Preamble
Feel free to chop this up or have a go at it. I've been bouncing this idea around for a while in my head, and while it probably isn't perfect, I think it's probably about the right mark? Anyway, bash it around and see what falls out.
The Layers
- The Story of the System Itself
- The Story of the "Long Game Story" (e.g. Campaign)
- The Story of the Players as Players
- The Story of the Characters
Story of the System
For the pithy one-word thing this is "Ludonarrative".
D&D wants to tell stories of kicking open doors, killing stuff, taking stuff, and repeating that. Blades in the Dark wants to tell stories of Heists going wrong, that maybe involve a fair chunk of failure. Punk systems (particularly Cyberpunk) generally want to tell stories of the underdog battling the systems of the world around them to reshape the world into a place where they aren't outsiders.
Basically, games have a story that they tell well by the structure of the game. What the game finds important enough to detail feeds into the stories it tells.
Story of the Long Game Story
This is what would be called a Campaign, or Series, or similar. This is often the story set up by the person taking the Referee/Umpire/GM/DM chair. Maybe there are other ways it is done if there are GM-less games that have long arcs that span multiple sessions.
Story of the Players as Players
This is one of the very very social parts of an RPG. This part is in many ways absent in a GM-less game, but can't disappear completely while you still have someone playing a game.
This is where people would talk about the stuff they did in the game. It's that story. It's the story of "My friends and I sat down with made up people and did stuff, and that stuff was this and that and it was fun..." you get the idea.
"We played a band of heroic types who slayed dragons and saved townspeople!"
"We were a bunch of society's outcasts who banded together, and overthrew the man to try rebuild the city from the top down!"
"We are courtiers around the king, and we manage to convince the king to avert a few different crises during this, got some other nobles in line, and probably prevented a civil war for another year."
"We sat down and has most of our people die as we tried to survive the winter".
Story of the Players as Characters
This is the story of the PC as told by the Player.
"This is Dave, he's a wizard in Neo Hong San Tokyo who is on the run from his previous employers for freeing a bunch of slaves out of an abusive factory. He did it by... Dave wants to bring down the company because they're abusive and exploitative and Dave's had enough."
"Liz is the third courtesan to the Emperor and is pretty sure the Empress wants her dead. She needs to survive this, and maybe if she does she'll end up one step up. Survival first, gaining rank second."
Why care?
Players can complain about games because two of these, or maybe more of these, pull in different directions.
Your game system might be setup to tell gritty combat, but the setup for the long-run narratives talks about spies, assassinations and court intrigues.
Your long-run narrative might be setup to talk of heists, espionage, getting out by the skin of your teeth, but the Players are really wanting less Action Movie and more Period Drama... so heists and pulp action isn't going to cut it.
The Players you have really want to play interpersonal diplomatic conflict (Yay! A Diplomacy group!) but the game you have on hand is... D&D. Those are going to clash.
The character really just wants to be a pacifist and help the poor. In a "Story of the Game" which promotes espionage and assassinations, that won't work. In a Long-Run Game which is based on courtly intrigue, that won't work.
Why care as Designers?
I think it's important that we make it obvious the kinds of stories our games are set up to tell (if we aren't aware of it already) and maybe the times when people don't like our games, is because we have clashes forming between these layers.
Blades in the Dark won't tell the same Stories as For the Queen or Shadowrun. You can try maybe "Ship of Theseus" your way into hacking Blades to give you "For the Queen" but... why? Why not just play For the Queen?
You won't be hacking Kagematsu anytime soon to give you Conan Fantasy Pulp... it's probably not going to be a "smart plan".
And if your game at one layer isn't backing up the other layers, then maybe its something you need to change.
But I looooooove hacking (system)!
Okay, that's fine. Hack away.
Just know the limitations of the tool. It comes with assumptions built into it.
Not all knives are the same. Scalpels aren't bread knives aren't filleting knife aren't machetes.