# What IS Storygaming? tags: #thoughts ![[The Complete First Edition of The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (cover).jpg]] You know, every religious philosophy on the planet generally has an admonition against the summoning of demons, devils, or other negatively aspected spirits. There's a really good reason for that, actually, because if you draw a seven-pointed star in salt, surrounded by two circles with the text **SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET** written between those circles in the blood of a schoolgirl, and then you set a silver brazier fueled by hawthorn and dragon's blood with a pair of d10 and a d6 on top being slowly melted, you will actually summon me, and it never ends well. So we have to talk about this.   Spyder means well and he seems like a good guy, but he is absolutely the worst possible person to be discussing this, in part because he gets lost in the weeds so easily, and also because he's trying to keep one foot in both worlds, somewhere between the OSR and story gaming. When he's having a conversation with them, he gets entangled in their expectations and promises without actually making the argument he needs to. Fair enough, he's a lot younger. He's not as bloodied.[^1] I've danced this dance before, so let me get my big feather fans out, because we're going to do it again. Let's get this out of the way now. Spyder, again, nice guy, but wrong in his explanation. He gets so close right at the beginning and then takes a detour. ## The Wrong End of the Argument He starts talking about the perception among the OSR that story gaming is about telling a specific story. He almost gets somewhere with that, but I think the connectivity failure drags him off the important point, which is that the OSR and **[[Dungeons and Dragons|D&D]]** itself specifically, historically, have been far more about running and telling specific stories than story gaming ever was. In fact, story gaming in part came about as a reaction to and reactionary movement against the railroading and specific storytelling of **D&D** in particular. You may wonder, Lex, what is your grounding for saying that **D&D** of all things is about telling *specific stories*? I will simply step to the side and point at all of the pages that have been published in the last 50-plus years devoted to modules and scenarios, many of which are *very specific* as to what you need to do, in what order, where, how, and what the outcome should be.[^2] That, in and of itself, almost defines story gaming by representing its antithesis. That is explicitly not what story gaming is about, so we can discard that right off the top of the deck. ## It's Not About Mechanics So now we need to talk about the affirmative. What is story gaming about? What is its central mechanism of practice? Spyder makes a vital mistake, and it's one that he's prone to, by first and foremost talking about mechanics. That's just wrong. It has very little to do with mechanics at all, at any level. First and foremost, story gaming is about a *philosophical approach to the practice of play* that is essentially different from many games that came before, and became the inspiration of the indie gaming movement. That philosophical practice is a focus on the character as prime mover of play and not externally applied architectural pressure. This is not a *completely* umbrella truth when it comes to story gaming, however. There are many games that fall under the rubric of story gaming that deliberately subvert that assumption. **[Bluebeard's Bride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebeard%27s_Bride)** starts with a very specific situational setup and narrow specification of who the protagonist is.[^3] Notice the philosophical approach: that it is about the actions and exploration of the character within a specific situation, and that character's motivations and how they change over time, which is the center, intentionally, of the experience. ## Older Than the Forge This philosophical approach didn't originate with [the Forge](http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php), of course. It was reified in many ways, written down, presented in actual games for the first time to what was rapidly growing as the alternative RPG hobby. The roots go further back. You can make a good argument that 19th-century **[[Kriegsspiel]]** in Prussia was one of the first manifestations of what is modern story gaming. After all, **Kriegsspiel** was played by a group of players and run by a set of referees who had no set of mechanics to adjudicate the results. Instead, they used their understanding of the game space, of the setting, of the capabilities of the things being discussed to judge whether or not the intended result by the players would be reified within the sphere of play. It just so happened to be that their sphere of play was 19th-century field warfare, and the referees were experienced officers and subject experts. But that's not truly different. From the modern manifestation of story gaming, the biggest difference is that in the ensuing time we have developed tools and methodologies, technologies for making that job easier, codifying expert knowledge, and making it easily referenceable. But now I'm doing it. I'm getting lost in the weeds talking about mechanics. It's not about the mechanics. ## Story by Kind, Not Kin Let's talk about another game, which I would consider a predecessor of the modern story gaming experience. We'll even throw in a moment about mechanics here while we're at it: **[Toon](https://www.sjgames.com/toon/)**. I know. You're confused now. How in the world is **Toon** a story game? Well, look at how it's actually intended to be played, and one of the central axioms of how it is to be run by the GM. *"Is it funny? It happens."