Chess is not an RPG: The Illusion of Game Balance

[prosfilaes]

In your definition of RPG, I have a scrawny character who wields a GPMG but he is shooting it single-handedly and hits your brawny character wielding a M16 and at the same time, dives down to throw a bayonet at another character 200 feet away.

Okay? In one edition of Champions, a baby could throw a football 100 feet. Is it realistic? No. Does anyone care? No. Presumably anyone playing a game where that's possible doesn't really care about those details.

Cthulhu Dark has combat rules: the PCs die. At least with the skills rules in He Who Laughs Last, it's pretty clearly an RPG, but one that doesn't want to deal with combat.

 

[Hussar]

Like any genre, you are probably better off trying to define the center and not the edges. When does fantasy become SF is an endless wank with no resolution.

But I can point to the Hobbit and pretty clearly say that it's fantasy and point to 2001 A Space Odyssey and say that it's SF without too much controversy.

I have to admit, I'm liking the turn this thread has taken.

 

[Jhaelen]

Celebrim I'm not sold on the single role thing though. It's pretty common for players to have more than one role in an rpg. Controlling multiple characters isn't that rare. Note are adjunct characters like familiars or the like.

It may not be a requirement, but it's definitely recommended to limit players to one character each at a time.

Back in '84 when I first tried to play a table top RPG, that was the major thing I didn't understand or get right: I was trying to play the whole party resulting in a game without any roleplaying. I was playing it like I would play 'The Bard's Tale' on my computer several years later. Of course part of the reason was that I was the only player and the GM didn't have any experience with playing's either, but still. It required reading the introduction to a few other rpg systems until it 'clicked' and I realized I was supposed to portray a single character rather than a kind of insubstantial 'team manager'.

Another thing that is tricky when trying to play several characters at a time is that you basically have to speak in third person: 'x is doing this, y is saying that'. If you have a single character you can use first person - something I consider crucial for good roleplaying.

 

[Hussar]

I dunno. Aren't you still role playing even if you are managing a team? Might not be the deepest role playing but, it shouldn't be impossible to switch hats.

Many groups let a player control a cohort or other kind of hireling type character in addition to the "boss" character. Do I stop playing an RPG if I gain followers? Does AdnD stop being an RPG at name level?

I don't think so. And to take it further, castle or domain management is seen as a pretty good module for 5e.

 

[pemerton]

To expand slightly, a Story Game was originally an RPGwith a defined end point because a whole lot of people said that this was one reason Paul Czege's My Life With Master couldn't possibly be an RPG and those who liked it were more interested in the game than the name. 4e and 5e are both open ended leveling up games. Currently there is a tendency for it to be a tribal banner.

I don't really use or understand the term "story game", except that I often see it used as a label by those who don't like them to characterise the things they don't like.

But 4e does at least incline towards a defined end-point: 30th level and the resolution of a PC's epic destiny. Admittedly it doesn't have the mechanical tightness of Nicotine Girls or My Life With Master. It relies much more upon ad hoc GM management via scene framing and the narration of consequences.

Does having an end point managed via GM adjudication rather than mechanics make a game less of a story game?

How about "A game where you are expected to make moves outside the direct scope of the game's mechanics, and where your moves are informed by intangibles like your character's motivations"?

<snip>

I'm going to say that what's critical is the corollary to A. That you can use the logic of the fiction to take actions the writers of the rules have not considered. And it's stepping round the rules that is credited with the invention of the RPG.

I prefer your second go to your first, if only because a well-designed modern RPG will have mechanics that, with appropriate adjudication and player/GM negotiation, will permit the resolution of any move declared by the player.

Furthermore, I don't think that the second clause in your first go is right: Tomb of Horrors clearly counts as an RPG scenario, but no one playing ToH is meant to have regard to intangibles such as PC motivations. In fact, if you're playing ToH and you give your PC a personality or motivations you've already missed the point of the exercise! (Much the same is true of many of the classic modues, eg Barrier Peaks, White Plume Mountain, Ghost Tower etc. I would say that the GD series and KotB are on the cusp.)

What is key to RPGing, and is as present in ToH as it is in a Burning Wheel session or something more to the "story game" end of the spectrum than that, is a shared fiction. An imagined state of affairs, which imposes no limits on permissible moves other than those that the players (with the GM taking the lead) can envisage as feasible within that fiction.

If you read the original tournament report on ToH you can see the shared fiction being crucial to resolution when the players hammer spikes into a wall and stand on them before pulling a lever - thereby ensuring that they can't fall if the lever makes the floor drop away.

Of course, in some games the shared fiction is meant to inform not just the resolution of actions, but which actions are declared. This is what is happening when you have regard to PC motivations (themselves part of the fiction) in deciding what moves to make.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I rather dislike all your definitions. They are meaningless, tautologies, and I can easily imagine an RPG that is not a story game that plays to an end and is only be designed to run for a single scenario. Likewise, I can imagine a story game that is meant to play on and on and on in multiple episodes until the players become tired of it. So the fact that Amber is meant to generate long running scenarios and has no defined end point doesn't to me seem to matter all that much.

