PDA

View Full Version : What is an RPG?



Pages : [1] 2

Quertus
2019-01-19, 09:27 AM
So, in another thread, I was asked why 4e didn't feel like D&D to me. I said that it didn't feel like D&D in no small part because didn't feel like an RPG, and gave a few examples that stressed their connection to 4e*, but not so much their ability to describe the elephant the dark cave of what being an RPG meant to me.

The response of others contained lots of gold, but, nonetheless, my approach was less than optimal for describing the elephant. I would like the tools to fix that.

So, much like the Playground has talked about "how sandboxy" something is, I'd like to see if we can develop a vocabulary for "how RPG-y" something is.

Except... I think that that's wrong-thinking. I think what need is a specialized vocabulary for the components of an RPG (except that "components" is the wrong word).

So, for example, an RPG is a "foo RPG" if game physics reacts in a reasonable manner; it is less of a "foo RPG" the more that "role-playing your character" and "playing the game" are at odds.

An RPG is a "bar RPG" if you have full authorship over your character; it is less of a "bar RPG" the fewer decisions you get to make about your character.

An RPG is a "sna RPG" if you have full control over your character; it is less of a "sna RPG" the more control of your character is taken away by the system, the GM, or other players.

Etc etc.

So, as much as I love inventing, I'd rather not reinvent the wheel here if there is existing vocabulary that describes RPGs at this level (and does a good job - at least a good enough job that i can say, yeah, items 3 & 7 on that list are what I was talking about).

But, if there is not such preexisting vocabulary, them what categories can we make? What makes something an RPG?

* As I had played it, which, as it turns out, may not be indicative of "real" 4e, and certainly isn't the only way that it can be played.

Mike Miller
2019-01-19, 10:41 AM
Nothing but a miserable pile of secrets!

Ahem... I take RPG in the broadest sense. I just consider it as a game in which you are playing a role. This opens up a great many things into the RPG tent, but that is how I always thought of it and will continue to do so. You can narrow it down from there, of course. D&D is a specific RPG and you sound like you may want to define D&D a bit more, before you define RPG. Make a Venn diagram of the two and you can begin picking out the differences

Kaptin Keen
2019-01-19, 11:09 AM
For me, RPG = 'Cooperative storytelling'.

That's literally all. I spin stories off the input players create, even if they're often entirely unaware I'm really just working details they provide into a background I had prepared in advance. It's like a painting. I know there are mountains and oceans in the distance ... then I paint in some little people with swords and wands, and everything forms around them.

I think this is why I'm frankly just plain bad at the combat side of things. It can't be done in the same way.

Unavenger
2019-01-19, 11:10 AM
Nothing but a miserable pile of secrets!

Ahem... I take RPG in the broadest sense. I just consider it as a game in which you are playing a role. This opens up a great many things into the RPG tent, but that is how I always thought of it and will continue to do so. You can narrow it down from there, of course. D&D is a specific RPG and you sound like you may want to define D&D a bit more, before you define RPG. Make a Venn diagram of the two and you can begin picking out the differences

I came here to say almost exactly this, including the "Miserable pile of secrets!" bit.

An RPG is a game where you play the role of a character and make decisions for that character, basically.

Millstone85
2019-01-19, 11:10 AM
So, for example, an RPG is a "foo RPG" if game physics reacts in a reasonable manner; it is less of a "foo RPG" the more that "role-playing your character" and "playing the game" are at odds.There is a lot of negativity attached to it, but you might want to look into the GNS theory.

GNS stands for:
* Gamism: Building your sheet, rolling dice, moving miniatures on a grid, etc. All the elements that really make you think of the game as a game, and people who enjoy that aspect. See also: powergaming.
* Narrativism: Telling a compelling story, full of drama, plot twists, character arcs, etc. And people who enjoy that aspect. See also: railroading and my-guy-ism.
* Simulationism: Trying to make the physics of the setting work in a realistic and/or consistent way. And people who enjoy that aspect. There is probably an insult to be found here too.

LibraryOgre
2019-01-19, 11:25 AM
Depends on what you mean by RPG. :smallbiggrin: It varies, a little, depending on medium... a lot of what people call "RPGs" in video games I'd more properly class as "adventure games", which I consider a subcategory of RPG where the character is predefined.

Broadly, I would say an RPG is a game where a player assumes a role, making choices for their individual character(s), based on an assessment of the needs of the on-going story and the characters involved. As a game, there should be mechanical means of resolving conflicts, be they physical, social, or mental. Furthermore, there should be an understanding that there can be non-conventional means to resolve problems, and unique solutions should be mechanically possible, even if they aren't necessarily recommended in a given instance (you can TRY to divert the zombies with a joke, but that doesn't mean it's going to work, or even have a chance to do so).

Now, obviously, this is a broad definition. However, it allows some examination of what is and is not a role-playing game, based on a few criteria:

1) Control of individual characters
2) Mechanical means of resolving conflicts
3) Non-conventional problem solving possible and mechanically significant

The third, IMO, is what really differentiates most RPGs from RPG-like games, or games that use RPG features without being, properly, RPGs. Lots of things give you control of an individual character. Lots of things have mechanical means of resolving conflicts. What makes an RPG is the ability to make up novel solutions to problems, and resolve things based on that solution.

Are Fighting Fantasy books RPGs? No, because you can't come up with unique solutions. Unique solutions might be presented to you, you might have the plot coupon that allows you to enact unique solutions, but you can't do anything outside the script.

Are things like Fortune and Glory (https://amzn.to/2T3ir7o) or Last Night on Earth (https://amzn.to/2DmfI3o) RPGs? No, because while you might NARRATE a unique solution to a problem, you resolved the problem the same way you resolve every problem. Your character might dictate some choices, but these are all closely defined, too. You can't look at the tile on the field of Last Night on Earth and decide to pick up the basketball on the floor of the gym and throw that at the zombie, and have the results of your actions change because of that... but can narrate that as an explanation for a given result.

An RPG requires being able to interact with your character's environment in non-conventional ways, and resolve it using mechanics based on your solution.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-19, 11:36 AM
There is a lot of negativity attached to it, but you might want to look into the GNS theory.

GNS stands for:
* Gamism: Building your sheet, rolling dice, moving miniatures on a grid, etc. All the elements that really make you think of the game as a game, and people who enjoy that aspect. See also: powergaming.
* Narrativism: Telling a compelling story, full of drama, plot twists, character arcs, etc. And people who enjoy that aspect. See also: railroading and my-guy-ism.
* Simulationism: Trying to make the physics of the setting work in a realistic and/or consistent way. And people who enjoy that aspect. There is probably an insult to be found here too.

The major problem with GNS theory is that it tries to make those into incompatible goals, when in reality an RPG exists where they overlap.

Jophiel
2019-01-19, 01:19 PM
I think it's less "What is/isn't an RPG" and more a collection of things that make a game move further along the spectrum. It can be things like freedom of choice and options, character progression, a narrative tale, world building, etc. You can "play a role" in anything but Candyland is less an RPG than playing soldier in your back yard which is less an RPG than Skyrim which is less an RPG than your standard tabletop game.

Unavenger
2019-01-19, 01:28 PM
The major problem with GNS theory is that it tries to make those into incompatible goals, when in reality an RPG exists where they overlap.

I think it's more a recognition that in some cases, you need to make compromises between one and another. And it's definitely the case that some RPGs prioritise one over the others, or two over the other, or one over one of the others - for example, rules-light systems tend to be less simulationist and gamist and more narrativist than rules-heavy ones, because they tend to sacrifice the ability to resolve things consistently (or, in some cases, at all) for what they consider to be an easier and better narrative flow. Fundamentally, the ultimate simulation is going to be awful for a game or a narrative, because it's going to be, well, physics (with a bunch of biology and psychology thrown in), and expecting people around a table to calculate the physics-based reality of anything they could possibly want to do is going to make your game unplayable, any narrative you want to tell impossibly drawn-out. The ultimate tactics game will have to give simulationism the finger, and is unlikely to tell a coherent narrative. The best narratives barely work as games, and often ignore perfect physical reality in favour of verisimilitude.

AFAICT, GNS isn't trying to categorise things into one of three clean columns. It's more that these three paradigms sometimes come into conflict, and when they do, each game is going to prioritise one or another, so some games are more G and less S, some games prioritise N over G, and some would rather be a good S than have a good N, while some will try to balance the three - yes, of course there has to be some of all of them to make an RPG (and in fact, you could argue that a game, with some kind of overarching narrative, which in some way simulates something, is actually a good definition of an RPG). But that doesn't make the ideas behind GNS completely useless.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-19, 01:57 PM
I think it's more a recognition that in some cases, you need to make compromises between one and another. And it's definitely the case that some RPGs prioritise one over the others, or two over the other, or one over one of the others - for example, rules-light systems tend to be less simulationist and gamist and more narrativist than rules-heavy ones, because they tend to sacrifice the ability to resolve things consistently (or, in some cases, at all) for what they consider to be an easier and better narrative flow. Fundamentally, the ultimate simulation is going to be awful for a game or a narrative, because it's going to be, well, physics (with a bunch of biology and psychology thrown in), and expecting people around a table to calculate the physics-based reality of anything they could possibly want to do is going to make your game unplayable, any narrative you want to tell impossibly drawn-out. The ultimate tactics game will have to give simulationism the finger, and is unlikely to tell a coherent narrative. The best narratives barely work as games, and often ignore perfect physical reality in favour of verisimilitude.

AFAICT, GNS isn't trying to categorise things into one of three clean columns. It's more that these three paradigms sometimes come into conflict, and when they do, each game is going to prioritise one or another, so some games are more G and less S, some games prioritise N over G, and some would rather be a good S than have a good N, while some will try to balance the three - yes, of course there has to be some of all of them to make an RPG (and in fact, you could argue that a game, with some kind of overarching narrative, which in some way simulates something, is actually a good definition of an RPG). But that doesn't make the ideas behind GNS completely useless.


The assertion they made was that games that try to do more than one of the three are "incoherent", and therefore "bad". (When they weren't wondering out-loud if "sim" doesn't even exist in the first place.)

Problem is, you can't have an RPG without a blend of all three.

Setting aside whether that's the only or best way to categorize, or how things break fit into what category... or how honestly that was done.

For example, some tried to "big tent" Narrative to claim it contained all the things that "really make an RPG an RPG", and/or pull in both storytelling-focus and character-focus into Narrative. But contrary to that effort, there are those gamers who have zero interest in storytelling in their RPGs (see, many debates in this forum), but get deep into character. Some of those making the aforementioned effort rejected those gamers as "not really Narrative"... while others making that effort claimed those gamers and tried to insist that just by gaming they were engaged in "storytelling", or that being deep into character meant they were into "storytelling" -- even if those gamers insisted otherwise.

Morty
2019-01-19, 02:00 PM
There is a lot of negativity attached to it, but you might want to look into the GNS theory.

GNS stands for:
* Gamism: Building your sheet, rolling dice, moving miniatures on a grid, etc. All the elements that really make you think of the game as a game, and people who enjoy that aspect. See also: powergaming.
* Narrativism: Telling a compelling story, full of drama, plot twists, character arcs, etc. And people who enjoy that aspect. See also: railroading and my-guy-ism.
* Simulationism: Trying to make the physics of the setting work in a realistic and/or consistent way. And people who enjoy that aspect. There is probably an insult to be found here too.


The major problem with GNS theory is that it tries to make those into incompatible goals, when in reality an RPG exists where they overlap.

I'm pretty sure it was also purposely built to prop up "narrativism" as the best, with "gamism" being occasionally acceptable and "simulationism" being bad.

JoeJ
2019-01-19, 02:22 PM
The major problem with GNS theory is that it tries to make those into incompatible goals, when in reality an RPG exists where they overlap.

Instead of incompatible goals, perhaps GNS could be better understood as the vertices of a triangle, with each game existing somewhere within that triangle.

gkathellar
2019-01-19, 03:09 PM
At the broadest possible conceptual level, it's a game where you play a role, and encompasses any sort of game where one or more players work under the assumption of stated identifiers (or even a complete identity) as part of texturing underlying mechanical interactions.

In practice, however, most people won't accept this definition: D&D and its many, many imitators have had such a dramatic effect on the way we approach the notion that it has become virtually inextricable from a set of (sometimes mutually contradictory) attributes and identifiers. Here are a few easy ones:
Setting: RPGs take place within a fictional milieu, and progress in an RPG is frequently articulated through changes in this fiction and/or in the scope of player access to the fiction. Unlike games like Monopoly or Ticket To Ride, where setting conceits justify and flavor certain mechanical interactions, but the game is "played" mostly at the level of satisfying mechanical objectives, RPGs are "played" primarily at the level of interacting with the fiction.
Narrative: RPGs are described in terms of sequential narrative events. Players act and are acted upon first and foremost by imaginary events for which mechanics are facilitators. A piece in chess may be "captured," but this is simply the standard language for "removed from the field of play." On the other hand, an RPG character who has been "killed" is not simply inactive for the remaining duration of the game - they are, in the minds of the players, dead.
Embodiment: We almost universally require that players in an RPG do not act directly on the fiction, but instead through one or more fictional persons specifically designated as their representatives. Unlike Pong or Missile Command, where the player directly assumes control of in-game activity, RPGs require intermediary characters to articulate the player's desires. Interestingly, these fictional intermediaries are rarely just amalgams of "player + stated attributes" (as in roleplaying more generally), but are frequently entirely separate constructed persons.
Statistics-driven mechanics: The ability of a character to take many actions in an RPG (which actions are statistically driven is often a function of the game's focus) will frequently be tied to a set of statistics associated with that character. This is sometimes measured in a success/failure dynamic or sometimes through a gauge of "effectiveness" - frequently it incorporates randomness in order to provide tension, but this is unnecessary.
Character progression: In many RPGs, there is an assumption that a character will be rewarded for success with improved ability to interact with game mechanics. It is of special note that the association between character progression rules and the term "RPG" is so powerful that any such rules are frequently described as "RPG elements" even in games that would not otherwise be described as RPGs.
Social component: Most RPGs have the expectation of at least superficial interaction between various characters as part of the gameplay experience. Even combat-focused RPGs frequently involve social choices and social interactions that serve as lulls in the action and help explain changes in the fiction.
Combat: Most RPGs have combat, and many devote the overwhelming majority of their mechanics to combat resolution.
Gameplay loops: "Get stuff to help do stuff so we can get more stuff" is pretty much a fixture of this genre.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-01-19, 04:21 PM
For me, the key components of an RPG are that the players

1) interact with a fictional world
2) as part of a narrative
3) through the lens of specific, unique characters and their actions
4) for the primary purpose of having fun.

#4 is what makes it a game. #1 requires that the setting be more than an excuse. Ideally that fictional world will be changed (even in the slightest) by the events of the game. #2 requires that the game involve a sequence of events that are causally connected. #1 and #2 together exclude most wargames, collectible card games, and board games. #3 requires that the primary point of interface between the real human players and the game world is through their characters, not through meta-narrative tools or authorial edit powers. It implies that the players see what the character sees & hears but are generally not omniscient. If they want to change something, they have to work through their character (or characters) to do so. This excludes a large fraction of "story-games".

Note I haven't said anything about mechanics here, nor is my definition very restrictive. That's on purpose. In my eyes, rules and mechanics are helpers, not essential components of the game. Free-form role-play can fit this definition with absolutely no non-meta rules. If there are mechanics, they don't need to be more than a source of randomness. The space of valid RPGs is huge.

Rhedyn
2019-01-19, 04:27 PM
If you have to roleplay to play the game and you have to play to the game to roleplay, then you are playing an RPG.

Now that doesn't get into the difference between Storyteller RPGs and Traditional RPGs. But it does preclude calling a board game an RPG even if you personally roleplay while playing it.

zlefin
2019-01-19, 05:19 PM
@op
while your grasp of philosophy seems pretty good already; if you're unfamiliar with it, I'd recommend prototype theory as a useful tool to help better understand the type of problem you're looking at.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_theory

Tanarii
2019-01-19, 06:02 PM
Its a game (set of rules) in which the player make decisionss for a character in the fantasy environment.

Often the character is supposed to have some slightly or greatly different personality from that of the player that will affect the decisions differently, but thats not a requirement.

noob
2019-01-19, 06:20 PM
A role playing game is a game where you play a role.
For example a game where players have to pretend to have one opinion or the opposite of that opinion then discuss with each other is a rpg but not as people imagine them(but it is a quite old rpg).
rpg was extended to include games where you move a character around that kills everything that can be killed such as diablo and the other hack and slashes and most mmorpgs.

Malifice
2019-01-20, 10:18 AM
http://www.khaosodenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/RPG-training-696x439.jpg

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-20, 10:28 AM
I'm pretty sure it was also purposely built to prop up "narrativism" as the best, with "gamism" being occasionally acceptable and "simulationism" being bad.

It eventually got to that point, yes.

Unavenger
2019-01-20, 12:36 PM
[Snip rocket-propelled grenade]

I suppose, really, someone had to. Well played.

olskool
2019-01-28, 10:17 PM
http://www.khaosodenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/RPG-training-696x439.jpg

Beat me to it!:amused:

Psikerlord
2019-01-28, 11:52 PM
There is a lot of negativity attached to it, but you might want to look into the GNS theory.

GNS stands for:
* Gamism: Building your sheet, rolling dice, moving miniatures on a grid, etc. All the elements that really make you think of the game as a game, and people who enjoy that aspect. See also: powergaming.
* Narrativism: Telling a compelling story, full of drama, plot twists, character arcs, etc. And people who enjoy that aspect. See also: railroading and my-guy-ism.
* Simulationism: Trying to make the physics of the setting work in a realistic and/or consistent way. And people who enjoy that aspect. There is probably an insult to be found here too.

hahaha lol!

Psikerlord
2019-01-29, 12:00 AM
An RPG is like a cool boardgame, but without a board, where you get to roleplay your character from time to time, in amongst all the danger, dice rolling, resource spending, and other meaningful decision points that make playing a game fun. Sometimes you'll get a sweet story from all this. Sometimes not. But that doesn't matter, because playing the game itself is fun. Good story is icing on the cake.

noob
2019-01-29, 09:18 AM
[QUOTE] in amongst all the danger, dice rolling, resource spending,[/QUOTE
Role playing games does not needs any of the stuff from that list.
you are thinking of one specific category of rpgs.

Cluedrew
2019-01-29, 09:37 AM
First off I should mention I consider a computer RPG and a table-top/pen-and-paper role-playing game to be different things. There are similarities, but not enough that I think at we should be using the same term for both. But that ship has sailed.

I have been bouncing some ideas around and one I have hit on recently is: A role-playing game is a story-telling game where the primary tool for shaping the story (for most players) are individual characters. Dice, combat and all that are common, but not really essential to the experience.

Of course, more accurately the definition for any word X: what people mean when they say X. Now if only that were useful.

noob
2019-01-29, 10:07 AM
First off I should mention I consider a computer RPG and a table-top/pen-and-paper role-playing game to be different things. There are similarities, but not enough that I think at we should be using the same term for both. But that ship has sailed.

I have been bouncing some ideas around and one I have hit on recently is: A role-playing game is a story-telling game where the primary tool for shaping the story (for most players) are individual characters. Dice, combat and all that are common, but not really essential to the experience.

Of course, more accurately the definition for any word X: what people mean when they say X. Now if only that were useful.

You are excluding megatons of actual rpgs with that definition.

flond
2019-01-29, 10:43 AM
For me, the key components of an RPG are that the players

1) interact with a fictional world
2) as part of a narrative
3) through the lens of specific, unique characters and their actions
4) for the primary purpose of having fun.

#4 is what makes it a game. #1 requires that the setting be more than an excuse. Ideally that fictional world will be changed (even in the slightest) by the events of the game. #2 requires that the game involve a sequence of events that are causally connected. #1 and #2 together exclude most wargames, collectible card games, and board games. #3 requires that the primary point of interface between the real human players and the game world is through their characters, not through meta-narrative tools or authorial edit powers. It implies that the players see what the character sees & hears but are generally not omniscient. If they want to change something, they have to work through their character (or characters) to do so. This excludes a large fraction of "story-games".

Note I haven't said anything about mechanics here, nor is my definition very restrictive. That's on purpose. In my eyes, rules and mechanics are helpers, not essential components of the game. Free-form role-play can fit this definition with absolutely no non-meta rules. If there are mechanics, they don't need to be more than a source of randomness. The space of valid RPGs is huge.

I feel the need to note that your #3 implies a #5 "There is some sort of arbiter or facilitator who is not considered a player"

PhoenixPhyre
2019-01-29, 11:27 AM
I feel the need to note that your #3 implies a #5 "There is some sort of arbiter or facilitator who is not considered a player"

The role of arbiter/facilitator/rules engine/content creator/"NPC-player" must be filled, but it can be filled by distributing it among the other players, by taking turns, or by other means (such as a computer program for CRPGs). But yes, there usually (especially in D&D-like RPGs) a dedicated "GM" role.

LordCdrMilitant
2019-01-29, 04:44 PM
A shoulder-fired antitank weapon firing a rocket equipped with an explosive warhead. :)

I consider an RPG to be a game in which any given player controls a single character, who represents her persona in the world. The objective of the game is to interact with the world through the character[s] and develop the story of the player[s] character[s].


Notably, what I feel is excluded from the primary focus of RPG's is: simultaneous control of multiple field units or player-versus-player combat. Small elements thereof might be included, but if the game is primarily about that it turns into a strategy game or a shooter/fighting game.

Thrudd
2019-01-29, 10:08 PM
I'd say the components of all RPGs are -

Game Players control and make decisions on behalf of one or more characters in a fictional world.

Said fictional world is normally controlled by one special player, dedicated to the role of describing what the characters are perceiving at all times.

The fictional world and characters are persistent: changes in their status are tracked and carry forward from the start of the game to the end (if there is an end).

Game rules dictate means of generating the outcome of players' interactions with the fictional world and each other.

This is an attempt at descriptions which can fit any extant game calling itself an RPG. Note there is no requirement for players to design or choose which characters they control - there is and always has been such a thing as pre-generated characters, which might be appropriate for a variety of reasons.
There is no requirement for dice or even random result generation - there have been diceless RPGs that rely completely on non-random means (ie Amber Diceless RPG).
Players make decisions for characters, but the scope of activities those characters engage in is not defined - it varies from game to game. An RPG could be solely about hunting for treasure in dungeons, there would be no expectation of rules or support for characters that want to raise pigs or start business enterprises.

Cluedrew
2019-01-29, 10:24 PM
You are excluding megatons of actual rpgs with that definition.Please elaborate.

Some examples of the games I am cutting out would be nice at the very least.

Psikerlord
2019-01-30, 04:43 AM
[QUOTE] in amongst all the danger, dice rolling, resource spending,[/QUOTE
Role playing games does not needs any of the stuff from that list.
you are thinking of one specific category of rpgs.

For my definition they do. For me Gameplay > Roleplaying.

noob
2019-01-30, 06:17 AM
Please elaborate.

Some examples of the games I am cutting out would be nice at the very least.

I already gave an example of rpg at the start of the thread your definition would exclude unless you consider every chain of events (including just people talking) is a story(which is technically true) but then the story part would not have any use in the definition since even football would then create stories thus making the creation of stories non discriminating in your definition.

Earthwalker
2019-01-30, 06:36 AM
I have joined the thread to say.

I have no idea how to define an RPG and whenever I try I miss something or exclude something I shouldn't as its seems fundamental and maybe include something I shouldn't have as well.

All in all I give up...

Is it ok if I just run a game for you and you can tell me if you like it or not. Also note.. How I run my RPGs can be vastly different from others so just because I shouldn't you how I play doesn't mean you know globally how to RPG but its a good start.

Cluedrew
2019-01-30, 08:07 AM
I already gave an example of rpg at the start of the thread your definition would exclude unless you consider every chain of events (including just people talking) is a story(which is technically true) but then the story part would not have any use in the definition since even football would then create stories thus making the creation of stories non discriminating in your definition.I see the issue. I guess I have to be more clear about what I mean about story-telling game. Because no sequence of events is really a story until it is recounted. A football game is not a story, if I later narrate the events of the football game, that's a story. A story-telling game might actually be better called a story-creating game, because they are not just about recounting events (a story or story-driven) game but creating a new one. Also that is the point of the game, you can add some story-telling on top of any game (including football for that matter). Then do that through characters (the roles) and you get a role-playing game.

OK I'm not quite happy with that explanation, this is a work-in-progress definition, but it is the best I have right now. I also don't quite agree with your definition, its right but role-playing=playing a role trivially and it doesn't actually add any information. For instance is goalie a role you can play? Than football is a role-playing game too. And I already spoke on my hole CRPG=/=role-playing game thing.

To Earthwalker: You are probably right.

noob
2019-01-30, 12:11 PM
A story telling game is not the same thing as a rpg.
There is story telling games that are not rpgs(example: players take turns writing segments of a story) and rpgs that are not story telling games(example: each player pretends to have one opinion then they talk about each other defending their fictive opinions)
But there is a vast expanse of games that are both such as most table top role playing games.

Rhedyn
2019-01-30, 06:50 PM
A story telling game is not the same thing as a rpg.
There is story telling games that are not rpgs(example: players take turns writing segments of a story) and rpgs that are not story telling games(example: each player pretends to have one opinion then they talk about each other defending their fictive opinions)
But there is a vast expanse of games that are both such as most table top role playing games.

Formal Debates and Courtroom cases are RPGs.

Two or more people assume a role that may or may reflect their own feelings and act out that role in the presence of an arbitrator who administrates fair rulings and conflict resolution.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-30, 06:53 PM
Formal Debates and Courtroom cases are RPGs.

Two or people assume a role that may or may reflect their own feelings and act out that role in the presence of an arbitrator who administrates fair rulings and conflict resolution.

Eh... no.

There's "roleplaying", but it's not an RPG.

Rhedyn
2019-01-30, 08:20 PM
Eh... no.

There's "roleplaying", but it's not an RPG.
How so? It fits basically every descriptive definition in this thread.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-30, 08:27 PM
How so? It fits basically every descriptive definition in this thread.

It lacks any mechanics, relying entirely on arbitrary fiat.

It's a roleplaying exercise, not an RPG.

JoeJ
2019-01-30, 08:36 PM
It lacks any mechanics, relying entirely on arbitrary fiat.

It's a roleplaying exercise, not an RPG.

Yeah. At the most minimal definitional level, an RPG has to be both roleplaying and a game.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-30, 08:52 PM
Yeah. At the most minimal definitional level, an RPG has to be both roleplaying and a game.

That's why I keep saying that it's that part of a Venn diagram where roleplaying, mechanics, and "fiction" (not story, fiction) overlap.

Rhedyn
2019-01-30, 09:44 PM
It lacks any mechanics, relying entirely on arbitrary fiat.

It's a roleplaying exercise, not an RPG.

There are many rules and regulations for how you can present cases. The conflict resolution is decided by who convinced the jury. Sure fiat, but that's the game. It lacks dice, but there are diceless RPGs like Amber or Nobilis.

Cluedrew
2019-01-30, 09:52 PM
On Mechanics: I think "this person decides according to criteria of their choosing" is a mechanic. I know several games (Apples to Apples and Snake Oil) that use that.

On Role-playing: OK, can someone give me a good definition of role-playing that does not use the words role, playing or any homophone... no what is the opposite? Different word with same meaning, blanking on it right now. Point is, can someone give me a good definition of role-playing that is not circular.

Rhedyn
2019-01-30, 09:56 PM
On Role-playing: OK, can someone give me a good definition of role-playing that does not use the words role, playing or any homophone... no what is the opposite? Different word with same meaning, blanking on it right now. Point is, can someone give me a good definition of role-playing that is not circular.

"act out or perform the part of a person or character"

Thrudd
2019-01-30, 10:37 PM
On Mechanics: I think "this person decides according to criteria of their choosing" is a mechanic. I know several games (Apples to Apples and Snake Oil) that use that.

On Role-playing: OK, can someone give me a good definition of role-playing that does not use the words role, playing or any homophone... no what is the opposite? Different word with same meaning, blanking on it right now. Point is, can someone give me a good definition of role-playing that is not circular.

RE: Role Playing - I think we need to specify that any definition of "role playing" that applies to the sort of games that are clearly being discussed - table top fantasy/fiction role playing games - is not the same as what might be used in other contexts.

For TTRPGs, "Role Playing" means making decisions as/for a fictional character. Anything much more precise than that starts excluding extant accepted RPGs. For instance, I think "act out/perform" is not appropriate - that is certainly not a required element of all TTRPGs. Even if in other contexts, "role playing" has an acting component, in tabletop games this is not universally true.

Florian
2019-01-31, 02:54 AM
Personally, I think the the whole category of "RPG" is labeled a bit misleadingly, as it is a mix-up of "how" and "what".

Ok, first, it is a game and we use it as a game. Unlike other games, we use two sets of rules, one for "how to conduct the game" and one for "how to resolve actions in the game", both often being quite different from each other, which sets this particular activity apart from, say, board games.

Mordaedil
2019-01-31, 05:17 AM
That's why I keep saying that it's that part of a Venn diagram where roleplaying, mechanics, and "fiction" (not story, fiction) overlap.
I am interested in your newsletter and would like to subscribe. Could you explain further what fiction is and how it fits into the venn diagram? I can guess at roleplaying and mechanics since they are fairly core to D&D, which is really well know. I'd like to know how fiction enters into it compared to something like Maid RPG or Call of Cthulhu contrasting experience with D&D.

Florian
2019-01-31, 05:47 AM
I am interested in your newsletter and would like to subscribe. Could you explain further what fiction is and how it fits into the venn diagram? I can guess at roleplaying and mechanics since they are fairly core to D&D, which is really well know. I'd like to know how fiction enters into it compared to something like Maid RPG or Call of Cthulhu contrasting experience with D&D.

Max has the right idea, but going by past conversations, will draw very narrow, if borderline wrong, conclusions based on them.

The fiction here is that the game reality could be real, as well as the characters that are part of it, all of those should function and act as if it according to the first assumption.

That works with old-school stuff like CoC, but will break with dedicated system like Maid.

Edit: Max has an aversion against games that are created to facility a certain kind of outcome.

Rhedyn
2019-01-31, 07:42 AM
That idea is broad enough to apply to two Lawyers in a courtroom.

Both are playing a fictional character that believes their client is right. Both are acting out or performing actions in the context of the fiction each client has about the situation where they are right.

There is two to 3 fictions, what each client believes (or wants people to believe) happened and the magical land of the Legal courtroom where things like witness testimony is "proof" and objective truth is decided by the subjective opinion of the jury.

Knaight
2019-01-31, 08:37 AM
That idea is broad enough to apply to two Lawyers in a courtroom.

Both are playing a fictional character that believes their client is right. Both are acting out or performing actions in the context of the fiction each client has about the situation where they are right.

There is two to 3 fictions, what each client believes (or wants people to believe) happened and the magical land of the Legal courtroom where things like witness testimony is "proof" and objective truth is decided by the subjective opinion of the jury.

