Storyteller Heartbreakers

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Bruce,

Most of the comments, I think, are derived from experiences from the early-mid 1990s, using early editions of Vampire and Mage.

There're a lot of Adventure! fans at the Forge.

Best,
Ron

[Bruce Baugh]

Wouldn't surprise me, Ron, but I see a lot more present than past tense, and not always in cases where I can check. I know, for instance, that WW switched to an official policy of "only quotes in the public domain" in 1996/1997 - I had to lobby for a single exception in a Werewolf book a couple years later. So anyone who "sees Sister of Mercy and Shriekback quotes is seeing them in older books. But in other cases...I don't know, and I...

Ah, undeclared personal history time. :)

Some years ago I was in a comics amateur press association. It was interesting, and it included Tom and Mary Bierbaum, who were co-writing the then-just-started infamous Giffen & Bierbaum run on Legion of Super-Heroes. (Non-superhero fans may treat this as "yadda yadda". :) ) Trying to discuss things with them proved very difficult. It eventually turned out that they both had this policy: if you write something that they think is just nonsensical and obviously wrong, they'll try to work out what they think you must have intended and respond to that. So if they didn't want to accept a criticism as is, they'd work up some mental model and go respond to that instead. This is of course not a good strategy for actual dialogue.

I came away from it with a horror of second-guessing of that sort. I'm probably over-compensating in the direction of responding to the text I see, and figuring that it's fairly close to the poster's intent. Given that sometimes we all do make mistakes, I'd rather go "oh, I see" in response to a clarifying follow-up than try to insert my own speculations about motive into the first post.

I do realize that sometimes this can be annoying, but I find it overall safer, particularly in an environment I'm still new to with lots of folks whose circumstances I don't know. I'm always open to acquiring the context, as going "oh, I see" and even "oops" and "sorry" when needed along the way.

[Ron Edwards]

Good call, Bruce.

Folks, please be more careful about just what White Wolf "stuff" you're referencing. Like D&D, WoD games provide something of a moving target in discussions, partly due to local variations in play and partly due to changing policies and designs of the game itself over time.

Best,
Ron

[Paganini]

Ron,

I think Bruce may be misreading this thread. We've been discussing Storyteller System, with the specific, named, example of VtM. The topic is how the game does not live up to its claims, and how "storyteller heartbreakers" have tried to repair it, but have failed to do so by buying into bpgis preconceptions. I see only one post that might be in danger of over-generalizing.

Bruce, I've never encountered your work, but I've heard lots of good things about Adventurer, so I hope you don't feel personally attacked by this thread in any way. Certainly, none of my posts were intended as such.

[Bruce Baugh]

Paganini, I've written a lot for Vampire, so folks' thoughts about what it does and doesn't do, in various circumstances, are of both personal and professional interest to me.

And I'll say again: I have seen some really excellent, highly dramatic, very literary-feeling Vampire play that makes heavy use of the rules to support the intent of the folks playing the game to accomplish this kind of thing. I've also seen efforts at such - and at other styles of play - founder badly. But as long as the successes are there and I keep hearing from happy customers, I won't accept "it doesn't do this" without a lot more qualifications.

I try not to say of any of my games "it does this" without qualification, for the same reason. The nature of the players and the circumstances of the session and series matter so much in this sort of thing. I believe people who tell me "it didn't work for us", particularly when they can tell me as much about the game as some of the really good complaints I've read over the years have. It's just...well, I get just as much detail from some folks whose campaigns did work out. So there are more things at work here.

And yes, I really do mean it about people using the rules as written to support the sort of shared dramaturgy they were interested in. This isn't "you can get a great game if you ignore the rules". That's a true but useless statement. :) I mean people saying things like "the chargen process gave me a better sense of who I was playing, and the Nature/Demeanor split ended up generating plot hooks with efforts to find out what would actually strengthen characters in moments of crisis, and the contrast of different characters' reactions to the same issues since they were at the same Humanity gave us the hothouse war-within-the-coterie flavor we wanted at that point," and so forth on down the line. I really do mean the rules producing results of interest to people concerned with the development of their characters and of long-term plotlines built around the evolution of those well-developed characters.

[Bruce Baugh]

I should add that I find the general question "Why do folks have success accomplishing goals I share with a game that just doesn't work for me?" a fascinating if often frustrating one. For me, it's listening to folks talk about games of narrative and dramaturgic interest with...nah, no need for the digress. Suffice it to say that I do find myself on the "but it doesn't do that for me" side often enough to wonder just what the heck is going on sometimes.

[Jason Lee]

Bruce,

Well, I feel kind of sheepish.  Adventure! is one of the few WW games I haven't read cover-to-cover (not planning on reading Demon and Street Fighter).  I actually haven't seen it, which is sort of funny because I always think of the Aeon/Trinity line as the beginning of major system improvements.  But, that isn't actually applicable to the question as I simply see the system changes as refinements instead of any kind of fundamental alteration.