Dislike it all you like. According to AndyK, who runs the Story-Games forum that was what people were objecting to in My Life With Master that meant that it couldn't possibly be an RPG - so they came up with the term "Story-game" to describe it. And it's the main point of difference between a lot of story games and most trad RPGs.

Maybe. To me this relates back to the notion that there exists a fiction. I didn't want to get into this because it raises the problem of associated mechanics. I think all RPGs have at least some associated mechanics (or there wouldn't exist a fiction), but I'm not sure how to phrase things in such a way that it doesn't look like I'm saying "If you have dissociated mechanics, you aren't an RPG."

I'd not go for that side at all. "In an RPG you can and are expected to use pre-existing elements of the fiction for which there are no clearly defined mechanics in the rulebook." To me that's the critical difference between an RPG and various games like Descent and Arkham Horror.

Of course a lot of modern RPGs have very wooly definitions anyway.

Here I have to agree at least a little with Hussar. RPGs aren't merely games that have some roleplaying in them. If we go that far, then it must be true that "Whose Line is it Anyway?" is also an RPG - at which point RPG has morphed from being something rather specific into an umbrella term that covers almost everything.

Which bit of "Whose line is it anyway"?

What then happens is that we've left ourselves with no specific term for the thing we used to call an RPG.

Tabletop RPG or Trad RPG. Or even Tactical RPG. Whether it should include My Life With Master may be a point we can disagree on.

Since we already have terms like Story Game and Theater Game for things that share many traits with RPGs but which aren't RPGs, I see no need to make RPG the umbrella term.

And yet it is an umbrella term that includes things as diverse as World of Warcraft, dressing up as vampires, and bedroom games.

Anyway, from my perspective, Montsegur 1244 is pretty much definitively a story game.

No argument. I'd also call it an RPG.

If Montsegur 1244 is an RPG, then we must concede that "Whose Line is it Anyway?" is also an RPG.

Not true. The objectives of the subgames in Whose Line is it Anyway are almost entirely meta. Montsegur 1244 has logic following from the characters.

Possibly. However, I don't think I'm including games like Warhammer Fantasy, since even if you have a leader, the focus of play is on the manipulation of the whole army.

That's why I mentioned Fog of War rules - the goal of which is sometimes to restrict your prior information to only things the general would know.

That said, it is a distinctive feature of RPGs that the fiction tends to be open ended in the same way that the rules are open ended. Playing a wargame, no aspect of the fiction not covered by the rules has any actual importance to play. The play isn't actually taking place in the shared imaginary space. The visible board is itself the shared space in a wargame or board game. I would suggest this departure from traditional closed system games is something that RPGs share with story games, and probably the entire 'dramatic game' family.

On this we agree Where we differ is that Story Games are RPGs

That said, this leaves me with a problem and suggests a way that cRPGs are different than 'true' RPGs and an area I feel somewhat sympathetic to Wick's observation that WOW is not an RPG. Computers created closed game worlds and game systems. Only to the extent that this is ignored and the computer is used as a minigame interface for certain kinds of proposition resolution, are you actually playing a 'true' RPG on a computer. So either I'm going to have to abandon the closed/open system/setting divide, or else either story games or cRPGs are going to have to drop out of the definition. Hmmmm.

And given that WoW is so overwhelmingly popular it makes about as much sense to exclude it from the heading as it does D&D.

Types of Dramatic Play
RPGs: ???

Umbrella term. We need something like Tactical RPG.

Story Games: RPGs without procedural fortune mechanics. (??)

Nope. Doesn't fit either My Life With Master or Monsterhearts (which bills itself as a Story Game). Or about half the other games under the banner of Story Games. Of course what they choose as stats is ... non-traditional.

Theater Games: Story Games that don't implement the Fundamental Law except by social contract. (Fairly sure on that one)

Fundamental Law? Rule 0?

Improvisational Theater: A theater game played before an audience.

Again, no unless the participants are also the audience.

Traditional Drama: Theater Games that don't allow the players agency

Trad Drama isn't a game in the same way.

 

[Hussar]

Furthermore, I don't think that the second clause in your first go is right: Tomb of Horrors clearly counts as an RPG scenario, but no one playing ToH is meant to have regard to intangibles such as PC motivations. In fact, if you're playing ToH and you give your PC a personality or motivations you've already missed the point of the exercise! (Much the same is true of many of the classic modues, eg Barrier Peaks, White Plume Mountain, Ghost Tower etc. I would say that the GD series and KotB are on the cusp.)

