[MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION], in my view much of what you say about the significance of non-wargamers playing D&D, and the effect on widespread/mainstream approaches to play, is uncontroversial. So I'm only replying to those bits of your post where I think I have a meaningful disagreement, or have something to add this is relevant to the thread topic.
I think the living world is a HUGE strength of tabletop roleplaying games. If someone wants a static world that doesn't change, where they can scout and learn patterns and know their enemies never move, they'll play a video game. That's pretty much what they excel at.
Well, c 1979 Lewis Pulsipher described the role of the GM in wargame-style D&D as being a "friendly computer with discretion". (I think I'm getting the quote right.)
The difference between a wargame RPG and a video game - which relates to the referee's discretion - is that in a RPG
fictional positioning matters, and there is no limit on the permissible moves. To give a banal example: if a player deducts the right number of coins from his/her PC sheet, and writes "shovel" on his/her equipment list, then if - later on in play - the GM describes the PCs as arriving in a room with a dirt floor, the player can declare "I use my shovel to dig up the floor and see if anything is buried there!"
That's not feasible in a choose-your-own-adventure book (where the number of permitted moves in each situation is strictly limited by what the author has written, which is in turn limited by page count as well as imagination).
I have basically no familiarity with modern computer games other than having watched some friends play WOW aroudn a decade ago, and having watched some kids play minecraft. So I don't know how powerful modern games are in terms of allowing fictional positioning to be a significant factor in action declaration and resolution. I'm going to guess, however, that humans are still better at that particular aspect of adjudication (even if the computer is obviously better at managing many other aspects of refereeing, like all the arithemtic ones).
Anyway, my point is that a "living, breathing, world" isn't the only attraction of a RPG over a video game, and I think - among the proponents of the wargming style - it was that ability to play on fictional positioning that was the predominant significance of the shared fiction, rather than its character as a "living, breathing world".
As our discussion of dates and styles shows, I think it's hard to put a precise timeframe around changes in typical approaches to RPGing. No doubt Runequest is a significant publication event, but it comes out of a prior culture of play (the West Coast D&Ders, I think, whom Lewis Pulsiher was rather critical off in his essays/articles around that time). A publication event that I see as a paradigm of the shift, though, is the Planescape Module Dead Gods. That is chock full of "living, breath, world"-type stuff; but the ability of the players to actually affect things through action declarations, including the exploitation of their PCs' fictional positioning, is close to zero.
The contrast with White Plume Mountain or Tomb of Horrors - no living, breathing world and backstories that are the barest veneer over a series of gameplay challenges; but in which the opportunities to exploit fictional positioning and make good game moves abound (although in ToH are, in my view, very tedious) - could hardly be starker.
To me that comes off less as a puzzle/ challenge and more a scripted encounter where enemies respawn. It means the players past actions have little impact—no matter how many giants they killed outside and how many serving maids were slain reinforcements arrive.
It's only a puzzle if you need to find a way to "solve" the encounter, bypassing the conflict.
It's a puzle in this sense: the players have to decide whether this is really a social encounter, which they can use to their benefit; or whether it's a combat encounter, in which case kneeling before the queen is almost certainly going to impose some sort of disadvantage (as it turns out it turns her into a vorpal backstabber, but I'm prepared to treat that as a quirk of classic D&D's relative shortage of systematic resolution mechanics).
The puzzle can be solved by such devices as a Wand of Enemy Detection, or a Medallion of ESP, or a Detect Evil or ESP spelll, etc. Or, less mechanically and more fictional positioning based, the PCs might capture and interrogate one of her maid servants - who could tell them about the Queen's pets, and perhaps even her penchant for asking intruders to kneel so she can decapitate them.
This sort of play, which engages the fiction even though the fiction is artificial/inane, is more viable if the scope of the fiction is relatively confined.
pemerton said:
Without this artificiality, that style of play can't work, as the players can't scout, collect information and then plan and execute raids.
If that were even remotely true, it would be impossible to execute scouting missions and raids in the real world. Which happen all the time.
<snip>
it just adds another dynamic: stealth. Having to avoid attracting attention. Quick strikes before the alarm can be raised
I think comparisons to reality are unhelpful. In reality, I learn the situation by looking around and scanning with my eyes; by listening carefully; by smelling the air; etc. A couple of weeks ago I went for a walk in some forested hills outside Melbourne. When I heard rustlinging in the bushes, I stopped and looked. On a few occasions I saw birds. On one occasion I could see the foliage moving, but couldn't see what it was that was moving it. On another occasion, I saw an echidna.