The one serious, and legitimate, mechanical problem in the WoD line I see is the Stance incoherency - the text encouraging player narration (Director or Author stance, who knows) while at the same time sticking to the preplanned adventure, Actor stance only, GM tells you what happens to you and what you're allowed to do model (which I think is connected to the Impossible Thing, Golden Rule, and GM is God principles). I've yet to be convinced that the broken part of the WoD line that everyone refers to is anything other this or a dysfunctional playing group.

My understanding is that Adventure! includes player narration mechanics (Director Stance mechanics) - fixing this problem.  Is this true, do see this problem and see it fixed?

Case in point, 7th Sea.  You can definately make a case for Storyteller influences (you'd have to ask Mr Wick, I've just got conjecture) - but includes player control mechanics and other tools to increase player authorship rights.  It bills itself as a cinematic, story telling game, and I think it pulls it off.  No problem here.  If such a thing as Storyteller heartbreaker exists, it definately isn't one.

(One side note on Ron's moving target issue.  I've always though VtM was the most coherent of the line.  If I was going to single one out, it would be Mage.)

[greyorm]

I won't accept "it doesn't do this" without a lot more qualifications.

Ahh, but no one here is saying "it doesn't do this," because everyone here realizes that it can indeed do that. We agree: what you argue it can do can and does happen, but what is being discussed is that the rules could be better designed to support that goal of play in the first place.

Simple Forge lingo: the Incoherency in the design requires a certain amount of conscious or unconscious Drift to enable the sort of play you mention.

These put together are an answer to your following statement:

I do find myself on the "but it doesn't do that for me" side often enough to wonder just what the heck is going on sometimes.

[Jason Lee]

Bruce,

Yeah, cross posting.

The truly successful VtM game (as in 5 years successful) I've seen basically involved dropping the combat system and damage rolls (when I dodge I roll, when I attack I roll, what's a round anyway?).  Game flow was basically illiciting 'what do you want to have happen' feedback from players.  Fairly like story telling.  The players were relatively fresh, so they didn't come with 'what an rpg is' assumptions.  No problems here except the combat rules didn't fit with their flow.

The way I see it the Stance incoherency issue springs up with people who've already got assumptions about what an rpg is.  Bringing the GM vs player, GM is God ideals into the game and the mechanics not contradicting that.  If you read the text with those assumption in mind it seems to support the GM is God.

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, here I am trashing WW products and Josh (a guy who GMs for me and posts here occasionally) just recently ran a game of Adventure! in which I played a very fun Mad Scientist named Emil Weisskopf who had to save the United Nations from certain death by diffusing a blast of Telluric energy using the Eiffel Tower as a giant antenna.

Realize, Bruce, that a lot of the theory here comes around as a result of the reports of people who played WW games and found some problem with them. This is, in part because of the WW design philosophy of "everyting but the kitchen sink" that you mention above. Which works for players who are able to figure out what to use from it. But for many of your "treadmill" sorts of players, this just causes confusion at times. Most times simply because there are mutiple player types simply gravitating to the different types of play that the rules support. This causes one player to annoy another, and dysfunction can occur.

With a GM who has strong control, they will choose one mode and play to that. If the players don't like it, then dysfunction again.

I think a lot of Storyteller play is about tying to "get it right". There's a sense that players have that they know how to play it correctly but others just aren't playing right. So, it's definitely an attractive system, but one marred by the potential for player conflict of interest. Which is hardly unique.

From a design perspective, GNS is simply about trying to ensure that these sorts of problems do not occur, or that at least the players understand the problems that can arise so they can address them on their own.

Interestingly, Adventure! seems to address these issues relatively well (as do some of the later editions of the other games, as Ron points out). Hence the enthusiasm for it here. And yes, this isn't bootlicking,  you can do a search for Adventure! and that ought to show the enthusiasm for the game well before your arrival.

If you want, I can let you in on what I see as continuing problems with Adventure! in another thread, just to prove that we aren't trying to stroke you.  :-)    In fact, I commented to Josh when we played that, while I thought that Adventure! was the best WW game I'd played, it still had some baffling inconsistencies.

But then, as you've said, you're already aware that it's not perfect (and what game is?). So that may well be a redundant conversation. The point is that there is no bias here against WW (Grant's outburst aside which is really about player inflexibility more than anything else; sometimes people vent). We consider their designs with the same critical eye that we examine any system. It's just that, as a popular system, and one that led to much of the theory on this site, it attracts a lot of attention and commentary.

Anyhow, the thread is meant to point out how, following on the successes and failures of Storyeller, players went off trying to "fix" Storyteller, much as other's had tried to "fix" D&D a generation before. Which has inevitable problems (one of them being that from a certain perspecive, these games aren't broken to start with). Instead of "fixing" they should have taken cues from games like Whispering Vault (that stood on the shoulders of Storyteller), and created more innovative games from scratch.

Mike

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Simple Forge lingo: the Incoherency in the design requires a certain amount of conscious or unconscious Drift to enable the sort of play you mention.

The truly successful VtM game (as in 5 years successful) I've seen basically involved dropping the combat system and damage rolls (when I dodge I roll, when I attack I roll, what's a round anyway?).  ...snip...  No problems here except the combat rules didn't fit with their flow.

