In which I disagree with Mr. Wick to the (hopeful) benefit of the game in question

Hello, my silent muses. 

Something a little different today. So John Wick had a post that ruffled a few feathers, essentially stating that game balance is not needed on RPG's, and anything that didn't help you tell the story was meaningless. Others have argued this point, and while I think he got some of it right, it seems that Mr. Wick is incorrect on some of his assumptions. 

I'm not going to go into a point by point analysis, but the core of his arguement is, if I may quote:

'I ask myself, “How does this help me tell stories?”

If it doesn’t, I throw it out.

When I run Vampire, I keep the Humanity rules and throw out the initiative rules.

When I run Call of Cthulhu, I keep the Sanity rules and throw out the gun chart.'

Which...is kinda odd, when you think about it. Technically speaking--dice don't help you tell stories. Is it really needed to have the sanity chart in a story? If we can get by without initiative, do we really need (the admittedly clumsy) humanity rules? Can't I just say "I'm loosing my humanity and becoming a beast!!"? Lovecraft didn't have a chart on the side of his stories showing the death-spiral of his characters...

This, I think, is the big problem. RPG's aren't stories. If they are, they're terrible, horrible stories that need a good editor and better plotting and frankly better writers half the time. Hell, most of the time the characters are either rip offs from other media and terribly acted to boot (and why is everybody making Monty Python jokes in this dramatic horror??!).  There's little dramatic control, randomness for the sake of randomness, and character development ranges from none to "sweet glob why is that man still talking?!". My pet theory is that RPG's are at best B-movies in terms of enjoyment, popularity, and storytelling capacity (that's another post...). 

No one would watch Casablanca if we knew that the movie might have Rick run over by a car because Humphrey rolled poorly. RPG's break Chekhov's gun rule all the time--things introduced are ignored, forgotten, or shifted by character action/dice rolls/forgetful GM's/etc. Quite simply, RPG's are terrible stories. 

No, in truth, RPG's aren't stories. They're a weird bastard child of miniature wargames, storytelling, gambling, video games, and filing your tax returns. By this weird mish-mash of elements, we become something different. No, chess is not an RPG, and investing emotion into your pawns is a great way to loose said game. But that ability TO invest emotion into pawn 6? to imagine yourself in it's place, having to stare down the Queen (who obviously is unnatural--nothing should be that powerful!!), and then replacing dramatic licence with random luck? That's what RPG's do well. Holding them to the laws of stories binds them just as much as binding them to the rules of a board game. 

Now, I'll be the first to admit  that there's a lot RIGHT in this piece--frankly, I think we as a hobby have moved past spreadsheets of pike damage codes. I don't NEED eighty pages of guns. Initiative normally sucks as a system. But I think that we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 

Now, he has a definition of RPG:

"roleplaying game: a game in which the players are rewarded for making choices that are consistent with the character’s motivations or further the plot of the story."

I would change that to a game in which the players are rewarded for attempting actions and acting 'in character' that are consistent with character motivations or furthering the plot of the story. 

Basically, I don't think it's just choice. I think it's actions, and rolling the dice is part of that fun. 

At least, that's my opinion. 

Finally, he asked these questions. I love answering questions about games--they make you think and sharpen the knives of the game in question. So, here's mine. 

• What is your game about? Characters striving to safe what's left of humanity in a techno-fantasy. 
• How does your game do that? Immersion in a world and something something system something I'll get back to you.
• What behaviors does my game reward? Being a big damn hero mumble mumble system again no seriously the check's in the mail...