This is borderline sophistry. Arguing a particular position you may not actually hold is not "playing a fictional character". Possible interpretations of real events aren't really within the category of fiction. Procedures for setting assumptions to use in future procedures are not remotely the same thing as the portrayal of a fictional setting. Being able to jam things that shouldn't fit a definition in by stretching other definitions to their breaking points doesn't discredit a definition.

Rhedyn
2019-01-31, 10:07 AM
This is borderline sophistry. Arguing a particular position you may not actually hold is not "playing a fictional character". Possible interpretations of real events aren't really within the category of fiction. Procedures for setting assumptions to use in future procedures are not remotely the same thing as the portrayal of a fictional setting. Being able to jam things that shouldn't fit a definition in by stretching other definitions to their breaking points doesn't discredit a definition.
You're just making claims without offering reasons.

Maybe Lawyers are just professional RPGers. I personally don't have a problem with them falling into my definition.

The issue is those who say Courtroom cases aren't RPGs but then their definitions do not exclude them.

Schismatic
2019-01-31, 10:54 AM
I'd say a RPG is a social contract of acceptable, prescriptivist decorum enshrined by the proviso that there is a general suspension of disbelief bridling a common interpretable gamestate with codified injunction of structuralist player interactions in order to elicit an esoteric understanding of conflict resolution within a larger pseudo-theatrical prose.

4e is still a RPG. It requires that wilful social contract, it requires that reactive pseudo-theatrical prose. Mechanics alone do not make a RPG a RPG.

Just because 4e plays like a somehow even less free form Gloomhaven (I still love Gloomhaven to bits, mind you) doesn't make either of them not RPGs.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-31, 11:21 AM
I am interested in your newsletter and would like to subscribe. Could you explain further what fiction is and how it fits into the venn diagram? I can guess at roleplaying and mechanics since they are fairly core to D&D, which is really well know. I'd like to know how fiction enters into it compared to something like Maid RPG or Call of Cthulhu contrasting experience with D&D.

"Fiction" is the setting, the history, the continuity and causality, the characters (PCs and NPCs), etc -- the people-who-could-be-real that players take the roles of, the and the world-that-could-be-real where they "live".

This is distinct from "story" -- as someone else pointed out earlier, a football game or a birthday party is not a story, stories are told about them after the fact. Likewise, the events of an RPG campaign are not inherently a story, even if a story can be told about them after the fact. Some games, and some campaigns, set out to deliberately create a series of events that they view as "the best story", and they're still RPGs... but keep heading out in that direction, keep leaving the RP zone behind, more and more into of "author stance" decisions instead of character-level decisions, and eventually you leave the overlapping area of the Venn diagram and get into outright "storygames" or "collaborative storytelling" instead.


Keep in mind that the edges are fuzzy and somewhat subjective, so out at the edges there can be honest disagreement about whether a particular thing falls into the overlapping region.

There's also room to distinguish between "as written" and "as played". As written, D&D 5e is an RPG, without question. As played... I've seen descriptions that would make what's going on not an RPG in my own analysis because the RP layer is just gone, there's no "what would this character do" there's no "what would I do in this situation" even... it's all math and rules and the character is just a playing piece / number set, with decisions made entirely on what gives the best mechanical outcome. It becomes more of a board game or war game. IMO.

Tanarii
2019-01-31, 11:27 AM
This is distinct from "story" -- as someone else pointed out earlier, a football game or a birthday party is not a story, stories are told about them after the fact. Likewise, the events of an RPG campaign are not inherently a story, even if a story can be told about them after the fact.This is a critical point that many people that like to claim "RPGs are about telling stories" often mistake.

I don't live the story of my life. I don't play the story of my RPG characters. Those are real and virtual experiences, not stories.

Schismatic
2019-01-31, 11:39 AM
This is a critical point that many people that like to claim "RPGs are about telling stories" often mistake.

I don't live the story of my life. I don't play the story of my RPG characters. Those are real and virtual experiences, not stories.

That seems a bit of a blurry definition. What's objectively the difference between improvisational theatre and your PC within a wider suspension of disbelief within the environs your GM has created for a super-structuralist purpose?

You can't play without a GM giving you the structuralist tools to build a mutually agreeable metanarrative.

If you can't fundamentally agree, you can't play the story. If your GM can't fundametally agree, you can't play the story. Either there is metanarrative for the sake of legitimation of player and world, or there simply isn't metanarrative and thus zero play.

Rhedyn
2019-01-31, 11:47 AM
You can also argue that everyone acting in character is collaborative storytelling because you are collaborating to create what the story will be about.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-31, 11:50 AM
You can also argue that everyone acting in character is collaborative storytelling because you are collaborating to create what the story will be about.

Except you're not creating a story any more than going out to get lunch is an act of deliberately creating a story, or the players in a football game are deliberately creating a story.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-31, 11:55 AM
That seems a bit of a blurry definition. What's objectively the difference between improvisational theatre and your PC within a wider suspension of disbelief within the environs your GM has created for a super-structuralist purpose?

You can't play without a GM giving you the structuralist tools to build a mutually agreeable metanarrative.

If you can't fundamentally agree, you can't play the story. If your GM can't fundametally agree, you can't play the story. Either there is metanarrative for the sake of legitimation of player and world, or there simply isn't metanarrative and thus zero play.

Having watched a lot of improv theatre, what they're doing is not an RPG.

I'd say that what they're doing is out in the fully de-mechanized area where roleplaying and collaborative storytelling overlap.

Schismatic
2019-01-31, 11:59 AM
Except you're not creating a story any more than going out to get lunch is an act of deliberately creating a story, or the players in a football game are deliberately creating a story.

Wait, why? I mean people should break down hat they mean by 'story' ... if it's the act of spectating players are merely actors. The relatioship between player and GM is world's apart from player and player, but objectively speaking the GM ha, in a transcendental sense, written the plot and story (hopefully) from the very start, it's just a matter of time and inevitability the GM has already guaranteed last words of whatever tale they wll tell (assuming seen to conclusion)--though players drive narrative.

If we treat players working to an improvisational script as thespians by proxy, does that mean the artist painting is not telling a story in praxis? Or a writer is not weaving a tale as they type? Or a reporter commenting is not 'making news' by reporting an event to the viewers?

In transcendental examination, it matters not the story hasn't perceptibly end to you, what matters is the end and story is inevitable.

In a very metaphysical sense, a story you have never experienced before at all, in part or whole, is objectively no different than reading it as the author has been typing it. It makes no meaningful difference that the author has completed the very line you are on that second or a thousand years ago, in both cases still stories.

Schismatic
2019-01-31, 12:03 PM
Having watched a lot of improv theatre, what they're doing is not an RPG.

I'd say that what they're doing is out in the fully de-mechanized area where roleplaying and collaborative storytelling overlap.

Why not? A person screams 'truck stop diner!' And they work with that. Improv is no less a game than as kids playing house.

Moreover, whatever niggling definition that you have between improv and RPG, the metanarrative and suspension of disbelief is no less the same, and the fact that by (hopeful) inevitability, necessitate the GM must pen the final words of the accounts of a group of players and the world at large.

A collaborative metanarrative that allowed for everything to be contained within in terms of all its participants.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-31, 12:37 PM
Wait, why? I mean people should break down hat they mean by 'story' ... if it's the act of spectating players are merely actors. The relatioship between player and GM is world's apart from player and player, but objectively speaking the GM has, in a transcendental sense, written the plot and story (hopefully) from the very start, it's just a matter of time and inevitability the GM has already guaranteed last words of whatever tale they wll tell (assuming seen to conclusion)--though players drive narrative.

If we treat players working to an improvisational script as thespians by proxy, does that mean the artist painting is not telling a story in praxis? Or a writer is not weaving a tale as they type? Or a reporter commenting is not 'making news' by reporting an event to the viewers?


A story is a telling or recounting of events, even if those events are fictional, not the events themselves as they happen. The people who actually lived real lives, or the people-who-could-be-real that are the PCs, do not live in a story. Stories are told after the fact about the events that happened, with more or less veracity and accuracy... but they are never the events themselves.

We specifically do not treat the players as "thespians by proxy" or "working to an improvisational script". Reporters do not "make news" unless they're failing at their responsibility, they REPORT news.


Important -- IF the GM has "written the plot and story from the very start" and "has already guaranteed last words of whatever tale they will tell", then all the players have to look forward to is being railroaded, and there are a lot of us who have ZERO interest in just being bit players in the GM's already-written story.




In transcendental examination, it matters not the story hasn't perceptibly end to you, what matters is the end and story is inevitable.

In a very metaphysical sense, a story you have never experienced before at all, in part or whole, is objectively no different than reading it as the author has been typing it. It makes no meaningful difference that the author has completed the very line you are on that second or a thousand years ago, in both cases still stories.


As for this... my only comment is that we're seeing exactly why I have zero interest in or use for continental "is the chair real?" philosophy, and as far as I'm concerned it's completely unrelated to the discussion of "what is an RPG?" or the discussion of "what is a story?"

noob
2019-01-31, 12:45 PM
Formal Debates and Courtroom cases are RPGs.

Two or more people assume a role that may or may reflect their own feelings and act out that role in the presence of an arbitrator who administrates fair rulings and conflict resolution.

My definition was: A role playing game is a game where you play a role.
If you consider courtroom cases to be games then it is a rpg for you and the only problem I see is that I might fear you would not be serious enough if it was your first case (at the same time some players are extremely serious and does their best while playing games).

Schismatic
2019-01-31, 01:08 PM
A story is a telling or recounting of events, even if those events are fictional, not the events themselves as they happen. The people who actually lived real lives, or the people-who-could-be-real that are the PCs, do not live in a story. Stories are told after the fact about the events that happened, with more or less veracity and accuracy... but they are never the events themselves.

Stories are totally not told after the fact. There is no 'after the fact' in either real life, or even in fantasy. If that were true there would't be so much MLP fanfic in the latter, and there'd be no things like CIA wetworks in South America that we still have't discovered that had lead to manufactured ends throughout history.

There is no 'after the fact', but it doesn't stop either of them being stories if told. It also doesn't alter the status of existing narratives in the past of them being 'stories' that can be, and have been, told. The legend of someone like Achilles matters not any degree of 'after the fact', the legend of an Achilles predates future revelations, it succeeds any reinterpretation of the past.


We specifically do not treat the players as "thespians by proxy" or "working to an improvisational script". Reporters do not "make news" unless they're failing at their responsibility, they REPORT news.

You do understad stories can be 'non-fiction', right? Moreover, reporters try to report news. Sometimes details are shaky. Sometimes what they hear is hearsay. Sometimes details are intentionally withheld to avoid complications of the authorities to investigate. Sometimes they cannot be on scene to verify, but the 'burden of reasonable assumption' as to what a reporter says already passes a line of responsibility that refusing to report anything may be undermining their duties to keep people informed.

Like, say, two multi-role fighters are verified to have been flying overhead and had dropped a payload of munitions over a targeted facility. The tv reporter can't be 100% sure of events, but heard the detonations, sees the score of panicking civilians and rushing soldiery, and two large plumes of smoke from nearby fires billow into the air.

Now the journalist can wait for hours trying to verify all details, or they can report what they know to their viewers (editor then viewer) and keep the feed open to the live story to help warn others in the area to possibly increased attacks.

They at their most enlightened idea of a rationalist conception of 'journalist' is merely recounting news. Often while it's still happening.



Important -- IF the GM has "written the plot and story from the very start" and "has already guaranteed last words of whatever tale they will tell", then all the players have to look forward to is being railroaded, and there are a lot of us who have ZERO interest in just being bit players in the GM's already-written story.

You're thiking literally, I said transcendentally. Trascendentally the GM (hopefully) has already costructed the final words of the super-structuralist environs they have created. That objectively, the GM has already (hopefuly, as in seen to conclusion) finished the story, and the story is as just as much in praxis of it being told as its final result of its inevitability.


As for this... my only comment is that we're seeing exactly why I have zero interest in or use for continental "is the chair real?" philosophy, and as far as I'm concerned it's completely unrelated to the discussion of "what is an RPG?" or the discussion of "what is a story?"

Why exactly is it unrelated? More over, your discussion is about stories and what they constitute.

Give me 5 hours and I could probably write a 2000 word essay on what suspension of disbelief actually means, and the genre specific relationship of TTRPGing and structuralism, as well as its curious connection to postmodernist consumption.

Rhedyn
2019-01-31, 01:09 PM
My definition was: A role playing game is a game where you play a role.
If you consider courtroom cases to be games then it is a rpg for you and the only problem I see is that I might fear you would not be serious enough if it was your first case (at the same time some players are extremely serious and does their best while playing games).

Of course court cases are a game. Only one side wins!

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-31, 01:10 PM
Of course court cases are a game. Only one side wins!

That doesn't make them "games".

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-31, 01:23 PM
Stories are totally not told after the fact. There is no 'after the fact' in either real life, or even in fantasy. If that were true there would't be so much MLP fanfic in the latter, and there'd be no things like CIA wetworks in South America that we still have't discovered that had lead to manufactured ends throughout history.

There is no 'after the fact', but it doesn't stop either of them being stories if told. It also doesn't alter the status of existing narratives in existence. The legend of someone like Achilles matters not any degree of 'after the fact'.


If the RPG campaign is over, and I tell a story about what happened in that campaign, that is told after the fact.

If I tell you a story about what happened on my drive to work yesterday, I can frame it as a story. It's after the fact. When I was actually driving to work that day, I was not living a story or creating a story.

Even in science fiction set in the future, there's a concept of "future history". From the perspective of the story, the events already happened.

The past exists.




You're thinking literally, I said transcendentally. Transcendentally the GM (hopefully) has already constructed the final words of the super-structuralist environs they have created. That objectively, the GM has already (hopefully, as in seen to conclusion) finished the story, and the story is as just as much in praxis of it being told as its final result of its inevitability.


If the GM has already "written the ending", if the GM has already "finished the story", then there's absolutely no point in playing the campaign, the GM should just go write their novel and spare trying to railroad the players into being the audience for the story he wanted to tell.




give me 5 hours ad I could probably write a 2000 word essay on what suspension of disbelief actually means, and the genre specific relationship of TTRPGing and structuralism, as well as its curious connection to postmodernist consumption.


Please don't, there's enough postmodernist obscurantism and word-salad in the world already.

Bohandas
2019-01-31, 01:45 PM
Some combination of the following

1.) A game where you roleplay a character
2.) A game where you level up
3.) A rocket propelled grenade launcher

Schismatic
2019-01-31, 02:54 PM
If the RPG campaign is over, and I tell a story about what happened in that campaign, that is told after the fact.

Then the metanarrative continues.


If I tell you a story about what happened on my drive to work yesterday, I can frame it as a story. It's after the fact. When I was actually driving to work that day, I was not living a story or creating a story.

This is blatantly dishonest argumentation, this was your argument;
'
"Stories are told after the fact about the events that happened, with more or less veracity and accuracy... but they are never the events themselves."

This is a patently false argument. Stories require no veracity or accuracy, nor do they even need to be about evets 'happeing' or 'have happened'. Gossip is a thing. Legends change, Homer did not likely come up with his own ideas and neither would his be recouted faithfully by those that came after. 'There is no after the fact'. Humans are not perfect record keepers and most memory itself is a fabrication that changes through active reinterpretation, often simply by recounting events and how respondents behave in relationship to its recount. It's known as 'false memory phenomena'.

You can rewrite people's memories just by tailoring your resposes to them recounting them, and they themselves will believe it ad 'correct' themselves.


Even in science fiction set in the future, there's a concept of "future history". From the perspective of the story, the events already happened.

The past exists.

Where you going with this, precisely?


If the GM has already "written the ending", if the GM has already "finished the story", then there's absolutely no point in playing the campaign, the GM should just go write their novel and spare trying to railroad the players into being the audience for the story he wanted to tell.

How many times do I have to explain it? The GM inevitably creates the structuralist foudations upon which both player and GM have an approximated agreeable metanarrative that allows players to act, and GMs to rectify whatever chaos that brings. But in the end, the GM has an idea how the results of a character's actios will be, how the module will play out, what the ramifications of that will be over a campaign, and in the end will dictate the close of the story by necessity.

A GM that sees in conclusion of the metanarrative (the very end), will inevitably be the one to construct its end. In a non-transcendental aspect of the story, GMs will plan before seshs, in a transcendental sense this relationship to metanarrative means inevitably the GM has been leading to the end.

Still a story, whether in praxis or conclusion. Easily modules on their own are contained narratives with explicit tonal shifts delineating the split between them. If the story ends there, the metanarrative does also. The gamestate built by GM and players has finished.


Please don't, there's enough postmodernist obscurantism and word-salad in the world already.

Pffh, no one's paying me. You haven't actually presented a meaningful argumet or acked up your reasoning, however.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-31, 02:59 PM
Pffh, no one's paying me. You haven't actually presented a meaigful argumet or acked up your reasoig, however.


Or rather, I refuse to engage in debate about whether the chair I'm sitting on is real.

I have no use for or interest in postmodernist self-referential obscurantistism. Simple as that.



How many times do I have to explain it? The GM inevitably creates the structuralist foudations upon which both player and GM have an approximated agreeable metanarrative that allows players to act, and GMs to rectify whatever chaos that brings. But in the end, the GM has an idea how the results of a character's actios will be, how the module will play out, what the ramifications of that will be over a campaign, and in the end will dictate the close of the story by necessity.

A GM that sees in conclusion of the metanarrative (the very end), will inevitably be the one to construct its end. In a non-transcendental aspect of the story, GMs will plan before seshs, in a transcendental sense this relationship to metanarrative means inevitably the GM has been leading to the end.

Still a story, whether in praxis or conclusion. Easily modules on their own are contained narratives with explicitly toal shifts delineating the split between them. If the story ends their, the metanarrative does also. The gamestate has finished.


All of that... meaningless navel-gazing nonsense, that tells us nothing, and only serves as an attempt to justify its own continuance within academia by burying the reader in a blizzard of bottomless circular terminology.

See, Sokal's brilliant takedown of postmodernist "scholarship" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair) and the more recent "sting (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/)".

I'd rather not have to hammer this nail back in so often, but it's almost inevitable that when we have this discussion about the nature of RPGs, we'll see this nonsense about "everything is a narrative" and "all events are ongoing stories" rear its misbegotten head.


Buried in there is maybe an assumption about "modules" being used, which... is a fundamentally wrong assumption about how many GMs actually do the thing they do. Personally I've never used a module, or a script, and have found assumptions about how players or their characters will react to be useless at best.

Schismatic
2019-01-31, 03:07 PM
Or rather, I refuse to engage in debate about whether the chair I'm sitting on is real.

I have no use for or interest in postmodernist self-referential obscurantistism. Simple as that.

I broke down my argument;



How many times do I have to explain it? The GM inevitably creates the structuralist foudations upon which both player and GM have an approximated agreeable metanarrative that allows players to act, and GMs to rectify whatever chaos that brings. But in the end, the GM has an idea how the results of a character's actios will be, how the module will play out, what the ramifications of that will be over a campaign, and in the end will dictate the close of the story by necessity.

A GM that sees in conclusion of the metanarrative (the very end), will inevitably be the one to construct its end. In a non-transcendental aspect of the story, GMs will plan before seshs, in a transcendental sense this relationship to metanarrative means inevitably the GM has been leading to the end.

Still a story, whether in praxis or conclusion. Easily modules on their own are contained narratives with explicit tonal shifts delineating the split between them. If the story ends there, the metanarrative does also. The gamestate built by GM and players has finished.

What exactly is academic about this?

Willie the Duck
2019-01-31, 03:37 PM
Max, I'm generally sympathetic to the 'a game being played has fiction and events which can be recounted in a storytelling manner, but is distinct from storytelling (but can include them, leading to Venn overlaps)' line of argumentation. Likewise, Schismatic is doing themselves no favor by declaring your clearly forthright and earnest argumentation somehow dishonest (the word you are looking for is 'wrong' if you think it not right), and also by trying to tell you what your argument is.

However, Sokal's takedown was very good at showing a failure of good peer reviewed journalistic practices in certain academic journals. However, it doesn't even really even address the legitimacy of any particular school of thought. I suppose that's a takedown of their "scholarship," just as you said. But that's kind of saying, 'your philosophy is wrong because the people advocating it are lazy publishers,' which... I guess I just don't see that as all that impressive a takedown.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-31, 03:51 PM
Max, I'm generally sympathetic to the 'a game being played has fiction and events which can be recounted in a storytelling manner, but is distinct from storytelling (but can include them, leading to Venn overlaps)' line of argumentation. Likewise, Schismatic is doing themselves no favor by declaring your clearly forthright and earnest argumentation somehow dishonest (the word you are looking for is 'wrong' if you think it not right), and also by trying to tell you what your argument is.

However, Sokal's takedown was very good at showing a failure of good peer reviewed journalistic practices in certain academic journals. However, it doesn't even really even address the legitimacy of any particular school of thought. I suppose that's a takedown of their "scholarship," just as you said. But that's kind of saying, 'your philosophy is wrong because the people advocating it are lazy publishers,' which... I guess I just don't see that as all that impressive a takedown.

In both cases I linked, the core problem is inherent to postmodernism itself -- it is inherently and deeply vulnerable because of its utter disregard for objective empirical fact, its insistence that there is only perception, only constructed "narrative", and no objective reality, and because of its fixation on form over function.

But I think we've wasted enough time on this sidebar... I'm trying to fight my own problem with getting way off topic, and at this point we're getting there.

Frozen_Feet
2019-01-31, 04:45 PM
A roleplaying game is a game where you assume the role of a character and decide what to do in a virtual scenario, and why, and how.

A game of football is not a roleplaying game because line between player and character is not established. This is in fact main reason for why most games do not count as roleplaying games. Even when those games have roles, they are not defined well enough to count as characters.

This said, the character you play in a roleplaying game can just be yourself. The distinction here exists on the level of conscious processing: thinking about how you would act in a scenario if it was real versus acting in a scenario.

Court cases etc. are not roleplaying games because their scenarios are not virtual, they are actual. For a similar reason, they fall outside the social context of games.

This said, it would be trivially easy to turn a courtroom case into a roleplaying game, and same goes for a football game. In the former case, all you need to do is virtually (re)create the situation, in the latter, you only need a layer of fiction to establish characters for the players.

Most computer games trivially satisfy the parts of assuming a role and engaging a virtual scenario, but then fail because they don't actually allow enough quantity and quality of decisions. There are a lot of RPG-adjacent computer games, such as most entries in the Legend of Zelda series, which have all the aesthetic trappings and gameplay elements needed for a classic fantasy roleplaying game, but they rely too much on single-solution puzzles to fully cross over. Sometimes these are technical limitations of the medium imposed by hardware, other times they are conscious design decisions. Most egregious are games heavily reliant on scripted cutscenes or other mechanics which relegate the player to a passive audience member. There may still be roleplaying in such games, but ironically it tends to exist outside important story and character beats.

This said, the view that CRPGs can't be "real" RPGs has been obsolete for decades now and is largely based on technological limitations.

Whether or not a game is aiming to tell a story is not important to whether a game is a roleplaying game. You can tell a story of any sequence of events, so the question is often moot anyway.

What really seems to trip people up is that they can't seem to accept that a roleplaying game can count as other types of game both at once or in succession.

Trivial example: in D&D, you are not roleplaying at character creation because you do not yet have a character (duh). Similarly, when serving as a dungeon master, you may be roleplaying when you are deciding what Goblin A is doing, but then you have to take a break from that to decide what Goblin B is doing, or to look up a random generation to determine the weather or treasure in Goblin B's pockets.

When and where newer tabletop roleplaying games start to feel like not roleplaying games, it's usually because they demand the player more frequently break from their role to do the sort of non-roleplaying decisions that were reserved for a game master or dungeon master. Sometimes, these non-roleplaying decisions are about the script of the story (etc.). But this does not make such games "storytelling games" instead of "roleplaying games" ; it makes them both.

For contrast, there are storytelling games which are not roleplaying games, because the players don't have characters. Such games can progress, for example, by players dealing cards with potential events or plot twists written on them, or by the players taking turns to draw pictures on a board.

jayem
2019-01-31, 05:02 PM
I'd go for something like...

1) A game inspired by and similar to Dungeons & Dragons [Attributes&Skills, Combat Encounters, die based combat resolution, GM/DM, ()]

2) The Roleplay + Game definition.

Roleplay, you have a character/job/situation that is not your real life one. During the 'roleplay', people respond to you as though you were that character, and you respond to people as though you were that character.
Corollary, if the game does not allow the responses necessary, this impinges on the ability to roleplay.
-> Monopoly would really struggle (but could be adapted, either by changing the mechanics or coming up with an explaination as to why you most go to Park Square)
-> Diplomacy is pretty much there (ok so you know you can't research nukes or personally inspire the troops
-> A courtroom simulation definitely (after all you can say anything you want to)
-> similarly something that allows a full range of options (via a GM) but...
-> A group of optimising metagamers playing D&D wouldn't qualify [hence definition 1]

Game, the players should have some active control of the situation but not total control. Probabilities (given knowledge of the other players actions) should be appropriately predictable. Meaningful choice comes into play here.
-> Monopoly struggles under this definition (this is a feature! )
-> For the courtroom, a variant where you could make up evidence would not count. But one where you have 'evidence' cards or a GM would.
Some things must be abstracted (or else it's just real life).
-> this kind of cuts off football (which I don't really like)

Rhedyn
2019-01-31, 05:07 PM
In both cases I linked, the core problem is inherent to postmodernism itself -- it is inherently and deeply vulnerable because of its utter disregard for objective empirical fact, its insistence that there is only perception, only constructed "narrative", and no objective reality, and because of its fixation on form over function.

But I think we've wasted enough time on this sidebar... I'm trying to fight my own problem with getting way off topic, and at this point we're getting there.But you are arguing about word definitions, a totally subjective quality that if examined close enough reveals no definition to be objective. Sure definitions can be useful, but arguing about them is meant to kill time.

noob
2019-01-31, 05:09 PM
-> A group of optimising metagamers playing D&D wouldn't qualify [hence definition 1]

They are playing the role of unbeatable superheroes which they are not in real life.
You would say that someone pretending to be mary sue empowered superman would not be role playing but that is false.

jayem
2019-01-31, 05:17 PM
They are playing the role of unbeatable superheroes which they are not in real life.
You would say that someone pretending to be mary sue empowered superman would not be role playing but that is false.

Playing Mary Sues Supermen is potentially perfectly fine roleplaying (though probably is hard to game for).*
The problem I was picking out is when rather than being their character (Mary Sue or otherwise) the entire turn is about the dice and sheets. It's never about what their 'character' would do, but what gives the highest score. Which is perfectly fine as a game, but isn't actual roleplay any more than any other example.

*ETA and of course providing that is the role you are playing

noob
2019-01-31, 05:24 PM
Playing Mary Sues Supermen is potentially perfectly fine roleplaying (though probably is hard to game for).*
The problem I was picking out is when rather than being their character (Mary Sue or otherwise) the entire turn is about the dice and sheets. It's never about what their 'character' would do, but what gives the highest score. Which is perfectly fine as a game, but isn't actual roleplay any more than any other example.

*ETA and of course providing that is the role you are playing

they were not optimizing enough if they still used dice and sheets.
If you optimize enough it becomes a game where you impersonate someone thinking hard how to solve philosophical problems while you are able to act infinitely fast and other stuff like that where hit points and dice stopped mattering ages ago.

Frozen_Feet
2019-01-31, 05:33 PM
Irrelevant distinction.

Jayem is right here. Or, more specifically, he's right that the particular sort of player outlined is in violation of the spirit of the game.

Equivalent action in soccer would be to deliberately grab the ball with your hands or kicking the ball out of bounds to manipulate outcome of the game.

What particular fouls are being committed is not important; the mindset is.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-31, 05:49 PM
Playing Mary Sues Supermen is potentially perfectly fine roleplaying (though probably is hard to game for).*
The problem I was picking out is when rather than being their character (Mary Sue or otherwise) the entire turn is about the dice and sheets. It's never about what their 'character' would do, but what gives the highest score. Which is perfectly fine as a game, but isn't actual roleplay any more than any other example.

*ETA and of course providing that is the role you are playing

The part I bolded is one of the "leaving the overlap" conditions, specifically heading off into "board game" territory if it goes far enough.

jayem
2019-01-31, 05:51 PM
Irrelevant distinction.

Jayem is right here. Or, more specifically, he's right that the particular sort of player outlined is in violation of the spirit of the game.

Equivalent action in soccer would be to deliberately grab the ball with your hands or kicking the ball out of bounds to manipulate outcome of the game.

What particular fouls are being committed is not important; the mindset is.

It's not necessarily against the spirit of the game. It's is necessarily against the letters of the word role-play.

But I think I see the football metaphor, but in this case, (and arguably the football one) both are valid games.

[ETA and yes, exactly with the leaving the overlap comment. There are often times when I'd categorise it as an RPG (on the basis of it's mechanical similarity to the standard RPG) and exclude other games with role-play (that have different mechanics). On the whole hopefully it should be obvious or unimportant which definition is being used most of the time.

Schismatic
2019-01-31, 09:15 PM
Max, I'm generally sympathetic to the 'a game being played has fiction and events which can be recounted in a storytelling manner, but is distinct from storytelling (but can include them, leading to Venn overlaps)' line of argumentation. Likewise, Schismatic is doing themselves no favor by declaring your clearly forthright and earnest argumentation somehow dishonest (the word you are looking for is 'wrong' if you think it not right), and also by trying to tell you what your argument is.

However, Sokal's takedown was very good at showing a failure of good peer reviewed journalistic practices in certain academic journals. However, it doesn't even really even address the legitimacy of any particular school of thought. I suppose that's a takedown of their "scholarship," just as you said. But that's kind of saying, 'your philosophy is wrong because the people advocating it are lazy publishers,' which... I guess I just don't see that as all that impressive a takedown.

D&D is not a science. Neither is the definition of story, narrative, plot, or metanarrative. Ignoring the very basic idea that there is a social contract that exists that simply allows one to play/GM is objectively wrong. Empirically so. Every gamer ever has to internalize and match the requirements of play that a GM has structurally created.

This shouldn't be as if some amazing leap of conjecture. RPGaming and storytelling are social contracts and all of us come to a game ready to make the concession of; "I will suspend my disbelief, I will not metagame, I will roleplay my character, and that cgaracter must exist within the metanarrative the GM deigns is congruent in the designs they have presented thus."

Not exactly a leap of faith. We come to RPGs with these tenets because they work.

So the blatantly obvious that this structuralism exists, from character introduction to campaign end, the inevitable of a GM is a world they built, a metanarrative to which allows both player and world to coexist, and the inevitably end of that campaign once, is not somehow in contest. And if people truly find that somehow contentious, well I'm still waiting for an honest argument against.

GMs don't rock up to a game with zero worldbuilding, character creation rules, or no idea of even how to introduce PCs or whatever unread adventure they haven't decided on yet.

It's almost as if the most active threads on the site are the Finding Players board and both the players and GM excitedly bouncing back to and fro worldbuilding, questions about how they should build their characters, and where best they might fit into the GM's designs they are initially planning.

