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Thread: RPG metric, simplified version
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2022-01-01, 02:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
By that metric, any game where you are playing the role of a character has you making those decisions 100% in character.
So by this metric 4e, 5e, 3.x, AD&D, that starship repair game, all fully immersive.
The disconnect seems to be your misunderstanding of what an in character decision is.
Most RPG’s assume a core competency for the PCs. If you’ve been travelling in space or delving dungeons, there’s an awareness the character has that allows you to make long and middle term decisions (assess the ship, hire a mechanic, install new parts, etc) in seconds rather than minutes, hours or days:but make no mistake, the decision is still in character.
100% immersion is absolutely possible.
This is a lot of extra effort to arrive at the same conclusion.
The 5 decisions to repair the ship are entirely in character: during the 10d6 days that you’re on a space station, star base, dry dock, whatever, your character is receiving a ridiculous amount of feedback that to fully enact every second of it would take…. Well 10d6 days.
And unless you expect your RPGs to play out real time, then that information will be abstracted.
In this case, the players know that their ship is under equipped to voyage into space. And so do the PCs, because between talking to mechanics, other spacers at bars, vendors selling equipment, reading technical journals, watching the holonet, running training simulations, and all the other stuff professional space adventurers do in the hours between micro ten second decision moments that combat or danger are played at, they’ve acquired the information that allows you the Player decide the ship needs to level up.
So 20 actions taken, 20 actions taken in character.
100% immersion accomplished.
If you disagree, then your metric is the issue, your conclusions drawn from the metric (and therefore your understanding of the metric) are wrong or you’re simply not trying to play immersively and being dishonest.
Unless you’re doing a free form improvisation in real time, there is a rule set attached to the roleplay that frames and abstracts time and action. Without that, there is no game.
But as long as the interface for decision making is the role you are assuming, then all decisions are the decisions of the character, and therefore roleplaying.
And if you’re roleplaying while playing a game, that’s a roleplaying game.
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2022-01-01, 02:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
I do think that the amount of time spent on non-fiction stuff vs. fiction stuff is important. I'm actually not as convinced that in-character matters quite as much, though I'm willing to consider it.
I also do think that, absolutely, some non-in-character stuff breaks some people harder than others. There's a subjective nature to this that I don't think can really be gotten around."Gosh 2D8HP, you are so very correct (and also good looking)"
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2022-01-01, 02:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
The two most frequent non-roleplaying time sinks in tabletop games tend to be character creation and system busywork. The former doesn't really need explaining, the latter means rolling dice, calculating values, checking tables etc.. System busywork isn't inherently opposed to roleplaying, in fact it usually exists to facilitate it, the reason why it often ends up detracting from roleplaying is because humans have limited brain power. Your work memory can only keep handful of things in mind at once, so if all of that is taken up by abstract variables for system math, little is left over for thinking what your character's motives are or how those variables are expressing them.
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2022-01-02, 06:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
Pretty much, yeah. So, cool.
Agreed. Let's pretend that was on purpose, that being able to say that was a test of "did you understand what i was saying", and not just me… being me.
Eh, not exactly. Imagine if you were trying to measure temperature, but only had subjective humans to work with. Imagine trying to explain the concept, without any objective universe to access.
Same problem.
The most objective answer you can get to the expected gameplay loop is from the modules that the publisher created.
At each decision point, evaluating what a character *could* do, vs what the system expects / requires that you do, takes skills (of the type that GM planning routinely fails at). So, yes, one's skill with using the metric is limited to one's GMing skill (much like one's skill with a(n oldschool) thermometer is limited to one's visual acuity).
Here, you've gone off the reservation. Maybe focus on how the hard stop of the choose your own adventure book is the epitome of failing the test, and work from there? Or how the ship that was perfectly safe to take out in space two days ago is now death trap, because you got more skilled?
Maybe if you start with the most obvious versions of what I'm talking about, you'll be able to say things that I can hear. Because I've no idea how any of that is relevant to my metric.
This could also qualify as a "core logic" issue.
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2022-01-02, 10:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
Let's suppose I give you a functional definition of soccer. For purpose of this discussion, I'm going to copy-paste one from a dictionary: "A game played on a rectangular field with net goals at either end in which two teams of 11 players each try to drive a ball into the other's goal by kicking, heading, or using any part of the body except the arms and hands. The goalie is the only player who may touch or move the ball with the arms or hands."
You then point out to a game of soccer where some players are unable or unwilling to kick the ball, or repeatedly try to kick the ball to their own goal, or do something else that's directly against the definition. You ask "what about those people?"
