Arkham's Inquiries - Storytelling
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In a tell, I mentioned "things might have been interesting had you let us speak"; the response was on the order of "I fulfilled a step towards my goals, why should I care?"; A little bit of me as a RPer died; thats not Storyelling, no matter how "epic" others considered that character later; thats checking a box in your checklist.
This particular anecdote struck a chord with me, and I'd just like to make a statement regarding the "checklist" attitude.
If I ever, ever, ever get wind of this attitude on CoA, I will personally devise a horrible setback for that player's character involving loss of limbs and half of their levels and gold. This is a community of responsible roleplayers who are trying to tell stories and have fun in a game. As such, I will severely punish any who I see exhibiting this attitude of, "I'm going to win at the cost of your fun."
That, to me, is the core aspect of storytelling on CoA - the act of telling a tale that can be both fun for the antagonist and protagonist on both sides. At the end of the day, there should either be anticipation for the next encounter or catharsis after a good set of roleplay. Not OOC whining or e-penis promotion.
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As I have mentioned storytelling a few times, I shall give my thoughts to it. Storytelling is having "characters" instead of "concepts". Such as when that big werewolf comes at you, the werewolf being a lvl 11 barbarian, that you pick up a torch and him being a character who is frightened to death of fire, runs off, scared more of the lvl 3 rogue with a torch, that a lvl 10 paladin with a glowing sword. Its where sitting down at the Traveller, sharing a meal and telling the latest story of your last adventure. Its where a bard can affect the crowd without having to find fifteen hedge magic regents beforehand.
Its where CHARACTERS are in focus, and we as players try our best to portray their personality. Where a characters addiction to alchohol isnt a gimick used between quests, but defines how he reacts to situations, even if that reaction is negative. Where people dont come up with excuses to bend their concept, just because Hinx, Live or Citizen Bane have been approved for an evil half dragon warlord, and you want to use their awesome powers to quest with, even though your character is a paladin. (And I love all three of them, so it isnt in any way a hit against them.)
And where if you try the above, you arent labelled as a Sim character. Give me the above, with more conflict and less flowers, and I will return to CoA. (And unless something drastic changed in the last few months, "No" CoA isnt focused on characters, its focused on concepts, and accomplishing whatever the fuck you wrote on your app to get your mighty dragon wings or glowing sword.)
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I feel that story telling should be about risks- players trying to overcome truly impossible odds to get what they are after, to leave a legacy worth speaking about, and that only a few out of a couple thousand should be able to. Death should be present, an everyday event in the life of an adventurer, frustration, loss, and bitterness should be all on the path to greatness.
The greatest heroes (and villains) are those who we watch triumph over obstacle after obstacle and leave an impression that truly changes the setting of a server.
Yes, this was edited.
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SpiffyHas
Some people have different tastes. To expect a player who is telling a story to treat every character differently due to a PC preference behind the screen is both unrealistic and impossible, I will not bother trying. If you think that is not fun, well, I apologize, but I do not intend to change for your fun.This is a case of one manner of story telling conflicting with another. I enjoy mine, I know what I like, and if you do not appreciate it, I will make small efforts to not involve you, but if you get in the targeting lane, I will simply say, "Shit happens, try and enjoy it."
Wow… Methinks I detect the fetid stench of self centeredness, with a dash of contempt thrown in on the side. No good can come of this kind of "my way or the highway" mentality. There is already an undertone of exclusivity growing on the server. I hate to sound like CoA gramps here, but back in my day we were pretty accommodating of the other players and their play styles son. With an attitude like that your going to run into trouble.
On storytelling - I'm with Eddie sedative for the most part. Without reliving the glory days of CoA I will try to make my point. Players telling -personal- tales have always been the attention grabbers here. I don't think slaying dragons, or having flames leaping from your weapon are terribly interesting. Those things are the spice, the frills if you will, on a characters story. I've used the term "plot frenzy" in posts before. Plot frenzy is essentially what we have on the server now. Somehow people have decided that the more important plots they have feathering their caps, the more important or fulfilled they are. What about making a -character- instead of a plot-bot?
