Is D&D a story-telling game?

You read a lot of arguments on the Internet about role-playing games versus story-telling games. In particular there are vocal factions who sell D&D as a story-telling game (both calling this a good thing and a bad).

DaggerHeart, the new RPG from the Critical Role team, seems to have stirred the question up again – from what I’ve heard (I’ve never played it) it seems to have collaborative story-telling elements.

I’ve been inspired by a couple of blog posts to throw in my two-pennorth.

The first one which really caught my attention and inspired me to write was this one by RuneSlinger: The Accidental “Lie” in RPGs, but I was also inspired by Che Webster’s Recovering FRP which came out shortly afterwards.

Before we get into the discussion, it’s probably worth trying to define what we’re talking about.

What is a role-playing game?

Let’s start with the Wikipedia definition:

A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, or abbreviated as RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting or through a process of structured decision-making regarding character development. Actions taken within many games succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines.

So, unsurprisingly, it is a game where the players play a role, or “character” in a fictional setting. They represent their character and decide how their character acts and reacts to the situations in the game.

There are many different role playing games around, the most famous of which is Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), and the games derived from it – Pathfinder, Tales of the Valiant and Level Up! Advanced 5^th Edition being among the better known. But there are also others, such as the Blades in the Dark set, Call of Cthulu, Castles and Crusades, and the new DaggerHeart from the Critical Role team and Draw Steel from MDCM productions.

What is a story-telling game?

Again, let’s start with Wikipedia:

A storytelling game is a game where multiple players collaborate on telling a story. Some games primarily feature spoken storytelling, while others primarily feature collaborative writing. In some storytelling games, such as many tabletop role-playing games, each player represents one or more characters in the developing story. Others involve more third-person narrative.

So here the emphasis is on the story, which may or may not involve role playing.

A very simple version passed endless hours of journey for us as a family: the players take it in turn to add a word to the developing story. I have to confess I tended to leave that to the others after the first few times, and “concentrate on my driving”.

I came across a couple of other story-telling games a few years ago. I got involved in a weekend challenge where we were given five random seeds on the Friday evening, and we had to come back with a game on the Sunday afternoon. The random seeds we received were a theme of “Cabaret”, plus ingredients of Deceit, Myth, Watchtower and Spare parts.

For my contribution, I created the outline of a D&D module “The Cabaret in the Watchtower”. (I have since polished it and play-tested a few times. I really need to create a set of maps I like and properly publish it.)

The others participants were all story-telling game players.

I don’t remember the exact details of the games, but here’s what I remember:

• One had you develop a character’s life, one year at a time, rotating around the players. Each player in turn draws a tarot card and uses that to inspire their description of the character’s year. Once you draw Death, that’s the character doomed, and there was something to develop how they died.
• Another had the characters as performers in a circus, and someone had dropped out, so a character had to fill in, and describe how they performed despite not being trained for that role. There were rules to decide who filled in, and the other players had different roles. For example, one job was to throw in an awkward situation which made things harder.

In both cases, the game was about developing a story together, and the mechanics were inspiration guiding the story as it developed, plus ways to manage turn-taking.

I tried the games at the end of the weekend, but I found them unsatisfying. Would you like them? Quite possibly, maybe not. I recognise this is completely a matter of taste. My wife would probably much prefer these to D&D – she finds D&D completely unsatisfying and boring.

Dungeons and Dragons

So, can a role-playing game also be a story-telling game?

Clearly. You can play a role while you are collectively spinning a story between you.

Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game. Does this mean Dungeons and Dragons is a story-telling game?

I would say not. While a role-playing game can be a story-telling game, it is not necessarily one.

What’s the difference?

Dungeons and Dragons is about playing a role within a world imagined by the GM. But although the GM has developed the scenario, once you reach the table, the way the game develops is much more mechanical.

Yes, the characters can try anything the players can imagine, but they are reacting to the world and the situation, and there are a whole load of mechanics which determine the outcome of the attempt. It’s up to the GM and the dice whether what they try is reasonable, plausible, and succeeds, and exactly how the world reacts.

There are no mechanisms built into Dungeons and Dragons (as written) by which the non-GM players embellish the world and the story other than being their character.

And to me, that’s one of the reasons I like it so much. I like that the story emerges from the actions and interactions of the characters with the world. It makes it much more real to me, and (dare I say it?) helps build the immersion. It should feel like the characters, and hence vicariously their players, are living and breathing in a living and breathing world. And as GM, it should feel like I am the NPCs and the world reacting to the players (or not, depending…).

Sure, the game can be extended to add ways that the players contribute (and you will find plenty of suggestions across the Internet), but they are not there in the core rules as written.

Conclusion

Is D&D a story-telling game? I say no. And I also say it’s one of the reasons I like it.

Does this mean there are no stories from D&D? Of course not! Just like in real life, once the event has happened, there are all sorts of stories that get told in retrospect.

My players keep talking about the time a heist went badly wrong because a character dashed out of a door and out from under a balcony with a guard on it, because they trusted the map they had been given. They also talk about the time a character decided to flaunt the fact she was a wanted criminal in an attempt to bargain down a delivery price…just across the square from a guard house…and so (naturally) got arrested.

But those stories are told after the fact, from the situation that develops naturally out of the actions of the characters and the world.

Of course, at your table, you can (and should) adapt the rules to suit your taste. But my taste is firmly in the emergent story camp.