What I know is that I am not "doing story" when I play my PC in an RPG. End of story. That is not what I am thinking or experiencing when I engage in that activity. Things that are "story" (at least any meaning of "story" not so vague as to be useless) are not my motivation, intent, or thought process, when engaged in that activity.
And I'm not the one so determined to tell other people how their minds work, what they're thinking, and how they experience something, that it becomes supposedly acceptable to stretch definitions to uselessness to justify it.
OK, so I guess I'm just imagining these statements:
Take the log out of your own eye.
And be careful in accusing one person of lying, because you might end up catching someone else in the crossfire...
Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2018-01-02 at 05:55 PM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2018-01-02, 06:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
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- Victoria, BC
Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
You're not imagining them, you're just selecting them from among many better definitions to be the ones that you argue against, and also ignoring later clarifications that made them into better definitions. It's a pretty transparent tactic to avoid debating honestly.
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Optional rules I'm working on (please contact me if you have ideas for developing them!):
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2018-01-02, 06:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
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2018-01-02, 06:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2014
Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
This is not unusual behavior. Next up in his bag of tricks is putting you on ignore for pointing that out. Just saying I called it now.
To correct Max's murder/manslaughter argument:
Story is a byproduct. It's a thing that just happens. Yes, you can make it happen on purpose, but it can happen unintentionally as well. Essentially, nobody is arguing that manslaughter and murder are the same. We're saying that in both cases A DEAD BODY IS PRODUCED.
Whether I intended to kill a pedestrian with my car or not, there is now -1 person in the world.
Byproducts exist for all kinds of things. If you make dinner, you also make dirty dishes. You might not have intended to make dirty dishes, but indeed they happened. Yes, you coule grab dishes and make them dirty on purpose. Lord knows my 2 year old does that, near as I can tell. But the intent does not change the existence of said dirty dishes.
Now, where people go wrong is in assuming the following:
Intentional stories > unintentional stories.
Blatantly not true. Have you ever read history? It's amazing and also not made intentionally. AND it comes from the same root word as Story. (Not a mistake.)
Or they make the blatantly untrue inverse mistake:
Unintentional story > intentional story.
Tell that to shakespeare.
Story being a thing that naturally occurs as a byproduct of playing an RPG has bum-all to do with you intent, and it is not more insulting to point out that story is produced as a byproducts pf play than it is to point out that you produce dirty dishes as a byproduct of making spaghetti.
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2018-01-02, 06:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
Postmodernism is toxic garbage.
I'd really like to go into detail and post links to others' thoughts as to why, but it would quickly go into verboten territory.
So if someone wants to accuse me of making unfounded / unsupported statements, feel free, I guess... I'm not going to break the rules and get banned to avoid it.It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2018-01-02, 06:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2018-01-02 at 06:59 PM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2018-01-02, 07:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
Go right ahead thinking that. I'll just note that this amounts to pretty much a concession that you also feel basically all current scholarship on the nature of language and storytelling is garbage, which looks to me like you don't have much of a compelling argument for why your understanding of the nature of stories is worth taking into consideration.
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2018-01-02, 07:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
Prrrretty much, yeah. Is this surprising to you? If you want to defeat my argument (for instance), you have to actually argue against it. If you only respond to weaker arguments or arguments that you made up yourself, then you haven't really defeated mine, have you?
Ah, I just noticed that "only" that you stuck in there. No, you don't have to ONLY respond to the strongest arguments. You can respond to both weak ones and strong ones. But don't respond to the weak ones and then pretend you defeated the strong ones. That's dishonest debating.
(For the record, I don't really mean to call Pleh's arguments weak. I do think that they were poorly expressed to the point where they make an easy straw man for you and others, which is why they were clarified afterwards.)Awesome avatar courtesy of Dorian Soth.
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2018-01-02, 07:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2012
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- In the Playground, duh.
Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
Everything that's actually happening on the tabletop - "On-screen", as it were - is happening in the presence of the PCs, and if in general the NPCs are all doing stuff and the PCs are all doing stuff then unless there are 76 NPCs on the table the DM is not actually doing 95% of the actual story that's being told.
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2018-01-02, 07:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2015
Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
Revisiting this then.
Definitions can be correct or not correct. One thing that makes them not correct is attempting to expand an existing definition to cover previously uncovered territory. In this case, we have one group attempting to expand the definition of "story", or at least a sub-set of it pertaining to events, from "an account of events" to encompass "events". Which I'll point out, actually removes the most important part of "story", the narrative or account.
