You are projecting a "you" problem as a "general" problem. It is not a general problem. I do not mind randomness, and I've had literally dozens of awful rolls in tense situations in the last three years of playing Ex3. I guarantee you, they are not consistently "ruined forever" moments. You don't like how the dice work and shit, that's fine.
No. No. It's a system based inherently in RNG, which is really not a way to base a story. They say it's about telling a story? Then the system should be vastly more controllable than it is. What they say is the point, and the mechanical system clash. Writer's don't roll die to decide who lives and dies, they make deliberate choices. Therefore, if Exalted really is about telling a story, then their should be control over events far beyond the limited probablistics that exists.
Well, Wildbow did with Worm.
WIldbow did and does many foolish and terribly advised things. He is not an example of anything, except maybe how to depress people via the internet, at which he is an undisputed master.
Again. You are projecting your personal issues across the rest of us. Quit it.
No. It's an inherent dissonance between stated purpose and the systems present to actually achieve that purpose. You can't argue that a pile of dice some equals a constructed story.
There is no inherent dissonance, and I can, and I have. You are projecting. You are making a personal dislike into a universal fact, and it's ridiculous. Quit while you're ahead.
....Do you not know what narrative is? Deliberate construction is the only way to build a truly excellent story, the author should never be surprised. The moment you introduce randomness, you start sacrificing quality. Control is paramount to good storytelling, as is predictability and consistency within the narrative. When somebody could have the highest stats ever and just roll low a bunch and then not fit all prior description, that is a MAJOR issue. It means comparison always carries a caveat, and the ability to use standing fact to resolve plot points suffers.
I do know what narrative is, and I think you're far too obsessed with the way you, personally, approach stories, and don't want to admit that there are other, equally valid ways of approaching fiction, for some incomprehensible reason. You're not imparting any wisdom here. You're not giving some grand revelation of truth.
Yeah and I think you're utterly and totally wrong. The dice fundamentally serve as a conflict management system between players who might otherwise have two different narratives. If you get rid of a consistent unbiased system for conflict management then games just turn into vs debates or punching matches.
I'm saying their are basal rules for how every good story works. That Exalted does not allow to stand. This isn't even my idea, I have come up with none of it, people far more qualified have published books/essays on the subject. Brandon Sanderson has some good essays on this sort of thing, as does Thomas Foster. Nobody seems to be able to dispute the existence of basal rules in a coherent, logical way, which indicates they should be excepted. Then, when there is clear conflict with them, it's an easy judgement.
okay if you are appealing to the authority of Brandon Sanderson, that should be pretty strong evidence that you're not talking about a universal rule here, but a matter of personal taste. My reaction to any advice Brandon Sanderson gives on writing is to immediately do the opposite.
Dice rolling let you have fights where the abilities of the characters matter while also not having them be boring as shit snoozefests predetermined by who has the bigger number or having to have an extended debate over who would win that ends in tears. Exalted works perfectly well for telling stories. Citation, people have fun while playing Exalted and like the stories they tell in it. Clearly your sancrosanct "rules of storytelling" have been fulfilled seeing as we're quickly approaching page 2000 of this thread.
And you still don't get that a game has different rules for making a narrative than a written story, one of which is the emergent narrative as dictated by conflict resolution (whether the system uses dices, cards or nothing at all is irrelevant for this).
Everything has laws, even if we haven't pinned them down yet. Not even trying is just attempting to reject reality.
Fun to play is not the same as telling a good story.
Narrative is narrative is narrative, regardless of format. Most emergent narrative is trash because of this.
"I'm right because I'm right because someone I consider an authority agrees with me".
Emeregent narrative is trash because it's narrative? Lol, such a profound opinion.
Everything has rules. Maybe you disagree on what they are, but they have to exist. If you won't even acknowledge that, then I have no idea how to even communicate with you.
It's trash because it doesn't obey rules.
By definition, if the narrative that emerges from the gameplay comes out of the game's rules, it's following rules. In a game the narrative has to take in account what can happen due to the rules of said game, otherwise just do an improv session and be done with it.
The rules that you personally like, because they do what you personally want to do. There is not an objective set of rules handed down by god. They are varying rules to accomplish different goals. You are deluding yourself into thinking the rules you prefer are universal. You aren't. You're just revealing your own ignorant arrogance. It's rather a lot like debating a Creationist about evolution. "I am right because I am right because the Book Says So, these are the laws."
Are you debating from a strawfield or do yo just really hate crows? The argument is not that storytelling doesn't have rules but that the rules of storytelling are incredibly complicated and difficult to observe because human beings are really complex things and the definition of a good story is hardly one that's going to be universally agreed upon. Simply saying that a author you like has defined the rules without then stating how they did so is not actually an argument.
Do you define a good story as a story which has value and worth or as a story which obeys the rules set forth by your favored authors?
Exalted has more rules then literally any narrative book ever written. It has chapters entirely devoted to the rules and resolution of events within the story.
That's not even the point anymore. There HAS to be one set of basal rules. Mine may be wrong. But there has to be one set, or it makes 0 fucking sense. The only acknowledgement I want is that you aren't advocating that there are no absolute rules, because that is.....frankly insane. Everything has empirically correct rules, even if we don't know them. That is as far as I want at this point.
So if I'm understanding you correctly, your argument is that there must be some ideal Platonic ruleset of which all other rulesets are merely inferior reflections?
No, I'm not here to validate your faith in Almighty Science. Not everything has empirical rules, because some things are opinion based. We're the product of randomly propagated chemicals and we constantly diverge in bizarre ways from each other. Some things are not subject to absolute empirical rules because they're the product of countless random flashes in the human brain, designed or accidentally arranged to appeal to various instincts and emotions and desires.
