Basic Information
A story game is sort of a sub-genre or style of RPG. They tend to be small press or independantly published, so for example you could a lot of them for sale at Indie Press Revolution.[1] What makes a story game different from an RPG is usually philosophy and the distribution of mechanical power. Many story games don't have a GM, or if they do they give the other players a bigger share of the narrative and world-building power than in a standard RPG, so the GM is just another player with assymetrical goals. Others use a GM, but are designed to be run off-the-cuff and improvisationally with little or no GM prep.1In some story games, the players play multiple characters, or share communal control over some minor characters, or don't even play a character at all. Some story games will use very familiar mechanics and concepts from "normal" RPGs, and others are radically different activities where you're building a map or a timeline instead of acting. Most story games tend to be rules-light, and/or just shorter than most traditional RPG corebooks, so they're easy to learn and fast-playing.
Here's a list of a few story games this arcanist has played or read. There's plenty more out there if you dig around the web a while.
- Baron Munchausen (story game) - over-the-top noblemen interrupt and amend each other's tales of their ridiculous exploits
- Dialect (story game) - a game about language and how it dies
- Dungeon World (story game) - a fantasy game where the players help the GM define the world
- Fiasco (story game) - a GM-less game in the vein of Coen Brothers movies
- Hillfolk (story game) - handles dramatic and social conflict by emulating "golden age of television" character struggles and rotating who is the "director" from one scene to the next
- InSpectres (story game) - a game about one of those ghost-hunting reality tv shows
- Microscope (story game) - a GM-less game about building a timeline and setting
- Psi*Run (story game) - you have amnesia, a dangerous super power, and a vague awareness that some conspiracy is hunting you. Run!
- Puppet Land (story game) - Punch and Judy and The Nutcracker gone real dark
- Remember Tomorrow (story game) - a GM-less cyberpunk game about style and mega-corp factions
- The Quiet Year (story game) - a GM-less map-making game about a community after the apocalypse
- Urchin (story game) - a game about crazy homeless people in the tunnels beneath New York, based on a very strange movie
- Universalis (story game) - a GM-less system for collaborative world building mostly, but also includes a bidding mechanic for RPG resolution
- Wilderness of Mirrors (story game) - an espionage/heist game where the players collectively build the site they are about to break in to
- Wrath of the Autarch (story game) - a kingdom-building game that's basically an RPG version of 4X (explore, expand, exploit and exterminate) computer game genre
- Yesterday's Tomorrow (story game) - a retro-sci-fi RPG about what people in the past thought the future would become
Not all story games identify themselves as such, so it can be hard deciding what belongs here and what belongs over on the campaign setting page.
The concept of "storygaming" may also find itself opposed to roleplaying in some analysis - where the emphasis in the game is on the story arc, and the play serves to develop and further that arc, that may be considered story gaming, whereas a roleplaying campaign's "story arc" such as it is, emerges depending on the results of roleplaying. The distinction can appear quite superficial and more one of emphasis than reality, but adaption to one or the other can cause significant differences in play - for example the story-game is likely to de-emphasise lethality (since removing a character from "the plot" can play havoc with the story) and anything else that distracts from the progress of the arc. A roleplaying campaign, by contrast, may not have a big picture story to follow and is more tolerant of characters indulging their quirks and poking about in the sandbox.2
Sources
Game and Story Use
- Some Story Games are great world-building tools, or can be used to simulate large swaths of "downtime" between adventures. It can be fun to start your campaign with one, or switch to them as a way to "age" your world between quests.
- Universalis is great for collaborative construction of a unique campaign setting or world where all the players get an equal say in details.
- Microscope will do the same for epic generation-spanning world histories.
- The Quiet Year will help you collaboratively build a map of your post-apocalyptic community, and fill in 1 year of recent history to get your campaign rolling.
- Some story games could even be integrated or swapped to mid-session to use their systems for the specific scenario types that they were built to handle best, and your favorite traditional RPG for everything else.
- Wilderness of Mirrors gets the PCs to do the heavy-lifting of scenario design, you could use a half a WoM session to collectively sketch out the next mission, then break for a week so the GM can fill in details and surprises. When you meet up again you can run the actual infiltration or heist in your usual system.
- Hillfolk's built-in Drama System is intentionally made "plug and play" where you add it to your favorite other RPG. You can insert Hillfolk's "relationship map" into your favorite character creation system, and then swap back and forth between dramatic "talky" scenes using Hillfolk's mechanics, and exciting "procedural" scenes like fights and chases using your actiony RPG of choice.