Storyteller Heartbreakers

[Jack Spencer Jr]

This idea recently occured to me. I'll see if I can express it properly. With the fantasy heartbreaker articles, there has been some discussion over whether there are other types of heartbreakers out there, particularly Vampire Heartbreakers.

I think there might be several types of heartbreakers that come from VtM. One might be the Goth heartbreaker. I don't deal well with goth, so we'll let those who can discuss it.

I think that another sort of heartbreaker is the storyteller heartbreaker. Vampire is long on it's focus on "story" or "storytelling" in the text but the actual mechanics support Gamist play. I know that The Window is similar in this respect. Stating a Narrativist goal but not backing it up with mechanics.

So the question is, is this a form of heartbreaker you have seen? If so, where? If you disagree, explain.

[Lugaru]

I think most people will say no, since its in fashion.

Here's my view on the subject:

Lots of creators worship all those rpg's written in the 70's even though the games themselves have been re written a dozen times by the companies themselves.  Thechnically they are very proficient and complete games. Still by considering them "untouchable" the "fantasy heartbreaker" thing came up.

Then story teller comes along and its like Nirvana... all of a sudden any one can pick up a six stringer and play what's on the radio. Or all of a suden any one can make a "brand spanking new game" with just 2 or 3 paragraphs. The fact that most people where introduced to the system through VTM made them asociate it with dark, occult and evil subjects, causing them to make that kind of a game. Also of course the theme was in fashion... just like any other theme is at a time.

[ThreeGee]

Hey Jack,

The short answer is, "Heck, yes." It is so painful to see games obviously derived from the Storyteller System. The source games are so incoherent that they just cry out to be "fixed", and lots of people try it. Unfortunately, most of them have never played anything else, except maybe some D&D. I really do not want to name names, but I will say that I personally know too many people who have fallen to this lure.

I want to point out that I do not mean the style of writing where you start with cliched prose and proceed to talk for pages about stuff the characters will never do. I mean the whole package: classes disguised as splats, d10 dice pools, power points, the whole nine yards of insanity.

Later,
Grant

[Paganini]

Jack, of course. Countless freebies, and at least some published small press games exhibit this heartfelt fallacy. It stems from a very simple underestimation of what RPG rules are for, and what they can do. The Window is a prime example.

You've got a bunch of people with a perfectly legitimiate and passionately defended gaming ideal: the "story-based" role-playing camp. These guys have come to the conclusion that "story is the thing." You'll often find them on forums making the implicit or explicit statement that "role-playing is about storytelling." I've been there myself. "Everyone makes a story when they game. That's what gaming *is.* That's what we *do* when we game." (Ever see this discussion before?)

Story here is used in the "sequence of caused events" sense. Members of the "story-based" camp maintain that the sequence of caused events should be as interesting as possible to the participants. This is certainly a worthy goal in and of itself. Along the line, though, they make several key errors.

The first, of course, is that they latch whole-heartedly onto the Impossible Thing Before Breakfast: The GM is the "storyteller" who tells *his* story to the players, who participate via the actions of their characters. There's quite a bit of this difficult text in the Window.

The big error in system terms is two-fold. They correctly realize that the mechanics of games like D&D and GURPS do not facilitate their style of play. Couple this with the detrimental assumption that RPG exist in only one form - that of      ing the game reality - and they reach the conclusion that fewer rules are better. So you end up with tiny games with vaguely abstract physics-modeling mechanics.

Note: Vampire *claims* to be exactly what they're looking for, but the inevitable crash and burn is discouraging. I view Vampire itself as a "storytelling heartbreaker."

[Lugaru]

See... for the last few years (at least 6) my roleplaying style was always like this:

You create a character. I create problems. You tell me what you want to do. I tell you what happens.

I just dont know how to convey that into a rule book for less imaginative guys, because they will diffinatly never have to deal with my imaginative rpg troup.

But like I said is bottom line it never came down to "you get a call" or "some one kidnaps your girlfriend". Somehow the players usually got themselves into tons of trouble on their own.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I'm not sure what you're talking about, Javier. I'm talking about what Nathan describes:

The big error in system terms is two-fold. They correctly realize that the mechanics of games like D&D and GURPS do not facilitate their style of play. Couple this with the detrimental assumption that RPG exist in only one form - that of ing the game reality - and they reach the conclusion that fewer rules are better. So you end up with tiny games with vaguely abstract physics-modeling mechanics.

Or basically games that claim a focus on story yet have little if anything in their system to fascilitate the creation of a story. I don't see what you mean.

[Rob MacDougall]

One of the most interesting things for me about the Fantasy Heartbreakers articles (and about the Fantasy Heartbreakers, I suppose) was how elements of those games offered definite, and often quite innovative, solutions to specific problems people had had with D&D (for example, all the different magic systems), while not challenging 95% of the larger assumptions of the game.

Rather than rehashing the GNS of VtM, maybe some people who are familiar with a couple of Storyteller heartbreakers could talk about the sorts of things that tend to be innovative in Storyteller heartbreakers and the sorts of things that never are? What parts of VtM (or whatever) did heartbreaker authors see as crying out to be fixed, and what parts were never critically examined?