This relationship simmers to consistent play once the players 'gel' with the worldbuilding and ideas of the GM. Players have essentially read the fineprint, found a place to fit, and are having a ball exploring the edges of what and how the GM populates their world. Whether it's talking to you good friend, the tavern owner... to get a contract with the local lord to raid a monster den harassing nearby farmsteads.

That's the metanarrative towards efficiency of player/GM action. And from session 1 to the final curtain, it's the GM that decides both. Without GM structuralism and metanarrative, there is no game. Hardly controversial. Campaign settings themselves is this postmodernism of RPGs. They are essentially a pre-written, indepth metanarrative. Because RPGs are not a science, it's postmodern suspension of disbelief.

It's almost as if it's a game that involves playing a role.

Florian
2019-01-31, 09:45 PM
@Schismatic:

I strongly disagree with you there. But I think you also showed why a lot of gamers socialized to the hobby under certain conditions have a hard time with some of the newer systems that are less based on D&D.

Some assumptions can only work when you have a very clear work division between players and GM, with the later providing setting and content and the former have to take care of their characters. Strictly speaking, neither setting nor GM are necessary to play a roleplaying game, but that requires the players to constantly switch to and from the author stance and make active meta game choices (for example, in games based on conflict and drama, you must try to steer your character into conflict and create drama).

@Jayem:

That, too, seems a bit based on D&D-likes, where it can easily happen that the two sets of rules we have, 1) How to conduct the game and 2) How to handle what happens on the in-game level, don't necessarily match. It´s also a thing that is quite common with most combat heavy game systems, that reward a certain amount of system mastery as part of the character building pre-game.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-31, 09:54 PM
D&D is not a science. Neither is the definition of story, narrative, plot, or metanarrative. Ignoring the very basic idea that there is a social contract that exists that simply allows one to play/GM is objectively wrong. Empirically so. Every gamer ever has to internalize and match the requirements of play that a GM has structurally created.

This shouldn't be as if some amazing leap of conjecture. RPGaming and storytelling are social contracts and all of us come to a game ready to make the concession of; "I will suspend my disbelief, I will not metagame, I will roleplay my character, and that cgaracter must exist within the metanarrative the GM deigns is congruent in the designs they have presented thus."

Not exactly a leap of faith. We come to RPGs with these tenets because they work.

So the blatantly obvious that this structuralism exists, from character introduction to campaign end, the inevitable of a GM is a world they built, a metanarrative to which allows both player and world to coexist, and the inevitably end of that campaign once, is not somehow in contest. And if people truly find that somehow contentious, well I'm still waiting for an honest argument against.

GMs don't rock up to a game with zero worldbuilding, character creation rules, or no idea of even how to introduce PCs or whatever unread adventure they haven't decided on yet.

It's almost as if the most active threads on the site are the Finding Players board and both the players and GM excitedly bouncing back to and fro worldbuilding, questions about how they should build their characters, and where best they might fit into the GM's designs they are initially planning.

This relationship simmers to consistent play once the players 'gel' with the worldbuilding and ideas of the GM. Players have essentially read the fineprint, found a place to fit, and are having a ball exploring the edges of what and how the GM populates their world. Whether it's talking to you good friend, the tavern owner... to get a contract with the local lord to raid a monster den harassing nearby farmsteads.

That's the metanarrative towards efficiency of player/GM action. And from session 1 to the final curtain, it's the GM that decides both. Without GM structuralism and metanarrative, there is no game. Hardly controversial. Campaign settings themselves is this postmodernism of RPGs. They are essentially a pre-written, indepth metanarrative. Because RPGs are not a science, it's postmodern suspension of disbelief.

It's almost as if it's a game that involves playing a role.

You're making a lot of assumptions both about how other people approach gaming, and about how other people go about gaming... reading between the lines one can see a very narrow "this is how people game" concept that seems to be very rooted in "traditional" D&D-like gameplay, "group finding" instead of extant gaming "circles", prewritten plots and modules, imposed setting as opposed to any sort of collaboration or feedback, and so on... a concept that neatly fits into the theory you already believe is true.

It's a very neat just-so-story, wrapped in buzzword salad, that doesn't really tell us anything or offer any predictive value.

Also, don't say "we" when you mean yourself.

Let me make this clear, so I can move on -- I reject in whole and in detail this notion that existence and all human activity is built on "social constructs" and "meta-narratives" and "structuralism" and so on. I'm not rejecting your analysis, I'm rejecting in total the entire philosophy and belief system upon which your analysis is grounded.

It's as if you're trying to explain to me that I can't travel in space without electrifying the aether, and when I tell you that I reject aether theory, you keep trying to tell me that my rocket won't fly without it.



@Schismatic:

I strongly disagree with you there. But I think you also showed why a lot of gamers socialized to the hobby under certain conditions have a hard time with some of the newer systems that are less based on D&D.

Some assumptions can only work when you have a very clear work division between players and GM, with the later providing setting and content and the former have to take care of their characters. Strictly speaking, neither setting nor GM are necessary to play a roleplaying game, but that requires the players to constantly switch to and from the author stance and make active meta game choices (for example, in games based on conflict and drama, you must try to steer your character into conflict and create drama).


Don't even have to go that far to find gaming that doesn't fit the little model in question.

First, the assumption that players are making "concessions", and that each player is simply agreeing to abide by the GM's "structure". (I can't bring myself to use these buzzwords without the scarequotes, my only other option is so much eye-rolling that I'll hurt my vision.)

Second, the assumption of prewritten plot that came up earlier.


If we're sticking to the question of "what is an RPG?", then so far there are a lot of answers that fall well outside this "structural" thing, while still being well within the overlapping area on the Venn.

Rhedyn
2019-01-31, 10:00 PM
And here I think Schismatic understands the true purpose of this thread: to construct word salad.

Schismatic
2019-01-31, 10:17 PM
@Schismatic:

I strongly disagree with you there. But I think you also showed why a lot of gamers socialized to the hobby under certain conditions have a hard time with some of the newer systems that are less based on D&D.

Some assumptions can only work when you have a very clear work division between players and GM, with the later providing setting and content and the former have to take care of their characters. Strictly speaking, neither setting nor GM are necessary to play a roleplaying game, but that requires the players to constantly switch to and from the author stance and make active meta game choices (for example, in games based on conflict and drama, you must try to steer your character into conflict and create drama).

Okay, but we're talking narratively driven TTRPGs. Even Gloomhaven has a metanarrative.

See, I don't belong in any in person TTRPG after a married couple in our group went to Melbourne, and another player has an unusual schedule. It's actually the reason I wanted to experiment with PBP to begin with, as our initially 6 person group is now a 3/4 player board gaming weekly group. We play Gloomhaven every fortnight (loving my spellweaver)...

Now Gloomhaven, if you're not aware, is amazing... Even though there is strictly no 'GM' it does have a narrative structure driven by part luck, part decision, and part mission choice at the end of a scenario. It has a stealth A.I system that is given a touch of whimsy by enemy decks of cards to determine what they do, how, at what range, and with which situational conditions.

So even in a game like Gloomhaven, there is a structuralism. A metanarrative. A master idea of self fruition through interactive agency. It's tight, clean, easy to learn, and really, really cheeky with hidden scenario objective cards, and how loot and treasure systems work.

So this boardgame still falls in line with my argument, and the characters do as they say. Take care of themselves, don't have a GM rolling dice determing their fate, is yet narratively drive with changing circumstances and gamestates, all witnhout technically a GM. So on and so forth.

So how exactly does thos game of yours not enforce a structuralist metanarrative for the sake of maintaining order and understanding of narrative drivers? I use 'GM' not in the sense of as if a singular person always or forever. In terms of a Gloomhaven it doesn't even need to be a person... or at least a very distant person who simply wrote a very detailed campaign book.

Tanarii
2019-01-31, 11:25 PM
Some combination of the following

1.) A game where you roleplay a character
2.) A game where you level up
3.) A rocket propelled grenade launcherSounds like RIFTs ...

Florian
2019-02-01, 12:29 AM
So how exactly does thos game of yours not enforce a structuralist metanarrative for the sake of maintaining order and understanding of narrative drivers? I use 'GM' not in the sense of as if a singular person always or forever. In terms of a Gloomhaven it doesn't even need to be a person... or at least a very distant person who simply wrote a very detailed campaign book.

They don't need to. Unlike more D&D-like RPGs, their rules work on the primary level, the interaction between the players and how to conduct the actual game. They deal with loss and gain of narrative rights, as well as how vetos are handled.

@Max:

Well, at least it is more or less easy to agree that the "adventure" format is quite common in the hobby and many people understand it as the default.

Willie the Duck
2019-02-01, 08:30 AM
And here I think Schismatic understands the true purpose of this thread: to construct word salad.

Well, that the thread was going to be high-falutin navel-gazing was inherent to the topic. That it was going to be so contentious. I feel like there's a battle here that on the surface is vaguely sagacious* but less than a millimeter down is a proverbial pack-positioning/junk-measuring contest. Only explanation I have for why there's so much passion on the subject.
*mind you, stuff we all learned sophomore year of undergrad, amongst a bunch of people who I assume are all overly-educated, overly-compensated, under-challenged, middle-aged professionals slowly coming to terms with the fact that they'll never get to use most of their education in their professional lives. :smalltongue:


Let me make this clear, so I can move on -- I reject in whole and in detail this notion that existence and all human activity is built on "social constructs" and "meta-narratives" and "structuralism" and so on. I'm not rejecting your analysis, I'm rejecting in total the entire philosophy and belief system upon which your analysis is grounded.

It's as if you're trying to explain to me that I can't travel in space without electrifying the aether, and when I tell you that I reject aether theory, you keep trying to tell me that my rocket won't fly without it.

Again, I agree with the position, but this analogy is off. The rocket literally or will not fly, based one whose theory of the universe is correct. That's not the same scenario as rejecting Schismatic's philosophy, which at the best or worst, does nothing but frame the action. A more apt analogy would be Schismatic coming to your rocket take off and declaring that it was a boat, and not a rocket, because it was merely sailing into the aether -- the rocket flies either way, you just disagree with their framing thereof. Rhedyn was right up above, we are just arguing about word definitions to kill time. We're not changing whether people are playing RPGs, only how we are defining it.

noob
2019-02-01, 10:06 AM
For all I know I am going to throw random words until it makes sentence and it will make as much sense to me as what I can read right now.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-01, 10:12 AM
Well, that the thread was going to be high-falutin navel-gazing was inherent to the topic. That it was going to be so contentious. I feel like there's a battle here that on the surface is vaguely sagacious* but less than a millimeter down is a proverbial pack-positioning/junk-measuring contest. Only explanation I have for why there's so much passion on the subject.
*mind you, stuff we all learned sophomore year of undergrad, amongst a bunch of people who I assume are all overly-educated, overly-compensated, under-challenged, middle-aged professionals slowly coming to terms with the fact that they'll never get to use most of their education in their professional lives. :smalltongue:



Again, I agree with the position, but this analogy is off. The rocket literally or will not fly, based one whose theory of the universe is correct. That's not the same scenario as rejecting Schismatic's philosophy, which at the best or worst, does nothing but frame the action. A more apt analogy would be Schismatic coming to your rocket take off and declaring that it was a boat, and not a rocket, because it was merely sailing into the aether -- the rocket flies either way, you just disagree with their framing thereof. Rhedyn was right up above, we are just arguing about word definitions to kill time. We're not changing whether people are playing RPGs, only how we are defining it.

At least in my case, I've tried to make my definition as open-minded and flexible as possible, so that it includes things that are RPGs but that are not to my taste at all -- I see a lot of definitions that come down trying to codify someone's personal tastes, rather than find an objective standard. I would never play a game using a PBTA system, it's just antithetical to my enjoyment of gaming and system preferences, but that's subjective -- PBTA systems are clearly RPG systems.

Maybe the "boat" analogy would be more apt -- that the "theory of constructed reality" I'm rejecting in whole and in detail is equivalent to aether theory, or the geocentric model of the solar system, is the important part.



Part one. Given the dark days of "RPG theory", the efforts made to belittle and marginalize competing preferences, the efforts made to seize the terminology for partisan ends... I don't see this as just arguing over definitions just for the sake of arguing. If we're going to ask "what is an RPG?", and look for a definition, we need to find something that's not designed to exclude or to exalt any one group's preferences or hates, but also draws a meaningful distinction when things that simply aren't RPGs try to claim the mantle. That is, when someone tries to call what's clearly way way out in freeform collaborative storytelling game territory, or clearly in straight-up board-game territory, or pure improve acting territory, "an RPG", we need a way to say "sorry, you're outside even the fuzzy edges of our big inclusive Venn diagram overlapping zone".

Part two. It's nearly inevitable that discussion of this topic will end up derailed by the toxic and corrosive claims that "everything is a narrative" / "real events as they happen are inherently stories just as much as pure fiction" / "perception creates reality" as soon as we get to the very real objective distinction between "fiction layer" and actual "narrative", or the very real distinction between an emergent sequence of coherent events, and deliberate storytelling. I'd LOVE to be able to discuss "RPG theory" without the exchange being poisoned and derailed, and never have that stuff come up again, but evidently that's not possible.

Tanarii
2019-02-01, 11:15 AM
I see a lot of definitions that come down trying to codify someone's personal tastes, rather than find an objective standard.Like saying making decisions for your character are objectively required, and playing the role of a personality different from your own is not? :smallamused: What kind of dastardly poster would try to pass off personal tastes like that?

Schismatic
2019-02-01, 11:49 AM
They don't need to. Unlike more D&D-like RPGs, their rules work on the primary level, the interaction between the players and how to conduct the actual game. They deal with loss and gain of narrative rights, as well as how vetos are handled.

@Max:

Well, at least it is more or less easy to agree that the "adventure" format is quite common in the hobby and many people understand it as the default.

Right, but can you explain to me why it doesn't? Does this game have rules? Does it require surrealist interpretation of reality requiring an intertextuality of ideas that self-referentially cement themselves allowing one abstracted engagement? What?

It might eeasier to just tell me what this game is, as my critique works just as well with Traveller, WoD, D&D, GURPS, even TORG (though I could write essays on why TORG breaks all the rules and why it was and still is amazing).

Schismatic
2019-02-01, 12:05 PM
Well, that the thread was going to be high-falutin navel-gazing was inherent to the topic. That it was going to be so contentious. I feel like there's a battle here that on the surface is vaguely sagacious* but less than a millimeter down is a proverbial pack-positioning/junk-measuring contest. Only explanation I have for why there's so much passion on the subject.
*mind you, stuff we all learned sophomore year of undergrad, amongst a bunch of people who I assume are all overly-educated, overly-compensated, under-challenged, middle-aged professionals slowly coming to terms with the fact that they'll never get to use most of their education in their professional lives. :smalltongue:

Pffh, this assumes education is simply to get a job.


Again, I agree with the position, but this analogy is off. The rocket literally or will not fly, based one whose theory of the universe is correct. That's not the same scenario as rejecting Schismatic's philosophy, which at the best or worst, does nothing but frame the action. A more apt analogy would be Schismatic coming to your rocket take off and declaring that it was a boat, and not a rocket, because it was merely sailing into the aether -- the rocket flies either way, you just disagree with their framing thereof. Rhedyn was right up above, we are just arguing about word definitions to kill time. We're not changing whether people are playing RPGs, only how we are defining it.

This is not what I'm saying. Can you point to me where this holds true in my argument? Unless you have some magical, Star Trek-esque replicator that can physically build and create anything literally all TTRPGs tell you to imagine a boat. The only way this analogy would work at all is as a GM I told you to imagie a rocket ship, no wait, imagine a rocket ship that turned into a boat. It's actually a boat now. Whether rocket or boat, it's still in the ether.

And guess what? Still a story. It would just me being a really bad GM who can't maintain the metanarrative.

I should point out the irony that the analogy actually proves my point about the nature of suspension of disbelief, but that would be petty.

Rhedyn
2019-02-01, 12:26 PM
*mind you, stuff we all learned sophomore year of undergrad, amongst a bunch of people who I assume are all overly-educated, overly-compensated, under-challenged, middle-aged professionals slowly coming to terms with the fact that they'll never get to use most of their education in their professional lives. :smalltongue:
Why do you know so much about my life and why am I dying in my 50s

Willie the Duck
2019-02-01, 12:26 PM
Pffh, this assumes education is simply to get a job.

No, it doesn't. I was characterizing us as people who didn't get to use X, Y or Z as often as we thought we would.



This is not what I'm saying. Can you point to me where this holds true in my argument?

Who said it had anything to do with your argument? I was critiquing Max's simile of rejecting your philosophy (and whether said analogy was apt or not), not addressing your point at all. How could you have missed that?


Unless you have some magical, Star Trek-esque replicator that can physically build and create anything literally all TTRPGs tell you to imagine a boat. The only way this analogy would work at all is as a GM I told you to imagie a rocket ship, no wait, imagine a rocket ship that turned into a boat. It's actually a boat now. Whether rocket or boat, it's still in the ether.

And guess what? Still a story. It would just me being a really bad GM who can't maintain the metanarrative.

That was the point of the analogy. We are only discussing the framing of things, not what they are. Regardless of whether we call something a story or not, or frankly whether we call an activity participating in an RPG or not, we're just changing what we are calling it. People are doing them regardless. Thus Max's statement, "It's as if you're trying to explain to me that I can't travel in space without electrifying the aether, and when I tell you that I reject aether theory, you keep trying to tell me that my rocket won't fly without it," is, in my mind, an in-apt simile (as the 'who's right' in the rocket scenario actually dictates whether the rocket might get off the ground or not).

Schismatic
2019-02-01, 12:51 PM
No, it doesn't. I was characterizing us as people who didn't get to use X, Y or Z as often as we thought we would.

Ehh, in my job philosophy of mind is pretty relevant (well, relative to the discussion of looking at cognition and the metrics of measurement) even if I have to spend some days in an underground lab.

Then you have the ethics board...

Academia is rarely (if ever) whatever you've studied specifically.


Who said it had anything to do with your argument? I was critiquing Max's simile of rejecting your philosophy (and whether said analogy was apt or not), not addressing your point at all. How could you have missed that?

Because I want to make it clear this is not what I'm saying. I know how these discussions go, if Ido't rebuke a perceived allusion of an argument that I ultimately didn't make then suddenly it appears as though I made that argument, and I'd rather snip that in the bud.



That was the point of the analogy. We are only discussing the framing of things, not what they are. Regardless of whether we call something a story or not, or frankly whether we call an activity participating in an RPG or not, we're just changing what we are calling it. People are doing them regardless. Thus Max's statement, "It's as if you're trying to explain to me that I can't travel in space without electrifying the aether, and when I tell you that I reject aether theory, you keep trying to tell me that my rocket won't fly without it," is, in my mind, an in-apt simile (as the 'who's right' in the rocket scenario actually dictates whether the rocket might get off the ground or not).

Yeah, well it's an awful analogy that has no validity as to what I was arguing. And no, it's not merely 'framing'. It's a structuralist necessity. It's 'framing' in the some way a strut, or ceiling joist is 'framing' in a building. It stops the building collapsing and crushing your game to death.

And forgive me for pointing this basic tenet of my argument out...

But the GM decides whether your spaceship still flies or not. If I'm a GM and electrifying the aether is what makes your spaceship go, as a player in my game that's a fact that you have to consider.

If my game requires electrifying the aether, and the worldbuilding is propped up by that, the player should respect that idea because as a GM that is the way I have structurally designed it. Like you could take Max's argument, point to a game of Spelljammer. That as a GM if I'm running a Spelljammer game, and I validate everything in the campaign settings as for how those spaceships fly, a player has to respect that by design.

TTRPGs aren't democracies. If the GM has explicitly said that's not supported by the metanarrative, then if a player keeps transgressing that point there is no game. It's a social contract you sign that; "Okay, so the world is this way."

I wouldn't have thought this is a controversial position. Hence my argument of campaign settings as metanarratives for GMs to point to and just say; "Look, that + these other specificities I have listed. Any other questions that can't be covered by it?"

Floret
2019-02-01, 02:25 PM
I have butted heads with Max a fair bit in the past (Which might be for the same reason he will never try PbtA and they're some of my favourite RPGs), but I do find myself in agreeance with him on this.

Describing the setting of a campaign as a metanarrative is missing the point. The setting informs the narrative, certainly, and sets limits for it, yes. But to assert that by having described the setting the GM does, in fact, already determined the outcome of "the plot" in some way is a clear and obvious falsehood. Take PbtA games and their rule that the GM cannot pre-plan a plot. Not "shouldn't", but "is forbidden by the game rules from doing so". At this point, the GM cannot possibly know the outcome of the game. Or any system with a pre-made setting. Choosing the setting does not determine the course or outcome of the story told about what happened during the session.

And, frankly, Schismatic, what you are saying holds true only for a (large as it may be) subsection of RPGs. The position of the GM itself being optional, the power you ascribe to them as a matter of fact is simply wrong. The setting might not usually be a democracy, but it can be. And that doesn't break it being an RPG. If a player in one of my games goes up to an NPC I just introduced and greets them as an old friend (no such thing having been planned) the player just defined part of the setting. If the player characters know each other for years, and bicker with each other about "back then" (events from the backstory), they are forming the setting. Yes, ultimately, the GM can put their foot down. But depending on the situation, it might very well be them that is out of line in doing this. This does not take away from it being an RPG.

In fact, I very much favour this approach of RPG and setting growth - the improv theater approach, so to speak. You set rules for what's possible in the setting and agree on those before (Session 0 stuff, and it definitely need not be just the GM deciding here either), and then, no takebacks. If you establish a fact, that's a fact now, no matter who said it. If my character's cousin (also a PC) tells a story about how my character once seduced the blacksmith that forged his axe? That's true now. I can react to the exposing of the fact in whatever way I find appropriate, try and downplay the event, reframe it, whatever - but it happened, now. No takebacks. This does, of course, require people knowing each others boundaries on things. And a lot of trust. But that's why I game with trusted friends.

And I do agree with Max on the story thing, after thinking about it for a while. A story is what you tell of it. When my character tells other people about the adventures they faced, they are telling a story. But they weren't "Telling a story" when they lived through the events. They were living through events. That is a different thing. If the end result you want from an RPG is to be able to tell great stories about what happened during them, go for it. They might well be story-crafting games for you. But as much as I like telling stories (It's like my one skill, I should like it), I can absolutely see why someone else might not care for it.

Morgaln
2019-02-01, 02:33 PM
I've mulled this over for a while and I think this is one of the major points that makes RPGs distinct from other games, at least for me:

An RPG does not provide you with choices; it provides you with situations.

For example, to take Gloomhaven (which is an awesome game, but by my definition not an RPG). the game might tell me I'm offered 10 gold to go and stop some bandits from attacking travelers. The game then gives me the choices to accept or decline. While those choices might be meaningful and lead down differing pathes for future scenarios and the development of the story, those are the only choices I have, due to an external restriction that is not part of the game world.

An RPG, on the other hand, will not narrow down my number of choices arbitrarily. It will provide me the situation and then allow me to make my own choice. I can accept or decline, but I can also try to haggle for more money, I can take their money and betray them to the bandits, I can kill them and rob them of all their gold, I can even pull out my dagger and commit suicide right there on the spot (not all of these are especially good or smart options, mind you). But my options are only limited by my imagination. Of course that doesn't mean I can just do whatever, but for those things I can't do, it will be due to the internal logic of the game world, not because the game rules out options without even considering them.
Of course the DM might rule out options that would be viable, but as long as the game itself provides the potential, its a strong sign for an RPG.

I guess you could also say it like this: in most games everything is forbidden unless it is specifically allowed. In RPGs, everything is allowed unless it is specifically forbidden.

Of course there are other things that factor into whether I consider something an RPG or not, but for me, this one is an intrinsic part of any RPG.

Willie the Duck
2019-02-01, 02:42 PM
Why do you know so much about my life and why am I dying in my 50s

I, uh, don't know if you're being serious and whether I should continue with that rather flippant line of thought.

Regardless, there is a guy in one of the sub-forums here who has posited that most gamers (certainly most forum-goers) are a bunch of unwashed, mother's-basement-dwelling, neckbeard, etc. etc. etc. <finish off stereotype here>. That's not been my experience. My experience is that places like these are full of a bunch of middle aged (although this place skews a little younger) white collar professionals (with a high prevalence of IT jobs), with incomes over 100k but under 1/2 mill (geographic and national variations, of course), and a strong tendency towards lifestyles that are comfortable, unchallenged, but perhaps less exciting than some other people we each used to know. A grand generality like that is bound to match no one in particular 100%, but it seems like a trend line here.


But the GM decides whether your spaceship still flies or not. If I'm a GM and electrifying the aether is what makes your spaceship go, as a player in my game that's a fact that you have to consider.

I feel like you are missing the analogy (although I acknowledge that I might be the outlier). There are no spaceships in some game somewhere. The analogy of the spaceship is specifically about the capacity to reject a theory/philosophy. Max stated that he could reject your theory of roleplaying, and compared it to aether theory. I stated that it was an inapt simile, as the truth or falsity of aether theory would dictate whether or not a rocket would fly, while the truth or falsehood of your theory only dictates how we think, and define of the action of roleplaying. People playing (ex. D&D) are playing it, regardless of the existence of any for of theory around it (we can go down to the FLGS and watch them do so). That's what the spaceship is, not a ship in a game.

Rhedyn
2019-02-01, 03:41 PM
I, uh, don't know if you're being serious and whether I should continue with that rather flippant line of thought.

Regardless, there is a guy in one of the sub-forums here who has posited that most gamers (certainly most forum-goers) are a bunch of unwashed, mother's-basement-dwelling, neckbeard, etc. etc. etc. <finish off stereotype here>. That's not been my experience. My experience is that places like these are full of a bunch of middle aged (although this place skews a little younger) white collar professionals (with a high prevalence of IT jobs), with incomes over 100k but under 1/2 mill (geographic and national variations, of course), and a strong tendency towards lifestyles that are comfortable, unchallenged, but perhaps less exciting than some other people we each used to know. A grand generality like that is bound to match no one in particular 100%, but it seems like a trend line here.

Who else but IT or similar white-collar professionals have time to waste discussing "what is an RPG"?

And to throw a wrinkle into this discussion, "does your definition exclude videogame RPGs? How would you exclude them?"

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-01, 03:58 PM
Who else but IT or similar white-collar professionals have time to waste discussing "what is an RPG"?

And to throw a wrinkle into this discussion, "does your definition exclude videogame RPGs? How would you exclude them?"

Morgaln has a pretty good start on that with the distinction laid out in the post a few up from here.

(http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23677921&postcount=101)

In general terms:

In a CRPG, what is not allowed is forbidden.
In a TTRPG, what is not forbidden is allowed.

Friv
2019-02-01, 04:08 PM
Right, but can you explain to me why it doesn't? Does this game have rules? Does it require surrealist interpretation of reality requiring an intertextuality of ideas that self-referentially cement themselves allowing one abstracted engagement? What?

It might eeasier to just tell me what this game is, as my critique works just as well with Traveller, WoD, D&D, GURPS, even TORG (though I could write essays on why TORG breaks all the rules and why it was and still is amazing).

I do have a pretty solid example of one, if you're interested. Dream Askew (https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/dream-askew) is a post-apocalyptic RPG in which the players select character sheets representing the major characters in their community, and then also select character sheets representing the forces at work in the world to pull that community apart. Each player is thus taking on the role of defining the world even as they define the people in their settlement, with no GM acting as a unifying or polarizing figure.

The game is extremely defined, mechanically speaking. You need to collect tokens by making mistakes and spend them to do good things, and the world presses on the PCs in specific and very-defined ways. It's definitely an RPG - it is a game, everyone is playing roles, everything is quite specific. But it's not a game that matches your premise, because a GM is not actually necessary for an RPG to function.

Most RPGs that lack GMs tend towards the single-session approach, I've found. I don't know if this is because people aren't sure how to design campaign play without a unifying figure, or if it's just inertia.

*EDIT* WRT video games, the problem is that the term "RPG" in video games has become increasingly specific, simply because if it didn't, *every* video game would be an RPG nowadays. There aren't a lot of video games any more in which you aren't playing a role and exploring or creating a narrative under defined mechanics.

Schismatic
2019-02-01, 04:33 PM
I feel like you are missing the analogy (although I acknowledge that I might be the outlier). There are no spaceships in some game somewhere. The analogy of the spaceship is specifically about the capacity to reject a theory/philosophy. Max stated that he could reject your theory of roleplaying, and compared it to aether theory. I stated that it was an inapt simile, as the truth or falsity of aether theory would dictate whether or not a rocket would fly, while the truth or falsehood of your theory only dictates how we think, and define of the action of roleplaying. People playing (ex. D&D) are playing it, regardless of the existence of any for of theory around it (we can go down to the FLGS and watch them do so). That's what the spaceship is, not a ship in a game.

And this is bad when looking for a description of what constitute a RPG because...? You cannot arbitrarily separate mechanics and expression, and I explain both why and hows of its expression to begin with.

Humans do lots of things that ultimately they can't explain. Humans can barely explain why they like the things they like. Doesn't stop people trying to explain it, nor does it stop others exploring the mechanics behind phenomena. My description of TTRPGs is a working theory regardless of the player. My argument works regardless of whether people like or do't like TTRPGs. I mean, being honest my favourite gaming is board games (including card games like L5R, Netrunner, Doomtown, etc)... That being said, blonging to two boardgaming groups now (originally a TTRPG group), I'm kind of burnt out and why one group (formerly TTRPG group) plays mostly dungeon crawler board games.

I don't really like cartoons or comics, but I'll watch and read anything MLP related religiously.

I'm not a huge fan of cake, but I do like pastries.

I love and can fix motorcycles, know nothing about cars.

It would take me a lifetime to explain why I like these things, but I can explain why such things make them different as discernment is not a mindless process.

TTRPGs are no diferent. People will play them regardless of the structuralism at the core of it, as you say, that make them possible or possibly the reason why people like them to begin with. But then again that alone would not invalidate an answer.

But then again, the discussion is what is a RPG? ... Kind of important to look at how they work, and the method in the madness and what makes them tick.
--------
Edit:

As for the stereotypes:

I am not a single one of those things you listed. Actually, lot of the gamers I know in the flesh maybe only earn 100k as a combined income.

You don't go into research for the pay cheque. Most scientists are paid dismally. The hours and company is where it's at. That and I can wear denim shorts and a t-shirt to work and still pretend to be more than an adult child with crippling student debt.

jayem
2019-02-01, 04:51 PM
Who else but IT or similar white-collar professionals have time to waste discussing "what is an RPG"?

And to throw a wrinkle into this discussion, "does your definition exclude videogame RPGs? How would you exclude them?"

Mine are split between the two definitions (which is why I had 2)
Nethack, Kotr, Morrowind etc... clearly have mechanical simularities with DnD style games. By the time they needed a new name it was too late, "computer implementation of role playing game mechanics with the role-play interactions suppressed" is too long. So in that sense they are definitely IN
(I don't know if there are any other games with similar relationships to non D&D style RPG's)


In addition a number of the CRPG games do try to match the "role-play" "game" description. You do get to make choices based on the character. They do suffer from the problem of restriction mentioned, and in many ways you watch the story rather than create the fiction. So some of the CRPG's are skimming a more literal definition of RPG. I would be inclined to technically exclude them, because...

