I was recently directed to this article by Sam Sorensen outlining a “Three-Question Taxonomy” for TTRPG play. The article is quite well-written and makes some good points in its 2nd and 3rd questions, but the first one bugged me so much that I needed to write a response (rebuttal).

Sorensen creates a dichotomy between “solving problems” and “telling a good story” as the first question in their “taxonomy.” This concerns the fundamental motivation behind not only the act of playing an RPG, but the specific playstyle adopted in any given game.

“Problem-solving is about winning, or trying to win,” Sorensen writes. This is a simulationist motive, centering on the player’s desire to achieve a goal, to reach some kind of win-condition. Interestingly, Sorensen admits that “problem-solving” can be achieved through endogamous (or “game-y”) methods as well as diegetic (in-universe) methods, so we are not strictly talking about rules-lawyers or gameists here.

“Telling a good story,” on the other hand, is about playing in such a way to maximize (or at least accentuate and produce) “drama, tension, and narrative.” It’s less important that the goal or win-condition is achieved, and more that the story told along the way is emotionally and/or narratively satisfying.

Basically, the former (problem-solving) is about the destination, and the latter (telling a good story) is about the journey.

There are a lot of insights here, clearly drawn from a lot of play experience. Unfortunately, setting these two things against each other as a dichotomy (even if not absolute) collapses the entire thing. It’s built on a false premise that, to my mind, is the source of a lot of stupid arguments about things like “roll-play vs. roleplay” and “rules vs. rulings.” This is a fundamentally broken way to approach role-playing games.

Let’s dig into why.

Win Conditions

Sorensen doesn’t actually use the phrase “win condition,” because we’re talking about RPGs here, right? They don’t usually have “win conditions.”

Instead what they’re talking about are group or player-chosen goals. Examples given include “Slay the dragon, rescue the hot prince, catch the murderer, get the loot, solve the mystery.” These aren’t win conditions in the same way that, for example, Monopoly has a win condition (bankrupting every other player), but they’re win conditions within the specific scenario, campaign, or session that the players are playing.

Most players will naturally tend to optimize their play for achieving their group’s set goals. This is completely natural and expected. Now, this may take the obvious “game-y” form of minmaxing, such as building a character to maximize your DPS [sic] or have the highest number of Skill Points. But Sorensen insists that it also can include clever use of the environment and fictional world to advance the story in a way that is desirable to achieving the ultimate goal: “…scaling a very large cliff with very little rope. Or perhaps piecing together a series of clues, signs, and suspects’ statements to solve a mystery. Problems that are less abstracted, less numeric, less focused on systemic optimization than being clever in the relatively unsystematized diegetic world.”

The grouping of these two types of player behaviors together as the same type of thing is interesting. While min-maxing is often seen as antithetical to roleplaying (and indeed often is), it doesn’t have to be.

Pretend you’re an actual character in a fantasy world for a minute. If you were really a person who spent a significant amount of time delving into deadly dungeons and doing battle with dangerous dragons, wouldn’t you, in real life, min-max yourself? Wouldn’t you prioritize things like training your body for combat, learning how to properly wield weapons and maintain armor, purchase things that are likely to keep you alive and maximize the return on your time investment? The decision to minmax a character for combat can be entirely consistent with authentically roleplaying the kind of character for whom combat is the biggest part of their life.

Likewise, making the best choice for how to achieve a goal outside of combat is just, y’know, what most people try to when they’re trying to accomplish something. It’s basically tautological.

The problem is, Sorensen isn’t really talking about role-playing.

Roleplaying vs. Storytelling

Sorensen does admit that a story will naturally emerge even out of the most game-ist, optimization-crazy, problem-solving-oriented RPG groups. They even go so far as to admit that “maybe,” “it’s definitely possible sometimes,” for choosing the “optimal solution” to also create good drama. (What equivocation!)

The difference for the “telling a story” player(s), though, is that they’re “not really trying to win, per se. [They’re] regularly mak[ing] decisions that, in the context of the diegetic world, put [their] character and allies in a worse position, because those worsening positions fuel the drama.”

We’re wading into murky, dangerous waters here, but it’s the only way to our destination of better role-playing, so onward we must press.

Sorensen includes the caveat that the above paragraph applies “especially moving from games where I play one character to games more about literally telling a story.”

Here’s the thing–we already have a word for that, and it’s not “roleplaying game.” It’s “storytelling game.”

I don’t know why storytelling game fans are so fanatically committed to the indefensible position that STGs are also RPGs, but this conflation here perfectly illustrates why they’re wrong.

And, to be clear, Sorensen is specifically talking about RPGs. They say “RPGs” at the top of their article.

The thing is, if you’re one of the people who thinks it’s an insult when I say that a STG is “not an RPG,” we have almost nothing to say to each other. Calling me a “gatekeeper” is not a rejoinder. It’s not “gatekeeping” to theorize that two different genres of games with different conventions and goals should be called by two different terms (only idiots still call RPGs “wargames,” for example). Sorensen’s article shows why.

