Point-Counterpoint:
Story versus Mechanics
In our inaugural edition, the discussion is between Stan! and Rich Redman.
STAN! |
Position:
Mechanics are the most important thing in a game product because if they're not sound then the game breaks down.
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RICH |
Position:
Story is the most important thing in a game product because if it's boring no one will want to play it.
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| STAN!: |
For the record, I think all our answers would change greatly depending on what kind of product we're talking about. I certainly have a different opinion regarding adventures than I do regarding source material or regarding splat books.
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| RICH: |
It may be depend on our definition of story, because I certainly disagree with your "for the record" statement. Sure, sound mechanics are important for exactly the reason you cite above. However, no one will read those mechanics if the story they support is boring, trite, or clichéd. By "story," I mean the background material, the "soft" stuff that isn't mechanics. In source material and splat books, it's the campaign background that runs along with the books. For instance, in our Artifacts of the Ages Series, it's very important that the items all have exciting histories that players want their characters to enter and act upon. In adventures, the story is the adventure itself. It needs a gripping plot, a truly threatening opponent, exciting locations, plot twists, and strong hooks for the characters.
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| STAN!: |
I couldn't disagree more. While I think that histories and background is interesting and provides inspiration to build adventures and campaigns around, the fact of the matter is that most GMs have their own stories, histories, and campaign backgrounds. What they want is cool material to place in their worlds. The more they have to "strip out" background material, the more they are likely to just ignore otherwise useful items. After four years working on Dragonlance, trust me ... gamers have a tendency to consider the story elements in an item's background as "required." Instead of saying, "How can I adapt that to MY game," I most often heard, "Well, that's for DL (or that's for the 5th Age) so I can't use it." The more an item or "crunchy bit" can be generic, the more useful it will be to the greatest number of people.
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| RICH: |
Stan!, you make a key point there. I have to point out that it's not true in every case. First, there's the beginner GM. The beginner doesn't know what's been done, what can be done, or what shouldn't be done. The beginner GMs needs that story material to help them out. Second, there's the genre. For most of us, a fantasy campaign lends itself to lots of different kinds of story. It's closest to the myths and fantasies we read growing up, it's closest to Joseph Campbell's monomyth, and it's fairly easy to create stories and campaigns. One of the concerns about d20 Modern, and one of the criticisms of Alternity, was that it was hard to know where to start and what kinds of stories to tell. People wanted more campaign material and more specifically, more story material, e.g. adventures.
Yes, mechanics are important. Yes, veteran GMs can tell their own stories and build their own campaigns. But even veteran GMs use "canon" story material to inspire them. Also, in this hectic day, campaign resources and adventure "stories" are a vital time-saver when the GM is pressed for time. It's far better to have that story material present and not need it than to need it and have to create it yourself.
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| STAN!: |
And I say that in most products the best story material is the least intrusive story material. Of course, sourcebooks, adventures, and other products where the background is intimately tied to the theme need to be steeped in that story. But when you come to more general use products (like the D&D core books, or even our Artifacts of the Ages Series), it's important to keep story elements pretty shallow. Look at the artifacts in the D&D DMG ... almost all of them have some kind of "history" attached to them, but they almost never use place or person names unless they're talking about a monster that can be found in another core book.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge proponent of storytelling in RPG products. Those are the kind of projects I most like working on. But when I'm writing a general use book, any time I introduce a named character into a piece of background I always ask myself "when someone reads this, will they stop and say 'who is this guy, what's his story?'" If the answer is yes, I remove the name and replace it with a generic character. I wouldn't say "Bertalon the Righteous carried the sword during the Battle of Steel Teeth" when "a legendary hero used the sword in a historic battle" would suffice. The former is definitely more colorful, but it is also more likely to make a GM feel like he needs to know who Bertalon is and what the Battle of Steel Teeth was all about.
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| RICH: |
I have to agree with you there. Few things irk me more than buying an RPG "rule book" and finding that half, or more, of every page is fiction. Frustrated novelists should write novels and get it out of their system. In most cases where I've seen that, the writer really needed to concentrate more on the mechanics. Sound mechanics, as we've said all along, are vital. Otherwise your product is unplayable. It's easier and faster to fix a bad story than it is to fix bad mechanics, especially if the story is separated from the mechanics (a rules section and a campaign material section).
I stand by my first point, that without an exciting story, no one reads your material. Something has to inspire the reader, excite his or her imagination, to get that reader to wade through pages of mechanics. Intrusive or not, you need good story in every RPG product.
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