On Successful Communication With the Other Side

I engaged a story gamer with questions!

We didn't talk past each other!

We communicated! And understood each other!

Me: 

"I'm not really interested at all in attempting to simulate a movie? What I want to do is play a game that is it's own thing. I grant it's all informed by media, but 'do something that is like in that movie' is not really a goal of mine.

I think we can both agree the actual play of OSR D&D is not very movie-like. It's more like. . . a game. :-)"

Stras Acimovic:

Oh. You say that flat out several times, but I think I just put together the pieces. . .  Because see, I assumed we were referring to the same beast with different bits. We're not.

I see an RPG as Role-playing, where the word 'role' indicates an actor, similar to theatre. . . To you RPG stresses Gaming. . .

I was going to ask 'but why don't you just play a video game/board game', but I think I figured it out. Player Agency and Infinite Play. The ability to have the story be about you and your meaningful choices (which is lacking in a video game) and the ability to go off the grid (which is lacking in a board game). . .

ME:

"My confusion is over the logistics of rewarding everyone for separate things? How does that not create difficulties in logistical structure?" 

 Stras Acimovic:

In your OSR style games there are two facts.  

 #1) Combat, despite being lightning fast compared to the morass of minis games like the later editions, still takes a while. As do investigations of dungeons, negotiations with bandit leaders and so on. If the group is not of a like mind, and not focusing on performing the same action you get the split party syndrome where the GM is forced to spend alot of time with group A while half the players (or more) in group B are bored.

Many story games do 2 things.
1 - they resolve the whole conflict in a single roll. So Bob can negotiate with the bandits (or fight them) in a single roll. Assaulting a town? Roll once, done. . . . In other words 'rounds' and 'actions' can be defined very differently. . .
2- Meta rules also allow you to change probability-to-story relations. For example most OSR games are FatE (fortune at the end) as opposed to FitM (fortune in the middle). In other words in your games you declare intent, execute, then check to see success . . . Whereas in FitM games you declare intent, roll knowing success or failure, and then narrate the scene . . . Why does this matter? . . .\. If you do FatE you almost have to tick time because you're moving in actions, rather than in scenes. . .

If you say "I swing my sword" (FatE) you then have to check to see what happens. If you say "I fight the monster" and you fail, you can narrate 100 swings but the outcome of the overall fight is the same without having to check for success or failure of each one.

. . .You can do disparate things, because you're not punishing the rest of the group by having them be bored. Doing something away from the group frequently takes no more time than an action in a round would in a trad game.

#2) Many story games have meta rules that guide player, and provide them with opportunity which are different than rules that guide the group. You are equating player success with group success which isn't wrong if all the players are in a group, and the group is of one mind. To have a player be separate from the group and acting against the group interests is the same thing in your game since then the player is acting against the win-condition or goal of the game. We've established that this is bad. What story games often do though is decouple these rulesets. In other words, the party can be acting towards the same overarching goal, while the individual is not. The individual can pursue divergent goals, which benefit him (by giving him xp and levels for example) and therefore party in the long run. . .

Me:

I am stridently anti-illusionist. http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/search/label/series%20%28Quantum%20Ogre%29

Stras Acimovic:

You know I read that article and almost cried. You see the reason most story-gamers think OSR games are bad is because we grew up playing in bad ones. You're having fun because you're 'doing it right'.

So let me answer something for you now that I understand the question. What I think OSR games do 'wrong' (loaded word!) is that they . . . don't have articles like this included in the books. The 'problem' is that while the 'correct' way to do things may be exactly what's addressed in that article there is a way to do it without any player agency contained in the ruleset. In other words a bad GM can run a game full of illusionism completely removing player agency while acting within the rules themselves (if not the spirit necessarily).

Many story-gamers depart the trad games BECAUSE this bad-GMing behavior leads to a hostile game experience they associate with the genre and the games, instead of associating them with bad individual games.

What meta rules (like story points) do is not hack rule 0, but provide . . . a system of checks and balances for controlling GMs that act within the rules while being hostile to the players and denying player agency. OSR games have the potential to generate an us-vs-them gm-vs-the-players mentality, which can bring out the worst traits competitiveness and damage cooperation and fun (on the player end mostly). The meta-rules (like story points) often create a better environment (us-all-together-making-a-story-by-playing) and often results in a better play experience.

So let me clarify. When the original author (of the article at the very top original post) says 'meta rules are better' what he means is that there are rules to teach the GM how to 'play right' and if not put the power in the 'hands of the players' to maintain a good game environment. It's usually about setting up a system of rules and rewards that incentivises 'more productive' behavior. It's not about making a better game (in the sense of probability, and piece moving) so much as it is about mitigating bad games, and bad GM behavior. In other words they're not necessarily adding good, they're removing bad. So these rules may not help your game (specific) so much as they might help your game (OSR). . .

Me:

4)"I think I grok what you're saying. It seems more abstract.
I don't think it's accurate to say D&D characters don't have flaws - since the role they are taking is what would the player do in this situation, their flaws are really the player's flaws. :-) "

Stras Acimovic:

You know I realized I have 'story gamer' brain damage when I almost went 'but this is not a good thing'! Let me instead present you with an explanation (this isn't a suggestion because it may not work for what you're trying to do).

If you play a character with no goals or personality of their own this is often called being '2 Dimensional'. There are all sorts of other derogatory and negative connotations attached to it. Shallow. Boring. Not-fleshed-out. But the thing is in the OSR having your dude be a meeple isn't a bad thing. You spend too much time fleshing a character out and he gets axed by a troll in two bad rolls and wowzers. You just wasted a whole lot of time.

But some people enjoy the activity of fleshing out the character much like you like making a dungeon. And some people just desparately want to play something they saw in a movie or a book. They don't need the whole game to be a movie or a book, but if they can 'pretend' to be a cool lone-wolf badass-in-a-trenchcoat it makes them happy. So if you let them play a 'lone-wolf-badass' instead of a fighter while not breaking the game, they are happy and still benefit the party. The meta-rules allow for them to essentially design their own class while keeping them focused on the game goal (get gold, get xp, get badass enough to conquer lands) and not disrupt what the others are doing or break game-balance.

Me:

5) "You're saying the "encounter I would construct" is instead of a trap or monster, a thing like "debt" playing into whatever is on their sheet. I see. "

Stras Acimovic:

Yes! Yes! Exactly! happy dance This is it exactly! Hopefully now you can see that 'traps' and 'monsters' while flexible enough as challenges - also are somewhat impersonal. The troll may have great reasons to murder you for crossing it's bridge, but ultimately you don't care. You're just trying to get to your objective. When you dig into something personal, players can get more invested. As they say 'it's personal'. Also this opens whole new avenues and options of risk and conflict to explore and to use to drive your story and events.

I've learned as much about what you like, and what you like about it and more importantly WHY you like it from these discussions as I may have helped elucidate :)"