Fundamentally, “mak[ing] decisions that, in the context of the diegetic world, put my character and allies in a worse position, because those worsening positions fuel the drama” is not roleplaying.

Roleplaying, in the context of an RPG, is making decisions as your character. If you disagree you might as well just close this article because we have such a fundamental disagreement about the foundations of this entire hobby that we may as well be speaking different languages.

Outside of extreme cases, real people do not make decisions purely to fuel drama. (I know it doesn’t seem like that sometimes, but I promise it’s true.)

This does not mean that people always make optimal choices for achieving a group goal. What most people do most of the time is make decisions that they think will lead to them achieving some kind of personal goal.

Do you see the critical distinction here? Sorensen’s idea of “achieving a goal,” no matter how “diegetic” the actual gameplay is, is fundamentally tied to meta-considerations. The character isn’t trying to slay the dragon or rescue the hot prince because it’s what the character wants, but because it’s what the player wants.

But if you’re trying to role-play in your roleplaying game, then your primary consideration should be what your character wants. Now, you’re in control of your character, so you can decide that what your character wants is what you as a player in an RPG group also want. That’s fine, and it can lead to lots of fun and fulfilling gaming sessions.

But if you also want drama and narrative tension, you don’t need to throw out the concept of role-playing a single character. You don’t need to “make the call to go one way or the other, towards drama or towards efficiency.”

You go a third way–you go towards playing your role. That way will sometimes lead to drama, sometimes to efficiency, and sometimes to both. No matter which way, however, it will be satisfying, because it’s what RPGs are all about at their most fundamental level.

Real people have numerous motivations, goals, and things that they want at any given time, right? Conflict might come from a single person having competing motivations, or from two allies having incompatible secondary goals. Gorg the Barbarian wants to defeat the dragon in honorable combat to prove his mettle; Adir the rogue wants to shoot an arrow into its eye from stealth to minimize their own risk of bodily harm. Adir’s player splits from the party to take the shot before Gorg’s player can say “I Leroy-Jenkins myself into the dragon’s lair, shouting whirling my axe above my head like a windmill.” Now you’ve got drama between the characters.

You’ve still put the party into a worse position and created narrative drama and tension, but it’s entirely consistent with an in-universe role-playing decision.

This also works in the “game-y” form of play, lest you think this is a distinction without a difference. The party wants their best fighter to be minmaxed for combat, since he needs to tank damage for them; the fighter’s player, however, wants to play him as becoming traumatized by violence and decides to put an attribute bonus into Wisdom instead of Strength, and then roleplay their character as wiser than they were before.

My PC wants to rescue the hot prince (group goal), but it’s really because she wants vengeance on him for killing her sister. So I play the game in such a way that my character is the first one to enter the dungeon where he’s being held, so I can fulfill my personal goal while my allies fend off the goblins outside. Meanwhile, the rest of the PCs now have to contend with my character going rogue and killing or harming the NPC we’re supposed to be rescuing, which interferes with their personal goals of getting as much reward money as possible.

At no point are we “faced with the dry but effective choice or the foolish but dramatic choice.” We all optimized our play for solving our characters’ problems, and also created a tense, dramatic story where hard choices have to be made.

Conclusion

Any RPG game or session can be like this if you 1.) authentically role-play your character, and 2.) create characters with diverse and interesting motivations.

Like, yeah, sure, if the characters are just numbers on a stat block to you, and there’s no goal other than “escape the dungeon with as much treasure as possible,” then you’ll probably need to break away from optimal play to create juicy character drama.

You can even have fun with games like that. Nobody’s telling you how to have fun.

What I am telling you is that the choice between strong, twisty narratives with tension and choice agony and character drama on the one hand, and “optimal” gameplay on the other hand, is false. You can have both, every campaign, every scenario, every session, if you just bother to actually role-play in your roleplaying game.

(And, of course, if you don’t define “problem-solving” in a metatextual, board-gamey way.)

RPGs are not board games. You get to set the “win condition” for your character.

If the problem you’re trying to solve is prompting you to avoid telling a good story, and you want to tell a good story, you’re probably solving the wrong problem.

Just do something different!

You might need to create a new character, or tweak your character’s backstory or motivations. That’s fine. You could also give them, y’know, character development–and I don’t mean in a mechanical sense (although if you can synergize it with mechanics, then you’re really cooking with gas). Your character can, at any time you feel it right, fall in love with an NPC or other PC; become traumatized by something; overcome a trauma or phobia; develop an interest in a new subject; resolve to learn a skill; or anything you want, as long as you earnestly feel that it makes sense for them as a person.

Now please–stop listening to advice that boils down to “good storytelling requires narrative control/suboptimal play/few or no game mechanics/other Storytelling Game trappings.”

Go forth and role-play, no matter the system you’re playing. I guarantee the rest will take care of itself.