* While there are some fairly crunchy mechanics that describe characters, they're not overly extensive. This is the critical bit of GM advice that cements the whole book: *"Is it funny? It happens."* What kind of a story are we telling? It's a comedy. It's a Saturday morning cartoon. It's the kind of thing where ludicrous events happen, and if the intent is funny, odds are good that it works. If there's a question, err on the side of funny. This is, in its own fumbling way, a movement toward story gaming, because it is about the story that is being woven at the table. It's not about the *narrative* that's being woven at the table, but about the *story* that's being woven at the table. The differentiation between a story and a narrative is critical. If I refer to something as a "fairy story," odds are good that you know what I'm talking about immediately. More so if you've studied the Brothers Grimm and understand the history of the term fairy story through the Victorian era into today. You might even be familiar with the way that Tolkien used the term fairy story. But every fairy story is not the same. In fact, if I tell you that we are about to share a fairy story, you don't have any idea exactly what's about to happen. Any number of narrative elements and a million billion narrative combinations could hit the table next, and you just don't know. But you do have a feel for the themes, for the way stories are structured, and for the way characters interact within the framework of a fairy story. That knowledge that you can understand what kind of story we're telling is the essence of what story gaming is. That there are kinds of stories and that we can look to them to help guide our decision making, no matter the mechanics or absence thereof. Not only can we, within the context of this game, we should. Take a moment to sit back and imagine the equivalent of **Kriegsspiel** for fairy stories. Imagine you're sitting down with one of the Brothers Grimm, and he says, *"All right, you're in a big dark forest. Who are you?"*[^4] Now it's time for character generation. Who are you? What kind of character fits into a fairy story? You could be a talking fox, or a child who's been abandoned by his parents, or a troll, or a wise old owl. All of those are characters that fit into the context of a fairy story. You're probably *not* a grizzled soldier wrestling with his PTSD or a wizard who's just shown up to try and get some gold pieces so he can level up.[^5] The philosophy of story gaming is taking that general idea that you *know* what kind of story we're talking about, and you can judge the probability of outcomes by not simulating a physical mechanical world, but by thinking about the themes and styles and nature of a story, and just playing that out. You also may rightly object and say that you can certainly play **D&D** in that mode. You *can* play **D&D** where your outcomes and actions and choices are guided by the kind of story that you're in. After all, that's why Appendix N exists, right? It exists to provide a flavorful stew of influences and stories, which should, and some would say must, guide your decision making as to how outcomes of decisions that are in doubt can be resolved. I would say you are correct, but that is not the philosophy by which **D&D** has been played for 40 years at most tables. ## And Yet It Moves Now we're going to get around to talking about mechanics. Having established the philosophical premise that the story framework itself should be what guides the methodology for deciding what comes next when a question comes up, free of any illusion that we're actually simulating a physics, then what is the point of mechanics within story gaming? After all, you could certainly run it like a free **Kriegsspiel** with the GM simply deciding. Collaborative storytelling, it's called. It works. It's fun. You should give it a try sometime. So why mechanics? Because we're not simulating the physical processes of a world. Instead, mechanics exist to help simulate the story mechanics of a story. Are there story mechanics? Anyone who has seriously studied writing can tell you there are many, and the number of books that try to teach people about those story mechanics almost rivals the number of teachers who have a class to convince they have the secret of writing the next great story, whether it be a novel, a short story, or a screenplay.[^6] The focus on simulating the architecture of stories is one of the things that differentiates story gaming from more traditional forms of tabletop RPGs. As a fine example, let's look at **[[Primetime Adventures]]**. If you've never heard of the game, I can't really slight you for that. It was an indie darling for a hot minute, and then it disappeared. It had some influence in the scene, but really, I think it was too specific as to what kind of stories it wanted to tell to really get mainstream traction. What were those stories? TV series. Specifically TV series. The episodic ensemble TV series. One of the mechanics that worked toward simulating the structure of those stories and how they flowed was giving a character an arc that they would go through during a 9-episode season. I don't mean a *narrative* arc, though it inevitably worked out that way post hoc, but from