Rob

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Rather than rehashing the GNS of VtM, maybe some people who are familiar with a couple of Storyteller heartbreakers could talk about the sorts of things that tend to be innovative in Storyteller heartbreakers and the sorts of things that never are? What parts of VtM (or whatever) did heartbreaker authors see as crying out to be fixed, and what parts were never critically examined?

Rather than rehashing the GNS of VtM, maybe some people who are familiar with a couple of Storyteller heartbreakers could talk about the sorts of things that tend to be innovative in Storyteller heartbreakers and the sorts of things that never are? What parts of VtM (or whatever) did heartbreaker authors see as crying out to be fixed, and what parts were never critically examined?

There are no Vampire heartbreakers, just Vampire clones. Other games (including other WWGS games) take the 'tude and the mood but keep/copy the same rules. Games like Darktown, Witchcraft, Armegeddon, the Seventh Seal and all those other "dark" games...they have similar styles but give eff-all about "rules" (it's all about storytelling, man).

And while I love to poke fun, the whole Vampire=Goth thing is just...not there. The game uses quotes by Shriekback and Ministry and SoM and such but only because a) Vampire is quintessentially an 80's genre movie game (ala Terminator, Highlander, The Hidden, The Hunger...rain slicked city streets at midnight, crumbling stone facades and lots of neon with a bass heavy new wave playing in the background) and b) Rein*Hagen and his cohorts were into the punk vibe (musics from that vibe -- Siouxie Sioux, Robert Smith, Carl McCoy, Peter Murphy and Andrew Eldritch -- are vampiric lookin' -- black clothing, pale skin, dark hair).


- J

[Paganini]

Well, as I doubt the authors of VtM believe in GNS they certainly aren't claiming Nar.  They are claiming story, universal to all modes.  VtM is fairly metagame-lite, and actor stance is the obvious preference.  So, I'd say all that story and moral struggle they are talking about is just Sim:Sit/Char.

OK, I'll buy that. I've heard it said, though, that the VtM mechanics encourage powergaming in that the system has breakpoints and exchange rates and such, which would encourage Gamism. I've only read it, not played it. Would you agree with that assessment?

(Raven? I don't see a post by Raven. Are you guys doing the PM thing? I claim conspiracy to derive an unfair advantage! ;)

[Lugaru]

Oh... what I was previosly saying though is that I dont see why a system should be what is needed to facilitate story telling instead of the chemestry between players.

I mean with us it was all about the story, about cliffhangers and plot twists and stuff... and we used a pretty gamist system. All that "kill 'em and take their stuff" stereotypes that some game's have is just an exuce that story tellers use to cover up lack of chemestry with the players or lack of imaginative play. If you give the players the option to have more fun with words than numbers, they will deffinatly do so.

So yeah, story teller and VTM clones are just taking the same stuff and making it even more simple to take away the option of seeing it as a game at any point. But I dont think minimalization promotes story telling, I think chemestry does so. And frankly Im not sure how I could make that chemestry contageus on my website.

[Paganini]

Lugaru, you're falling into the same trap that the designers of VtM themselves did. What you're talking about is what Ron calls "drift." It means playing in a particular style that is not encouraged by the mechanics of your game. Take a look at the Window, for example. The text of the game is full of instructions to prioritize story, prioritize character, etc. etc. But the system itself does not help you or encourage you to do that. It just "gets out of the way." Remember this paragraph from my previos post?

The big error in system terms is two-fold. They correctly realize that the mechanics of games like D&D and GURPS do not facilitate their style of play. Couple this with the detrimental assumption that RPG exist in only one form - that of modeling the game reality - and they reach the conclusion that fewer rules are better. So you end up with tiny games with vaguely abstract physics-modeling mechanics.

That's exactly what you're doing. You're saying "just get the system out of the way and player chemistry will provide storytelling." Well, okay, sure you can drift any game. But wouldn't it be nice if you had a game that actually promotes what you're trying to do via the mechanics? Go check out System Does Matter in the Articles section. Read the bit about Herbie carefully. :)

Beware of the implicit assumption in your post that there's something wrong with the "kill them and take their stuff" style of play. That style is only a problem if it's *causing* problems in the group (I.e., conflicting play priorities). If a particular group enjoys that style of play, and you come along with a post like that, the members of that group will be justifiably upset at your attack of their perfectly valid play style.

Edit: Whupps, this post should actuall be in http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5779">this thread. Sometime between then and now it got splitted off.

[Mike Holmes]

What Nathan's saying is simply to reiterate the notions conveyed in the System Does Matter essay. Basically that if one wants to have a story, one ought to have rules that support that. And one can.

Put another way, Javier, you say that you can't convey to other players in the text how to play like your players. Well, we'd agree. Instead of trying to cajole people into this style of play, why not just have rules that cause it to happen anyhow.

For example, how do you think your players would react to The Pool?