BTW if you want to understand why I object to the attitude, people claiming story are "events", regardless of narrative interpretation or recounting, are expanding an existing definition of something I might choose to do, to encompass anything I do. I am aware of the existence of that existing definition, so I'm quite aware of what they're trying to tell me I'm doing, just as I'm quite aware I'm not doing that. Making events happen is not the same thing as an account of events.
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2018-01-02, 07:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
Typical postmodernist response. "Obviously you don't understand the brilliance of our work, you pleb."
Meanwhile, I invite anyone interested to look up the Sokal Affair and work your way out from that, if they want to understand why someone would consider postmodernism a sick joke played on modern society by "philosophers" and "literary critics". Short form, postmodernism is the notion that there are no facts, there is no objective reality, there is only competing narratives to be manipulated; even science is just another worldview with no more validity than any other... for a good dose of irony, this attitude towards science is usually expressed via mediums of communication only possible because of the success of scientific inquiry.Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2018-01-02 at 07:56 PM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2018-01-02, 07:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2012
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- In the Playground, duh.
Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
Okay, okay, so this is just a massive argument about whether a word with two definitions only means one of them or only means the other of them, right?
And either way, it doesn't impact the fact that "Collaborative storytelling" is quite clearly a phrase which means "Storytelling which is collaborative" and therefore has a meaning?"
Right, glad we sorted that out. Linguistic descriptivism saves the day again!
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2018-01-02, 08:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
And by their own logic, shouldn't postmodernism itself be just another narrative? Their viewpoint that "no viewpoint is more valid than any other" wouldn't be more valid than any other. So they basically saying all viewpoints are equally meaningless and therefore that their own viewpoint is not worth considering, because it isn't useful for sorting out what to believe and what not to believe.
We do tell stories to ourselves, but the stories we tell ourselves have flaws that blind us to certain things, and often have underlying reasons why we tell ourselves them.
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2018-01-02, 08:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
No strawman, I've responded to exactly the words that he wrote in his posts on that matter, and if he's pulled back from those words in any significant way, I've not seen it. If he would like to pull back from the words I quoted a few posts ago, I welcome it and I will adjust my response accordingly.
Furthermore, if your position is in fact that storytelling is inevitable in any RPG, then it can only be true if it starts from the position that any sequence of events -- and thus everything, because nothing is static -- is "a story". It's not enough for that position to be true for any account of events to be "a story", because it is not an "account of events" simply to make in-character decisions and play the game.Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2018-01-03 at 07:19 AM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2018-01-02, 08:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
From here, what this thread has looked like is Tanarii and I saying "we're not storytelling, we're not 'doing story', when we play our characters in RPGs", and several people trying out broader and broader definitions of what "story" is (not storytelling, story, note the shellgame there) until they could find one that "proved" that we were "lying" or "delusional" about how we play our characters in RPGs.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2018-01-02, 08:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2012
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- In the Playground, duh.
Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
I mean, I'm afraid that if you're sitting around a table, dictating what your characters do, then by a certain definition of story (which is a perfectly viable one) you are telling a story, and you're even collaborating in doing so. That doesn't mean that it's true by other definitions of story, but it doesn't mean that they're "Lying" "Delusional" or even more ludicrously "Postmodernist" because they're wielding the divine might of different definitions. Saying "Describing how your fighter helps save the princess is part of the process of telling a story" is, to be quite frank, not even remotely on par with trying to argue that fluid dynamics is inextricably linked to feminism or whatever other crap postmodernists are coming up with this week.
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2018-01-02, 08:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2016
Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
In fairness, at least as I understand it, the argument tends to be (at least, the ones I bother with) less "no objective reality" and more "no perspective less analysis." That everything is always, a communication, a model. Especially science. Fundamentally, everything has a context. Everything has things omitted either intentionally, or non-intentionally, and that science is always, in part a product its creators.
(To give a dumb example, take a GameFAQ. How the author describes, and what they choose to describe is going to vary, and even though none of them will be lying, all of them might focus on very different things. Some of which may even miss entire sub sections. Likewise, while science is a set of tools that attempts to minimize bias, what is studied and who studies it will effect the map (i.e. the report), even if it is not false about the territory (i.e. the objective world.)
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2018-01-02, 08:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
Now now, it's not polite to tell the Emperor he's naked.