a mechanical perspective, their ability to influence the story through the mechanics waxed and waned depending on whether it was the top of their narrative arc or they weren't really important to the story at that moment at all. Every player character had their own arc, often staggered, so that everyone got the spotlight during the season. The mechanics for resolving conflicts of vision, which is really what mechanics do in every system when you get down to it, took into account how much in the spotlight the character was. If they were the spotlight character for that episode, their player was likely to get narrative rights for most of the scenes in which there were a conflict. If they weren't the spotlight character, their chances of getting what they wanted were less. Notice how I carefully avoid saying *"getting a success,"* because a player doesn't necessarily always want the character to *succeed* in story gaming. What's the more interesting outcome? If you have narrative control, you get to pick what that outcome may be. Again, this is something that differentiates story gaming from traditional gaming. In story gaming, the question often comes down to a question of narrative control. Who has control of how this question is answered? Is it this player or that player or the GM, if there is one? Do we go to the random table of potential outcomes, which require interpretation within the context of the scene? These are the questions that are essential within the scope of a story gaming resolution. It is almost never *"Do I hit him with my sword?"*[^7] ## Exeunt What then *is* story gaming? I would say that it is a mode of tabletop RPG play in which the characters are the prime movers of action, and the systems exist to resolve conflicts of vision about what fictional outcome comes next, in a way that attempts to simulate the nature of stories, whether or not it's by some sort of random resolution or judgment. Now I probably could go on about mechanisms of play for reifying stories into tabletop experiences in ways that are accessible for anyone to actually do, rather than requiring high levels of expertise, which some people have accused story gaming of demanding of the people facilitating the games. But we're not going to touch on that. Instead, I will just share with you an insight that I had earlier today when replying to someone on Reddit about **[[Ironsworn]]** and whether or not they could change their vow if the character's understanding of the situation changed in a way that made the vow shift. If, for example, their vow was to save their sister from the kidnappers, but they discovered that the kidnappers were actually aliens who kidnapped her as part of a plot to take over the city due to her special genetics, would it make sense to increase the challenge rank of the vow from, say, dangerous to extreme? The answer came to me after the initial response: *["Who the fuck is going to break into your house and hold a gun to your head if you don't change the vow back to what it was?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/Ironsworn/comments/1ww7mhv/comment/pdjcnil/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)* The sheet is there to manifest what the character *is*. The character is not there to manifest what the sheet says. The character is the first-class object in play. The character sheet is just there to help you play it. If the character changes, the sheet has to change. The real part that we're playing is the *character*, first and foremost. The character sheet, the numbers on it, even the words on it, are just there to make playing the character and resolving conflicts easier. The first mechanism of judgment is to just *pay attention* to the place the character is. I think that really sums up story gaming in a way I don't think I've ever seen anyone else put it, perhaps for good reason. I may be insane. Regardless, that's probably enough on that subject for now. I'm sorry, Spyder. When you summon the devil, sometimes you get the horns. [^1]: Appropriate background music here:  [^5]: Though I'm not going to lie, the idea of a **D&D** wizard wandering into a proper fairy story and getting absolutely fucked up, given the rules of the fairy story universe, does make me laugh to contemplate. [^2]: Truthfully, you can only love **[Expedition to the Barrier Peaks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedition_to_the_Barrier_Peaks)** so much before you have to acknowledge it wants a single path through the module and it will enforce it with colored keycards to get it. [^3]: By protagonist in this case, I literally mean the player character. [^4]: As an aside, this actually leads into one of my favorite bits of online accidental punditry, which supports story gaming while pretending to be **D&D**. It's where Deborah Ann Woll sits down and invites Jon Bernthal to play **D&D** with her, but what she does is not how **D&D** is conceived as being played by many of its advocates.  What we have here is pure story gaming: setting up a situation and then asking someone who they are, why they're there, explaining what they see, asking what they intend to do, making the character the core driver of the experience with no preconceived idea of what the outcome should be, but instead deciding where the narrative power resides. [^6]: Did you pick up on the fact that I have very little respect for most books about writing intended to teach people how to write? It may have been too subtle. [^7]: It's better off for it, if we're going to be honest.