Quite a few other computer games also put you into a role. Is a FPS a RPG, is a RTS? A "Role Play" "Game" definition that excludes these would, in my opinion also put a lot of CRPG's in trouble (and some variants of TTRPG). I think that the third element might be the most useful distinctive element here.
I would be inclined to say Tropico and the like do have the potential to cross that bar.

[Xpost with Friv]
So you'd have something like the following



(D&D/)RPG Descended
Other


"Role Play"+"Game"
D&D, Kotr?
Tropico


Other
Nethack
Sims


with either the first row or first column being IN RPG's depending on what you wanted to talk about. In a post about combat mechanics you want to divide by columns, in a post about immersion you want to divide by rows.

Schismatic
2019-02-01, 05:37 PM
I do have a pretty solid example of one, if you're interested. Dream Askew (https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/dream-askew) is a post-apocalyptic RPG in which the players select character sheets representing the major characters in their community, and then also select character sheets representing the forces at work in the world to pull that community apart. Each player is thus taking on the role of defining the world even as they define the people in their settlement, with no GM acting as a unifying or polarizing figure.

The game is extremely defined, mechanically speaking. You need to collect tokens by making mistakes and spend them to do good things, and the world presses on the PCs in specific and very-defined ways. It's definitely an RPG - it is a game, everyone is playing roles, everything is quite specific. But it's not a game that matches your premise, because a GM is not actually necessary for an RPG to function.

But, it does have a metanarrative. It tells you that this is a post-apocalyptic world, the frameworks is that specific ideals or resources are in contest and scarce, and that the characters you have are required to work to known end game metanarrative state decided by that construction of the world to begin with (your community).

It's an interesting dichotomy between player and game state, and I'd really like to give it a go however. It's safe to say it doesn't sound like anything I've played before, but also I can't imagine people routinely play games like this. It sounds lke more of a board gamer game, or at least a board gamer friendly toe dip into RPGaming if they don't really like roleplaying.

Which is fine by me, as I'm a proud and avid board gamer, and TTRPGs are a solid 2nd place. Kind of like the opposite of the dungeon crawler board game, if you get me. Like as if the board game polar opposite of the dungeon crawler is to TTRPGs.

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-01, 05:49 PM
Who else but IT or similar white-collar professionals have time to waste discussing "what is an RPG"?

Reality check: RPGs are a niche hobby, pretty much any hobbyist has had to answer "what is an RPG?" to a clueless friend, relative etc.


And to throw a wrinkle into this discussion, "does your definition exclude videogame RPGs? How would you exclude them?"

Why would you want to exclude them as a general rule? They neatly define themselves as a subset of the larger set by the virtue of being computerized.

To quote myself from a page back:

"Most computer games trivially satisfy the parts of assuming a role and engaging a virtual scenario, but then fail because they don't actually allow enough quantity and quality of decisions. There are a lot of RPG-adjacent computer games, such as most entries in the Legend of Zelda series, which have all the aesthetic trappings and gameplay elements needed for a classic fantasy roleplaying game, but they rely too much on single-solution puzzles to fully cross over. Sometimes these are technical limitations of the medium imposed by hardware, other times they are conscious design decisions. Most egregious are games heavily reliant on scripted cutscenes or other mechanics which relegate the player to a passive audience member. There may still be roleplaying in such games, but ironically it tends to exist outside important story and character beats.

This said, the view that CRPGs can't be "real" RPGs has been obsolete for decades now and is largely based on technological limitations."

---


Morgaln has a pretty good start on that with the distinction laid out in the post a few up from here.

(http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23677921&postcount=101)

In general terms:

In a CRPG, what is not allowed is forbidden.
In a TTRPG, what is not forbidden is allowed.


That's just closed versus open game design. Granted, all computer games have to be closed design because they don't work if the code is not closed enough to be complete, but it's still largely harping on a technical limitation. Computers are already powerfull enough that the more complex CRPGs are more expansive than your average tabletop game.

---

@Friv: yes, going by a sane definition of roleplaying games, there are a lot of games that are outside the nominal genres of CRPGs, JRPGs etc. that still qualify as roleplaying games.

This not a problem.

In fact it's pretty obvious and trivial why more detailed virtual environments and more in-depth character-environment-interactions would push computer games towards roleplaying games, even if you forget the plain historical fact that modern computer games owe so much to D&D and tabletop games that they can be considered direct descendants.

Floret
2019-02-01, 05:55 PM
and that the characters you have are required to work to known end game metanarrative state decided by that construction of the world to begin with (your community).

How, pray tell, are you required by this setup to work towards anything but your characters goals, and how on earth is the end game state decided at construction of the world?

Because if you can predict what the end result will look like, fine. I accept you are psychic. But if you cannot meaningfully make conclusions about the end game state from creation state alone, as you are asserting here, your argument falls flat.

If instead, as I am guessing, you actually wanna state that the character's goals determine the outcome, then... duh, but with your definition, and your assertion that the outcome is necessarily decided, in any meaningful way, at setting and character creation, then you fail to account for a) failure at the goals being a very real option in very many RPGs, and b) goals possibly changing after the fact.

Schismatic
2019-02-01, 06:25 PM
How, pray tell, are you required by this setup to work towards anything but your characters goals, and how on earth is the end game state decided at construction of the world?

Because if you can predict what the end result will look like, fine. I accept you are psychic. But if you cannot meaningfully make conclusions about the end game state from creation state alone, as you are asserting here, your argument falls flat.

Because you are literally building the world. From what I've read of the starter kit the key elements serving to split your community apart are already in contest, the modus operandi of its elements of the world and its aspects are predetermined. A metanarrative is not abou knowing the end (though arguably the goal of every examination of metanarrative is the search for truth as a final reward), the metanarrative is about the superstructre of the setting, the story, that which allows fruition of the master idea.

A metanarrative is a narrative about the narrative. The means by which experience is constructed. GMs don't know how their campaigns will finish, they simply know that they will finish it and their structured play and world will lead to it and shape its conclusion. The metanarrative is inevitable if the story is to survive.

JoeJ
2019-02-01, 06:29 PM
A metanarrative is a narrative about the narrative. The means by which experience is constructed. GMs don't know how their campaigns will finish, they simply know that they will finish it and their structured play and world will lead to it.

What if there is no anticipation of a finish? A game can very easily be open-ended, with no plan or intention of "finishing" anything. Or do you count any events in the real world that prevent further gaming as "finishing"?

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-01, 06:32 PM
@Schismatic: you're just using fancy terms to say that the rules of a game set limits to legal movespace, and that games need rules to work.

Schismatic
2019-02-01, 06:40 PM
What if there is no anticipation of a finish? A game can very easily be open-ended, with no plan or intention of "finishing" anything. Or do you count any events in the real world that prevent further gaming as "finishing"?

Which is uniquely problematic and the key problem I have on one side with computer games cRPGs but also on the flipside, incomplete campaigns. On the flipside the argument could be simply; "Well what game does not have events?" So let's say an open-ended, do what you want fantasy life simulator... your party is drinking in the tavern, a gang tries to kick your teeth in.

The thing is the metanarrative structure of the world is still 'there' ... and arguably the nature of the world still allows these sorts of things.

-----

For example the players (effetively) ask after the fight; "Why did they try to kick our arses?"

GM: "Well, near the corpse of one of them you find a crumpled piece of cheap paper with a list of your names and a crude printing of your profiles above each. A bounty of 1000GP for each of you dead upon proof of kill!"

----

Well, hypothetically what is the objective difference between a GM just randomly rolling that encounter for an adventure hook that is at best a 1 or 2 session diversion, or kickstarts a large, long module and adventure arc?

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-01, 06:59 PM
@JoeJ: the tangent about finishing games is irrelevant. Schismatic really is just using fancy terms for movespace of a game and you don't need to finish a game to be within its movespace.

---


Well, hypothetically what is the objective difference between a GM just randomly rolling that encounter for an adventure hook that is at best a 1 or 2 session diversion, or kickstarts a large, long module and adventure arc?

Easy: one of them leads to different, longer sequence of events.

Now please unask your question and formulate it in a way that's not self-answering.

Schismatic
2019-02-01, 07:01 PM
@JoeJ: the tangent about finishing games is irrelevant. Schismatic really is just using fancy terms for movespace of a game and you don't need to finish a game to be within its movespace.

---



Easy: one of them leads to different, longer sequence of events.

Now please unask your question and formulate it in a way that's not self-answering.

And what makes either of them not stories?

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-01, 07:19 PM
Neither of them is a story because they're flag triggers for game events.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-01, 07:21 PM
A metanarrative is a narrative about the narrative. The means by which experience is constructed. GMs don't know how their campaigns will finish, they simply know that they will finish it and their structured play and world will lead to it and shape its conclusion. The metanarrative is inevitable if the story is to survive.


In no campaign that I have run or played in, has there ever been a "narrative about the narrative", and yet they'd survived just fine. And really, most of them have had no narrative at all -- just an emergent after-the-fact story.

(I realize that your philosophy would claim this is impossible, because "by definition", and it's a philosophy built entirely on bottomless layers of argument by definition.)




@Schismatic: you're just using fancy terms to say that the rules of a game set limits to legal movespace, and that games need rules to work.


That's what happens when a postmodernist "theory of mind" is applied to RPGs.

Schismatic
2019-02-01, 07:24 PM
I've mulled this over for a while and I think this is one of the major points that makes RPGs distinct from other games, at least for me:

An RPG does not provide you with choices; it provides you with situations.

For example, to take Gloomhaven (which is an awesome game, but by my definition not an RPG). the game might tell me I'm offered 10 gold to go and stop some bandits from attacking travelers. The game then gives me the choices to accept or decline. While those choices might be meaningful and lead down differing pathes for future scenarios and the development of the story, those are the only choices I have, due to an external restriction that is not part of the game world.

Yeah, I wouldn't be crash hot calling Gloomhaven a RPG. But then again, I think in a lot of ways it does a lot of things that are actively discouraged in most TTRPGs... like acting like an actually self-interested jerk. It's probably a better look of how actual mercenarial adventurers who will wllingly murder things for a profit would actually act like.

Though it is not an RPG in the sese that it explicitly writes in the rulebook you canot ever share gold or items. Which is kind of a big deal.

On the flipside it offers so many things that are really amazing that you can flat out just accidentally miss. Like upgradig your ability cards. In our group we only stumbled onto that because one of us was like; "Hey, maybe we should do that other scenario we unlocked awhile back? Unlocking new classes.... amazing combat deck system and truly cool deck modifications istead of simply 'more hps, more abilities'... how you customize your deck means everything. How turns work...

Honestly, why can't PC games like X-COM not be able to do this ****?

And if Gloomhave was a computer game as is, it would have no trouble earnig a 'RPG' classification.

JoeJ
2019-02-01, 07:35 PM
@JoeJ: the tangent about finishing games is irrelevant. Schismatic really is just using fancy terms for movespace of a game and you don't need to finish a game to be within its movespace.

"Movespace" is not a term I'm familiar with. It did seem to me, however, that Schismatic was saying that all RPGs have a defined finish, even if that finish is not actually reached for some reason. My question was about sandbox style games, where every adventure is followed by another adventure, with no idea of finishing at all. D&D, with it's 1-20 level progression, is not well suited for this kind of play, but many other games are.

Willie the Duck
2019-02-01, 07:36 PM
In no campaign that I have run or played in, has there ever been a "narrative about the narrative", and yet they'd survived just fine.
(I realize that your philosophy would claim this is impossible, because "by definition", and it's a philosophy built entirely on bottomless layers of argument by definition.)

That's what happens when a postmodernist "theory of mind" is applied to RPGs.

Honestly, I have too much self respect to keep tilting at the castle of self-declared victory, so clearly I'm siding with you... but, honestly, what happened? Did post modernism run over your dog when you were 11?

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-01, 07:36 PM
@Schismatic: I feel pretty confident saying that computer games have done all that and more, you just haven't played the right ones. :smalltongue:

Schismatic
2019-02-01, 07:45 PM
"Movespace" is not a term I'm familiar with. It did seem to me, however, that Schismatic was saying that all RPGs have a defined finish, even if that finish is not actually reached for some reason. My question was about sandbox style games, where every adventure is followed by another adventure, with no idea of finishing at all. D&D, with it's 1-20 level progression, is not well suited for this kind of play, but many other games are.

To be clear, it wasn't really my argument. More like GMs will be the ones to end it by necessity. Less the GMs must, but by necessity a GM will. Which is why I was really hammering home that point of 'hopefully' and 'inevitably'. As in we all kind of hope the GM will close the final curtain. The reality is often different, but the intent is important as well.

I'm unfamiliar with the term 'movespace' as well, but I like it. That beng said, I think it's important to define what a master idea of a campaign is.

JoeJ
2019-02-01, 07:53 PM
To be clear, it wasn't really my argument. More like GMs will be the ones to end it by necessity. Less the GMs must, but by necessity a GM will. Which is why I was really hammering home that point of 'hopefully' and 'inevitably'. As in we all kind of hope the GM will close the final curtain. The reality is often different, but the intent is important as well.

But why do you say there is a necessity? There's nothing that intrinsically requires a Traveller campaign (to pick just one example) to ever end. Obviously, events outside the game will eventually cause it to end (if nothing else, the players themselves will someday die), but nothing about the game rules, or the structure, the fictional world, or any other aspect of the game requires that there be an end.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-01, 07:57 PM
Honestly, I have too much self respect to keep tilting at the castle of self-declared victory, so clearly I'm siding with you... but, honestly, what happened? Did post modernism run over your dog when you were 11?


It's a corrosive, toxic philosophy that has no regard for fact or empirical examination, regards all claims as equally valid, and rejects objective reality in favor of competing subjective "narratives" and "perception". Looking around the world, at our culture, at the state of affairs in the US, and on the campuses of our colleges, will demonstrate exactly where it leads. Beyond that, these forums really just don't let me get into detail, more's the pity.

I've actually cancelled or deleted a LOT of replies on this thread... I find postmodernism offensive on a level almost as grating as that of the 20th century's most destructive and reviled ideologies.

Schismatic
2019-02-01, 08:05 PM
I feel prettt confident saying that computer games have done all that and more, you just haven't played the right ones. :smalltongue:

If you can name one that hadles character progression and 'random chance' as Gloomhaven does, tell us as I'm legitimately interested.

How Gloomhaven handles the combat deck is genius alone. As it's not technically just rolling a dice. It's clever, and to my mind few games ever play with the concept.

So with zero perks every character starts off with an attack modifier deck consisting of six +0, five +1, five -1 and a single +2, -2, 2x and Null card each.

Now everytime you attack you draw a card... but the only time you recycle your deck is when you get a native x2 or null (crit fail, effectively) card. Now as you get perks you can modify your personal attack modifier deck with special conditions, by removing numeral cards, by adding numeral cards, etc. What this means is that you're not only playing with how fast your deck recycles, but also you can guesstimate how your successes will be in the future.

And with each character you get a list of AM deck changes you get to pick and tailor to your desires, yourself. Often character specific.

Like if you've been drawing badly (a whole bunch of zeros and -1s), you can calculate in your head on the fly what's in your deck remaining, your odds of drawing it, and you might suddenly become a lot more aggressive, because you feel more like you can pull off bigger attacks.

The problem is that that 'null' card is always in your deck and still provides that level of hubris-checking when you try to capitalize on a deck you think has already gotten rid of more disfavoured results.

And you can do this with monster and players at your table as well, counting cards effectively. And it's a really, really clever mechanic that seems so obvious a thing to tailor in any roleplaying game but I have't yet seen anything like it. The closest thing that I feel objectively takes deck size tweaking for strategic game playing is Netrunner's ID cards. Making minimum deck size a gameplay compoent itself in terms of draw efficiency and total agenda card and total point concentration.

That isn't the only thing that is clever about Gloomhaven, but it's a mechanic that feels so obviously clever compared to just rolling dice.

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-01, 08:17 PM
"Movespace" is not a term I'm familiar with. It did seem to me, however, that Schismatic was saying that all RPGs have a defined finish, even if that finish is not actually reached for some reason. My question was about sandbox style games, where every adventure is followed by another adventure, with no idea of finishing at all. D&D, with it's 1-20 level progression, is not well suited for this kind of play, but many other games are.

Movespace is the sum of allowed moves in a game, a move being a game decision that changes the state of the game.

It's easiest to grasp the concept by thinking of a closed board game, such as Chess. You have a gameboard of set dimensions, a set number of play pieces and set ways for them to move. By going through all possible permutations, you get all playable games of Chess. (Which is a limited, but stupidly huge number.) That's the movespace.

In an open design game, such as D&D, some parameter(s), such as dimensions of the play area, are not set and stretch into theoretical infinity, thus allowing for vitually infinite movespace. However, on per-turn basis ("turn" being unit of player decision making), number of allowed game moves is still limited by game rules (from character abilities to setting information). So even an unfinished game will have been within the movespace. The fact that an endstate was not reached is irrelevant.

The real joke here is that even for a well-defined closed game such as Chess, there is not a defined endstate... there's a huuuuuge number of mutually exclusive defined endstates. Even if you group them in categories, you have victory for white, victory for black, and tie.

An open game might not have a defined end state at all, other than "players get bored and stop playing".

---

@Schismatic: I know nothing about Gloomhaven besides what's been said in this thread, yet am perfectly confident that all of Ancient Domains of Mystery, Nethack, Dwarf Fortress, Unreal World and Dungeon Crawl have it beat. Heck, Pokemon Sun & Moon probably has it beat. :smalltongue:

Schismatic
2019-02-01, 08:23 PM
But why do you say there is a necessity? There's nothing that intrinsically requires a Traveller campaign (to pick just one example) to ever end. Obviously, events outside the game will eventually cause it to end (if nothing else, the players themselves will someday die), but nothing about the game rules, or the structure, the fictional world, or any other aspect of the game requires that there be an end.

Because GMs will rarely factor ito their metanarrative; "Oh, and I'll get a job offer I wasn't expecting in another city 800 kilometers away, and if that happens the world implodes...", as what happened a married couple in our group did. The poit I was making is that a game that has an end will be by the GM ending.

JoeJ
2019-02-01, 08:38 PM
Movespace is the sum of allowed moves in a game, a move being a game decision that changes the state of the game.

It's easiest to grasp the concept by thinking of a closed board game, such as Chess. You have a gameboard of set dimensions, a set number of play pieces and set ways for them to move. By going through all possible permutations, you get all playable games of Chess. (Which is a limited, but stupidly huge number.) That's the movespace.

In an open design game, such as D&D, some parameter(s), such as dimensions of the play area, are not set and stretch into theoretical infinity, thus allowing for vitually infinite movespace. However, on per-turn basis ("turn" being unit of player decision making), number of allowed game moves is still limited by game rules (from character abilities to setting information). So even an unfinished game will have been within the movespace. The fact that an endstate was not reached is irrelevant.

Thanks. It sounds, then, like a game such as D&D would have a movespace that is not fully defined. That is, in any given situation there are a few things that the rules say a PC can do, and some other things that they can not do, but also a great many possible moves that are not determined to be either allowed or forbidden until the player suggests them and the GM makes a ruling.

Schismatic
2019-02-01, 08:40 PM
@Schismatic: I know nothing about Gloomhaven besides what's been said in this thread, yet am perfectly confident that all of Ancient Domains of Mystery, Nethack, Dwarf Fortress, Unreal World and Dungeon Crawl have it beat. Heck, Pokemon Sun & Moon probably has it beat. :smalltongue:

Um, no... Because I've played all of these games barring the modern Pokemon games. If you have a chance to play i, I suggest giving it a go. It's a pretty amazing dungeon crawler and petty easy to get into. A fair bit of micro but once you autopilot that stuff once or twice it becomes second nature. Except the elements chart. That can get occasionally forgotten, particularly when either monsters or players do't modify it over a round.

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-01, 08:58 PM
Thanks. It sounds, then, like a game such as D&D would have a movespace that is not fully defined.

You are correct. That's a result of D&D being both open and incomplete; you don't have a playable game of D&D before someone designs and selects a scenario to use.

---

@Schismatic: it increasingly sounds like you're so smitten with the game's particular mathematical engine that you don't realize it doesn't really do anything particularly amazing with it compared to a decent roguelike.

Schismatic
2019-02-01, 09:19 PM
@Schismatic: it increasingly sounds like you're so smitten with the game's particular mathematical engine that you don't realize it doesn't really do anything particularly amazing with it compared to a decent roguelike.

Well the game has maths, but what game doesn't? I mean you could level this crtique at any game that uses random number generation with some modifiers and then pretend like that makes every game therefore of equal quality. What makes Gloomhaven good is how it handles that maths i a clever way.

The attack modifier deck is a really clever lateral meas of customizing the character. One that also allows one to gauge the success of future activities in a way that dice/RNG wouldn't. Being able to increase deck sizes, decrease them, add special conditions that combo with items and many of your cards for future rounds makes it tactical in a way that few games manage.

Like have AM cards that empower elements, that you or other players can readily use to empower their abilities, for instance.

Given that by rules in the game players can't tell eachother what they'll speifically be doing and what initiative they'll be going on, and because monster initiative is determined by their action deck, it also creates this tension each round. Add on to this random scenario battle goals for perk points that complicate the chaos of the battlefield (like Aggressor, which grants +2 perk points, means every round the holder of that card must always have a monster on the board at the start of a round from scenario start to end) means that players also can't be 100% of what the players are going to do and how they plan to do it.

So instead of a player spending their turn to kill something early, they try to go last, suddenly dart off to open a door and trigger the next encournter. Leaving you the closest to an enemy with a relatively high initiative (or mechanically low, as lowest numer goes first, and low initiative prejudices being struck by enemies) solely for that player to get their +2 perk points they wouldn't otherwise get.

And you do't see it coming because random scenario goals are secret.

Clever use of initiative and totally not like every game that has an initiative mechanic, for instance.

It sounds incredibly douchey, but it's that complex of a game that mechanically incentivizes human greed but also heightens gameplay and an estranged sense of camaraderie in their mercenarial atttitudes. As characters will be doing it too eachother, the mercenarial attitudes will eventually be shared by all, but also the fact that because the players ultimately need eachother... they're jerks at or near the start of the scenario, but by the end they are desperately, heroically teamworking with eachother trying to score a tight win as their resources run out.

And that's what clever maths can do.

georgie_leech
2019-02-02, 01:10 AM
Because GMs will rarely factor ito their metanarrative; "Oh, and I'll get a job offer I wasn't expecting in another city 800 kilometers away, and if that happens the world implodes...", as what happened a married couple in our group did. The poit I was making is that a game that has an end will be by the GM ending.

"Entropy is a thing, news at 11." I'm all for examining things on a deeper level, and I actually do find some value in post-modernist thought, but I have to draw the line at claiming "things stop being things eventually" as a particularly meaningful observation.

Tanarii
2019-02-02, 01:25 AM
@Schismatic: I know nothing about Gloomhaven besides what's been said in this thread, yet am perfectly confident that all of Ancient Domains of Mystery, Nethack, Dwarf Fortress, Unreal World and Dungeon Crawl have it beat. Heck, Pokemon Sun & Moon probably has it beat. :smalltongue:
Yeeeeah ... it's pretty clear from this nonsense you've never played gloomhaven.

Schismatic
2019-02-02, 04:18 AM
"Entropy is a thing, news at 11." I'm all for examining things on a deeper level, and I actually do find some value in post-modernist thought, but I have to draw the line at claiming "things stop being things eventually" as a particularly meaningful observation.

It's not (merely) a postmodern thought, however. Postmodern thought would focus on deconstruction and the value (and focus) of truth. Which can be a function of the game world as it constantly reality tests itself by the player character. It's a structuralist concept of how the game is designed. Po-mo could be a post-structural examination of it and a focus on what is actually being consumed.

For example, the nature of action attribution. Basically all the characters and the players have a concrete understading of the structuralism of the campaign and its world by its ending. Whether that's an open ended super dungeon that is merely; "For glory!"--or some other character reason why they're there, or whether it's this massive adventure arc from which meaning is resolved through interaction with an overarching narrative. They go into it knowing that's goig to be their character's story, that this is going to be roughly the totality of their existence, and that the character depth or interaction with the world is already shaped by a certain degree of the available, campaign specific nuances of that world.

Which will always be simply that mega-dungeon or narrative arc and informed only be your preconceptions of acceptability to exist.

How big a point buy? What race? What class? What skills? What gear? What feats?

And I think the only real contention between a character that dies and is not resurrected or something like that, and a campaign that just abruptly ends, doesn't exactly invalidate either of them being stories on their own.

Like put it this way. If a roleplay heavy, intricate campaign setting, with heavy character scripting and acceptability prerequisites that necessitates having a character background, where they grew up, what specific languages they know and why, and how they came to be adventuring in a place is effectively already a 'storied' character.

Nobody really builds a character in the same way a person might describe who others are. They don't say; "This is Erica. She's 31, a Leo, and her favourite colour is green. She likes vintage motorcycles, and works as a paralegal assistant in Sydney. On the weekend she goes hiking."

Ironically, the characters that sound the most human are often the open-ended mega dungeon characters because it's light on world details, is entirely dedicated to simply describing itself, and is entirely devoid of purpose beyond any other reason than why they're doing the thing.

People don't actually spend their every hour internalizing an idea of why I am here.

But for the character of that highly complex setting, with expectations of a good page or two of description, history, psychology etc, it seems as if that purpose is known, lived, thought of, and reflected through active consumption of the world as is. People themselves don't have a convenient campaign setting. There is no real purpose that is immediately knowable, or if at all knowable.

Most people blunder into careers they sort of just stick with, they end up marrying people they lunder into by chance and decide that they should be a couple. They might plan to have kids, but even then they blunder into how their kids will be born, what they look like, when exactly they'll start crawling and talking.

They'll blunder into their first home. They'll blunder into their next second-hand vehicle. They'll blunder into things like cancer or diabetes.

I think the reason why roleplaying is fun, is because it's easy. It's easy to face a dragon.

What's hard is going to the local pub with a group of friends, knowing that even if you haven't seen them in ages you have a pile of work sitting on your desk that needs to be crunched by Monday otherwise people will treat you as a horrible, lazy person dragging down the team. So you can't stop thinking about it even when you're just trying to have a laugh and celebrate the end of such a long absence in your life.

Ultimately such things are hard, consume you, and yet are not noteworthy at all. That even if you were to think about those moments and contemplate how you would write of them in your otherwise interesting memoirs (if you're lucky or unlucky), no one will want to read it and you wouldn't write about it in the first place. Not even a blank paragraph. Just a nothing in between other lines of text.

RPG characters are already memoirs of interesting people that don't have to worry about all the nothings between the lines. It doesn't really matter if it's open-ended, or the campaign just abruptly ends.

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-02, 04:23 AM
@Tanarii: I admit to that much in the text you quoted, duh. :smalltongue: So do you want to try to sell the game to me too or did you just drop by to state the obvious?

Unavenger
2019-02-02, 07:18 AM
Fire, meet fire.


Wait, why? I mean people should break down hat they mean by 'story' ... if it's the act of spectating players are merely actors. The relatioship between player and GM is world's apart from player and player, but objectively speaking the GM ha, in a transcendental sense, written the plot and story (hopefully) from the very start, it's just a matter of time and inevitability the GM has already guaranteed last words of whatever tale they wll tell (assuming seen to conclusion)--though players drive narrative.

But surely, this creates a biased, GM-privileging narrative, such that the actions of the players are, de facto, subservient to those of the GM? For an RPG to be a true RPG, the interrelation between the action-interaction causality must, by necessity, be a free one, with the GM only as the adjudicator of the mise en scene and, where the rules as defined by the authors leave a ruling void or defer to the GM's discretion, in those cases to ensure a cogent reconstruction of the regulatory intent, as well as to play the part of the NPCs in the narrative and thus ensure a cohesive action-reaction result within the game-space metanarrative, including the "off-screen" action-interaction-reaction causality processes via which the universal evolution of the game-space is effected?


If we treat players working to an improvisational script as thespians by proxy, does that mean the artist painting is not telling a story in praxis? Or a writer is not weaving a tale as they type? Or a reporter commenting is not 'making news' by reporting an event to the viewers?

Here I would agree that the equivocal ambiguity surrounding the "Storytelling" which this discussion is so far neglecting to elucidate means that we can indeed refer to the construction of a fiction about which one might later recount a tale is in itself "Storytelling", but for Max, the evolution of the game-space via a cogent action-interaction-reaction causality process and thus, the ability of the gameplay statistics to act as GM-reaction-predictors (hence the existence of such statistics, else one might as well engage in an abstract deregulated game-minus-game without such action-reaction predictor-statistics), is vital to the enjoyment of the game, whereas any narrative or metanarrative that one might construct is valuable only inasmuch as that informs the action-interaction causality factors within the game universe, and the action-space which is possible within the game-space and which of those actions within the action-space is liable to induce which reactions as part of the action-reaction causality informed primarily by the game statistics.


In transcendental examination, it matters not the story hasn't perceptibly end to you, what matters is the end and story is inevitable.

While the end may be inevitable in some sense, inasmuch as that narratives, games and indeed humans in motion must inevitably come to rest, this strikes me as not only a very banal statement, but one that privileges endings over middles and beginnings - indeed, how one begins one's story, whether in medias res or via the cliché outset in a public house, is the only true inevitability where the GM displays any comprehension of the statistically-engendered action-reaction discourse between the player and the GM roles - to make an inevitable story is to "Railroad", that is to deny the players agency and unjustly privilege the GM's narrative and sovereignty within the social contract over the purpose of the game, which is in the enjoyment of the players and GM alike of the action-interaction-reaction paradigm.


In a very metaphysical sense, a story you have never experienced before at all, in part or whole, is objectively no different than reading it as the author has been typing it. It makes no meaningful difference that the author has completed the very line you are on that second or a thousand years ago, in both cases still stories.

This is only true if you privilege the "Death of the author" explication over other paradigms of storytelling, and indeed strip from the story the context in which it is created. It is simply madness to dissociate the narrative-metanarrative consolidation from the systemic reinforcement of certain behaviours by the society in which it originated, since a narrative about X by an author removed from X is liable to bring with it the paradigms of the author's degraded perception of X, most likely due to the lack of erudition about X; conversely a narrative about X by one who is mired within the grasp of X is liable to privilege the topic X over its competitors.

However, this is somewhat adjunct to the point that the fact that a narrative-metanarrative construction is simply adjuvant to the action-interaction-reaction paradigm via statistics-adjudication duality which Max favours, which is about the ability of the players to take actions with prognostication of the resulting actions of the game-space.


How many times do I have to explain it? The GM inevitably creates the structuralist foudations upon which both player and GM have an approximated agreeable metanarrative that allows players to act, and GMs to rectify whatever chaos that brings. But in the end, the GM has an idea how the results of a character's actios will be, how the module will play out, what the ramifications of that will be over a campaign, and in the end will dictate the close of the story by necessity.

The GM may dictate the close of the story, but this is the interaction-reaction part of the action-interaction-reaction paradigm. If the resultant metanarrative was never influenced by the players, then it is simply an action paradigm for the GM, and a paradigm of abject nonentity for the players. In order to avoid this privileging of GM activity, the players must be able to liberate themselves from this "Railroad" and pursue their own desires within the game-space.


