Collaborative Storytelling?

I don't know who needs to hear this, but I have some bad news for you:
D&D is not a collaborative storytelling game.

At its roots, the mechanics of D&D are that of a wargame, in most respects; the more I watch of The Players Aid, the more convinced I am of this. What this means is that it comes from an ethos of there being some amount of balance between the opposing sides, but that ultimately there are winners and there are losers. This is something which is sorted out by the rules of combat and the rolls of the dice. To wit, whether or not your character lives or dies at the end of a combat has nothing to do with what is "narratively" or "thematically" appropriate; the sport of D&D combat is the only determining factor in your survival.

Now, I've heard of RPGs where characters only die when they "want" to (such as when it is narratively appropriate, a meaningful sacrifice is being made, etc.) But I don't even need to go that far; I can point to something as simple and mechanically D&D-like as Knights of the Old Republic to give an example of the PCs basically never dying. One could similarly point to the Mass Effect franchise as an example of party members only dying when it is narratively "earned."

D&D doesn't do this at all. And I'm not even necessarily saying that it should. What I am saying is that unless a system mechanically supports character death as being narratively driven... it won't be. So, if you're expecting D&D to be a game where you build grand narratives with your party members, then at best you're likely going to have to fudge things in order to make it so.

I guess this is all to say that, you can reduce the lethality of a D&D-like game, in order to improve the longevity and consistency of a party, so that collaborative storytelling can take root... but you do so at the risk of losing any sense of stakes, or at least create the necessity of coming up with better, more meaningful stakes than just "live or die [and respawn with Jimmmmm, the Fighter, at the next town.]"

I also think that in pursuit of accessibility and simplicity, D&D fails at being a sport -- and collaborative storytelling suffers as a consequence of that. When combats seem abritrary and unfair, death seems cheap and meaningless (and don't get me started on traps). I really think in a lot of ways, that D&D has lost its direction, because it has no identity; it can't decide what it does or does not want to be, because it wants to be everything to everyone -- and fails.

And this is why I've always felt that the focus on mechanics is so important, when it comes to TNP. The combat in the game may feel more like a pro-wrestling match than an actual fight, or even a team sport -- but it should ultimately be challenging and fun, and punctuate some of the drama. The DM shouldn't have to feel like they need to pull punches in a fight, for the sake of the narrative (nor should they feel like they need to punish in-character or IRL actions with things that happen in combat.) This is why I think that the idea of a "collaborative storytelling" RPG is sort of... aspirational? Because the mechanics just have to work, if you want to have any of that other stuff just work, too.

I've never looked at systems that are purely narrative and really felt like I was playing a "game" when I did it; if anything, it felt like a "choose your own adventure" where you inevitably have very bad things happen to you (with little or no agency over them) because that's what's deemed to be "dramatic" or "interesting" or what drives the story forward: failures, shortcomings, debts, etc. It always feels weird, and unheroic. And frankly, I come to TTRPGs from the Diablo 2 paradigm, of basically being a huge badass; playing as a shitfarming peasant just isn't want motivates me, in the RPG space -- never has, and possibly never will.

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Anyway, I guess that's a topic that's been on my mind, as I play through my 5e campaigns, in what clearly is the twilight of this edition. I hope some of you are at least able to gain something from my occasional rambling post, such as this one.

Next post should be up sometime after the 25th but before the end of June; I may do one post near the end of July as well, but we'll see.