Playing a RPG in which my PC is scouting is nothing like this. The way I learn what is going on is by making moves - that is, fictionally positoining my PC, or declaring actions, or both - which then trigger narration from the GM. There is no sensory input independent of the desires of human beings. Generally, there is little narration independent of my desires, as I have to do stuff - make the moves - to trigger the GM's narration.
And the GM's narration will almost inevitably focus on mattes that the GM regards as interesting and/or salient. In the course of a 4-hour wnader through the woods, I spent perhaps 15 or 20 minutes paying attention to the things I had heard rustling - the largest block of that time was spent looking at the echidna, as it's the closest I've ever come to one oustide a zoo. But if the PCs go on a four hour scouting mission, almost no GM is going to spend 20 minutes (or more, if they want to cover all the sensory inputs that I was taking in simultaneously) describing all that stuff, and letting the players decide what to make of it.
The direction, focus and content of play is going to be very significantly shaped by the GM's own narrational priorities,
unless there is some other device for circumventing those.
One device is to put a limit on GM moves; but then we're back to some form of static design, and have lost the "living, breathing" aspect.
Another device of that sort, which I'm most familiar with is, the skill-challenge style complex resolution system (the earliest explicity version of it that I know is in Maelstrom Storytelling, 1997; it's then found in HeroWars, 2001 (I think); in BW; in 4e; in Cortex+; and surely many other RPGs I'm not so familiar with - does Fate use it?) - where the resolution focuses on the players setting a goal for their PCs, the resolution structure then leads the group through the process of attaining or failing at that goal, with changes in the content of the fiction and in fictional positionig taking place on the way through, and yielding an outcome at the end.
But a distincive requirement of those systems is that they depend upon the details of the fiction - the worldbuilding - not being fully established at the start, because flexibility in respect of this is a necessary element to enable the narrative to be developed as the PCs' fortunes wax and/or wane.
If resolution proceeds, though, in the context of a "square by square"/"hex by hex", wargaming-style scouting by the PCs (as the players' vechicles), and with no limits on GM moves,
and with the players only able to get information by making moves that prompts the GM to tell them the stuff that s/he thinks is salient - well, I think this is a very hard puzzle/maze to beat.
Add into the repertoire of GM permitted moves that s/he can (secretly) thwart any player action declaration at any time by (secretly) writing new backstory (which is what [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] were discussing in the context of GM authority over the fiction) - well, then I think it gets even harder.
No matter what system is being played, I'm not going to let the rolls of a character solve a "puzzle" or riddle. I might give a clue, reflecting the character's superiour intelligence compared to the player, and any in world knowledge. But thought is still required.
OK. I'm not sure how that relates to my example, though. As I said, in Cortex+ Heroic you can't run a classic dungeon crawl, because the fiction isn't pre-authored in the right way to support that. As in the example I gave, strange runes or carvings aren't a riddle to be solved; they're an element of the fiction that establishes the basis for action declarations like the one I described (ie "They might be a map - let's see [frames check, rolls dice, beats Doom Pool] - yes, they are, we're
here and here's how we get to
there [rubs Lost in the Dungeon complication of character sheet]").
If the game being played isn't a classic skill-played dungeon craw, then the GM's worldbuilding provides setting and flavour. Description of the environs. Characters for the world.
The nature of worldbuilding doesn't change at all really. Creating the walls of the dungeon or the provinces of a kingdom are the same thing. If you move through the adventure's plot by advancing from dungeon room to dungeon room or from scene to scene, it's functionally the same.
Well, classic dungeon crawling didn't really involve
moving through the adventure's plot. As we see in Gygax's PHB, the players set an objective for the session (eg finding a staricase to the next level down), and then try to achieve that objective without getting lost in the dungeon, beaten up by monsters, or foolishly lured into trouble by the GM's clever tricks, wandering monsters, etc.
The setting is the framework in which the making and carrying out of these plans happens. Describing it as a maze or puzzle isn't perfect, but is an attempt to convey the idea. (
Luke Crane describes it thus: "Since the exploration side of the game is cross between Telephone and Pictionary, I must sit impassive as the players make bad decisions. I want them to win. I want them to solve the puzzles, but if I interfere, I render the whole exercise pointless.")
I think creating the provinces of a kingdom (oustide the contxt of a Diplomacy-type game, where the players play the kingdoms or their rulers) is quite different. Whatever exactly it is for, it's not part of a game that is a cross between Telephone and Pictionary.
I agree with you that setting, in a RPG, contributes
setting and flavour. Description of the environs. Characters for the world. Is there anything more distinctive or unique to be said about what GM pre-authored setting does (outside the cross-between-Telephone-and-Pictionary context)?
