I really am not sure what your point is. I said that gaming isn't dead and people have been decrying its end as long as I've been talking to people on the Internet (or its precursor, FidoNet) since about 1990. And I think people were write Letters to the Editor in Dragon Magazine before that, decrying the death of the hobby.
If your point is to refute that we story gamers also like traditional games, all I can say is, well, most of my friends play a mix, and I'm not talking my 4 local gaming group buddies. I mean the 60+ people who attend Camp Nerdly, or the hundreds of gamer friends who attend Dreamation or DEXcon, which has a huge indie turn-out. Yeah, there are Forge Twunts who say stupid things about traditional gaming, but a lot of us have a deep respect for traditional games, and still play traditional games.
See, I wouldn't claim Wick as a story gamer at all. His games rely on traditional "rule 0" GMing techniques that story games eschew. Wick can go fly a kite, as far as I'm concerned, but he'd probably make kite-flying not fun anymore.
I see tons of traditional gamers making the same asinine remarks about how story gamers "aren't role-playing," too.
Taxonomy
I don't understand the relevance of any of the taxonomy stuff, unless you're just trying to define terms so we are on the same page. It's a lot of work to do that, though...
I consider most of the games in your Hybrid category as story games, actually. But no need to quibble over definitions as long as we know what each other means.
Where do you categorize Apocalypse World and Dungeon World and Monsterhearts and other games "Powered by the Apocalypse"? I'd guess you'd call them hybrids. To me, they're clearly story games. I mean, they have sex moves and relationship rules. <=)
Burning Wheel (and, by similarity, Mouse Guard), to me, is the most likely to fit in a hybrid category but it's got pretty radical story-gamey ideas in it. Luke was a hardcore Forge guy.
I'm not sure scene resolution is a great indicator of what a story game is, but I can go with that.
Generally, when people talk about traditional games, what they really mean is "none of that newfangled nonsense" and "the GM has a traditional role and powers" (meaning in charge, making rulings, using fiat) and "the rules are guidelines" (meaning the gamer doesn't prioritize the rules covering story structure as much as they want it to cover verisimilitude). Oh, and most of the book should be about combat and exploration, because that's what role-playing is about, or at least you shouldn't need any kind of rules for "just role-playing" (and the GM is expected to just use fiat to adjudicate anything that comes up for social stuff).
Any anything outside that box is probably labeled either "one of those story games" or "not an RPG." Right?
Not really. Apocalypse World is the terminator between story and hybrid, IMO. Most of the people hyping it aren't big fans of Trad games, and from what I've seen, it plays very unlike trad.
Thing is, Trad has a few axiomatic issues:
- Unless there's a disad or magic involved, the owning player is the only one who decides what a PC attempts.
- Players absolutely do NOT get to narrate stuff into existence. They can suggest it by asking, but until the GM says yes, it does not exist, and it's not incumbent upon him to do so.
- Systems resolve actions, not conflicts.
- Systems have one-axis results (Fumble-fail-partial-success-crit is still one axis)
That's the core of the Trad side, which is mostly gamist and simulationist games, and there are bunches of subdivisions.
Burning Wheel is in hybrid turf, because players can explicitly narrate stuff into existence, and the GM is supposed to, by the rules, say yes or set an Ob.
FFG is in hybrid turf because of both yes-and, and yes-but from the dice, as well as "flip a destiny to find a ___"...
Fate is still in the resolving actions, single axis results, but allows narrating things into existence. Same with Cortex Plus. Also, both allow forcing other PC's to act (but require mechanical engagement to do so).
Games like
Blood and Honor, (or it's parent system,
Houses of the Blooded,) which still resolves actions, but is about narrative control, don't play like Trad at all. In B&H, you declare the action in broad terms and narrate the leadup. Anyone with a stake in the scene can then make a roll; the dice not used for generating control are the number of things you get to say if you win the roll... but anyone with a stake can be narrated by anyone with things to say left when it's their turn on the resolution. A combat action can be simple, or it can be a complex comedy of errors, especially if the acting character fails to retain any dice for things to say with the Yes-and and Yes-but contributions.
In one case, a player made a really lame roll - 5 dice rolled, didn't get 10, and so lost the 3 dice for saying things, and the only player who broke 10 had rolled only 2 dice... and narrated the player succeeding on the attempt to embarrass the Shogun, then chickening out, fleeing, hiding, and drinking sochu until they passed out in their own vomit...
I love B&H. But my players don't. They don't like that storygame mode of not "owning" their character. That session also saw the story hijacked into a dark, cthulhuesque sexually-charged story, and resulted in ending the campaign because one player could not keep within the bounds of "don't be a jerk". He singlehandedly crossed boundaries of EVERY other person in the 6-player group that session. And he's the only one in the group who likes other storygames.
My wife will play hybrids, provided that the line of ownership of the character is not crossed. That's really the hard line in the sand for her.
Many of the OSR crowd vehemently reject player narrative input other than action attempts...
Those two camps are the extremes, and I know from discussions elsewhere that you're pretty middle of the road, Adam. But a lot of players are not middle of the road.
There are people who genuinely think even Burning Wheel goes way too far into, and I quote one of my former players, "touchy-feely player-empowerment crap."
The division of the game systems into different areas of comfort, both on the player-empowerment axis and the rules-narrative axis, has lead to what used to be "everybody who RP's either does D&D or Improv" into groups that have systems to match their sensibilities. And that makes it harder to find players locally, even tho there are more people playing now than ever before. It also has lead to a wider acceptance that there are differing playstyles, and that they aren't
wrong, just
wrong for certain people.