A GM that sees in conclusion of the metanarrative (the very end), will inevitably be the one to construct its end. In a non-transcendental aspect of the story, GMs will plan before seshs, in a transcendental sense this relationship to metanarrative means inevitably the GM has been leading to the end.

But what of improvisation? A GM may well construct the entities within gamespace, and the dramatis personae on their side of the screen, but leave them to undergo action-interaction-reaction with the player-characters' activities in the game-space in a naturalistic manner according to their statistics and the rules-game consolidation allowing for a variety of different endings depending on both the action-reaction paradigm and the random-number-generation engine's fateful whims. The idea that there is an end is neither radical nor revolutionary.


Still a story, whether in praxis or conclusion. Easily modules on their own are contained narratives with explicit tonal shifts delineating the split between them. If the story ends there, the metanarrative does also. The gamestate built by GM and players has finished.

If one defines any interaction within game-space, nay any interaction at all, as a story then of course all games are stories, but this is rank equivocation which unfairly privileges narrativism over gamism and simulationism - the two paradigms which are contingent on the action-interaction-reaction cohesion that allows for the adumbration of the game-world's reaction based on pre-game decisions taken in the character-creation minigame and the decisions made in action-space during the course of the game. Wherever the players have the capacity for substantial contribution, the GM's supremacy is in question.



Hmm, too lucid. I'll never be a real postmodernist.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-02, 09:03 AM
It's not (merely) a postmodern thought, however. Postmodern thought would focus on deconstruction and the value (and focus) of truth. Which can be a function of the game world as it constantly reality tests itself by the player character. It's a structuralist concept of how the game is designed. Po-mo could be a post-structural examination of it and a focus on what is actually being consumed.

For example, the nature of action attribution. Basically all the characters and the players have a concrete understading of the structuralism of the campaign and its world by its ending. Whether that's an open ended super dungeon that is merely; "For glory!"--or some other character reason why they're there, or whether it's this massive adventure arc from which meaning is resolved through interaction with an overarching narrative. They go into it knowing that's goig to be their character's story, that this is going to be roughly the totality of their existence, and that the character depth or interaction with the world is already shaped by a certain degree of the available, campaign specific nuances of that world.

Which will always be simply that mega-dungeon or narrative arc and informed only be your preconceptions of acceptability to exist.

How big a point buy? What race? What class? What skills? What gear? What feats?

And I think the only real contention between a character that dies and is not resurrected or something like that, and a campaign that just abruptly ends, doesn't exactly invalidate either of them being stories on their own.

Like put it this way. If a roleplay heavy, intricate campaign setting, with heavy character scripting and acceptability prerequisites that necessitates having a character background, where they grew up, what specific languages they know and why, and how they came to be adventuring in a place is effectively already a 'storied' character.

Nobody really builds a character in the same way a person might describe who others are. They don't say; "This is Erica. She's 31, a Leo, and her favourite colour is green. She likes vintage motorcycles, and works as a paralegal assistant in Sydney. On the weekend she goes hiking."

Ironically, the characters that sound the most human are often the open-ended mega dungeon characters because it's light on world details, is entirely dedicated to simply describing itself, and is entirely devoid of purpose beyond any other reason than why they're doing the thing.

People don't actually spend their every hour internalizing an idea of why I am here.

But for the character of that highly complex setting, with expectations of a good page or two of description, history, psychology etc, it seems as if that purpose is known, lived, thought of, and reflected through active consumption of the world as is. People themselves don't have a convenient campaign setting. There is no real purpose that is immediately knowable, or if at all knowable.

Most people blunder into careers they sort of just stick with, they end up marrying people they lunder into by chance and decide that they should be a couple. They might plan to have kids, but even then they blunder into how their kids will be born, what they look like, when exactly they'll start crawling and talking.

They'll blunder into their first home. They'll blunder into their next second-hand vehicle. They'll blunder into things like cancer or diabetes.

I think the reason why roleplaying is fun, is because it's easy. It's easy to face a dragon.

What's hard is going to the local pub with a group of friends, knowing that even if you haven't seen them in ages you have a pile of work sitting on your desk that needs to be crunched by Monday otherwise people will treat you as a horrible, lazy person dragging down the team. So you can't stop thinking about it even when you're just trying to have a laugh and celebrate the end of such a long absence in your life.

Ultimately such things are hard, consume you, and yet are not noteworthy at all. That even if you were to think about those moments and contemplate how you would write of them in your otherwise interesting memoirs (if you're lucky or unlucky), no one will want to read it and you wouldn't write about it in the first place. Not even a blank paragraph. Just a nothing in between other lines of text.

RPG characters are already memoirs of interesting people that don't have to worry about all the nothings between the lines. It doesn't really matter if it's open-ended, or the campaign just abruptly ends.


Wow, that's a huge stack of unfounded presumptions about other people.

And about how they live their lives, about how they think, about how they perceive the world, etc.

And of actual relevance to the thread... about how they engage with RPGs, build and play characters, etc.

Completely unfounded and presumptuous.

Tanarii
2019-02-02, 09:42 AM
@Tanarii: I admit to that much in the text you quoted, duh. :smalltongue: So do you want to try to sell the game to me too or did you just drop by to state the obvious?There are no board games in its category that are anywhere close to it. It's that far ahead of the pack. If you're interested, do some research. If not, there's no need to sell it to you.

Knaight
2019-02-02, 11:45 AM
There are no board games in its category that are anywhere close to it. It's that far ahead of the pack. If you're interested, do some research. If not, there's no need to sell it to you.

There aren't, no - but that was a list of video games, and plenty come pretty close. Plus the reasons behind that are more that other legacy games generally have different goals and aren't trying to emulate RPGs at all, though some still have some pretty impressive narratives given the medium (Pandemic season 2 in particular).

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-02, 02:50 PM
It should be obvious by now that I'm more poking fun at how Schismatic talks about the game, rather than critiquing the game. :smalltongue:

Because stuff like "it uses cards instead of dice!" or "Unlocking new classes.... amazing combat deck system and truly cool deck modifications istead of simply 'more hps, more abilities'... how you customize your deck means everything..." are not impressive feats of game design on the computer game front. Unpredictable behaviour in multiplayer even less so, we had that in Diablo in 1996.

Nothing I've been saying deals with how Gloomhaven stands in comparison to other board games.

Schismatic
2019-02-02, 06:26 PM
Wow, that's a huge stack of unfounded presumptions about other people.

And about how they live their lives, about how they think, about how they perceive the world, etc.

And of actual relevance to the thread... about how they engage with RPGs, build and play characters, etc.

Completely unfounded and presumptuous.

Presumptuous? You know dictionaries exist, right?

Also half of that post was talking about how people specifically construct characters and also why I think they're fun. Also responding to another person about a tangent of another topic.

Schismatic
2019-02-02, 06:31 PM
It should be obvious by now that I'm more poking fun at how Schismatic talks about the game, rather than critiquing the game. :smalltongue:

You provided no valid answer at all. In fact what you said was patently wrong.

Schismatic
2019-02-02, 06:53 PM
There aren't, no - but that was a list of video games, and plenty come pretty close. Plus the reasons behind that are more that other legacy games generally have different goals and aren't trying to emulate RPGs at all, though some still have some pretty impressive narratives given the medium (Pandemic season 2 in particular).

Is there? I mean I would love a videogame that took pointers of character customization and how it handles 'randomness'. Most RPGs you play it's more based on stat point shifting and RNG rather than tailoring a new relationship to random chance by allowing layers of like deckbuilder style limited recursion of results as opposed to simply 'more numbers'.

I mean the biggest crimes in videogames concerning the 'tactical' turn-based sphere is something like X-COM. The relationship to randomness there is you're held hostage to it even if you do everything right and you can't plan around the dice. Videogames aren't alone in this, war game spheres like W40k and its relationship to pure luck (the big problem of dice) is just that. Even in the boardgaming scene with something like the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (PACG).

That being said, mechanically board games just seem to handle RNG so much better. Even in high-luck based games like Arkham Horror LCG. Instead of dice it uses a bag, with numerous tokens. The smart thing about this is that over a campaign, depending on scenario results, tokens can be popped into the bag ... Or you can modify the difficulty by changing the assortment of tokens in the bag to tailor the game experience. There's no hard limit on how many tokens can be in the bag.

So even that with a high degree of luck that in many ways is more variable than most d20 systems (depeding on specific campaign, difficulty and total results there of), the relationship to randomness is less obtrusively dependent. The mechanics of the game don't hold you hostage as there are more than enough ways to hedge your bets and maximize every turn.

And yeah, if there is videogames like that I'd like to know.

That being said, one of my favourite duelling games does just involve rolling a whole stack of dice, and come what may. Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn. That being said Ashes uses dice pretty cleverly, too.

Knaight
2019-02-02, 07:01 PM
I'm talking specifically about being sort of like an RPG in terms of Gloomhaven being ahead of the field. In terms of just mechanics I'm not that impressed by it. It's solid, sure, but so's a lot of other stuff.

Schismatic
2019-02-02, 07:39 PM
I'm talking specifically about being sort of like an RPG in terms of Gloomhaven being ahead of the field. In terms of just mechanics I'm not that impressed by it. It's solid, sure, but so's a lot of other stuff.

Such as, though? I mean I've played a ****load of games, and as much as I love Gloomhaven I think it has its problems. Like the general scenario length compared to set up time. Which isn't so bad 4 player as things slow down considerably and there's more monsters and elites... but on the flipside you don't want it to slow down too much. 3 players is optimal, but that means likely two scenarios a decently long games night.

It's not that bad if it's 1 scenario + another game, but even if you don't tear down properly, sort of pile it on the corner of a table, it's kind of distracting and unless you baggy everything token and card related you're just gong to spend more time putting it away properly.

It's twice as bad as Mage Knight, somehow.

That being said, mechanically it's probably the best way to include randomness and a smarter new avenue and direction of character customization than in any computer game I've played.

Schismatic
2019-02-02, 09:36 PM
Fire, meet fire.



But surely, this creates a biased, GM-privileging narrative, such that the actions of the players are, de facto, subservient to those of the GM? For an RPG to be a true RPG, the interrelation between the action-interaction causality must, by necessity, be a free one, with the GM only as the adjudicator of the mise en scene and, where the rules as defined by the authors leave a ruling void or defer to the GM's discretion, in those cases to ensure a cogent reconstruction of the regulatory intent, as well as to play the part of the NPCs in the narrative and thus ensure a cohesive action-reaction result within the game-space metanarrative, including the "off-screen" action-interaction-reaction causality processes via which the universal evolution of the game-space is effected?

I missed this post. Sorry about that.

In theory, yes. In praxis, this is legitimately terrifying to do otherwise. Particular if you're GMing a storytelling game that is very environmental heavy and requires a definite mystery at the heart of the world. For example, I'll give you an example of what you're describing, but with a 'storytelling' game. Online chatroom roleplaying WoD rooms with ST moderators. Now you could roleplay your characters with other PCs independant of an ST but regardless of how much distance it created between character and ST 'regulating', it would be by necessity less than what the ST required from the players as to the world they constructed. The narrative they have.

In essence it was fun roleplaying, it built 'IC relationships' and created schisms, fractures, discord, factionalisms that are fantastically replete in every WoD game line and often in a holistic way better than one could experience if you are't just roleplaying as a werewolf pack, or a mage cabal, or a Sin-Eater krewe, or a changeling motley, or a vampire coterie, or a Hunter cell with a membership made up of a bunch of different factions united in some strange way.

So you could IC your rivalries and your alliances, be politicking, stabbing eachother in the back, or have a beastial throwdown in an abandoned shopping mall carpark.

But ST 'regulation' is required for any of it to be more than manufactured drama. I would still argue they're stories in ad of themselves... but it highlightswell what the 'GM' actually is. Moreover that manufactured drama would be meaningless without some metaarrative master idea... whether by environment or the roleplaying manual of that gameline itself.

Actually nWoD games are actually really good examples of just how important the metanarrative is. Being a Dusk Courtier in a Changeling game means something to yourself, your community, your capabilities, your alliances, and your personal held philosophies and expressions of beautiful madness. Your 'Keeper', the fey Gentry who kidnapped, twisted and tortured you, and shredded your reclaimed, tattered soul upon escape outside Arcadia's terrible beauty... well that means something fundamental.

You can't tell these sorts of games without GM as regulator in the end because by necessity only an ST could progress a master idea. By necessity. Imagine if every player had that power to simply rewrite a world?


Here I would agree that the equivocal ambiguity surrounding the "Storytelling"...

I see no difference from the act of knowing a story than experiencing a story. I think it's fair to say that you cannot stand on rationalism alone about when the story starts and ends, but you can separate them through an understanding of metanarrative. The quitessential master idea of what a story means and how its components serve the whole.


While the end may be inevitable in some sense, inasmuch as that narratives, games and indeed humans in motion must inevitably come to rest, this strikes me as not only a very banal statement, but one that privileges endings over middles and beginnings - indeed, how one begins one's story, whether in medias res or via the cliché outset in a public house, is the only true inevitability where the GM displays any comprehension of the statistically-engendered action-reaction discourse between the player and the GM roles - to make an inevitable story is to "Railroad", that is to deny the players agency and unjustly privilege the GM's narrative and sovereignty within the social contract over the purpose of the game, which is in the enjoyment of the players and GM alike of the action-interaction-reaction paradigm.

I'm not privileging anythng. I'm saying the master idea exists. Story endings are not magically somehow better than their beginnings... I've read heaps of books that excite me and then I'm like; 'Ehh...' I think in an empirically observable way, we know a good ending will be remembered and often colour the memory of the whole more favourably. A good ending in a general sense can make up for a poor beginning... but on the flipside a poor beginning means less people reading till the end, so damned either way.

What I'm saying is that ultimately for a roleplayig experiece, we do craze that fruition of the journey's end. It's sad, and you might have gotte really attached to your character, but that attachment is naturally built into an idea that this is their story, and they deserve some form of closure.

Moreover, mechanically speaking D&D itself privileges the end.

Regular humans don't have character levels or experiece points that put a dot on a skill. They just grow older. They learn stuff, but inevitably even the mind begins to go. In D&D you just get more powerful. You go up a level, learn more spells, get a better BAB, get more skill points, get more HP. D&D mechanically is building to a close. It's not a life simulator, it's a fantasy game that predicates itself on you working towards an inevitable conclusion.

It's not like the game was designed to hit some plateau and just stay there, or have players with a veritable level selection that dials forwards and backwards character levels simply to experience a new type of fight.

The game simply isn't that fun mechanically. What is fun is the vehicle by which your charactera chieves something. It's about ever greater heights of power, glory, ability, esteem, control, wealth.

It's a game that espouses constant positive inflow. Never stagnate, never still, constant advancement. And eventually you can't go any further.


This is only true if you privilege the "Death of the author" explication over other paradigms of storytelling, and indeed strip from the story the context in which it is created. It is simply madness to dissociate the narrative-metanarrative consolidation from the systemic reinforcement of certain behaviours by the society in which it originated, since a narrative about X by an author removed from X is liable to bring with it the paradigms of the author's degraded perception of X, most likely due to the lack of erudition about X; conversely a narrative about X by one who is mired within the grasp of X is liable to privilege the topic X over its competitors.

No it's not. In academia now, if you study the humanities basically half your education could literally be entitled 'Respecting the Classics' ... Even if you can't ignore the social discourse of such works, I guarantee you people will still be reading Jane Austen in the 22nd Century. Moreover, it's not about anachronisms. It's about the truth of the word, and there is no future you 1000 years in the future reading it at the same time.

I never made ay commentary about how you would feel about such works, I'm saying in a way that is more akin to that being there's nothing new under the Sun. Which is a dum setiment in general, but in terms of a hypothetical book oe picks up it kind of sort of works.



But what of improvisation?

What about it? Improvisation has always been a part of a story. Authors create.




If one defines any interaction within game-space, nay any interaction at all, as a story then of course all games are stories, but this is rank equivocation which unfairly privileges narrativism over gamism and simulationism.

Or simply that there might exist a holistic whole that my particular narrative butter is most enjoyable on some wholegrain game. You could take your argumet and apply it to any discussion about the merits and problems of picking a specific type of media form to tell a story. Like all those insufferable arsewipes that simply pretend print is universally superior to film in every possible way.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-02, 09:56 PM
Presumptuous? You know dictionaries exist, right?

Also half of that post was talking about how people specifically construct characters and also why I think they're fun. Also responding to another person about a tangent of another topic.


Most of what you said rested on unfounded presumptions about how other people think, how people build characters, what people find fun, what people find realistic and why, etc. Then there are the presumptions about gaming overall that sound like you've never played an actual RPG campaign outside of a D&D campaign run straight from the modules.

It's like listening to a TED Talk about "how people think" and realizing that the speaker has evidently never talked to a real person, and definitely has never talked to you personally.

Schismatic
2019-02-03, 03:39 AM
Most of what you said rested on unfounded presumptions about how other people think, how people build characters, what people find fun, what people find realistic and why, etc. Then there are the presumptions about gaming overall that sound like you've never played an actual RPG campaign outside of a D&D campaign run straight from the modules.

That's not presumptuous. A presumptuous person would help themselves to your wallet and slip in an 'IOU $50 t'moz. -K' without asking whether they could borrow some money. It's used to describe people who assume approval, but have actually misstepped.


It's like listening to a TED Talk about "how people think" and realizing that the speaker has evidently never talked to a real person, and definitely has never talked to you personally.

You introduce me to a person who legitimately knows the future, and then you have a point. As for this person hasn't evidently talked to a real person, In my homeless youth I enlisted in the army. Blundered into that. I served in East Timor due to voluteering for assignment, and due to factors outside of my direct control was considered suitable for active service. Mainly because I was sold the idea of duty, honour, humanity on the frontlines of a 30 year humanitarian crisis. As I was nearer the end of my contracted service I espied an advert for the STAT, completely by luck. I decided to take the opportunity and I got into a prestigious public university program. I ended up in my field of study partly by computer error. I have basically studied and work in the same place for 13 years now. What else would I do, and where else would I go after all this time?

It's a pretty ordinary life. None of it was really planned.

The thing that has occupied 13 years of my life started by accident, and if it hadn't I'd have been sent to Afghanistan. On the flipside I would have ended up with more money by now if I stayed in the army. I'd have had a whole different set of friends. My economic situation would be much better off. I might have found something I was looking for in East Timor.

I don't know what will legitimately make me happy. As in for the first time of experiencing it. I have things I like, but as for discovering that next, new something? Not a clue.

And I'm pretty sure most people are more like me than they'll want to admit. And if we were legitimately people that actually didn't blunder into things then surely aiming for what will unequivocally make us genuinely happy would be numero uno on that list, right?

People merely have wants, but people don't know happy till it bites them in the arse unexpectedly. We just sort of make do.

Floret
2019-02-03, 04:33 AM
In theory, yes. In praxis, this is legitimately terrifying to do otherwise. Particular if you're GMing a storytelling game that is very environmental heavy and requires a definite mystery at the heart of the world.

So because you find scary, it is somehow a legitimate argument that RPG sessions have to circumvent this state to be considered RPGs?


But ST 'regulation' is required for any of it to be more than manufactured drama. I would still argue they're stories in ad of themselves... but it highlightswell what the 'GM' actually is. Moreover that manufactured drama would be meaningless without some metaarrative master idea... whether by environment or the roleplaying manual of that gameline itself.

Anything in RPGs that is deliberately following any thread of a predetermined story is manufactured drama, and a storyteller making their decision based on what they planned to happen way more so than people playing off one another and forging their experiences together. GM-planned games are not somehow a higher level of play, in fact, the sort of railroad that your arguments appear as championing would, to my enjoyment, be significantly less.


You can't tell these sorts of games without GM as regulator in the end because by necessity only an ST could progress a master idea. By necessity. Imagine if every player had that power to simply rewrite a world?

Imagine that, yeah. Wait, in fact, I don't have to, I've played those games. They were fun. Maybe take a look at Reflections, it's probably my favourite in that category.

Your arguments speak of a very narrow list of experiences, and a lack of imagination as to how games could be conducted differently from yours, as well as a fear of stepping outside of what you know.



I see no difference from the act of knowing a story than experiencing a story. I think it's fair to say that you cannot stand on rationalism alone about when the story starts and ends, but you can separate them through an understanding of metanarrative. The quitessential master idea of what a story means and how its components serve the whole.

Experiencing events is not experiencing a story. The time I was lying in an abandoned military building, trying to sleep while cultists invaded the place and fought with the travelling soldiers a bit over I was not in a story. I was in a situation. People made decisions that lead to the situation happening. There was no planning involved except that which led all of us there. The time zombies attacked while I was on the toilet? Marvellous story to tell. Quite amusing situation, actually. But not a story in the moment. Not a moment spared to story while I was sitting there.

Sure, you can redefine "story" until it fits, but all you've proven is that if you assume a, then a is true. Duh. You have yet to convince me that redefining story in such a way is in any way productive.


What I'm saying is that ultimately for a roleplayig experiece, we do craze that fruition of the journey's end. It's sad, and you might have gotte really attached to your character, but that attachment is naturally built into an idea that this is their story, and they deserve some form of closure.

I... don't. Not always. Not necessarily. Sometimes the end is a cool thing. Most of the time, the journey matters far more. My fun while playing my shouty seapriest is from her utter lack of selfpreservation, impudent belief in her moral superiority, and in some part her ability to pull off amazing things (like climbing a flying stingray demon to stab it in the back. That one was awesome. And then falling into the sea due to the demon disintegrating on death, but hey). The idea of the campaign ending... I know it will happen, we are playing a module, after all, but it doesn't factor into my enjoyment at all, except in so far that I can look forward to be able to play a different game at a planned point, unlike I might with an endless campaign.


Moreover, mechanically speaking D&D itself privileges the end.

We're talking RPGs, not D&D. D&D is merely one of many, and far from the be-all and end-all of what they can be.


No it's not. In academia now, if you study the humanities basically half your education could literally be entitled 'Respecting the Classics'

Then you have ****ty teachers. Mine didn't. "Question the classics" was far more prevalent then any sort of reverence for them, which was explicitly called out as a problem of academia a few decades ago.

Go watch Lindsay Ellis' video on death of the author. It deals with the problems behind the concept quite handily.


What about it? Improvisation has always been a part of a story. Authors create.

Creating and improvisation are not the same thing, or at most, improvisation is a subset of creating, a very specific one at that. Improvisation necessitates permanency of decisions, immediately, or it looses meaning. If you can take back your immediate answer, you have thought on it, and the result is no longer improvised. Improvisation is to come up with an answer (in the broadest sense) and be required to stick to it. It knows no takebacks.

An author writing a novel is not that.


And I'm pretty sure most people are more like me than they'll want to admit. And if we were legitimately people that actually didn't blunder into things then surely aiming for what will unequivocally will make us genuinely happy would benumero uno on that list, right?

People merely have wants, but people don't know happy till it bites them in the arse unexpectedly. We just sort of make do.

You don't aim your life for what you think, by your best guess, will make you genuinely happy? And no. I do know happy, and have taken numerous, oftentimes successfull steps to achieve my goal. Sure, not every plan of mine has worked, and sometimes, I've turned out to be wrong about a thing, but in the end, I have to disagree. You can absolutely plan your own happyness, and your theory on how humans work is painfully limited by your own experiences.

Because see, I would actually agree that we can't know for certain if a new thing would be enjoyable. My own personal response is to just, yaknow, try.

I do think I understand now why you limit the capacities of RPGs so much as you do in your arguments though. You're still wrong to do so, mind you, but I think I know where you're coming from.

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-03, 06:10 AM
You provided no valid answer at all. In fact what you said was patently wrong.

You claim I've provided you no valid answer but nothing you've said explains why.

Here, let me point the obvious reason why I don't do an in-depth comparison between the games I listed, and Gloomhaven: while I can get ADoM, Nethack (etc.) for free, I can't get a copy of Gloomhaven. That's why I'm focusing on what you say about the game.

And what you just said about random chance is laughable. It basically boils down to: "I like dependent chances more than independent chances, because I don't like being screwed by the RNG & I like luck manipulation strategies". Or even more shortly: "I like counting cards more than counting dice probabilities".

Here, let me point a reason why board games feel like they do random chance better: they tend to be simpler and the game's generation algorithms tend to be more transparent to the players.

But this difference is superficial. You can do luck manipulation in every computer game with random chance, if you know how the game's pseudorandom number generator works. It's just harder. Even outside of that, player skill has tendency to trump luck, to the degree that being "held hostage" by the game mechanics is an illusion and you likely just didn't play very well. This is true for ADoM, Nethack, Unreal World and Dungeon Crawl, and it is true to a high degree for Dwarf Fortress and Pokemon.

Unavenger
2019-02-03, 10:23 AM
*Takes a deep breath, puts on irony gloves, prepares to wade into an inferno*


I missed this post. Sorry about that.

No worries. This is far too much fun!


In theory, yes. In praxis, this is legitimately terrifying to do otherwise. Particular if you're GMing a storytelling game that is very environmental heavy and requires a definite mystery at the heart of the world. For example, I'll give you an example of what you're describing, but with a 'storytelling' game. Online chatroom roleplaying WoD rooms with ST moderators. Now you could roleplay your characters with other PCs independant of an ST but regardless of how much distance it created between character and ST 'regulating', it would be by necessity less than what the ST required from the players as to the world they constructed. The narrative they have.

In essence it was fun roleplaying, it built 'IC relationships' and created schisms, fractures, discord, factionalisms that are fantastically replete in every WoD game line and often in a holistic way better than one could experience if you are't just roleplaying as a werewolf pack, or a mage cabal, or a Sin-Eater krewe, or a changeling motley, or a vampire coterie, or a Hunter cell with a membership made up of a bunch of different factions united in some strange way.

So you could IC your rivalries and your alliances, be politicking, stabbing eachother in the back, or have a beastial throwdown in an abandoned shopping mall carpark.

But ST 'regulation' is required for any of it to be more than manufactured drama. I would still argue they're stories in ad of themselves... but it highlightswell what the 'GM' actually is. Moreover that manufactured drama would be meaningless without some metaarrative master idea... whether by environment or the roleplaying manual of that gameline itself.

Actually nWoD games are actually really good examples of just how important the metanarrative is. Being a Dusk Courtier in a Changeling game means something to yourself, your community, your capabilities, your alliances, and your personal held philosophies and expressions of beautiful madness. Your 'Keeper', the fey Gentry who kidnapped, twisted and tortured you, and shredded your reclaimed, tattered soul upon escape outside Arcadia's terrible beauty... well that means something fundamental.

You can't tell these sorts of games without GM as regulator in the end because by necessity only an ST could progress a master idea. By necessity. Imagine if every player had that power to simply rewrite a world?

Of course the GM needs to act as a regulator - I'm not suggesting complete freedom of action for characters, only that there is a realistic (or at least verisimilar) action-reaction-interaction paradigm via which the characters' actions within the permitted-action-space are responded to by the NPCs in the game, thus the combined efforts of the GM and the players help to further the evolution of the game-space universe via this action-reaction-interaction paradigm, without which the players are simply taking actions with no reactions and the GM taking actions with fundamentally meaningless interactions from the players, thus leading to a non-interactive activity, this raising the question of why you would be playing a role-playing game at all if you couldn't expect that actions would lead to interactions, not only player-player but player-GM interactions, thus complicating the game-flow evolution beyond the GM-acts-players-observe paradigm which allows only a façade of player activity.


I see no difference from the act of knowing a story than experiencing a story. I think it's fair to say that you cannot stand on rationalism alone about when the story starts and ends, but you can separate them through an understanding of metanarrative. The quitessential master idea of what a story means and how its components serve the whole.

The point is not in whether one knows or experiences a story (though if you think that there's no difference between knowing a story and experiencing it, try reading a story backwards and see how surprising all the plot twists are), the point is in whether the story is fundamental or extraneous to the player's enjoyment of the game. For Max, the story per se is not the purpose of the exercise: rather the purpose of the RPG is that a player and a GM should be able to create a game-space and engage in the action-interaction-reaction paradigm, with results consistent with the capability-definition of the characters via the game's rules, with the story being useful only inasmuch as it informs the potential-action-space of the characters.


I'm not privileging anythng. I'm saying the master idea exists. Story endings are not magically somehow better than their beginnings... I've read heaps of books that excite me and then I'm like; 'Ehh...' I think in an empirically observable way, we know a good ending will be remembered and often colour the memory of the whole more favourably. A good ending in a general sense can make up for a poor beginning... but on the flipside a poor beginning means less people reading till the end, so damned either way.

But a non-malleable master idea with an inevitable end necessarily privileges endings inasmuch as that an "All roads lead to Rome" paradigm necessarily forces all actions the players and GM take to be subservient to the ending that the GM has foreseen perhaps months in advance. A coherent action-interaction-reaction paradigm means that the end must be contingent on the actions which occurred before and during it.


What I'm saying is that ultimately for a roleplayig experiece, we do craze that fruition of the journey's end. It's sad, and you might have gotte really attached to your character, but that attachment is naturally built into an idea that this is their story, and they deserve some form of closure.

Closure may be important, but so is the rest of the experience, and most importantly, we want to have influence over the story via the action-interaction-reaction paradigm, thus creating our own ending contingent on the precedent actions within the action-possibility-space of the characters.


Moreover, mechanically speaking D&D itself privileges the end.

Regular humans don't have character levels or experiece points that put a dot on a skill. They just grow older. They learn stuff, but inevitably even the mind begins to go. In D&D you just get more powerful. You go up a level, learn more spells, get a better BAB, get more skill points, get more HP. D&D mechanically is building to a close. It's not a life simulator, it's a fantasy game that predicates itself on you working towards an inevitable conclusion.

It's not like the game was designed to hit some plateau and just stay there, or have players with a veritable level selection that dials forwards and backwards character levels simply to experience a new type of fight.

The game simply isn't that fun mechanically. What is fun is the vehicle by which your charactera chieves something. It's about ever greater heights of power, glory, ability, esteem, control, wealth.

It's a game that espouses constant positive inflow. Never stagnate, never still, constant advancement. And eventually you can't go any further.

D&D is not the only RPG, and some lack this progression of action-space, but also D&D causes a reduction in viable-action-space that keeps up with the increase in action-space as actions which were once viable within the action-economy paradigm are relegated to actions which are no longer viable, thus keeping the viable-action-space roughly constant as the characters advance. That, and many games never reach level 20 (notwithstanding 3.5's infinite-advancement epic levels) thus causing an ending which is not at the zenith of a positive-inflow character-action-ability-capability-space advancement-paradigm. Not only that, but individual character goals which are not to do with this positive-inflow action-space-advancement, such as the goal to cause a particular event in game-space or influence a particular game-space-evolution event towards a particular result, can occur at any point in the game, or even occur continuously (such as the goal to maintain control of a region in game-space, which is not a discrete task but one which is open-ended).


No it's not. In academia now, if you study the humanities basically half your education could literally be entitled 'Respecting the Classics' ... Even if you can't ignore the social discourse of such works, I guarantee you people will still be reading Jane Austen in the 22nd Century. Moreover, it's not about anachronisms. It's about the truth of the word, and there is no future you 1000 years in the future reading it at the same time.

