Savagezion said:
The problem is the more linear your story becomes, the more the player must ask "How does my GM want me to resolve this?" rather than "How can my charactor resolve this". I found this quote very peculiar in you post.
I snipped quite a bit, hopefully I'm not forgetting anything.
At any rate, alignments were not something that came about in RPGs until later when people started building worlds and such for them. The point I am making here is that an RPG is fundementally a very simple thing. Sure a plotline can enhance an RPG, but at it's most
basic level it's about a collection of stats and some dice.
It's sort of like a couple of wargamers fielding armies and then rolling dice to see who wins based on how well they can controll the variables. Sometimes the people involved will re-fight a historical battle, in other cases they might just put down a few units of napoleanic era troops on a sandtable with some random scenery and have at it.
To begin with the appeal was more along the lines of having a set of mechanics that could emulate one specific guy taking a swing at another guy with a weapon. Just like lining up a few random units to fight a skirmish or whatever the satisfaction was simply from the doing, rather than some kind of fantastic metaplot.
I'm not saying that this is all RPGs should still be of course, simply that it's those fundemental sorts of mechanics, where two gamers can say "I whack you with my sword", "noes! I whack you" and roll dies for the resolution as to who wins the ensueing swordfight that makes something an RPG. Anything else is simply dressing it up, and while that might improve it, none of the dressing like story, plot, etc... should be mistakenly considered integral to the games themselves.
-
As far as the bit you quoted, I will say that the problem of course is in having a story and considering that integral to the experience. To put things into context, RPGs at their best are a framework, a loose plotline with an objective, followed by tossing the characters out there to do their thing. There is doubtlessly going to be a storyline tying things together, but the idea is not to TELL a story since that by definition implies a degree of railroading.
To put things into perspective one of the more classic modules out there is "The Isle Of Dread" which has been reprinted for several versions of D&D. The plot is basically "you have heard that there are great riches on this island from which nobody returns, being adventurers you have decided to sail there to see what all the fuss is about". Now, there are several things going on, on this island, none of which has a predetermined resolution, and any of which can be missed. For the most part the adventurers explore the island via a hex map, and graph paper. There are also suggested additional plot elements that can be introduced like say a wizard deciding he really wants a pet dinosaur and once he hears the adventurers talking about their adventures while selling their loot he hires them to capture one for him on their next trip.. and things like that.
Storytelling as a "gaming" form is something I've actually seen as a sort of cancer within gaming. All too often today an adventure consists of a series of interlinked, and more or less unavoidable encounters. The techniques suggested in many DMGs at one hand talk about not railroading, but then also go on about doing the job "right" to present the illusion of freedom without actually giving any.
This form of GMing is actually a *LOT* easier than creating an adventure framework like the above because you can control the variables by limiting them to the umpteenth degree. It's also the format most published adventures have been using for a while because it's relatively easy to write as well. The attitude being that you as the GM are telling a story, and the PCs are playing roles within it... the GM already knowing the end of the story, or perhaps maybe the possible ends from a short list that he'll allow to transpire.
A good example of this would be the published Adventure that "tied up" the entire Bahrain facility/Slider metaplot in White Wolf's old "Aberrant" setting. The basic adventure winds up with the PCs watching a bunch of NPCs doing whatever the plot demands, with the instructions clearly saying to ignore PC actions and that they are smacked down by godlike power (irregardless of what they might be capable of) if they try and interfere with the intended resolution. Not only is this common nowadays in adventures (with various degrees of class) but a lot of people seem to think that this is the way things are supposed to be, hence all of the discussion about storytelling being the defining element of RPGs... which it is not.
While there have always been discussions about Monty Haul or "Munchkin" characters in the gaming community, just in the time I've been playing I've noticed definate shifts in what is considered to be such behavior. A lot of the time characters that need to be "disaplined" are simply doing what they are supposed to, and while at one time it was hard to throw a wrench in the gearworks of an adventure, today there is so much stuff that has to happen in an interconnected plot that it's hard to really blame someone for trying to do their own thing when it makes sense. Once upon a time a "wrench in the gearworks" might be if someone hit upon the idea of grabbing a flying ship from another adventure and using it to traverse "The Isle Of Dread" and avoid the seamonsters and shoot landlocked dinosaurs with arrows from safety. Today it's more like "OMG, one of the PCs decided one of my NPCs is an obnoxious twit and left a key encounter, which makes the adventure difficult to continue for everyone else. I must disapline the guy...". The former representing the true spirit of gaming and how things could go wrong (and I mean kudos for brains if someone knew about such a ship, and thought about using it), the latter being more along the lines of "So what your saying, is that this thing is on such rails that if the PCs don't endure this guy, the entire adventure derails?".
At any rate, all rambling aside, I will say there is middle ground between the two, what I'm getting at is that it's when you start going too heavy with the story aspects that you wind up with problems. The more the game becomes focused on telling a story, as opposed to creating one as things happen, the more linear things become by their very nature.
When it comes to video games, I do understand why the medium leads to heavy story telling with little control over most of what happens. I mean game programmers can only allow for so many contingencies. I do however think that the future of computer RPGs lies more in the direction of sandbox games like "Oblivion" or "Fallout 3" than in the direction of say "Mass Effect" which despite the prescence of some stats is barely a shadow of an RPG anymore as of the second installment. Heck, half the time choosing differant options in conversations just changes tone more than actually resulting in anything differant happening.
Once someone creates a sandbox where the little quests and characters can be as involved as the stuff going on in the more cinematic "RPGs" I think success will have been achieved with the genere. We aren't there yet, but I imagine it will come eventually.
For those who read this far, I think a key element is going to be easy to work with voice creation technology, allowing programmers to create the voices, inflection, delivery, etc.. they need from whole cloth in a studio without needing an actor. Similar tech exists, but
it's not all that prevelant right now. One of the big bariers afflicting game design is of course voicework and the time and expense it takes, but I imagine this will not always be the case. Once voices become easier to do, you'll probably see more options becoming availible due to being able to easily produce more lines, and less need to feel people need to be rushed through all the characters and not "miss anything" because of all the effort taken.
.