Seriously though, you've nailed it... if everything is relative and subjective and equivalently valid narratives, then it's relative all the way down, and they can't escape that to ever establish the accuracy of their own position. Which is why you see so much self-referential, circular, obscurantist jargon and double-speak. Postmodernism is like the big red monster in the old Bugs Bunny cartoon -- in the end, it's nothing but hair and sneakers.
A deep dive for those who want more of the picture, and if I can manage to control my disgust, my last comment on this sidebar: https://areomagazine.com/2017/03/27/...act-explained/Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2018-01-02 at 08:41 PM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2018-01-02, 08:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
To be clear, I am not saying that they're lying or delusional (for holding to that other definition or otherwise) -- Tanarii and I have been called, directly and through insinuation, "lying" and "delusional".
The connection to postmodernism comes from, first, the similarity between the postmodernist assertion that everything is competing narratives, and the assertion here that any sequence of events is a story, and second, the attempt to fastidiously ignore intent and the odd resemblance that has to "the death of the author".Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2018-01-02 at 08:49 PM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2018-01-02, 08:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
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- Victoria, BC
Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
Awesome avatar courtesy of Dorian Soth.
Optional rules I'm working on (please contact me if you have ideas for developing them!):
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2018-01-02, 08:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2012
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- In the Playground, duh.
Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
And to be clearer still, you have ALSO said that they are lying, "Pretending to know what goes on in other people's heads", "Asserting to know what other people want better than they do", and so forth up to "Postmodernists" when they say that you're telling a story when you sit around a table and tell people your characters actions which can be reasonably said to be contributing to a story, irrespective of whether you care that storytelling is taking place or not.
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2018-01-02, 08:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
And that would appear to be a claim that all communication is "giving an account" and therefore supposedly we can't even have a conversation without telling a story.
OK, yes, in that specific case, I can see it coming across that way... but what else am I supposed to say when I make it very clear that I'm not concerned with story, doing story, or storytelling; that story never comes into my mind and never gets a second of consideration; that nothing that feels like story or works like story is part of how I engage with the game, the character, or the setting; and that I dislike narrative mechanics quite a bit... and I'm immediately hit with "you're kidding yourself" and "your mind works on stories you can't help it" and "you can't play RPGs without story" from multiple sides?
Look, back when I actually had a gaming group for 15-20 years, before everyone had kids, moved away, and/or flaked out, something that the others learned when GMing was to save the story stuff for other players who ate it up, and not waste it on me. Put a mystery to solve, or an enemy infiltrator to uncover, or an artifact to recover, or whatever, in front of me, and I'm all over it, and I will roleplay my character to the best of my ability... but save the drama and tragedy and character development arcs and "try-fail cycles" and overcoming weaknesses and all that stuff for someone who enjoys it far more than I do. And if you're another player, never expect my character to be suddenly and inexplicably ignorant, or incompetent, or helpless, to prop up your "story".Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2018-01-02 at 09:52 PM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2018-01-02, 09:08 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2012
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- In the Playground, duh.
Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
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2018-01-02, 09:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
Awesome avatar courtesy of Dorian Soth.
Optional rules I'm working on (please contact me if you have ideas for developing them!):
Generic Prestige Classes; Summon Monster Variant; Advanced Dodges and Dex Bonuses; Incantations to Raise the Dead
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2018-01-02, 09:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
Eh.
even if your right (which I'm not sure of), that makes it sound that postmodernism doesn't really seem all that useful? Mostly because it just seems to be a long form way of saying "we still need to correct for self-bias" when we just haven't found all the biases yet. that seems to be something that science and everyone else is well aware of already, so I don't see the point of it either way. regardless, I'm not a big fan of "everything is subjective!!" philosophies anyways simply because they are used more to shut down discussion by saying that you can't criticize what doesn't have objective value or shut down a specific viewpoint by pointing out that its a viewpoint than to actually help anyone, its not something I can trust, rely on or buy into, because regardless of reality, people need to be able to clearly sort out what to believe in themselves psychologically speaking to be healthy, you muddy the waters too much by saying nothing has a value you can assign then it makes doing that very murky and difficult.
because people have things they value, and if you go around making it all too subjective, all that value starts to feel fake, in my experience. and feeling as if things don't have value generally leads down dark roads that I don't want to travel down. gazing into the abyss and all that.
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2018-01-02, 09:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2012
Re: Why collaborative storytelling is a meaningless phrase
People seem to be getting excessively worked up over having a different definition of "story". That's really what this entire argument boils down to.