I'd like to see a return to more character centered story telling with the plots acting to facilitate these stories.
Sensei
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I really think that 3 sentences limit was specifically suggested by the OP to avoid tl;dr ego trips.
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Personal stories are great, without them the characters are just hollow, but it's balance, if you only develop your characters personality, and don't actually do anything, well I know I'd get bored, if you wouldn't, then cool, enjoy, but there's probably much better environments for those stories.
For me the stories are about interactions between all the characters, some of those interactions are violent, some of them are about friendship, some are about hatred, some love, some are about a fellowship getting together to change the world, and then being thwarted by another fellowship who want it to stay the same.
Deep characters that do interesting things in the world that they live in are awesome, deep characters that do very little are boring, shallow characters are just always boring, no matter what they do.
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Personal stories are great, without them the characters are just hollow, but it's balance, if you only develop your characters personality, and don't actually do anything, well I know I'd get bored, if you wouldn't, then cool, enjoy, but there's probably much better environments for those stories.
Is this your individual opinion, or is this an official DM stance?
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My opinion.
For me, part of Dungeons and Dragons is about dungeons and dragons.
I'm not sure that my opinion voiced here is very far off this post though.
I'd like to make it clear I'm not saying I feel that kind of play is unwelcome, as I just noticed which section you highlighted.
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Storytelling to me is that moment when you don't know what's going to happen next, where you churn to log IG just to see what's going to happen once the curtains are unraveled, whether McNollen was indeed secretly a backstabbing Cyricist, or if he fought for the Loyalists all along, saving them from the war to come with a cunning, last moment ruse.
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For me, I try to tell the story with other players. I look for things in other characters "lives" that perhaps my character can help them develop. I like watching other characters learn and grow just as much as I enjoy the ones who find a niche and stay there. Everything my characters have done have been made possible and driven by other players. Seeking out and learning from experienced role-players opens up a whole new dynamic and reveals, I feel, That the server is truly not one large story, but a collection of hundreds of small tales. I try, quite clumsily, to engage everyone I meet in game at least once.
Taking the time to hear about another characters home, family, relationships and other small details will undoubtedly produce a wealth of information that can be manipulated and structured into a full grown story all it's own, all while sitting at a table drinking ales. Exploring weaknesses and strengths, Dealing with vice and corruption, all these things are awesome and make the story of Arabel compelling to me.
Hope this is to the point, but it is how I can best describe what storytelling is to me.
Also, to a lesser extent, leveling and getting cool items. -
@oni:
Everything my characters have done have been made possible and driven by other players.
This was well said.
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I believe there is a distinction to make, to differentiate between storytelling and character development. The first involves, as the name suggests, a story. A story that evolves according to what the characters decide to do, and that does not belong to anyone and yet belongs to everyone. The latter revolves around the depth of feelings, emotions, thoughts that a character has. Both are greatly enjoyable, but one should not be mistaken with the other, and yet I believe many make this mistake. As soon as the character's depth turns into a story in that it affects the world, it ends up clashing with other stories, and we have storytelling. Storytelling without deep characters is shallow. Character's depth that doesn't convey in a story is boring. This is what Zool said, and I agree there may be other places more suited to welcome such playing style.
And the reason is very simple. I remember, when I was a player, spending hours and hours simply chatting with other players. Sitting at a table and discussing topics ranging from life to the last orc that I beheaded. Such depth, the strong feelings, emotions, etc that grow between two characters are the reason Arabel is so wonderful. Unfortunately one of the burden you carry once you become a DM is that the possibility to enjoy all of this, vanishes. You can spend hours observing two characters chatting, but you are not really there anymore. You are not part of it. It's not the same. You usually last ten minutes, then get bored and leave for something else. If players have the feelings that DMs do not give importance to character's depth but only to the story (aka plots) it's not because we do not like character's depth, but because we are not in the position to enjoy it. We could possess NPCs and speak with characters at length (and sometimes I have done it, when I missed this aspect of Arabel too much), but it is not a sustainable approach. What DMs can enjoy are the stories that progress, the clashes, the fights, the struggles.