I never made ay commentary about how you would feel about such works, I'm saying in a way that is more akin to that being there's nothing new under the Sun. Which is a dum setiment in general, but in terms of a hypothetical book oe picks up it kind of sort of works.

My point is that even if the actual text of the page isn't in question, the viewer's reaction - and indeed, the authorial intent, given their society's systemic reinforcement of a particular ethos - is going to be shaped by the societal context in which they find themselves.


What about it? Improvisation has always been a part of a story. Authors create.

As I said, "a GM may well construct the entities within gamespace, and the dramatis personae on their side of the screen, but leave them to undergo action-interaction-reaction with the player-characters' activities in the game-space in a naturalistic manner according to their statistics and the rules-game consolidation allowing for a variety of different endings depending on both the action-reaction paradigm and the random-number-generation engine's fateful whims. The idea that there is an end is neither radical nor revolutionary." That is to say that the GM per se does not construct the end, they only do so via the action-interaction-reaction paradigm and also under the regulatory intent of the game system and - in most games at least - as the random-number-generator influences the game, as if an occult hand were writing its own part of the story. In order for the players to have any freedom beyond the Sartre-esque radical freedom to leave the game, they must be able to participate in the action-interaction-reaction paradigm and thus, influence the end.


Or simply that there might exist a holistic whole that my particular narrative butter is most enjoyable on some wholegrain game. You could take your argumet and apply it to any discussion about the merits and problems of picking a specific type of media form to tell a story. Like all those insufferable arsewipes that simply pretend print is universally superior to film in every possible way.

In the abstractionist-simulation-state, this is an apropos example of a colourless green idea sleeping furiously, thus through obfuscating metaphor, the vacuousness of the juxtaposed palaver is exalted above discourse of merit.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-03, 10:39 AM
That's not presumptuous. A presumptuous person would help themselves to your wallet and slip in an 'IOU $50 t'moz. -K' without asking whether they could borrow some money. It's used to describe people who assume approval, but have actually misstepped.



You introduce me to a person who legitimately knows the future, and then you have a point. As for this person hasn't evidently talked to a real person, In my homeless youth I enlisted in the army. Blundered into that. I served in East Timor due to voluteering for assignment, and due to factors outside of my direct control was considered suitable for active service. Mainly because I was sold the idea of duty, honour, humanity on the frontlines of a 30 year humanitarian crisis. As I was nearer the end of my contracted service I espied an advert for the STAT, completely by luck. I decided to take the opportunity and I got into a prestigious public university program. I ended up in my field of study partly by computer error. I have basically studied and work in the same place for 13 years now. What else would I do, and where else would I go after all this time?

It's a pretty ordinary life. None of it was really planned.

The thing that has occupied 13 years of my life started by accident, and if it hadn't I'd have been sent to Afghanistan. On the flipside I would have ended up with more money by now if I stayed in the army. I'd have had a whole different set of friends. My economic situation would be much better off. I might have found something I was looking for in East Timor.

I don't know what will legitimately make me happy. As in for the first time of experiencing it. I have things I like, but as for discovering that next, new something? Not a clue.

And I'm pretty sure most people are more like me than they'll want to admit. And if we were legitimately people that actually didn't blunder into things then surely aiming for what will unequivocally make us genuinely happy would be numero uno on that list, right?

People merely have wants, but people don't know happy till it bites them in the arse unexpectedly. We just sort of make do.


That's YOUR history and YOUR experience. No one else's. You keep mistaking "I" for "we". It's like the philosophical version of telling people they'd like some food they hate, if they just really gave it a chance.


So, as noted, presumptuous.

As in, a person presuming (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/presume) that their own experience, both in terms of the experiences of their life and in terms of how they experience the the world, are true for others as well.

As in presuming (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/presume)to speak for others.

As in presuming (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/presume)to know others better than they know themselves... but then, that's the core fatal flaw, the core hubris, of most "theory of mind" endeavors, going back to Freud and Jung, who both wove elaborate theories of the functioning of the human mind that amounted to nothing more than projecting their own personal quirks and kinks onto the whole of humanity.


To bring this back around to gaming, we see the same thing happen with a LOT of "RPG Theory". Too many gamers just take it for granted that what they do when gaming is what everyone does, even if some gamers don't realize they're doing it. Too many gamers just take it for granted that what they enjoy is what every gamer enjoys. Too many gamers take it for granted that a "good" definition of "RPG" would be one that matches their tastes and excludes things that they dislike.

Just because YOU game a certain way, or run games a certain way, or like certain games and dislike others for reasons, doesn't mean that everyone else is exactly the same.

That's why I keep pushing the "Venn diagram" model. It's supposed to be inclusive, and open to different experiences around the edges, while still being able to say "this thing WAY over here, it's not an RPG, it's something with a thing in common with RPGs".

georgie_leech
2019-02-03, 10:42 AM
In the abstractionist-simulation-state, this is an apropos example of a colourless green idea sleeping furiously, thus through obfuscating metaphor, the vacuousness of the juxtaposed palaver is exalted above discourse of merit.

Ooh, classy.:smallbiggrin: For the uninitiated, "This is gramatically correct but nonsensical, and this is so busy trying to sound smart it hasn't said anything meaningful."

Unavenger
2019-02-03, 11:01 AM
Ooh, classy.:smallbiggrin:

Glad you like it. :smallamused:

See, I would do something similar with actual postmodernist discourse, but by now the Sokal Affair is such old news (and has been repeated so many times) that I don't know what I would really be adding. I will admit that coming up with postmodernist critiques of postmodernism is quite fun, though (I couldn't stop giggling while writing both of those posts). :smalltongue:

georgie_leech
2019-02-03, 11:22 AM
Glad you like it. :smallamused:

See, I would do something similar with actual postmodernist discourse, but by now the Sokal Affair is such old news (and has been repeated so many times) that I don't know what I would really be adding. I will admit that coming up with postmodernist critiques of postmodernism is quite fun, though (I couldn't stop giggling while writing both of those posts). :smalltongue:

Besides, when else are we going to use some of this language? Combat energised gas particles utilizing other energetic gas particles, I say :smallamused:

Unavenger
2019-02-03, 11:26 AM
Besides, when else are we going to use some of this language? Combat energised gas particles utilizing other energetic gas particles, I say :smallamused:

Or, as I put it:


Fire, meet fire.



As an aside, I do wonder to what extent you could produce a useful discourse by discussing the traditional subject matter of postmodernist discourse in plain language (the exact opposite of what I've been doing during this thread, which is dressing up coherent thoughts in jargon). My gut instinct is that you'd just get sociology - with perhaps a little philosophy, and we already have people working on that. Ah well.

Tanarii
2019-02-03, 11:37 AM
It should be obvious by now that I'm more poking fun at how Schismatic talks about the game, rather than critiquing the game. :smalltongue:
Im sorry that some internet asshat has had to drag you down on the game. It's a fantastic game, and more than worth it's price if you're able to find a group of people willing to run it on campaign mode, but who dont want to play an RPG. It's also kinda cool in game stores in pickup mode, because anyone improving a character can improve it for all future players.

It's not for everyone, mainly because it's expensive, and because most people who are willing to put that much time into gaming as a group might as well just play an RPG for more freedom of action and storylines.

Personally I started using it because I enjoyed it in a game store, then I had a group of friends who enjoy board games a bit more than RPGs, and I already DM enough D&D anyway. So an extended campaign co-op board game was perfect. Good heavy tactical co-op board games are hard to find in the first place, and good ones with a solid campaign mode and Referee-less are basically non-existent.

georgie_leech
2019-02-03, 11:42 AM
As an aside, I do wonder to what extent you could produce a useful discourse by discussing the traditional subject matter of postmodernist discourse in plain language (the exact opposite of what I've been doing during this thread, which is dressing up coherent thoughts in jargon). My gut instinct is that you'd just get sociology - with perhaps a little philosophy, and we already have people working on that. Ah well.

Depends on the focus of the speaker, and what the context is, IME. A lot of postmodernism, taken far enough, ends up in similar places (sort of like how following the first link of every wikipedia page will usually get you to "Philosophy"), so it really does depend on context. Like, this thread would probably end up in (dubious) sociology, but we've done something similar in a couple of my university courses, and the components of rational systems or logic was a decently common endpoint.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-03, 11:57 AM
As an aside, I do wonder to what extent you could produce a useful discourse by discussing the traditional subject matter of postmodernist discourse in plain language (the exact opposite of what I've been doing during this thread, which is dressing up coherent thoughts in jargon). My gut instinct is that you'd just get sociology - with perhaps a little philosophy, and we already have people working on that. Ah well.



Depends on the focus of the speaker, and what the context is, IME. A lot of postmodernism, taken far enough, ends up in similar places (sort of like how following the first link of every wikipedia page will usually get you to "Philosophy"), so it really does depend on context. Like, this thread would probably end up in (dubious) sociology, but we've done something similar in a couple of my university courses, and the components of rational systems or logic was a decently common endpoint.


Not sure if anyone else will get this Bugs Bunny reference, but as far as I'm concerned, postmodernism is just hair and a pair of sneakers.

georgie_leech
2019-02-03, 12:02 PM
Not sure if anyone else will get this Bugs Bunny reference, but as far as I'm concerned, postmodernism is just hair and a pair of sneakers.

Duck Dodgers, thankyouverymuch :smallwink:

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-03, 12:10 PM
Duck Dodgers, thankyouverymuch :smallwink:

Was it the DD encounter with Gossamer where that happened? No wonder I couldn't find a video to link.

georgie_leech
2019-02-03, 12:15 PM
Was it the DD encounter with Gossamer where that happened? No wonder I couldn't find a video to link.

About 5 minutes in. (https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7zq1d) And I can't find the clip either, so a whole episode will have to do. :smallamused:

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-03, 12:24 PM
About 5 minutes in. (https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7zq1d) And I can't find the clip either, so a whole episode will have to do. :smallamused:

That's pretty much postmodernism... it is all hair, there's nothing underneath... just hair and sneakers.

Unavenger
2019-02-03, 12:41 PM
That's pretty much postmodernism... it is all hair, there's nothing underneath... just hair and sneakers.

I dunno, I like to think they're talking about something (I've just had a debate that's two postmodernism-filled posts too long to think otherwise) but what they're actually saying on the topic isn't worth responding to. I think, actually, that that's part of what grinds my gears about it so much: the subject matter with which it concerns itself is already maligned enough without postmodernism showing up and acting like a grim parody of it.


(sort of like how following the first link of every wikipedia page will usually get you to "Philosophy")

As an aside, I got stuck in a loop (linguistics, science, Latin, classical language, language, communication, meaning, semiotics, semiosis, Greek language, Modern Greek, colloquialism, linguistics) when I tried this. :smalltongue:

georgie_leech
2019-02-03, 12:45 PM
As an aside, I got stuck in a loop (linguistics, science, Latin, classical language, language, communication, meaning, semiotics, semiosis, Greek language, Modern Greek, colloquialism, linguistics) when I tried this. :smalltongue:

I did say usually :smallwink: I remember an old computer assignment for online research that had a bonus question about finding one of said loops.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-02-03, 12:46 PM
I dunno, I like to think they're talking about something (I've just had a debate that's two postmodernism-filled posts too long to think otherwise) but what they're actually saying on the topic isn't worth responding to.

IMO that's even worse. If it was just pure word-salad, you could ignore. But wading through the crap only to find the "pearl" was paste? That's obnoxious. It's just close enough to something meaningful to demand attention, but not enough to be worth the effort. :smallmad:

Unavenger
2019-02-03, 12:53 PM
I did say usually :smallwink: I remember an old computer assignment for online research that had a bonus question about finding one of said loops.

Fair enough. Trying it a second time, I managed to get to philosophy (through music, culture, American English and society, among others) though it was quite a weird route. :smalltongue:



So I guess the point of all this is that an RPG is a type of philosophy.


IMO that's even worse. If it was just pure word-salad, you could ignore. But wading through the crap only to find the "pearl" was paste? That's obnoxious. It's just close enough to something meaningful to demand attention, but not enough to be worth the effort. :smallmad:

The rest of that paragraph you cut out did make a similar point, that it was actually worse than meaningless.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-02-03, 12:59 PM
The rest of that paragraph you cut out did make a similar point, that it was actually worse than meaningless.

Yeah. I was amplifying/agreeing, not contradicting. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

Schismatic
2019-02-03, 01:41 PM
So because you find scary, it is somehow a legitimate argument that RPG sessions have to circumvent this state to be considered RPGs?

Yeah, see my argument was examining the metrics of another person's about essentially a freeform game and I was specifically talking about a freeform game and the relationship between GM and PC in that and how in environmental heavy games (Unavenger specifically talking mise en scene and how GMs populate their world)... my reply was taking that and using the example of WoD chatroom games where there might not be any ST present.

It was not a description of all games. Which you might have a point if I literally said all games are like WoD chatrooms. An example of one type of game in reference to a person's argument and outlining a GM's role in it is obviously not going to cover every game. Expecting a person to be able to come up with some trascendental perfect example of every RPG otherwise they're somehow uiversally wrong and can make no salients of their arguments at all is bull**** debate decorum, and you know it.


Anything in RPGs that is deliberately following any thread of a predetermined story is manufactured drama, and a storyteller making their decision based on what they planned to happen way more so than people playing off one another and forging their experiences together. GM-planned games are not somehow a higher level of play, in fact, the sort of railroad that your arguments appear as championing would, to my enjoyment, be significantly less.

Literally not the point I was making. The GM doesn't even need to be an active participant to have players be 'railroaded'. The GM doesn't even need to be a person at all. In an incredibly concise role with a sufficiently advanced campaign book driven by player choice, the specific narrative the players pick themselves from a series of options, a GM can be facilitated by a tablet app. That being said all of that will screech to a halt if players just said 'screw it' and picked scenarios and pretended like the narrative can 'take it' and still work.

Ultimately it won't be able because the creator of the product never designed the world and its sense of flow that way, and given the idea of an absent GM that created this open-ended narrative experience driven still by player choice and results of their actions could never be able to craft a product of the desired returns on investment 'playing the game right' by the players that could also allow the players to simply pick and choose any scenario at whim or at random.



Imagine that, yeah. Wait, in fact, I don't have to, I've played those games. They were fun. Maybe take a look at Reflections, it's probably my favourite in that category.

I don't know what category to which you refer to. You had basically highjacked another discussion entirely. It's like if two people were talking about tennis and comparing racquets and you are suddenly screaming at them about your willow wompwozzle bat. For starters, what is wompwozzle?


Your arguments speak of a very narrow list of experiences, and a lack of imagination as to how games could be conducted differently from yours, as well as a fear of stepping outside of what you know.

Yes, my experiences speak of a very specific experience indeed. It was almost as if I were just using one game and one very particular way to experience such games as we were talking about mise en scene.


Experiencing events is not experiencing a story. The time I was lying in an abandoned military building, trying to sleep while cultists invaded the place and fought with the travelling soldiers a bit over I was not in a story. I was in a situation. People made decisions that lead to the situation happening. There was no planning involved except that which led all of us there. The time zombies attacked while I was on the toilet? Marvellous story to tell. Quite amusing situation, actually. But not a story in the moment. Not a moment spared to story while I was sitting there.

A story can be an event or string of events. A small novella is no less a good story as a hypothetical epic told over many books. POV characters in major works of either fic or non-fic would still be stories on their own if you removed them from all the rest of the narrative (though you'd probably clean up most of their loose ends).


Sure, you can redefine "story" until it fits, but all you've proven is that if you assume a, then a is true. Duh. You have yet to convince me that redefining story in such a way is in any way productive.

Redefine a story what way? A story is hard to define and covers a lot of territory precisely because it's a root concept that ultimately underpins an alienation between humans and what they experience. Being able to define story so as to not leave any doubt that it is distinctly separate from all systematic array of arbitrary measurement that dictates a necessary reorientation value of otherwise non-descript judgments (particularly in the non-fiction category of 'story') would be like trying to solve all questions about Grand Unified Theory.

Like let's say I write a non-fiction story about a person during a revolution that happened. Then ten years later new information comes out and the historical consensus changes about said person... what, is the story still a story? Does it stop being non-fiction? Do people legitimately care enough to argue about that? Moreover the non-fiction genre is actually a really good examination of metanarrative and its role in shaping people's relationship to stories in general. Historical consensus and something like Japanese Pacific War revisionism, for instance. Or how about historiography and its role in shaping the discourse of various colonized people and the sociological impact from this?

This **** is complex, you really expect some transcendental solution (assuming there is even one and some uniform apprehension of it as universally correct in being) from me? I sure as **** don't expect one from you.

Story has a pretty open though solid definition, regardless.


I... don't. Not always. Not necessarily. Sometimes the end is a cool thing. Most of the time, the journey matters far more. My fun while playing my shouty seapriest is from her utter lack of selfpreservation, impudent belief in her moral superiority, and in some part her ability to pull off amazing things (like climbing a flying stingray demon to stab it in the back. That one was awesome. And then falling into the sea due to the demon disintegrating on death, but hey). The idea of the campaign ending... I know it will happen, we are playing a module, after all, but it doesn't factor into my enjoyment at all, except in so far that I can look forward to be able to play a different game at a planned point, unlike I might with an endless campaign.

Well 'the journey' also feels short and less meaningful when a campaign just abruptly ends, as well. As a player you have no real idea what 'percentage' (I guess you could call it that) of the way through a campaign. Once more, 'journey' predilects an end. The journey is a metaphor for growth. Like there's a really good book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values...

It can be described as an autobiographical fictional story where by the author predilects the idea of repairing oneself after trauma and a character changing event through the illusion of a motorcycle trip with his estranged son, and the idea of a common bond through a machine that no matter under what strains cannot be allowed to fail.

The ending of a tale is not merely meant to be artificially divided nor lacking in a sense of growth but rather a fruition of the events themselves. The machine cannot fail to get you there.

That being said, the real world is a noisome element that takes priority, naturally. But the point is the journey means less if you cannot interpret the vehicle succeeding. The motorcycle making it to the end, come what may and whatever end that entails.



We're talking RPGs, not D&D. D&D is merely one of many, and far from the be-all and end-all of what they can be.'
'
Yeah, almost like my example you didn't bother to read...


Then you have ****ty teachers. Mine didn't. "Question the classics" was far more prevalent then any sort of reverence for them, which was explicitly called out as a problem of academia a few decades ago.

I was going to say that was the second half of the humanities course. I thought that implication was pretty obvious, but whatever.

Also, not my teachers. I'm in science.


Creating and improvisation are not the same thing, or at most, improvisation is a subset of creating, a very specific one at that. Improvisation necessitates permanency of decisions, immediately, or it looses meaning. If you can take back your immediate answer, you have thought on it, and the result is no longer improvised. Improvisation is to come up with an answer (in the broadest sense) and be required to stick to it. It knows no takebacks.

They totally are. Innovation is ultimately a function of human curiosity to explore a topic. There's no point simply replicating past knowledge beyond mere utility it brings. Like an instruction manual. If you hve one, you don't need another. The whole function of a story and the dynamism of adventure and escapism is ultimately about transgressing what you already know and feel.



I do think I understand now why you limit the capacities of RPGs so much as you do in your arguments though. You're still wrong to do so, mind you, but I think I know where you're coming from.

Yeah, don't pretend to know me. It's insulting. You don't know me from a bar of soap, and for all you know I could be lying to you. My life is ordinary, that's the point. Ordinary does't mean knowable. And whatever arbitrary points you make about goals is fundamentally broken conjecture that insinuates that I haven't achieved things.

Listen, I played a role in the most successful peacekeeping operation in history. I saved lives. I promoted regional security. I helped rebuild an occupied nation and end a conflict going on as long as you've likely been alive. That being said, me as a few thousand others as well. Having helped birth a new nation on the back of my efforts is pretty ****ing special thing to achieve, don't you think? Still ordinary. We were ordinary people stumbling into an unkown quantity, and achieving success in the face of it.

I volunteered those efforts. I didn't do them specifically because I knew they would make me happy. More the point that I thought they might make me happy. But more to the point, I did it not knowing otherwise but simply because I believed in something bigger than myself. I've gone on from that to do other things that will also help humanity. I achieved those goals regardless of knowing whether they would make me happy. It didn't matter to me if I knew whether it would or not, but I did it anyways.

So don't pretend to know me. I'm not a melancholy person. I 'know' happiness... I just don't know conclusively where I'll find more of it. And unless you can find me a person who does with unerrng grace and accuracy that can also tell me with unerrig grace and accuracy where I'll always find mine, then safe to say happiness is an elusive thing.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-03, 01:53 PM
Yeah, don't pretend to know me. It's insulting. You don't know me from a bar of soap...

...

So don't pretend to know me.


So extend the same basic courtesy to others, and don't pretend to know how they think, or what they feel, or how they experience things... or what it is about RPGs that they do or don't like.

And if you wonder why I'm saying that... go back and read your posts on this thread.



Not sure if you've heard of it, but there's a book and podcast called The Hidden Brain. The author/host constantly talks about "our brains" "our minds" and "us" and "we"... and it's jarring to realize that even though he's talking about human beings, he's clearly not talking about me.

Once one has to face the fact that most of the human species is experiencing the world in a fundamentally alien and largely unknowable way... one realizes that presuming to know what others are thinking or feeling is a fool's errand.

Schismatic
2019-02-03, 02:19 PM
So extend the same basic courtesy to others, and don't pretend to know how they think, or what they feel, or how they experience things... or what it is about RPGs that they do or don't like.

And if you wonder why I'm saying that... go back and read your posts on this thread.



Not sure if you've heard of it, but there's a book and podcast called The Hidden Brain. The author/host constantly talks about "our brains" "our minds" and "us" and "we"... and it's jarring to realize that even though he's talking about human beings, he's clearly not talking about me.

Once one has to face the fact that most of the human species is experiencing the world in a fundamentally alien and largely unknowable way... one realizes that presuming to know what others are thinking or feeling is a fool's errand.






My actual words...


Yeah, don't pretend to know me. It's insulting. You don't know me from a bar of soap, and for all you know I could be lying to you. My life is ordinary, that's the point. Ordinary does't mean knowable. And whatever arbitrary points you make about goals is fundamentally broken conjecture that insinuates that I haven't achieved things.

Listen, I played a role in the most successful peacekeeping operation in history. I saved lives. I promoted regional security. I helped rebuild an occupied nation and end a conflict going on as long as you've likely been alive. That being said, me as a few thousand others as well. Having helped birth a new nation on the back of my efforts is pretty ****ing special thing to achieve, don't you think? Still ordinary. We were ordinary people stumbling into an unkown quantity, and achieving success in the face of it.

I volunteered those efforts. I didn't do them specifically because I knew they would make me happy. More the point that I thought they might make me happy. But more to the point, I did it not knowing otherwise but simply because I believed in something bigger than myself. I've gone on from that to do other things that will also help humanity. I achieved those goals regardless of knowing whether they would make me happy. It didn't matter to me if I knew whether it would or not, but I did it anyways.

So don't pretend to know me. I'm not a melancholy person. I 'know' happiness... I just don't know conclusively where I'll find more of it. And unless you can find me a person who does with unerrng grace and accuracy that can also tell me with unerrig grace and accuracy where I'll always find mine, then safe to say happiness is an elusive thing.

FTFY. I've been nothing but courteous. It would be nice if you would quote what I type, not use sophistry to pretend like I'm somehow telling you that you are not happy. Also, this tangent was brought up by others. Specifically you belabouring a throwaway point I made to begin with.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-03, 03:14 PM
My actual words...



FTFY. I've been nothing but courteous. It would be nice if you would quote what I type, not use sophistry to pretend like I'm somehow telling you that you are not happy. Also, this tangent was brought up by others. Specifically you belabouring a throwaway point I made to begin with.

What did I say about "being happy"? Perhaps if you're going to accuse people of sophistry (and evidently distortion), you'd do well to avoid it yourself first.

I singled out those two lines because they starkly demonstrate the double-standard. You made a demand of others to do what you yourself have repeatedly not done.

You've repeatedly made blanket universal statements about how and why people play and experience RPGs, about what draws them to RPGs, about all RPG play being "storytelling" (and all life being "a story"), etc. That's hardly "throwaway" in a thread that's supposed to be about what an RPG is.

Your first few posts read like wide projections of a narrow personal experience of RPGs (the classic "react to D&D module play as if that's what RPGs are" fallacy, see also "fantasy heartbreaker"), and from there your posts expanded to read like wide projections of a single person's experience of life onto all of humanity. But don't worry, you're in fine company there in the "theory of mind" navel-gazing crowd, that's exactly what people like Freud and Jung did.

This presumption to know how other people think, how other people experience the world, what makes other people tick -- even when applied narrowly to RPGS -- is the dead opposite of "courteous". It's one of the core problems in fields that delve or dabble in "theory of mind"; philosophy, psychology, or otherwise. It was one of the core problems during darkest days of "RPG theory", with certain people going so far as to tell other gamers that that they were "brain damaged" by playing certain RPGs, or that their preferred RPG approach didn't even exist, really. :smallfurious:

And it's also the exact opposite of how I tried to set up my definition of what an RPG is, and why that definition draws a distinct bright line between "the fiction" and "storytelling" -- because it's rude to presume to tell others that they're crafting stories when they have not interest in doing so and distinctly are not, and because it's rude to claim things like character, setting, continuity, etc, as the exclusive domain of "story" as if gamers must somehow "admit" that they're "doing story" when they focus on those things.

Instead of trying to be exclusive, the point was to pitch a big tent and only draw lines out where one of the pieces of an RPG is just plain missing, leaving fuzzy edges so there's room for disagreement and different tastes. I'm not trying to tell people exactly what an RPG is, I'm trying to simply establish the far limits at which a thing is simply not an RPG any more. And it's deliberately set up to avoid people trying to argue their tastes as superior by enshrining them in definition.

Roleplaying, Mechanics, "Fiction Layer" -- if it's got all three in some mix, if it sits in the space where they overlap on the Venn diagram, it can probably be called an RPG fairly.

dps
2019-02-03, 03:18 PM
Depends on what you mean by RPG. :smallbiggrin: It varies, a little, depending on medium... a lot of what people call "RPGs" in video games I'd more properly class as "adventure games", which I consider a subcategory of RPG where the character is predefined.

Broadly, I would say an RPG is a game where a player assumes a role, making choices for their individual character(s), based on an assessment of the needs of the on-going story and the characters involved. As a game, there should be mechanical means of resolving conflicts, be they physical, social, or mental. Furthermore, there should be an understanding that there can be non-conventional means to resolve problems, and unique solutions should be mechanically possible, even if they aren't necessarily recommended in a given instance (you can TRY to divert the zombies with a joke, but that doesn't mean it's going to work, or even have a chance to do so).

Now, obviously, this is a broad definition. However, it allows some examination of what is and is not a role-playing game, based on a few criteria:

1) Control of individual characters
2) Mechanical means of resolving conflicts
3) Non-conventional problem solving possible and mechanically significant

The third, IMO, is what really differentiates most RPGs from RPG-like games, or games that use RPG features without being, properly, RPGs. Lots of things give you control of an individual character. Lots of things have mechanical means of resolving conflicts. What makes an RPG is the ability to make up novel solutions to problems, and resolve things based on that solution.

Are Fighting Fantasy books RPGs? No, because you can't come up with unique solutions. Unique solutions might be presented to you, you might have the plot coupon that allows you to enact unique solutions, but you can't do anything outside the script.

Are things like Fortune and Glory (https://amzn.to/2T3ir7o) or Last Night on Earth (https://amzn.to/2DmfI3o) RPGs? No, because while you might NARRATE a unique solution to a problem, you resolved the problem the same way you resolve every problem. Your character might dictate some choices, but these are all closely defined, too. You can't look at the tile on the field of Last Night on Earth and decide to pick up the basketball on the floor of the gym and throw that at the zombie, and have the results of your actions change because of that... but can narrate that as an explanation for a given result.

An RPG requires being able to interact with your character's environment in non-conventional ways, and resolve it using mechanics based on your solution.

While I don't entirely agree with your definitions, he whole "unique solutions" part of your post highlights what is IMO a basic difference between CRPGs and traditional tabletop RPGs--CRPGs can only handle solutions that the designers/programmer had accounted for, whereas a good DM can resolve unexpected actions.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-02-03, 03:46 PM
While I don't entirely agree with your definitions, he whole "unique solutions" part of your post highlights what is IMO a basic difference between CRPGs and traditional tabletop RPGs--CRPGs can only handle solutions that the designers/programmer had accounted for, whereas a good DM can resolve unexpected actions.

I would still call both of them RPGs, just different in scope. One is restricted to a few specific, scripted roles that one can play while the other is much more flexible.

Floret
2019-02-03, 05:37 PM
It was not a description of all games. Which you might have a point if I literally said all games are like WoD chatrooms. An example of one type of game in reference to a person's argument and outlining a GM's role in it is obviously not going to cover every game. Expecting a person to be able to come up with some trascendental perfect example of every RPG otherwise they're somehow uiversally wrong and can make no salients of their arguments at all is bull**** debate decorum, and you know it.

We are though, in this thread, not talking about this specific subset in anything more than the ability it has to tell us about the borders of the medium we are trying to define. I am not trying to find a perfect example of every RPG everywhere, but if the purpose is to define RPG, then any definition that does clearly and obviously exclude obvious RPGs, and the way some of them are played, then that definition is faulty.


Literally not the point I was making. The GM doesn't even need to be an active participant to have players be 'railroaded'. The GM doesn't even need to be a person at all. In an incredibly concise role with a sufficiently advanced campaign book driven by player choice, the specific narrative the players pick themselves from a series of options, a GM can be facilitated by a tablet app. That being said all of that will screech to a halt if players just said 'screw it' and picked scenarios and pretended like the narrative can 'take it' and still work.

Ultimately it won't be able because the creator of the product never designed the world and its sense of flow that way, and given the idea of an absent GM that created this open-ended narrative experience driven still by player choice and results of their actions could never be able to craft a product of the desired returns on investment 'playing the game right' by the players that could also allow the players to simply pick and choose any scenario at whim or at random.

For Railroading to happen, there needs to be an entity enforcing it. And... no. It will not necessarily screech to a halt. That is my entire point. Games can work just fine when players just go for it.

Your statement about playing the game right confuses me, though. At best I am getting that the ability of players to pick and choose scenarios at whim conflicts with... something, in your eyes? The ability to make a satisfying narrative? If so, a), no, it doesn't necessarily, and b), that's my entire point, that narrative is not a universal thing. I am assuming, though, that you are trying to say something else, though I can't for the life of me make out what. Could you rephrase that, preferrably with like, a third of the jargon at most?


I don't know what category to which you refer to. You had basically highjacked another discussion entirely. It's like if two people were talking about tennis and comparing racquets and you are suddenly screaming at them about your willow wompwozzle bat. For starters, what is wompwozzle?

The category of games in which players can write the world, and there is no GM control, as per the quote I had in the post immediately before that reference.