Just pointing out that the second quote illustrates the first quote.

[ThreeGee]

Hey Bruce,

So we understand each other, I have nothing against you or White Wolf in general. Ron mentioned D&D, which is a perfect analogy. Many, many cooks have been in the kitchen, and the brew sometimes tastes a little funny. I love Streetfighter and first edition Mage. Masquerade was great. Vampire was not my style, but I appreciated the game for what it was. I hear nothing but good things about the latest stuff out of White Wolf, and I eagerly anticipate Gamma World.

However, this thread is about heartbreakers. Even now, I am trying to gently convince someone that his game should be more than a Vampire clone with kewler powerz and a couple rules changes. Vampire deserves better, and so does his design. I cannot count the number of different larp systems I have played that were based on both tabletop and Mind's Eye rules, but did not use either strictly. Just like D&D, the whole Storyteller line is so popular that a fanbase has sprung up, either decrying the system while blatantly copying it or praising it as the one true system while changing the parts that the fanboy does not like.

The nature of popularity is such that it spawns imitation where innovation would be better. Vampire et al has that kind of popularity. The cat is out of the bag, and no amount of effort will change that. The original should not be judged by the fans. If someone starts a thread focusing on a specific rules-set, we can talk specifics there.

Later,
Grant

[Paganini]

Just to clarify, Raven's post about "drift" is what I was getting at with my comments about "inevitable disillusionment." The VtM rulebook has a lot of text explaining that the game is all about story, theme, drama, etc., which looks very story-centric, and even Narrativist in the Forge sense of the word (dealing with difficult moral quandries). Upon closer inspection, though, the mechanics do not encourage this style of play, or even make it easy by "getting out of the way." VtM can be played exactly as it describes itself - that's a given. Any game can be played in the style described by the VtM rulebook. Heck, D&D can be played that way. The only requirement is that the players decide to do so. They will ignore anything that gets in the way, including rules if neccessary. Such is the nature of drift.

This natural chain of events is what leads to heartbreakers. "Oh, of course," says the drifting gamer. "We had to ditch such and such rules to get the game to work for us. Obviously rules are bad. The fewer rules the better!" And he goes on to design a rules-lite, freeform game like The Window. Or he says "Obviously, we need to replace these rules with better ones," and goes on to design a VtM clone from the ground up with custom tailored mechanics. When what the gamer should have been doing was throwing out the preconceptions implicit in the game in the first place, and looking for (or designing) a game that is custom tailored to his play style.

[Bruce Baugh]

I'll have to admit this: I honestly don't see the appeal of coherency in the GNS sense. It's not what I'm looking for in a game, and it doesn't seem to have any bearing on features of games I do like.

If folks reading this want to say that I'm tone-deaf to it, I would not feel at all insulted by it, and would agree. I'm used to life with a very limited sense of smell, and with allergies and metabolic problems that mean I can't eat Thai food or drink booze, just to grab a couple of examples. I will only ever (short of strong gene therapy) appreciate these things in an intellectual way. I can't know how single and blended malts compare, and if I write fiction with characters who do, I have to rely on second-hand information for them. I've long since gotten used to be being a finite being. :)

But conversely...

Paganini, you seem to be saying that the sort of people I describe (and am), who find the Vampire rules have supported strongly narrative and dramaturgic play, are wrong, that as a matter of objective fact they don't do that. I can only say, um, you're wrong. Because they did it for me and others, and I could adduce examples until the cows come home. I think very few Storyteller system mechanics are uniquely desirable or suitable - those tend to operate at the level of discipline definitions and the like, where they exist at all. But I think that many of them do in fact work to accomplish their stated aims for many players.

Obviously they don't for all, and I'm interested in the comments of folks who can say "this bit here didn't work for me because of X". As long as you're willing to realize that I am saying "I can't tell X from Y" for a fairly broad range of cases. I genuinely can't meaningfully answer some questions, and some answers convey no information to me beyond "according to people referring to a model which remains opaque to me, there is a distinction here I don't see which matters a lot". I seldom do anything calculated to drive a customer away, and I'm here in part precisely because I'm trolling for insights to get me out of some ruts. It's just that there will be limits.

I do hope not to be a pest about this. If it ever becomes unclear that I do draw a distinction between categories that work for me and categories that work for anyone ever, lemme know and I can sort it out. I'm willing to disagree, but I do not intend to insult anyone.

[Bruce Baugh]

Oh, yes, back at the point. :)

Yeah, I agree a lot that doing Storyteller knockoffs is silly. One of the real virtues of the d20 license is that it's saved us from D&D clones, mostly. :) I operate on an aesthetic inspired in part by comments of Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics - there should be clear reasons for the work to be in the medium it is (game rather than novel, for instance), and there should be features specific to the work at hand. Retreads may be good learning exercises, but why bother inflicting them on the public? If it's a new work, it should be, you know, a new work; otherwise it should be a supplement, official or otherwise, to something that already exists.