Jack, why does every sort of game have to have a heartbreaker category assigned to it? I mean, sure, we can just make a blanket statement that all areas of design suffer from designers not paying attention to the state of the art in design. Wouldn't that cover it?

To say that every designer should be aware of the design theory here is really pushing things, I think.

Mike

[ThreeGee]

Hey all,

While I think it is great that some of you all have not suffered under the lash of the Storyteller System, I would like to point out that in my neck of the woods, White Wolf ownzers j00. It kicks down your door, locks you in the closet, takes your kids, shoots your dog, and lights your house on fire. It is the One System to Rule Them All.

Why make your own system, when clearly the Storyteller System can be adopted to anything. Just look at Vampire, Werewolf, Changeling, Wraith, Mage, Hunter, Demon, Trinity, Abberent, Adventure, Streetfighter, and a whole lot more, many of which also come in larp format. Except for that one little thing, they are all perfect games.

Or so the argument goes. The games are long on talking about story, but the story is obviously the incoherent metaplot that the characters will never affect. The characters are either clones of each other, or they stab each other in the back constantly, and the best way to resolve a conflict is to kill the other character. Under the latest edition of most of these games, the best way being to make a brick character with truckloads of whichever physical discipline allows for the most heinous abuse. In short, a gamist system pretends to be heavy-handed sim pretends to be fluffy goodness-and-light narrativism. I sometimes wonder no one has been killed arguing about how the game "should be played."

When you cannot get away from White Wolf products, you tend to think in their terms, and a lot of people around here have hardly played anything else. Is it any wonder that folks reinvent the wheel in their own image? Think Vampire would be great, if only the combat twinks didn't ruin everything and that darn metaplot weren't so laughable? Then just nerf the combat disciplines and write your own plot. Think Aberrent is a great supers game, but the characters are just too powerful and the setting is too dark? Then just fix the numbers to something a little more human scale, and add four colors and a sense of honor.

And the larps around here are the worst offenders. After many, many years of playing Mind's Eye, everyone knows every loophole in the rules and the bestest, most effective way to do anything. So, when a new larp starts up, the first thing that happens is the rules are rewritten, practically from scratch. These "house rules" inevitably resemble a Frankenstein's monster made from bits of second edition Mind's Eye, third edition Mind's Eye, and third edition tabletop, with just a little bit of horse sense thrown in for good measure. These games are inevitably more coherent, but they still ignore the fact that there are better ways of playing in any mode you might want. A leatherman is still not a hammer.

Anyway, I am done ranting for the moment. Please, carry on your regularly scheduled conversations.

Later,
Grant

[Bruce Baugh]

Um.

Okay, I admit to the obvious prejudice: I've written most of a million words for White Wolf, co-developed one game and am developing another for them because I like their stuff. So obviously I can't claim to be a neutral observer. Not that I'd try, because I disbelieve in neutrality on these matters, but I don't want anyone thinking I'm ashamed of or trying to hide my biases.

I admit to a bit of croggling when I see words like "inevitable" thrown around, in phrases like "inevitable disillusionment". Someone needs to point out that WW remains in business precisely because this disillusionment isn't inevitable at all. Just as D&D genuinely does offer what a lot of folks are interested in gaming for even when it's not my cup of tea, so with WW. I have long thought that any analysis of gaming which places too high a value on coherence as a desirable quality is going to fail the reality test of the market at large, because in fact what a lot of folks want is a highly adjustable hodge-podge.

Most gamers - very much including most of WW's customers, there's no claim of superiority being smuggled in here - do not think deeply about their gaming. They may think a lot about their gaming, but it's like hamsters on a treadmill. The view doesn't change much. They want stuff that'll be fun and cool and that probably offers them enough scope to tweak and try new things within an existing framework. They don't particularly have many easily articulable specific goals, and in my experience there comes a point in most discussions when they respond poorly even to friendly efforts to sort out overlapping imperatives.

There are limits to how far you can understand what tissues do by poking at the properties of cell organelles, just as a firm grasp of electron orbitals proves of only limited value in understanding how elements act on the macroscopic scale. A lot of gamers are looking for the game on the level of emergent properties, and if you go much below the surface you just get chaos.

This isn't to say that the games I've worked on are perfect. Hoo boy is it not to say that. But I also don't think that an exchange deriving largely of folks who either not happy in the first place or disappointed for relatively esoteric reasons is likely to get at an understanding of how or why the games actually do work for rather a lot of customers. And without that understanding, suggestions at fixes aren't going to do much good, either. Bad diagnosis makes good treatment difficult. Not impossible - people have been healing each other with the help of all kinds of bogus, incomplete, or misapplied theories, after all - but harder.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Bruce,

I think it's important to note that the work that you've been in charge of doing for White Wolf is some of the most coherent, focused stuff ever to come out of there. (This isn't sucking up - as an avid member of the "White Wolf messed up my RPGs" club, I was shocked to find I loved Adventure!) From the looks of your newest work for them, it seems you've taken an old stew-pot full of everything that could be thrown in, and made a game with pretty extreme focus, which is a task I wouldn't want to undertake, but you've seemed to do extremely well.