You then point out a game of soccer where some players stop to do a comedy act in the middle of a game, in a way on which rules of soccer are completely silent. You ask "what about those people?"
The answer is that we don't care about those people for purposes of defining soccer. The functions, the description of what people do and are supposed to do, are the standard. People who are unable or unwilling to perform those functions, and people who go way outside those functions to do their own thing, are out of bounds for a game of soccer, and in a sane game, either the referee or other players will remove them from the game. The technical inclusion of these players in some game of soccer is not relevant to a functional definition of soccer.
Same deal, for functional definition of roleplaying games, people who are unable or unwilling to roleplay in roleplaying games, and people who somehow end up roleplaying in non-roleplaying games.
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2022-01-02, 05:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
I'm going to go back to the thing I suggested far up thread since it resolves this. Take the fiction of the setting as presented, then ask if that would be held up by the actions and choices of characters who knew the rules.
If you have a character who would be inert knowing the rules and knowing only the fluff, it cancels out.
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2022-01-02, 08:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
I think the problem is more like you are trying to establish an objective measure of when something is "hot". We can sort of figure out what is going on with fiction layer and mechanical decisions. But then you want to say that at some point this draws a line between role-playing games and not.
Here, you've gone off the reservation. Maybe focus on [these particular examples]?
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2022-01-03, 01:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
This split between fiction and the rules continues to be ill-founded. Statements about what the setting is are rules for a roleplaying game - a character who knew all the game rules they're subject to, would know both "fluff" and "crunch".
Further, just like "the determinator", this is not a perspective we have any general reason to care about. Take any game where the rules state that some rules of the game are hidden from a player. A character who knew all the rules, would then know that their perspective is invalid for a player character, meaning for them to exist, someone has had to break the rules.
You should only care about character perspectives that are valid player characters for a given game. This includes knowing proper amount of setting knowledge and when setting "fluff" takes priority over "crunch" or vice versa, because those are game rules.
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2022-01-03, 01:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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2022-01-03, 02:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
That boils down to the part you didn't quote, which is that you should only care about character perspectives that are valid player characters for a given game.
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2022-01-03, 02:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
That's a value statement though, so I don't really see any reason to try to pretend that it's a point of logic.
The experience of playing a game in which you have to intentionally dissociate information is different than one in which you don't. The experience of playing a game in which the choice to intentionally dissociate information is left up to the player is also different. You might choose not to care about that difference in experience, which is fine - that's your 'ought'. But that's not the same as 'there is no difference', which isn't what you argued.
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2022-01-03, 04:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
I'm not arguing there is no difference to functions you list; I'm arguing games rules themselves make statements of which functions are rules-legal.
The actual overarching point I'm trying to make is that distinctions such as "fluff" versus "crunch" or "the fiction" versus "the rules" are ill-founded. For a roleplaying game, the fiction is part of the rules; the map versus territory problem only exists because a high level rule posits some territory to which lower level rules are supposed to map to. In absence of such a high level rule, it can just be accepted that the map is the territory, making it a non-issue. The contradictions you're counting for your measure are contradictions within and between game rules, specifically rules with same or unestablished priority order.
Which is where you get that "should". If you want to measure if following game rules leads to contradiction, you have to follow those rules. Which means you should only concern yourself with valid player characters for a given game. If you posit a character that's invalid, it is not a surprise if they end up acting counter to the game.
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2022-01-03, 04:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
I'm not trying to measure if following the game rules leads to a contradiction though. I'm trying to measure cognitive dissonance, which is not the same thing.
Let's say the game book describes rules for magic that would let armies fly, then describes 'the top military power in the setting is based out of a mot and bailey fortress'. That's not a contradiction in rules - there can be both a fort behind a ditch and flying armies. But its an incoherent decision for the top military force to base itself out of a fort which could easily be attacked. Incoherent decisions aren't forbidden by rules, but create a particular feel which I think lies at the heart of what conflicts with Quertus' RP aesthetic. So that's what I want to measure.Last edited by NichG; 2022-01-03 at 04:50 AM.
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2022-01-03, 05:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
Cognitive dissonance is a feeling founded on a person trying to hold two or more contradictory beliefs, so any measure of it ends up counting contradictions. There is an apparent contradiction in the situation you describe, and there very well could be an actual contradiction, depending on how rest of the situation is detailed. There are also details which would solve the contradiction, and thus remove cognitive dissonance, such as flying armies being so new the top brass hasn't had time to adjust yet.