A story can be an event or string of events. A small novella is no less a good story as a hypothetical epic told over many books. POV characters in major works of either fic or non-fic would still be stories on their own if you removed them from all the rest of the narrative (though you'd probably clean up most of their loose ends).

Litereally missing my point by miles. Yes, stories can be told differently, and have different lengths, without changing their character. That is... obvious, and not related to my point in any way.

Also, no, a story can not be an event or a string of events. A story can describe an event or a string of events. The events themselves, while they happened, were not a story, but, yaknow, events.

Yes, events in a passive medium such as novels or movies might not have "happened" in any sense of the word. This does not make the story the events, it simply makes it a story about things that never happened.


Redefine a story what way? A story is hard to define and covers a lot of territory precisely because it's a root concept that ultimately underpins an alienation between humans and what they experience. Being able to define story so as to not leave any doubt that it is distinctly separate from all systematic array of arbitrary measurement that dictates a necessary reorientation value of otherwise non-descript judgments (particularly in the non-fiction category of 'story') would be like trying to solve all questions about Grand Unified Theory.

Story has a pretty open though solid definition, regardless.

Redefine the term story to include actual, current sequences of events (Funnily enough, everything else you say is literally meaningless to the actual point of contention outlined in more detail not only by me, but also several other posters disagreeing with your definition for multiple pages).
Because yes, story has a pretty solid definition. It is not "What is currently happening", and does not include it, no matter how much you would like it to.

I am not trying for a unifying theory, or anything even remotely transcendental. In fact, I believe your statements treat story as way more transcendental than anything I, or Max, or anyone else ascribed to it. Because you are the only one insisting to use story in a metaphorical way for the currently happening events of an RPG session.


Well 'the journey' also feels short and less meaningful when a campaign just abruptly ends, as well. As a player you have no real idea what 'percentage' (I guess you could call it that) of the way through a campaign. Once more, 'journey' predilects an end. The journey is a metaphor for growth. Like there's a really good book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values...

Speak. For. Yourself. Or, to put it in your words: "Don't presume to know me". It's all well and good if for you the journey feels short and less meaningfull if your campaign just ends, but this is not true for everyone. Including myself. The experiences I made with one of my discontinued (for life reasons, funny that) larp characters feel no less cheap because I never could enact the death I envisioned for him. Journey does not need an end in any but the most banal literal sense.

And **** off with "journey is a metaphor for growth". It isn't universally. A character can have had an interesting journey without having learned a damn thing. You quoting one specific work as a support for what you assert as universalities is no more convincing the hundredth time than it was the first.




I was going to say that was the second half of the humanities course. I thought that implication was pretty obvious, but whatever.

Also, not my teachers. I'm in science.

Is it? From this?
No it's not. In academia now, if you study the humanities basically half your education could literally be entitled 'Respecting the Classics' ... Even if you can't ignore the social discourse of such works, I guarantee you people will still be reading Jane Austen in the 22nd Century. Moreover, it's not about anachronisms. It's about the truth of the word, and there is no future you 1000 years in the future reading it at the same time.

There is no implication in here whatsoever in that sense. I mean, I'd presume there would be some bit left for the course to talk about, I dunno, the topic.
Moreover, you would still be wrong, as "respect the classics" was never part of the curriculum at all. "Take from them what is useful" at most.

And oh, you are in "science" as opposed to a subset of "science". Humanities are still sciences, as much as the natural sciences are. I know you natural science people sometimes don't like hearing it, but that doesn't make it untrue.

Besides, it's pretty ****ing rich that you, self-admittedly not a student of the subject, presume to know how the subject is taught. Dude.


They totally are. Innovation is ultimately a function of human curiosity to explore a topic. There's no point simply replicating past knowledge beyond mere utility it brings. Like an instruction manual. If you hve one, you don't need another. The whole function of a story and the dynamism of adventure and escapism is ultimately about transgressing what you already know and feel.

Innovation and improvisation are also not the same thing. Do you actually, in fact, know what improvisation means?


Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found.[1]. Improvisation, in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of improvisation can apply to many different faculties, across all artistic, scientific, physical, cognitive, academic, and non-academic disciplines; see Applied improvisation.

So. Anything that involves planning is out. That's a pretty big part of creation and innovation that does not qualify as improvisation. So necessarily, any sort of planned story element by a GM is not improvised. Any campaign that is improvised is, thusly, not pre-planned, as that is the literal antonym of improvisation. Therefor, noone can know the outcome of such a campaign.

Also, I disagree with your assertion that adventure and escapism are necessarily always about that. Again, and as Max pointed out, stop presuming your experiences are universal.


Yeah, don't pretend to know me. It's insulting. You don't know me from a bar of soap, and for all you know I could be lying to you. My life is ordinary, that's the point. Ordinary does't mean knowable. And whatever arbitrary points you make about goals is fundamentally broken conjecture that insinuates that I haven't achieved things.

You found it insulting that I presume to know things about you from a post you made about yourself? Why did you talk about yourself then?

My point was not actually about goals. The argument that I insinuated you hadn't achieved things is laughable and requires a misreading of my words that has to be almost deliberate. My point was about happieness, and about dealing with the ultimate uncertainty of human life. You talk about humans essentially "making due" in a world they just blunder through. I disagreed with that notion. I am not "making due". I am not "blundering". Sure, my life is formed by chance just as yours. But while you might be able to squeeze my experiences into your model if you try hard enough, it is, in the end, a misrepresentation of how I, and many other people go about life.

I was once forced (more or less, long story) to visit a therapist who did that thing. Heard my story, and pressed it into his model on how people like me should work. The report does not claim active falsehoods about me, but misrepresents me to a degree that made everyone reading it laugh.

And funnily enough, here you contradict your last post. Saying that we would aim for what makes us the happiest would be the natural way for every human if we knew how, now you are talking about believing in things bigger than yourself. Your theory of humanity changes and shifts with your arguments.

Also, you laying out your experiences in more detail to explain your theory of how humans work and enjoy RPGs does nothing to alleviate the feeling that you are overgeneralising from your own experiences. In fact, quite the opposite.

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-03, 06:50 PM
While I don't entirely agree with your definitions, he whole "unique solutions" part of your post highlights what is IMO a basic difference between CRPGs and traditional tabletop RPGs--CRPGs can only handle solutions that the designers/programmer had accounted for, whereas a good DM can resolve unexpected actions.


I would still call both of them RPGs, just different in scope. One is restricted to a few specific, scripted roles that one can play while the other is much more flexible.

The good thing here is that this is a matter of programming and can be objectively, mathematically analyzed.

So you can take, for example, Legend of Zelda, and show that some puzzle genuinely only has one solution put there by the game designers. And then you can take the successor title, Breath of the Wild, and show that some puzzle genuinely has multiple solutions, and can even be solved in novel ways not thought of by the game designers.

noob
2019-02-03, 08:07 PM
I have an hard time to read this thread.
Each post is roughly the size of an entire thread.
Does someone knows a way to explain what is the current situation and what are people talking about now?

georgie_leech
2019-02-03, 08:23 PM
I have an hard time to read this thread.
Each post is roughly the size of an entire thread.
Does someone knows a way to explain what is the current situation and what are people talking about now?

Duck Dodgers and Postmodernism, mostly.

Willie the Duck
2019-02-03, 08:25 PM
I have an hard time to read this thread.
Each post is roughly the size of an entire thread.
Does someone knows a way to explain what is the current situation and what are people talking about now?


Duck Dodgers and Postmodernism, mostly.

Honestly, if you want to explore postmodernism in regards to running around playing knights, this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFANgWN2Ul0)is probably a better use of your time.

Tanarii
2019-02-03, 11:22 PM
Also, no, a story can not be an event or a string of events. A story can describe an event or a string of events. The events themselves, while they happened, were not a story, but, yaknow, events.


Redefine the term story to include actual, current sequences of events (Funnily enough, everything else you say is literally meaningless to the actual point of contention outlined in more detail not only by me, but also several other posters disagreeing with your definition for multiple pages).
Because yes, story has a pretty solid definition. It is not "What is currently happening", and does not include it, no matter how much you would like it to.Trying to redefine "story" to encompass events as they happen is the go-to move for "RPGs are about cooperative storytelling" folks. It's only with that attempted sleight-of-hand maneuver they can try to justify their position.

As I like to say, I don't live the story of my life.

I do, however, enjoy experiencing it. And often, recounting stories about the exciting parts.

flond
2019-02-04, 12:28 AM
Trying to redefine "story" to encompass events as they happen is the go-to move for "RPGs are about cooperative storytelling" folks. It's only with that attempted sleight-of-hand maneuver they can try to justify their position.

As I like to say, I don't live the story of my life.

I do, however, enjoy experiencing it. And often, recounting stories about the exciting parts.

I mean, wading in here on the side of postmodernism. You living your life is you living your life. "Storytelling" doesn't come up until you try to communicate. And all communication is storytelling, because everything is "I am trying to explain something from my point of view, within my memories, with my referents. " because you will always rely on shortcuts, not know things, have forgotten (or remembered false things), or inject your opinions into things.

Your life is safe from the label of storytelling until you open your mouth.

Unfortunately, you open your mouth a whole lot in rpgs. (Or type words on a device which denies you access to thousands of years of cues that help other maned plains apes glean clues)

Tanarii
2019-02-04, 01:10 AM
Unfortunately, you open your mouth a whole lot in rpgs
I tend to play with people that prefer to have their characters act more than talk, but each unto their own.

Also, trying to redefine communication as storytelling is further attempted sleight-of-hand.

flond
2019-02-04, 01:11 AM
I tend to play with people that prefer to have their characters act more than talk, but each unto their own.

Yes. But you are still communicating those actions. :smalltongue:

georgie_leech
2019-02-04, 01:12 AM
Trying to redefine "story" to encompass events as they happen is the go-to move for "RPGs are about cooperative storytelling" folks. It's only with that attempted sleight-of-hand maneuver they can try to justify their position.

As I like to say, I don't live the story of my life.

I do, however, enjoy experiencing it. And often, recounting stories about the exciting parts.

I mean, there totally are RPG's out there that do have a certain amount of "and try to come up with interesting story bits" directly baked into the design philosophy, or even hard-coded into the mechanics. For instance, doesn't Toon explicitly call out that scenario where one character vehemently objects to a given plan, followed by a smash-cut-style transition to said character being grumpily dragged along?

It definitely shouldn't be applied to every RPG out there, though.

Tanarii
2019-02-04, 01:12 AM
Yes. But you are still communicating those actions. :smalltongue:
So what? Communication != storytelling


I mean, there totally are RPG's out there that do have a certain amount of "and try to come up with interesting story bits" directly baked into the design philosophy, or even hard-coded into the mechanics. For instance, doesn't Toon explicitly call out that scenario where one character vehemently objects to a given plan, followed by a smash-cut-style transition to said character being grumpily dragged along?

It definitely shouldn't be applied to every RPG out there, though.
Sure. I'm not attempting to exclude all elements of telling stories from RPGs.

I'm pointing out the flaws in the argument of those that try to claim roleplaying games are about cooperative storytelling.

flond
2019-02-04, 01:14 AM
So what? Communication != storytelling

The postmodern argument is that it does. Because it sure as heck isn't objective sharing of platonic facts and experiences. (You can take issue with that if you'd like. But it at least has a philosophical ground)

Tanarii
2019-02-04, 01:15 AM
The postmodern argument is that it does.
Sounds like you agree it's an attempted sleight of hand to me. :smallamused:

georgie_leech
2019-02-04, 01:16 AM
Because it sure as heck isn't objective sharing of platonic facts and experiences.

Sure it is, we just tend to leave out plenty of the facts and disagree about the facts of mutually shared experiences. :smalltongue:

flond
2019-02-04, 01:19 AM
Sounds like you agree it's an attempted sleight of hand to me. :smallamused:

Nope. Communication is way too hard for me to not think postmodernism has a point.

IMO all communication is storytelling, full stop. (And if you're wondering, why is it useful to have this, it's to define what any communication is not. )

Floret
2019-02-04, 02:55 AM
Trying to redefine "story" to encompass events as they happen is the go-to move for "RPGs are about cooperative storytelling" folks. It's only with that attempted sleight-of-hand maneuver they can try to justify their position.

I do, however, enjoy experiencing it. And often, recounting stories about the exciting parts.

Oh, I know. And I might have agreed with them at some point - my reflex in the last post was still to write "story" in some places it didn't belong. I still sympathise with the perspective, coming from a rather narrativist perspective myself.

But ultimately, I do agree with you and Max upon reflection. To call the thing happening in the moment a story is debatable at best, and redefining the term to be so broad as to be meaningless at worst. If "events that are happening" are inherently "story", then everything is. And if everyone's super... noone will be. A term that describes everything is a useless term. We have "everything" for that already.


And all communication is storytelling, because everything is "I am trying to explain something from my point of view, within my memories, with my referents. "

No. Absolutely not. Communication is no more inherently storytelling than events are. It's closer to it, sure, but "trying to explain something [...]" is nowhere near any definition of story I've ever heard, and I studied the stuff.

Yes, Wikipedia, usual caveats, but:



Story, a lie
Story, a fictional-like narrative
Story, a news event or topic
Story, or storey, a floor or level of a building
Stories, colloquial, American expression for soap operas

If you find the entirity of human communication encompassed in these... You have some low opinion on humans.

flond
2019-02-04, 03:08 AM
Oh, I know. And I might have agreed with them at some point - my reflex in the last post was still to write "story" in some places it didn't belong. I still sympathise with the perspective, coming from a rather narrativist perspective myself.

But ultimately, I do agree with you and Max upon reflection. To call the thing happening in the moment a story is debatable at best, and redefining the term to be so broad as to be meaningless at worst. If "events that are happening" are inherently "story", then everything is. And if everyone's super... noone will be. A term that describes everything is a useless term. We have "everything" for that already.



No. Absolutely not. Communication is no more inherently storytelling than events are. It's closer to it, sure, but "trying to explain something [...]" is nowhere near any definition of story I've ever heard, and I studied the stuff.

Yes, Wikipedia, usual caveats, but:



If you find the entirity of human communication encompassed in these... You have some low opinion on humans.

I'm going with "A recounting" though "A fictional narrative" also works for most things :P
For me, trying to explain something is inherently about trying to make a series of events or facts mean something. :P

Floret
2019-02-04, 03:38 AM
I'm going with "A recounting" though "A fictional narrative" also works for most things :P
For me, trying to explain something is inherently about trying to make a series of events or facts mean something. :P

Even if I accept this definition (And I don't, teaching someone how to use a toaster is not telling a story, and a cookbook does, while it explains an awful lot, not (usually) tell a story. I say usually because we own at least one, the Hare Krishna cookbook, but that one is... special.) you still leave out everything of human experience that is not "explaining something".

Also, stories aren't explaining something. Stories are telling, forging a narrative, however you wanna put it - they can serve as an explanation for the state of the world, or events that happened later, but stories aren't, inherently, explanations. I suppose your statement is so removed from actual definitions that it's not even false anymore, just... weird...

Also note that "a recounting" is not what is happening in an RPG. That's precisely the point where I rail against the argument that RPGs are inherently stories - they are not, in fact, recountings of anything, they are (fictional, imagined) events currently happening at the gaming table. They can contain stories (The recap at the beginning of the session might count, or any stories NPCs or PCs tell about the past, etc.), but are not themselves entirely such.

Pelle
2019-02-04, 04:29 AM
Also note that "a recounting" is not what is happening in an RPG. That's precisely the point where I rail against the argument that RPGs are inherently stories - they are not, in fact, recountings of anything, they are (fictional, imagined) events currently happening at the gaming table. They can contain stories (The recap at the beginning of the session might count, or any stories NPCs or PCs tell about the past, etc.), but are not themselves entirely such.

"Recounting" isn't necessary IMO, you can just as well improvise a story, both in past or present tense. Whether you see playing an rpg as telling a story depends on your perspective and motivation for playing. If you see it as collaborately improvising a story, where every player take turns deciding the actions of one character, that's telling a story. If you just see it as living in a fictional world, where things happen and you make decisions as in normal life, then you are not trying to tell a story. You can be doing the exact same thing when playing, but the intent is different.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-04, 07:56 AM
Also, trying to redefine communication as storytelling is further attempted sleight-of-hand.


Agreed -- but "all communication is storytelling" is a way to express one of the central concepts (fallacies) of the philosophy, so don't expect to get much traction against that with the believers.

Where it got ugly for RPG discussions is when that idea was pushed as a thing people are doing even if they don't intend to and insist that they're not.




"Recounting" isn't necessary IMO, you can just as well improvise a story, both in past or present tense. Whether you see playing an rpg as telling a story depends on your perspective and motivation for playing. If you see it as collaborately improvising a story, where every player take turns deciding the actions of one character, that's telling a story. If you just see it as living in a fictional world, where things happen and you make decisions as in normal life, then you are not trying to tell a story. You can be doing the exact same thing when playing, but the intent is different.


At least that leaves room for people who aren't storytelling to not be telling a story.

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-04, 08:33 AM
I mean, there totally are RPG's out there that do have a certain amount of "and try to come up with interesting story bits" directly baked into the design philosophy, or even hard-coded into the mechanics. For instance, doesn't Toon explicitly call out that scenario where one character vehemently objects to a given plan, followed by a smash-cut-style transition to said character being grumpily dragged along?

Sure. Just as well, there are roleplaying games with pages and pages devoted to tactical combat on a grid, or hardcore military trivia, or probabilities for various dice.

A game can be a roleplaying game AND a host of other things, either at once or in succession. But putting those other things into the definition of roleplaying games creates heavily idiosyncratic definitions that just make discussions worse. Discussing whether roleplaying games are storytelling is this bad, now imagine the fun of explaining that roleplaying games don't have to include combat, or dice, or be about power fantasy or escapism.

Pelle
2019-02-04, 08:54 AM
Where it got ugly for RPG discussions is when that idea was pushed as a thing people are doing even if they don't intend to and insist that they're not.

At least that leaves room for people who aren't storytelling to not be telling a story.

Yes. When people say rpgs are about collaborative storytelling, they say that's probably true for most people, although clearly some don't play that way. Then it's a matter of how absolutist you are about it and how much you insist on knowing better than others what their motivation is.

It's like saying cross-country skiing is about getting both exercise and a nice outdoors experience. That's a quite common motivation I reckon, but some people may instead only be doing it to get some time for themselves. What something is about is a personal thing. When people make general statements what something is about though, they usually mean what the common perception is.

Willie the Duck
2019-02-04, 10:18 AM
When people say rpgs are about ...

Good gracious. 'What is an RPG?' is a hard enough knot to untangle. Whether it can exist without story got us a multipage dumpster fire focusing more on a specific framework for looking at art and architecture than on RPGs at all. Now we have to decide what rpgs are 'about'? Oi Vey. At least when we're discussing 'what it is,' we're looking for boundaries and sets (necessary components, if you will). About... well that's so subjective I don't know if we'd even find enough consensus to begin.

Thinker
2019-02-04, 10:22 AM
There seems to be a lot of hang-up about whether or not RPG's can be about storytelling. This seems to get back to definitions of stories and whether or not a story is a specific series of events that someone communicates to others or is any series of events that happens. By strict definition, stories are a recounting of previous events (real or imagined) - stories are not whatever is currently happened or what has happened and a story cannot be experienced in the moment. So where does that leave storytelling in games?

You could say that storytelling games, collaborative storytelling, and storytelling in RPGs in general is an output of the game. Should any of the players wish to put pen to paper to describe the events of the game, all of the other players should be credited as co-authors as each player contributed to the narrative that emerged from the game. The RPG players are not necessarily playing with a goal to create a story, but one can be derived from their actions. The same can be said for any other activities - commuting to work, learning to play the piano, the California wildfires, etc. The difference between each series of events and what is output by an RPG is that the RPG's output is likely to be something similar to well-known stories. It can feel like you're contributing to a story, even if one is never written after the game has finished.

One major obstacle for RPG's to create a recognizable story is the random element inherent in the games. Even games without a random mechanic, you will have players who do unexpected and seemingly random things. This can disrupt narrative elements that are commonly found in stories. Another departure from normal stories is that a writer can put the events into a narrative structure no matter how bizarre the events portrayed, whereas with an RPG, you only really know how everything begins. After that, the players can go off in a thousand directions. Even with a tight railroad, the players can do unexpected things that throws off the planned outcomes. After the dust has settled and the party has saved the day (or not), someone can certainly turn what happened into an adventure tale, but they will have to apply many of those narrative elements and use some artistic license to fit everything into a comprehensible output.

Is storytelling necessary to an RPG? No. Do RPG's automatically create stories? No. Can an RPG create a story? Absolutely.

flond
2019-02-04, 10:28 AM
Even if I accept this definition (And I don't, teaching someone how to use a toaster is not telling a story, and a cookbook does, while it explains an awful lot, not (usually) tell a story. I say usually because we own at least one, the Hare Krishna cookbook, but that one is... special.) you still leave out everything of human experience that is not "explaining something".

Also, stories aren't explaining something. Stories are telling, forging a narrative, however you wanna put it - they can serve as an explanation for the state of the world, or events that happened later, but stories aren't, inherently, explanations. I suppose your statement is so removed from actual definitions that it's not even false anymore, just... weird...

Also note that "a recounting" is not what is happening in an RPG. That's precisely the point where I rail against the argument that RPGs are inherently stories - they are not, in fact, recountings of anything, they are (fictional, imagined) events currently happening at the gaming table. They can contain stories (The recap at the beginning of the session might count, or any stories NPCs or PCs tell about the past, etc.), but are not themselves entirely such.

They are recountings of the idealized plans going on in your head.

(Honestly I'm not trying to say all RPGs are the same. More just ineptly trying to stick up for a philosophy I think gets a bad rap. I'm willing to accept happily what max does is true for them. I'm just trying to explain the whole "everything is telling a story because communication inherently puts things at a remove from your thoughts which are at a remove from reality" part of an idea)

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-04, 10:39 AM
Good gracious. 'What is an RPG?' is a hard enough knot to untangle. Whether it can exist without story got us a multipage dumpster fire focusing more on a specific framework for looking at art and architecture than on RPGs at all. Now we have to decide what rpgs are 'about'? Oi Vey. At least when we're discussing 'what it is,' we're looking for boundaries and sets (necessary components, if you will). About... well that's so subjective I don't know if we'd even find enough consensus to begin.

Agreed. What RPGs are "about" is specific to each person. There is no objective answer, there is no universal truth, when it comes to that question.

Which is why I keep trying to push the definition debate to system features and activities during the actual gameplay.

Pelle
2019-02-04, 10:39 AM
Good gracious. 'What is an RPG?' is a hard enough knot to untangle. Whether it can exist without story got us a multipage dumpster fire focusing more on a specific framework for looking at art and architecture than on RPGs at all. Now we have to decide what rpgs are 'about'?

Maybe a bit off topic, yes, but I was not the first to bring up 'about'. And I'm not saying you need to decide that, I was saying it's personal.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-04, 10:53 AM
They are recountings of the idealized plans going on in your head.

(Honestly I'm not trying to say all RPGs are the same. More just ineptly trying to stick up for a philosophy I think gets a bad rap. I'm willing to accept happily what max does is true for them. I'm just trying to explain the whole "everything is telling a story because communication inherently puts things at a remove from your thoughts which are at a remove from reality" part of an idea)

Here's the thing -- "at a remove" doesn't make it "storytelling", and redefining "story" to force it to be, is diluting "story" to a meaningless word.

Willie the Duck
2019-02-04, 10:57 AM
Maybe a bit off topic, yes, but I was not the first to bring up 'about'. And I'm not saying you need to decide that, I was saying it's personal.

You're right, you were not, and I grabbed your post to quote because it was close at hand, not to specifically call your referencing it out as distinct from the other mentions of 'about.'

Floret
2019-02-04, 12:02 PM
They are recountings of the idealized plans going on in your head.

...No. There are no idealised plans in my head. There might be, from time to time, ideas of what might happen, but they are
a) usually wrong, and
b) Far and few between.

Again, I'm not arguing that mine is the only way to experience RPGs. But the way I do does kind of prove that either I am doing RPGs fundamentally wrong (doubt), or that the things I do not experience during them are not necessary for the definition of RPG.

So, again, no. RPGs are not inherently story.


So where does that leave storytelling in games?

An interesting question and one I do not handily have an answer to, which annoys me. The obvious answer would be "a misnomer", but I don't think that that's actually true. I think improvised storytelling might just be a grey area between "currently happening events" and "story". It would explain why RPGs cause this discussion about whether or not they are stories - but I would still maintain that RPGs can be a sequence of events that are happening.

Because if RPGs are inherently storytelling because improvisation, where does this leave Larp? As also inherently storytelling, because other than the acting out there might not be much difference in that aspect between the two? But if Larp is storytelling, where does that leave normal, non-played events? If Larps are different, why? I'm unwilling to accept "you are only imagining the actual events" as a meaningful distinction in regards to "these events happen currently", because... if I am, in the moment, reacting to an attack, the question if the attack was narrated by someone or swung by someone else seems meaningless in regards to the question of "is this sequence of events happening now".

I think, at that point, there might be things that are inherently storytelling, and those that can be, based on intent. Maybe, even, intent is a necessary component of storytelling - you can't "tell" a story if you don't intend to tell. What do you tell? Something that would qualify for being a story, I guess.

flond
2019-02-04, 03:30 PM
...No. There are no idealised plans in my head. There might be, from time to time, ideas of what might happen, but they are
a) usually wrong, and
b) Far and few between.

Again, I'm not arguing that mine is the only way to experience RPGs. But the way I do does kind of prove that either I am doing RPGs fundamentally wrong (doubt), or that the things I do not experience during them are not necessary for the definition of RPG.

So, again, no. RPGs are not inherently story.



An interesting question and one I do not handily have an answer to, which annoys me. The obvious answer would be "a misnomer", but I don't think that that's actually true. I think improvised storytelling might just be a grey area between "currently happening events" and "story". It would explain why RPGs cause this discussion about whether or not they are stories - but I would still maintain that RPGs can be a sequence of events that are happening.

Because if RPGs are inherently storytelling because improvisation, where does this leave Larp? As also inherently storytelling, because other than the acting out there might not be much difference in that aspect between the two? But if Larp is storytelling, where does that leave normal, non-played events? If Larps are different, why? I'm unwilling to accept "you are only imagining the actual events" as a meaningful distinction in regards to "these events happen currently", because... if I am, in the moment, reacting to an attack, the question if the attack was narrated by someone or swung by someone else seems meaningless in regards to the question of "is this sequence of events happening now".

I think, at that point, there might be things that are inherently storytelling, and those that can be, based on intent. Maybe, even, intent is a necessary component of storytelling - you can't "tell" a story if you don't intend to tell. What do you tell? Something that would qualify for being a story, I guess.

Unless you would like to argue that your mouth just does things, in which case this debate is pretty pointless, you have an idealized plan in your head.

I'm not speaking about the idea that you have a plan for how the session will go. I'm speaking about the idea you have a plan, or if you'd prefer an image of what you want to do.

As noted, my intent here is largely to stick up for postmodernism, not argue that some sort of narrative theme or the like. I'm just arguing that here is basically the idea I'm attempting to communicate.

Your brain <pictures a pit of a certain size, and your character making a running leap at it>
Your words: I jump over it.
The DM <pictures a tiny room>
The Dm: you walk into the pit make a tiny leap and die.

The assumed "story" is that you're trying to relate something you witnessed, in this case, in your head.

And the reason for the insistence is to remind people communication is always a limited and stunted tool, and while it might be improved, the act of relation removes objectivity

georgie_leech
2019-02-04, 03:33 PM
That is, it's quite difficult to directly beam our thoughts and feelings between our heads, so in the mean time, flapping our mouths at each other while expelling air is the best we can manage.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-04, 03:43 PM
Unless you would like to argue that your mouth just does things, in which case this debate is pretty pointless, you have an idealized plan in your head.

I'm not speaking about the idea that you have a plan for how the session will go. I'm speaking about the idea you have a plan, or if you'd prefer an image of what you want to do.

As noted, my intent here is largely to stick up for postmodernism, not argue that some sort of narrative theme or the like. I'm just arguing that here is basically the idea I'm attempting to communicate.

Your brain <pictures a pit of a certain size, and your character making a running leap at it>
Your words: I jump over it.
The DM <pictures a tiny room>
The Dm: you walk into the pit make a tiny leap and die.

The assumed "story" is that you're trying to relate something you witnessed, in this case, in your head.

And the reason for the insistence is to remind people communication is always a limited and stunted tool, and while it might be improved, the act of relation removes objectivity


The step you left before your sequence is that the GM depicted the setting insufficiently, and/or the player failed to ask for clarity. The GM didn't just start picturing a tiny room after the player declared their intended action, unless they're a terrible GM. If the GM didn't make the nature of the place clear, with insufficient space to get a running jump, and the player never asked "how big is the room" or "do I have room to get a running start" or something, that's a problem.

Of course, what SHOULD happen there, if it gets to that point, instead of the GM playing "gotcha" with the declared intent from the player -- is to realize that there's a disconnect and ask "you don't seem to have enough space to get a running start, are you sure want to do that?"


But none of that stands as any sort of proof of postmodernism's goofy claims about reality.

flond
2019-02-04, 05:42 PM
The step you left before your sequence is that the GM depicted the setting insufficiently, and/or the player failed to ask for clarity. The GM didn't just start picturing a tiny room after the player declared their intended action, unless they're a terrible GM. If the GM didn't make the nature of the place clear, with insufficient space to get a running jump, and the player never asked "how big is the room" or "do I have room to get a running start" or something, that's a problem.

Of course, what SHOULD happen there, if it gets to that point, instead of the GM playing "gotcha" with the declared intent from the player -- is to realize that there's a disconnect and ask "you don't seem to have enough space to get a running start, are you sure want to do that?"


But none of that stands as any sort of proof of postmodernism's goofy claims about reality.

The issue remains that it will always be an approximation. And that any attempt at interpretation will always be limited, subjective and personal.

Postmodernism at least usually does not argue there's no objective reality, just that you'll never ever be able to actually experience it, as opposed to at minimum guessing at it through shoddy ears, eyes with massive blind spots and a limited brain. And that any attempt to speak about it becomes even more subjective.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-04, 05:53 PM
The issue remains that it will always be an approximation. And that any attempt at interpretation will always be limited, subjective and personal.

Postmodernism at least usually does not argue there's no objective reality, just that you'll never ever be able to actually experience it, as opposed to at minimum guessing at it through shoddy ears, eyes with massive blind spots and a limited brain. And that any attempt to speak about it becomes even more subjective.

Samuel Johnson had such notions pegged when he said "I refute it thus". You can call "appeal to the stone" a fallacy, but I think not. The chair I'm sitting in is real, or I'd be on the floor, simple as that. The roof is real, or I'd be wet, as it is raining in this area. We don't know if we literally perceive "blue" the same, but if the same wavelenth of light is shown to us, we tend to report the same color by name. Creatures with senses that outright lie to them, usually end up not finding food, or becoming food, and don't survive. And so on.

Postmodernism is half a step or less from solipsism, but this is why it must wrap itself in endless voluminous layers of obscurantist language, to avoid being discovered.