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the bottom line for me; this is a violent fantasy world inhabited by dungeons and dragons. so lets strap on some armour and get down to business. Hopefully the character can develop his personality and story before the hack and slash becomes dull. To assume that a character is born fully formed doesn't work for me. People in the world develop their opinions through interaction within that world.
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I find the problem I have is that simply, every person has a story to run with on their character. Especally at this current stage in Arabel, where a lot of people want to see others removed… perminantly. It's two stories conflicting isn't it? In both players stories, they want to see their character truimphant, but obviously both can not win. Since I'm terrible at dealing with server conflict, I'd rather try a lesser conflict story between players. Maybe I just want to "Win", but not all stories shoudn't be about two factions trying to be the best.
Smply, I'd like some storytelling to allow characters who don't wish to be involved in factions, even indirectly, some action. Faction Politics is honestly a bore for me to deal.
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Storytelling if you're sitting in front of a page is depicting a series of events (or lack thereof if you want to be a modernist). Storytelling when you only have one character to speak through, one perspective in the narrative, and there are others like you swarming around is entirely different. It becomes something of a contradiction, where total immersion would require tuning out all these OOC things that make a kind of "common tale" possible. So to me that's where a lot of the love-hate I have for CoA comes from: it's the best setting I've ever seen (low magic, mysterious, characters don't become omnipotent by leveling up) but if you squat down, tune out, and try to pretend you're "in Arabel as your character" you get disappointed pretty fast. Then you try making lots of sendings for this, that, the other, but find that you're no longer running on that spark of suspended disbelief and your character (and other people's) look a lot like cartoon characters. In essence I guess they are. However, in the case of this module and others, you are not the narrator; you can do whatever, but a DM can veto it out or modify it. This isn't a bad thing in itself but it contributes to a kind of feeling where some things become more "culturally" desirable (here it tends to be conflict) than others.
With all that, for me, storytelling is just making a Mary-Sue so that I can understand/justify the character's reactions, and just going with what seems like a good idea at the time…
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Made a really long post with examples and such then realised it all comes down to this.
The Journey.
Not your goals not your history but the journey from the start of the character to it's end.
Stay in character and never go ooc in it's actions this way the story you write is good and others will enjoy it more. -
Storytelling is to involve your audience in a journey with a beginning, a middle and an end which hopefully leaves them changed in some way: stronger, wiser, cursed…
It's going from A to B and explaining how they got there and why they went- and where they are now and which C's loom on the horizon.
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I believe there are three parts to story telling and each are valid to a point. My two cents on the below, though I do consider the last (Server Story) the most important of the lot.
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Character Development:
This covers how a character develops on the server and all those short little incidents that rise up from time to time that help define who they are. Perhaps they won a drinking contest against a dwarf and therefore became a much bigger drinker. Or perhaps there was a week long plot against bugbears that they helped end and therefore hate all bugbears that much more. These kinds of things are fun and help develop each of the characters, but dont usually change the story arc of the server itself. -
Character Story:
This covers the story arc of an individual character, and the impact here frankly depends on the nature of the character and how they are played. There are a -lot- of good characters out there but relatively few that are remembered long term by individuals other than the player and his / her IC friends. This should not discourage people from playing really kick ass characters, just understand that its a big world and there will be relatively few characters that change the story arc of the server. -
Sever Story:
This covers the long term story arc of the server itself, and should have a large focus on it IMHO. Characters die, or the player gets bored and moves on to another character, or have RL events come up that limit their play time, or the player cant be online 24 / 7 and involve everyone. In short, focusing all the story development on a handful of characters makes things relatively boring when those people are not around anymore. Instead, focus on the over arching server story arc and how the individual character story arcs help tell that over arching server story arc. My personal preference is a long term server story arc without a determined end where individual character actions / character story arcs determine how that long term server story arc plays out. Also, there are consequences and the server changes based upon how plot points play out during the server story arc. IE server story arc one ends and as the next rises the characters have to deal with the consequences (good and bad) of server story arc one.
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And on that positive note, I'll lock this topic and review the answers. Thanks everyone.