I'm confident this holds even when talking about Quertus specifically.
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2022-01-03, 07:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
This thread seems to be a Quertus quibble about roleplaying games, but here's an angle that hasn't been considered: If you're making a non-zero amount of decisions that aren't in-character, it's for a more appealing story than the entirely in-character decisions version of events, and from that angle, perhaps storytelling games is a better way to describe it.
That said, it's very clear that that's not what this is about, so this shall be my only post in the thread.Last edited by Powerdork; 2022-01-03 at 07:01 AM.
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2022-01-03, 08:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
I think the point of "take the rules and see if they product the fiction" is to identify where the rules don't fit the fiction. It's objectively, coldly treating the rules as a hypothetical framework, and testing them to see if they produce the "observes results", in this case the "fiction" we think we're playing.
("Fiction" here meaning the setting, characters, and 'tone', the stuff that the rules are supposed to map/model -- not to be confused with "narrative", "story", or "genre".)
A big example would be the Tippyverse... the published, printed rules of D&D produce something in the vein of the Tippyverse, and nothing like any of the published D&D settings.Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2022-01-03 at 08:22 AM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
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2022-01-03, 10:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
How unlike Tippyverse is to published settings is often exaggerated. However, it is a great example of doing things backwards.
By the rules of D&D, its mechanics are not a first principles model of any setting. A dungeon master instead is meant to pick a setting and then cherry pick and interprete the mechanics in a way that fits said setting. Tippyverse, especially the detailed version(s) trying to fit in as much additional content as possible, does the opposite (aside from few specific assumptions, like silent gods, which are just normal setting building). Use rules in non-standard ways, get non-standard results, no surprises there.
By Tippy's own words, Tippyverse is incredibly fragile - remove teleportation circles and equivalents, and no such setting arises. No surprises there either - once you start treating rules of a complex game as first principles, it starts exhibiting features common of complex dynamic systems, such as high chaos and high sensitivity to small changes in initial conditions.
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2022-01-03, 10:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
IME, players (DMs included) don't approach D&D setting-first, at all. They approach it rules-first... the most common attitude I've seen in D&D can be summarized as "if it's in the books, it's in the game", with a very bitter and confrontational response to anything in the books being excluded or limited. That is, D&D is IME the go-to system for the "this is a game" approach.
And most of the text in various editions of D&D reads that way, advice to go setting-first and make whatever changes are needed is passing, buried in the DMG, or both.
(Hell, there was a time when Gygax expressed disdain towards houserules and changes, calling it "not playing D&D".)Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2022-01-03 at 10:31 AM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2022-01-03, 10:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
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2022-01-03, 11:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
Avatar by linklele. How Teleport Worksa. Malifice (paraphrased):
Rulings are not 'House Rules.' Rulings are a DM doing what DMs are supposed to do.
b. greenstone (paraphrased):
Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
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2022-01-03, 11:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
Gygax also came down on both sides of nearly all issues at one point or another.
Interesting. Various cultural references or something had me thinking you would have cut your teeth in the 2E AD&D era, where the game was decidedly leaning towards 'this game works if you want a swashbuckling campaign, or Eastern/martial arts campaign, or a stone-age campaign, or a no-magic Peers of Charlemagne campaign. Just buy the relevant green or red/brown splatbook for ideas' mentality.
I only remember the 1e DMG actually saying you shouldn't change rules, and even then it was more caution tape than admonition not to.
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2022-01-03, 11:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
Relevant quotes from the 1e DMG:
Originally Posted by 1e DMG PrefaceOriginally Posted by 1e DMG Preface
The communication is pretty clear to me - yes, you should muck with things. If you do muck with things, understand that if you muck with too much, your game will stop being understandable "as D&D" to someone that is used to playing with a game that is more in-line with the system as presented, and as such the ability of those players to converse about the shared hobby will be impacted.
People can disagree with this, but it still seems pretty far from the "play it exactly as written or you're doing it wrong" characterization that is often given. I suspect that's becuase prior to 1e, people were modifying D&D in vastly significant ways, to the point where you really couldn't talk about common experience.
I point this out not because I'm a Gygax fanboy (I'm not), but because I think criticism should be more accurately leveled at what was actually said, rather than a fourth-hand version of it.Last edited by kyoryu; 2022-01-03 at 11:42 AM.
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2022-01-03, 11:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2022-01-03, 11:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
"Gosh 2D8HP, you are so very correct (and also good looking)"
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2022-01-03, 11:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
What the game says and has said, and what player metagame says and has said, are two different things. Both for published settings and settings of individual game masters, using game mechanics as first principles for setting building has never been the norm.
Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy
Gygax got a lot of undeserved flak for saying people going way outside rules of his game were no longer playing his game. Both as a basic observation and as opinion of a product manager, it made perfect sense. Still does. Games are defined by their rules, change the rules enough and you get a different game.
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2022-01-03, 12:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
Right. That's why I quoted the actual text :) I think it's pretty clear.
Colin McComb's "apology" about hte Complete Book of Elves kind of hammers that home, too. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwDWx1cAqP4)
Yeah, if you read the text, it's pretty clear, I think it's just been misquoted multiple times. I think it's entirely reasonable. At some point, if you house rule enough, you're playing a different game. That doesn't make it a bad game, just a different one.
Vince Baker says pretty much the same thing about Apocalypse World, except he's even more strict on how much change happens before it's "not Apocalypse World". And in both cases, I don't read "therefore it's bad", I read "therefore it's a different game which may be super fun, but is still a different game."Last edited by kyoryu; 2022-01-03 at 12:05 PM.
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2022-01-03, 12:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
You think that your comments deserve discussion? Well, you’re not normally completely insane, so I’ll reply, and see if you show me some cool path that I just can’t see.
If you’re roleplaying a completely faceless pawn, that in no way impacts my ability to roleplay my character’s responses to your character, or to the rest of the universe. And, even were that not the case, your faceless pawn is not a part of the system, and so is irrelevant to my metric.
I’ve talked about the purpose of the “7-year-old” abstraction; senility willing, I’ll quote myself.
It’s not about the subjective “can you roleplay in chess”, or the subjective experience of whether you feel like you’re roleplaying. The metric measures the decision points, and whether (like in a “choose your own adventure” book) you have to drop roleplaying stance in order to make a valid decision. It is simply measuring, “to what extent is this system suitable to being played in roleplaying stance?”.
Your own subjective experiences are only valuable in the context of my metric for measuring how reliable a witness you are, or how much you roleplay. They have no bearing on the metric itself.
So, let’s dial back to the most über obvious example: the choose your own adventure book format.
Pick one of your characters. Doesn’t matter the setting - I’ll do my best to make this setting agnostic.
Ready?
“As you are traveling along, using whatever ground transportation makes the most sense for your character and the setting, you come to the setting equivalent of a stoplight (person with the authority to tell you to stop, perhaps?), telling you to stop. There is mild cross-traffic at this intersection, but it is very slow moving, and there is a hole in traffic big enough for several of you to pass through easily.”
What do you do?
Come up with your in character response, and then we’ll see if it’s one that the system accepts as valid, or whether you have to metagame in order to continue playing.
That’s what my system is measuring: the potential for and effectiveness of in character actions. That’s it. No amount of “other PCs with all the personality of wet cardboard” or personal experiences change anything as far as my metric is concerned, only whether the system lets you make the choices you wood make, and grades them reasonably in accordance with the fiction.
(Yes, I see what autocorrect did. I’m leaving it.)
So, is there actually anything here worth discussing?
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2022-01-03, 12:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
I don't recall ANY edition of D&D EVER establishing a setting-first approach, ever, at any point.
Note, this would take more than a few lines of lip-service claiming that it's setting-first, it would require the overall text of the rules to support that approach.
Instead, it has always had an implicit setting built in.It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2022-01-03, 12:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
I'll say that this thread, among many others, has indicated to me that defining the boundary between "is <game>" and "is not <game>" is...fraught with difficulty and subjectivity. And of little actual use in practice, other than to sate the human need for putting things in nice little boxes, by force if necessary.
I mean, there certainly is a point of differentiation at which we can generally say "yeah, that's a different game", but it's a heap problem drawing the line anywhere before that. For me, personally, the metric I use is "what book do I pull out first when looking for guidance on something game related? That's generally the system I'm going to call it." That's by no means a definition or a hard-and-fast rule, just a heuristic.Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
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2022-01-03, 12:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: RPG metric, simplified version
My AD&D books are paper and inside a box, so I can't quote them as conveniently as kyoryu above, but Gygax emphasises importance of the dungeon master's vision of their setting (or "milieu", which is the word Gygax uses) several times throughout the ruletext. What you call D&D's implicit setting, is not a singular thing at all. It's a number of constants posited across settings. The room to have distinct settings is quite expansive. Again, if you try to do Tippyverse-style worldbuilding, just changing what spells are available at the starting point can radically change the outcome. The original thought experiment was strongly defined by mechanics of a single spell (teleportation circle).