The GM can convey enough of the room's nature to the players to continue with a functional game, and even give an idea of the "atmosphere". The EXACT texture of the stones in the wall doesn't matter, as long as it can be conveyed how rough or smooth they are to a degree that the players can make decisions for their PCs.

I recently commissioned a piece of character art as part of a Kickstarter pledge, and I sent a half-page description and some references images to the artist -- he got the character almost right on the first try. She was as I had pictured here, as seen through the artist's personal style. We were not fumbling in the dark, vainly clutching at the impossible as postmodernism would have us believe is our fate -- through words, we shared an idea.

flond
2019-02-04, 05:57 PM
Samuel Johnson had such notions pegged when he said "I refute it thus". You can call "appeal to the stone" a fallacy, but I think not. The chair I'm sitting in is real, or I'd be on the floor, simple as that. The roof is real, or I'd be wet, as it is raining in this area. We don't know if we literally perceive "blue" the same, but if the same wavelenth of light is shown to us, we tend to report the same color by name. Creatures with senses that outright lie to them, usually end up not finding food, or becoming food, and don't survive. And so on.

Postmodernism is half a step from solipsism, but this is why it must wrap itself in endless voluminous layers of obscurantist language, to avoid being discovered.

Cool. So you'd agree that a chair is a single solid object right? All this talk of atoms is nonsense, easily disproved by the fact you can sit on it?

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-04, 06:07 PM
Cool. So you'd agree that a chair is a single solid object right? All this talk of atoms is nonsense, easily disproved by the fact you can sit on it?

Do not attempt to put words in my mouth. That post is exactly the sort of pseudo-clever attempted "gotcha", the sort of twee sophistry, that degrades my opinion of all philosophy, let alone postmodernism in particular.

That the chair and I are made of molecules and atoms and smaller, that we interact at that scale through electromagic forces between the atoms of our respective matter, and this creates our mutual solidity, does not change the fact that the chair and I cannot pass through each other.

The structure of matter doesn't change anything, or demonstrate anything. The macro scale is no less real than the micro scale.

Nothing about being able to sit in the chair disproves "atoms" if you understand how atoms actually interact and behave.

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-04, 06:21 PM
If you think all communications is storytelling, and communication is hard for you, you'd be better off talking to cryptographers, telecommunications officers and information theorists, than post-modernists or writers. :smalltongue:

flond
2019-02-04, 06:37 PM
Do not attempt to put words in my mouth. That post is exactly the sort of pseudo-clever attempted "gotcha", the sort of twee sophistry, that degrades my opinion of all philosophy, let alone postmodernism in particular.

That the chair and I are made of molecules and atoms and smaller, that we interact at that scale through electromagic forces between the atoms of our respective matter, and this creates our mutual solidity, does not change the fact that the chair and I cannot pass through each other.

The structure of matter doesn't change anything, or demonstrate anything. The macro scale is no less real than the micro scale.

Nothing about being able to sit in the chair disproves "atoms" if you understand how atoms actually interact and behave.

Except that the very idea of macro and micro scale helps prove my point. With only access to your senses, not tools, you could not tell me anything about the "micro" scale. Your senses have only a limited ability to perceive. Tools, likewise, while useful, have a limited ability to perceive.

Are all of these useful? Yes

Will we ever be certain of anything, as opposed to merely assuming based on experience? No.

Is it useful to remember that we, and everyone we talk to are only making flawed assumptions and viewing the world through a mirror dimly? I'd say yes.

Thinker
2019-02-04, 06:48 PM
Except that the very idea of macro and micro scale helps prove my point. With only access to your senses, not tools, you could not tell me anything about the "micro" scale. Your senses have only a limited ability to perceive. Tools, likewise, while useful, have a limited ability to perceive.
That seems disingenuous. That there is still an unknown part of the universe does not invalidate the parts that humanity has discovered. You can build and sit in a chair without needing to know or perceive molecules and atoms. They are irrelevant to a discussion of a chair.




Will we ever be certain of anything, as opposed to merely assuming based on experience? No.

Is it useful to remember that we, and everyone we talk to are only making flawed assumptions and viewing the world through a mirror dimly? I'd say yes.

This sounds like an attempt to be super-deep while sounding sophomoric.

flond
2019-02-04, 06:51 PM
That seems disingenuous. That there is still an unknown part of the universe does not invalidate the parts that humanity has discovered. You can build and sit in a chair without needing to know or perceive molecules and atoms. They are irrelevant to a discussion of a chair.



This sounds like an attempt to be super-deep while sounding sophomoric.

I mean, welcome to philosophy. It's the figuring out of things through corner cases?

However, to take a better crack at it, I'd say the big thing here is about not knowing what you don't know. Also, remember, this doesn't have to be humanity scale. A chair designer is very well served remembering their body, and their use case for chairs is not the same as everyone's body or use case for chairs.

georgie_leech
2019-02-04, 07:46 PM
However, to take a better crack at it, I'd say the big thing here is about not knowing what you don't know. Also, remember, this doesn't have to be humanity scale. A chair designer is very well served remembering their body, and their use case for chairs is not the same as everyone's body or use case for chairs.

I have the strangest urge to glare at software developers and middle management both, now. :smalltongue:

JoeJ
2019-02-05, 01:23 AM
I have never killed an orc. I've never visited any planet besides Earth. I've never run at 24 times the speed of sound. These are things done by fictional characters I created, not by me. When I play an RPG, I and the other players take turns narrating events in a fictional world. One person says that their character swings their sword, or casts a spell, or whatever else they want to do. Maybe they'll use a funny voice and recite the exact words their character says, or maybe they'll use more general terms. Then somebody else - usually a designated GM in the games that I've played - describes what happens next; the orc takes so many points of damage and counterattacks with its axe, or the Duke of Regina agrees to your character's request.

Nobody is living out the events in the games that I play, or in any RPG I've ever heard of. In fact, I think it's pretty much a defining trait of roleplaying that the events being roleplayed are not actually occurring. Rather, the players are simply making those events up (within the parameters of the agreed upon rules) and describing them to one another. How is that not telling a story?

Floret
2019-02-05, 02:05 AM
Will we ever be certain of anything, as opposed to merely assuming based on experience? No.

Is it useful to remember that we, and everyone we talk to are only making flawed assumptions and viewing the world through a mirror dimly? I'd say yes.

And I'd say, if you get to the point where the "(potentially) flawed assumption" is whether or not we percieve atoms, or whether we are actually living in the matrix, since we can't, by philosophy, know anything exists for real (true, but trivial)...

Then it is absolutely and utterly useless for real life. Assuming science can know things is absolutely and infinitely more useful than the navelgazing existential philosophy soon devolves to.


I have never killed an orc. I've never visited any planet besides Earth. I've never run at 24 times the speed of sound. These are things done by fictional characters I created, not by me. When I play an RPG, I and the other players take turns narrating events in a fictional world. One person says that their character swings their sword, or casts a spell, or whatever else they want to do. [...]

Nobody is living out the events in the games that I play, or in any RPG I've ever heard of. In fact, I think it's pretty much a defining trait of roleplaying that the events being roleplayed are not actually occurring. Rather, the players are simply making those events up (within the parameters of the agreed upon rules) and describing them to one another. How is that not telling a story?

See, where you say narrating, I'd say defining, or acting out. The fact a lot (in fact, most of my non-GM experience) has been on Larps shapes my experiences fundamentally, and beyond immersion, a difference in ability to go beyond your own physical limitations and utterly gamist concepts, all of which are somewhat irrelevant to the discussion of telling a story, it feels pretty darn similar.

So I would, in fact, argue that no, there absolutely is an RPG context where all of these events are, to a certain degree, real events. It doesn't change how I experience playing my character in regards to the question if I am telling a story, and I do, in fact, feel very much like I'm not.

Do you feel like playing a character in a computer game is telling a story? Because there, you are also directing a fictional character through fictional events, as you are in RPGs. And I'd argue that you're either experiencing a story laid out by the developers, or making events, but not actually telling anything.

I'd also argue that "making the events up and describing them to one another" is a framing that, while I can see where you could describe RPGs this way, I personally also wouldn't. It separates things that are pretty inherently conncected to me, the idea, and the description. I react to what situation is laid out in some immediacy, by taking the action that, being immersed in my character, is the immediate one, most of the time.

I am describing the actions of a fictional person during fictional events, all of which are happening (aka being made up) now. No part of me is taking any consideration for narrative, or telling anyone anything, I am concerned with my person reacting to what's happening to them. Describing my approach as storytelling requires you to either tell me I'm wrong in how I approach RPGs and do things I don't know I'm doing, or to twist the definition of either story, telling, or both.

The only time I care about narrative things during RPGs is when I GM, and have planned events for the future that I am seeding/foreshadowing; or if a character I'm playing is, in fact, telling a story in game, which they do tend to do a surprising lot.

Cazero
2019-02-05, 02:27 AM
I mean, welcome to philosophy. It's the figuring out of things through corner cases?
No, philosophy is the proper methodology for rational discourse. Wich is supposedly the most effective (or only) method we have to figure things through corner cases, but since the problem of hard solipsism is obviously unsolvable, it's clearly not a tool we can simply rely on without feeding it actual facts.

And even then, it wouldn't mean you can run around willy-nilly poisoning the well on any subject under the umbrella of "philosophy". Your stupid trick of constantly redefining terms to fit your ideas instead of using an actual language (one that people understand, where we agree on the meaning of words) is the reason philosophers have no "street cred" anymore.

JoeJ
2019-02-05, 02:38 AM
See, where you say narrating, I'd say defining, or acting out. The fact a lot (in fact, most of my non-GM experience) has been on Larps shapes my experiences fundamentally, and beyond immersion, a difference in ability to go beyond your own physical limitations and utterly gamist concepts, all of which are somewhat irrelevant to the discussion of telling a story, it feels pretty darn similar.

So I would, in fact, argue that no, there absolutely is an RPG context where all of these events are, to a certain degree, real events. It doesn't change how I experience playing my character in regards to the question if I am telling a story, and I do, in fact, feel very much like I'm not.

Do you feel like playing a character in a computer game is telling a story? Because there, you are also directing a fictional character through fictional events, as you are in RPGs. And I'd argue that you're either experiencing a story laid out by the developers, or making events, but not actually telling anything.

I'd also argue that "making the events up and describing them to one another" is a framing that, while I can see where you could describe RPGs this way, I personally also wouldn't. It separates things that are pretty inherently conncected to me, the idea, and the description. I react to what situation is laid out in some immediacy, by taking the action that, being immersed in my character, is the immediate one, most of the time.

I am describing the actions of a fictional person during fictional events, all of which are happening (aka being made up) now. No part of me is taking any consideration for narrative, or telling anyone anything, I am concerned with my person reacting to what's happening to them. Describing my approach as storytelling requires you to either tell me I'm wrong in how I approach RPGs and do things I don't know I'm doing, or to twist the definition of either story, telling, or both.

The only time I care about narrative things during RPGs is when I GM, and have planned events for the future that I am seeding/foreshadowing; or if a character I'm playing is, in fact, telling a story in game, which they do tend to do a surprising lot.

"story: The narration of an event or series of events, either true or fictitious." (American Heritage Dictionary)

You wrote, "I am describing the actions of a fictional person during fictional events, all of which are happening (aka being made up) now."

Storytelling might not be the part of the game that primarily interests you, or that you think most about, but you're clearly telling a story.

Floret
2019-02-05, 03:19 AM
See, where you say narrating, I'd say defining, or acting out.


"story: The narration of an event or series of events, either true or fictitious." (American Heritage Dictionary)

Defining =/= Narrating. I already told you, that in my approach to games, I am not. Narrating.

Description =/= Narration. If I describe to someone how they can find the next bus stop, that is not a narration. If I describe the workings of a toaster, that is not a narration.

Beyond that, ignoring all my arguments for distinction in favour of an appeal to authority in the form of a dictionary is just poor form. Adress my argument, not my semantics.

JoeJ
2019-02-05, 03:40 AM
Defining =/= Narrating. I already told you, that in my approach to games, I am not. Narrating.

Tomato, tomahto.


Description =/= Narration. If I describe to someone how they can find the next bus stop, that is not a narration. If I describe the workings of a toaster, that is not a narration.

No, but if you describe what you are doing while you fix the broken toaster, that is a narration.


Beyond that, ignoring all my arguments for distinction in favour of an appeal to authority in the form of a dictionary is just poor form. Adress my argument, not my semantics.

The argument is purely semantics. You don't like a particular phrase, "telling stories," being applied to what you say you do. Yet the phrase is apt. That doesn't mean that roleplaying is only telling stories, or that story telling is the aspect that is the most important to you. But what you claim you're doing when you roleplay can fairly be described as telling a story.

supercooldragn
2019-02-05, 05:44 AM
Then it is absolutely and utterly useless for real life. Assuming science can know things is absolutely and infinitely more useful than the navelgazing existential philosophy soon devolves to.


The issue with this is that almost all (if not all) the things that "science" has claimed to know in the past have been incorrect. Things like newtonian mechanics and the inverse square law to define gravity have been proven to be false. The fact that our current sciences of large scale and small scale are incompatible strongly indicates that at least one of them are also absolutely not true.

This doesn't mean that science isn't useful. Newtonian mechanics are a close enough approximation to work for almost any practical purpose. One is just misleading themselves if they think that it is "the way things Really Are" or some such

Science works just fine without making truth claims.

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-05, 06:29 AM
@Floret: there's a term for events that are happening mentally, even if not physically. It's virtual.

The term "fiction layer" put forth by some people in this thread is basically another word for "virtual reality". Any roleplaying game, whether live-action, tabletop or computerized, consists of a combination of actual and virtual events.

As far as this concerns JoeJ's argument, narration can, obviously, be used to set up virtual events. But so can computer programming. If we were to accept all of the semantic hoops and equivocation going on this thread, I should be able to trivially get away by stating that "computer programming" = "storytelling". That's right, if I'm coding a physics engine, I am telling stories. :smalltongue:

Unavenger
2019-02-05, 07:39 AM
You know, I dislike arguments like this: everyone is in agreement over what's actually happening when you play an RPG, they're just having a massive argument about what to call it without actually disputing the facts of the matter.

(Apart from the two-or-so posters who seem to think that the Wachowski sisters were actually trying to make a deep philosophical ideology, rather than just a cool sci-fi film. Geez guys, reality is real: handle it!)

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-05, 09:10 AM
"story: The narration of an event or series of events, either true or fictitious." (American Heritage Dictionary)

You wrote, "I am describing the actions of a fictional person during fictional events, all of which are happening (aka being made up) now."

Storytelling might not be the part of the game that primarily interests you, or that you think most about, but you're clearly telling a story.

That doesn't make playing an RPG storytelling. Maybe it is for you, and that's fine. But for others... we are not telling a story. We are not crafting a story. There is no storytelling involved.

You don't get to define what we're doing when we game. "Storytelling" is a deliberate act, and it's more than just describing something or recounting events.

End of story.




You know, I dislike arguments like this: everyone is in agreement over what's actually happening when you play an RPG, they're just having a massive argument about what to call it without actually disputing the facts of the matter.


Except two things.

One, they're trying to tell us what we're doing when we play, not just what to call it. When we say "we're not storytelling, telling a story is not what we do when we play an RPG", their response is always "yes you are". That goes well beyond a quibble over terminology.

Two, their attempt to define is an attempt to shape, control, and exclude. First, get general agreement that RPGs are "storytelling". Then, relentlessly push rules and gameplay to reflect this. This goes all the way back to David Berkman's diceless-drama-games-are-superior-true-roleplaying push on rec.games.frp.advocacy in the mid-90s.

Willie the Duck
2019-02-05, 09:21 AM
You know, I dislike arguments like this: everyone is in agreement over what's actually happening when you play an RPG, they're just having a massive argument about what to call it without actually disputing the facts of the matter.

I'm certainly not liking this diversion. Particularly because this side project of continuously circling over whether or not dictating the action of a non-real individual in a simulated environment is inherently storytelling has supplanted and drowned out any discussion about what an RPG actually is (such as necessary components, common components, actions that rule our qualifying as an RPG, etc.). We know (at least I think we do) that 'dictating the action of a non-real individual in a simulated environment' is part of an RPG, so splitting the hairs on what to call it doesn't really add or subtract from the original issue.

That said, thread topic drift is a normative action that one should be prepared to expect in most cases. I certainly don't want to pretend at dictating to others what is acceptable discussion. Mostly it just makes me think people here can't accept others disagreeing with them on exceedingly esoteric philosophical positions (the exact things you should have to have learned to comfortably disagree upon to function as a rudimentary adult, as far as I can discern).


(Apart from the two-or-so posters who seem to think that the Wachowski sisters were actually trying to make a deep philosophical ideology, rather than just a cool sci-fi film. Geez guys, reality is real: handle it!)

Well, the Wachowskis were definitely trying to allude to that philosophical discussion in their movie. If that wasn't a big important idea, about which the thinking upon is deemed interesting to many people, the movie would never have been a hit (and could have just been called "Keanu Reeves knows kung fu, also: 90s fashion"). Movies like The Matrix and Inception are definitely mining this vein to accomplish their primary goal of putting butts in seats. And I'm sorry, telling other forumers 'X is Y: handle it!' is just as petty and sophomoric as everything we've been complaining about. That's walking out of a conversation calling it childish as a 'real brave while walking away'-style dig.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-05, 10:05 AM
I'm certainly not liking this diversion. Particularly because this side project of continuously circling over whether or not dictating the action of a non-real individual in a simulated environment is inherently storytelling has supplanted and drowned out any discussion about what an RPG actually is (such as necessary components, common components, actions that rule our qualifying as an RPG, etc.). We know (at least I think we do) that 'dictating the action of a non-real individual in a simulated environment' is part of an RPG, so splitting the hairs on what to call it doesn't really add or subtract from the original issue.

That said, thread topic drift is a normative action that one should be prepared to expect in most cases. I certainly don't want to pretend at dictating to others what is acceptable discussion. Mostly it just makes me think people here can't accept others disagreeing with them on exceedingly esoteric philosophical positions (the exact things you should have to have learned to comfortably disagree upon to function as a rudimentary adult, as far as I can discern).


If it were just that --just quibbling over what to call a thing we all agree we're doing -- I wouldn't push back so hard.

But it isn't. It's an attempt to ascribe motivation to others, and seize conceptual ownership of the thing. "You're storytelling whether you want to or not, you're storytelling whether you realize it or not" is not a quibble over definitions, it is an attempt at debate via definition.

And note that we were having a pretty good discussion about what "what is an RPG?", until we reached the inevitable point where the "but it's story even if you don't want it to be!" and then "everything is story even a recipe book!" posts started showing up.

Willie the Duck
2019-02-05, 11:39 AM
If it were just that --just quibbling over what to call a thing we all agree we're doing -- I wouldn't push back so hard.

But it isn't. It's an attempt to ascribe motivation to others, and seize conceptual ownership of the thing. "You're storytelling whether you want to or not, you're storytelling whether you realize it or not" is not a quibble over definitions, it is an attempt at debate via definition.

On some level, all philosophies (be they social, political, or in this case analysis models) is vaguely saying, 'this is the way the world works, and I am defining what you do as X, whether you agree or not, whether you like it or not.' That's the way of life. The thing is, they can't actually seize anything (or own anything). All anyone can do on a thread like this is present a case or argument in an attempt to convince others to agree with their point of view. Given that we've had approximately two people who've publically taken the side of the postmodernist stance suggests that they did at least a somewhat poor job of actually presenting their case.

Regardless, while you might see yourself as defending some important conceptual battleground, I just see two sides fronted by people who can't stand that the other might walk away at the end thinking that they are the ones who 'won the thread.' Even though winning the thread isn't actually something that someone can do.


And note that we were having a pretty good discussion about what "what is an RPG?", until we reached the inevitable point where the "but it's story even if you don't want it to be!" and then "everything is story even a recipe book!" posts started showing up.

Right, the shift from this discussion is what Unavenger and I were bemoaning. Personally, I'd like to go back to Rhyden's tangent about whether a court trial is an RPG, but I think that's water under the bridge at this point.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-05, 12:00 PM
Personally, I'd like to go back to Rhyden's tangent about whether a court trial is an RPG, but I think that's water under the bridge at this point.


I think that was more specifically about the "mock trial" category in forensic debate, or something like it.

My response at the time was that while the participants might be taking on the "role" of a litigator arguing a case, and sometimes not arguing a position that they personally agree with... not all "role playing" is an RPG -- that the "mock trial" lacked the mechanical and "secondary world" elements of an RPG.

Friv
2019-02-05, 12:09 PM
I think that was more specifically about the "mock trial" category in forensic debate, or something like it.

My response at the time was that while the participants might be taking on the "role" of a litigator arguing a case, and sometimes not arguing a position that they personally agree with... not all "role playing" is an RPG -- that the "mock trial" lacked the mechanical and "secondary world" elements of an RPG.

What if it's a mock trial in ghost court (https://bullypulpitgames.com/games/ghost-court/)?

(In all seriousness, I am not entirely sure whether Ghost Court is an RPG or a party game.)

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-05, 12:13 PM
What if it's a mock trial in ghost court (https://bullypulpitgames.com/games/ghost-court/)?

(In all seriousness, I am not entirely sure whether Ghost Court is an RPG or a party game.)


IMO, it sits a bit outside the overlapping area of the Venn diagram, but just, because it doesn't have an ongoing "secondary world" and the characters are a bit too much like assigned playing pieces rather than actual "people-who-could-be-real".

JoeJ
2019-02-05, 01:14 PM
That doesn't make playing an RPG storytelling. Maybe it is for you, and that's fine. But for others... we are not telling a story. We are not crafting a story. There is no storytelling involved.

That is objectively false. Telling a story is not the only thing you're doing, and for you it's clearly not the most important thing. But it is a thing that you're doing.


You don't get to define what we're doing when we game. "Storytelling" is a deliberate act, and it's more than just describing something or recounting events.

Describing an event or a sequence of events is the very definition of the word "story". I'm not defining what you're doing, I'm telling you what the thing that you say you're doing is called.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-05, 01:18 PM
That is objectively false. Telling a story is not the only thing you're doing, and for you it's clearly not the most important thing. But it is a thing that you're doing.


Wrong.

Simple as that.

Stop derailing the thread with these deeply insulting assertions that you know other people better than they know themselves.




Describing an event or a sequence of events is the very definition of the word "story". I'm not defining what you're doing, I'm telling you what the thing that you say you're doing is called.

There's far more to the sort of "storytelling" that's being discussed relating to the RPG debate than the watered-down, deliberately-inclusive-through-vagueness definition you're citing.

This is a standard trick going back to the Forge and before into the early days of RPG theory on Usenet... cite and use the broadest possible meaning of a word to include something, and then proceed under the narrow specific meaning that advances the actual agenda. So find a meaning of "story" that can be used to lay claim to all RPG gaming, and then having "established" that RPGs are "storytelling", proceed to assert that RPGs should be built and played a certain way because they're "storytelling" and "about story" under a far more narrow definition.

JoeJ
2019-02-05, 01:26 PM
Wrong.

Simple as that.

Stop derailing the thread with these deeply insulting assertions that you know other people better than they know themselves.

I have made no such assertion. I've never claimed to know you at all.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-05, 01:27 PM
I have made no such assertion. I've never claimed to know you at all.

Then stop pretending to know why I game, how I game, or what I do when I game.

There is no storytelling involved. No story is being told, no story is being crafted, no story is being related. Full stop.

JoeJ
2019-02-05, 01:41 PM
Then stop pretending to know why I game, how I game, or what I do when I game.

You must be confusing me with somebody else, because I haven't done that.


There is no storytelling involved. No story is being told, no story is being crafted, no story is being related. Full stop.

You're saying that when you roleplay, nobody describes events occurring to fictional characters? Nobody says anything lik, "I shoot my bow at the orc?" Because doing that is telling a story. Full stop.

So if you don't tell stories, what exactly do you do when you roleplay? If some uninvolved bystander were present, what would they observe?

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-05, 02:00 PM
You must be confusing me with somebody else, because I haven't done that.


Every single time you make the false and insulting assertion that everyone engaged in playing an RPG is "storytelling", even if that's not their motivation, not their intent, and not what they're doing.




You're saying that when you roleplay, nobody describes events occurring to fictional characters? Nobody says anything lik, "I shoot my bow at the orc?" Because doing that is telling a story. Full stop.

So if you don't tell stories, what exactly do you do when you roleplay? If some uninvolved bystander were present, what would they observe?


Just describing something or describing an event is not "telling a story", any more than a recipe book or a coffee-table geography book or a list of plays from an American football game is "a story". There is more to a story than just "A happened, then B happened, then C happened, then..."

At best your argument is the equivalent of insisting that computers can spread disease to people because computers "get viruses" -- when a word has more than one definition, it's not a functional argument to use one definition to "prove" a point that revolves entirely around a distinctly different or far more specific definition.

And in the context of the RPG debate, this distinction is even more critical than normal, both because it cuts to the very core of what engages a player with RPGS, and because of the past attempts to define an entire swath of systems, campaigns, and players completely out of the hobby by crusading advocates of one or another particular view of "what gaming is".


For a lot of gamers, sitting down at the gaming table (literal or metaphorical) does not involve doing any of the things involved in actually crafting a story, and the "in game" events are happening "as we speak", not being retold after the fact (or after the fact-that-could-have-been). The things that separate actual story from "a sequence of events" just aren't there.

I'm also a would-be author, and I write a lot of stories, and what I do when write stories, what's going on is fundamentally not what's going on when I game.

JoeJ
2019-02-05, 02:51 PM
Every single time you make the false and insulting assertion that everyone engaged in playing an RPG is "storytelling", even if that's not their motivation, not their intent, and not what they're doing.

Beg to differ. The statement is neither insulting nor false. It is not a statement about anybody's motives or intent, merely the English word for their actions. I am most decidedly not saying anything about the importance of telling stories, as against all the other things that are going on.


Just describing something or describing an event is not "telling a story"

It is in English. In general usage, I think most people would not call a list that is entirely in the imperative mode a "story," but a description of events in the indicative mode certainly is. There can be more than that to a story, but there does not have to be.


At best your argument is the equivalent of insisting that computers can spread disease to people because computers "get viruses" -- when a word has more than one definition, it's not a functional argument to use one definition to "prove" a point that revolves entirely around a distinctly different or far more specific definition.

No, my argument would by like stating that a particular type of undesirable computer code is called a "virus." That's it.

I don't know what point you think I'm trying to "prove" that requires a different definition. It's quite appropriate to call somebody out for switching definitions in the middle of an argument, but that's not what I've done.


And in the context of the RPG debate, this distinction is even more critical than normal, both because it cuts to the very core of what engages a player with RPGS, and because of the past attempts to define an entire swath of systems, campaigns, and players completely out of the hobby by crusading advocates of one or another particular view of "what gaming is".

Ah, now I see why you're so vehement; because others have tried to use "story" as a bludgeon to attack people who enjoy other aspects of roleplaying. One true waysim is obnoxious in any form. But abusus non tollit usum. The fact that people have wrongly turned a descriptive statement into a normative one in the past does not make the description inaccurate.

patchyman
2019-02-05, 02:54 PM
I mean, welcome to philosophy. It's the figuring out of things through corner cases.

I thought that philosophy was the application of corner cases to everything, regardless of whether they applied or not?

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-05, 02:54 PM
New theory: Max is RPGPundit. (https://youtu.be/owtZ2TThmWI)

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-05, 03:06 PM
New theory: Max is RPGPundit. (https://youtu.be/owtZ2TThmWI)

Oh hardly. Don't fall into the false dichotomy that opposition to the story-mafia means that OSR is someone's gig. D&D-likes and whatnot don't trip my trigger.

Rhedyn
2019-02-05, 03:08 PM
New theory: Max is RPGPundit. (https://youtu.be/owtZ2TThmWI) Press [X] to doubt.

Max isn't ranting about Critical Roll and Matt Mercer.

Willie the Duck
2019-02-05, 03:10 PM
New theory: Max is RPGPundit. (https://youtu.be/owtZ2TThmWI)


Oh hardly. Don't fall into the false dichotomy that opposition to the story-mafia means that OSR is someone's gig. D&D-likes and whatnot don't trip my trigger.

Good gods! Someone has heard of him outside his site*! More evidence that he might actually be somebody in the gaming critique community. Wow.
*and an occasional person from the site he has his target hairs upon.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-05, 03:13 PM
Good gods! Someone has heard of him outside his site*! More evidence that he might actually be somebody in the gaming critique community. Wow.
*and an occasional person from the site he has his target hairs upon.


I'm well aware of who he is, he's an OSR soldier, with a very long history of fighting REALLY dirty against RE and crew, to the point of making himself look bad.




Press [X] to doubt.

Max isn't ranting about Critical Roll and Matt Mercer.


I had to look up who that is.

Frozen_Feet
2019-02-05, 03:26 PM
Max isn't ranting about Critical Roll and Matt Mercer.

Yet.

Give him time. :smallamused:

Unavenger
2019-02-05, 03:40 PM
Beg to differ. The statement is neither insulting nor false. It is not a statement about anybody's motives or intent, merely the English word for their actions. I am most decidedly not saying anything about the importance of telling stories, as against all the other things that are going on.



It is in English. In general usage, I think most people would not call a list that is entirely in the imperative mode a "story," but a description of events in the indicative mode certainly is. There can be more than that to a story, but there does not have to be.



No, my argument would by like stating that a particular type of undesirable computer code is called a "virus." That's it.

See, as I hinted at before: everyone agrees about what you're actually doing when you play an RPG. It's just that some people are arguing that dictating your character's actions is "Storytelling" and some people are saying that it isn't, and honestly, everyone understands that yes, people are telling things that could amount to a story, and no they aren't necessarily setting out to recount a story, but disagreeing on semantic grounds.

Arbane
2019-02-05, 03:42 PM
Good gods! Someone has heard of him outside his site*! More evidence that he might actually be somebody in the gaming critique community. Wow.
*and an occasional person from the site he has his target hairs upon.

I've read Grognards.txt, so yeah. He's somebody to mock, at least.

Currently Smoking: Burleigh's Rum-Soaked Special and reclaimed cigar butts.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-05, 04:05 PM
See, as I hinted at before: everyone agrees about what you're actually doing when you play an RPG. It's just that some people are arguing that dictating your character's actions is "Storytelling" and some people are saying that it isn't, and honestly, everyone understands that yes, people are telling things that could amount to a story, and no they aren't necessarily setting out to recount a story, but disagreeing on semantic grounds.

Except that it's not semantic, it makes a real difference.

1) The aforementioned ugly history of weaponized definitions in the "RPG theory debate".
2a) The conflation of definitions leads to worse communication, not better communication.
2b) Any definition of "story" that defacto seizes claim to what every last gamer is doing at the "gaming table" is so broad as to be useless -- especially in the context of trying to understand RPGs and gaming. Yes, you can dilute the definition that far, but then it doesn't distinguish between intents, actions, or methods.
3) "Story" is more than just the watered-down deliberately-vague definition given in dictionaries.
4) As a writer and would-be author, what I do when I'm writing a story, and what I do when I'm gaming, are two very distinct and different things.