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Illusion-of-Game-Balance/page33#ixzz3H3mnshJC

But, to be fair, you're moving towards the edge and away from the centre. It's not surprising that three of the first four modules you mention are all from the same series. The S series of modules are something of an outlier, even in AD&D. Most of the AD&D modules come with a much stronger story. Look at Temple of Elemental Evil or the Slave Lord's modules. There's a definite progression through a story present in those, and most other 1e modules. KotB is again a bit of an outlier in that it was serving double duty in being an adventure module and a DM training adventure as well. Compare to B4 The Lost City and you see a much stronger presence of intangibles - players are expected to join one of the three factions and then unify those factions against the lower levels of the city.

Never minding things like the Dragonlance Modules and pretty much anything by Weiss and Hickman.

I think that NeonC might be on to something here - an RPG is a game where the motivations of the character are meant to be a driving element of the game, isn't a horrible starting place for defining an RPG and nicely separates RPG's from most board games and even most video games as well.

 

[pemerton]

Presumably that you have some experience in the army (as I have) and/or weapon arms.

No. The main physical activite in which I have experience are running and cycling.

Let's take a real life scenario.

A M16 rifle vs carbine - which has more recoil?

Will a person who has more strength shoot better (handling the recoil effect) than another?

Will having the correct technique (butt between chest and shoulder, release half-breath and hold, etc) help?

In your definition of RPG, I have a scrawny character who wields a GPMG but he is shooting it single-handedly and hits your brawny character wielding a M16 and at the same time, dives down to throw a bayonet at another character 200 feet away.

And? Maybe my RPG is emulating a certain sort of war comic or movie.

I mentioned running upthread. From time to time I have to run from my office to catch my train. I know that the run typically takes me around 13 minutes. Variables that can effect the time taken include traffic and traffic lights (I have to cross some streets on my journey), how tired I am, how much I am carrying in my backpack or in my arms, and what shoes I am wearing. Wearing runners rather than hiking boots improves my speed, mostly because it reduces exertion.

I've never seen an RPG in which the movement rules have regard to footwear - eg in AD&D their are rules for the interaction between hard boots and sneaking, but not hard boots and sprinting. Does this mean that those aren't RPGs? Or aren't good RPGs?

Futhermore, for your example to even get going in an RPG, we have to be keeping track of details like different firearm types, the physical distance between the characters, etc. Neither of those things is essential to an RPG. When I GMed a session of Marvel Heroic RP, as part of the climactic final battle War Machine (PC) fought an aerial duel with Titanium Man (NPC). War Machine was firing rockets and repulsor rays at Titanium Man. Titanium Man was retaliating by ensnaring War Machine in force rings, and in the end won the combat - flying off to a secret base in Khazakstan while War Machine fell to earth somewhere in Florida (the fight started over Washington, DC).

Here are some of the questions to which I don't know the answers, because the game system doesn't require paying attention to them:

* What sorts of rockets does War Machine use?

* What precisely are the capabilities of a repulsor ray?

* At what distance(s) were the two combatants attacking one another?

* How high were the combatants flying?

* How long were they fighting for?

Some rough answers are possible to some of these questions: as neither combatant is equipped for operations in space, they must have remained within earth atmosphere; and as the combatants can fly at supesonic speed but not fast enough for interstellar travel, the fight must have lasted for some time to make it down the coast from DC to Florida. A quick Google tells me that's a distance over 1000 km, so even at mach 2 it's abut half-an-hour. When I was GMing I didn't worry about this - like my players I am Australian, with a fairly patchy knowledge of US geography, and narrated the falling point as Florid for colour - to indicate a large distance had been travelled - rather than on the basis of any actual calculations.

When declaring and adjudicating actions in MHRP, the sorts of details you're talking about simply aren't relevant. We aren't interested in the size of the gun - we're interested in whether it is Cable, The Punisher, War Machines, etc who is using it!

 

[pemerton]

I think that NeonC might be on to something here - an RPG is a game where the motivations of the character are meant to be a driving element of the game, isn't a horrible starting place for defining an RPG and nicely separates RPG's from most board games and even most video games as well.

I don't agree. You're making the same escape as John Wick did, of overly narrowing your characterisation.

Any definition that rules out ToH or WPM has ruled itself out!

The role of the fiction in framing and adjudication is enough to differentiate from board games and most video games.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Again I have to disagree. Let's take a real life scenario. Presumably that you have some experience in the army (as I have) and/or weapon arms.

A M16 rifle vs carbine - which has more recoil?

Will a person who has more strength shoot better (handling the recoil effect) than another?

Will having the correct technique (butt between chest and shoulder, release half-breath and hold, etc) help?

In your definition of RPG, I have a scrawny character who wields a GPMG but he is shooting it single-handedly and hits your brawny character wielding a M16 and at the same time, dives down to throw a bayonet at another character 200 feet away.

And in a game of Wushu, created to emulate the sillier action movie martial arts genres, that would be fine. In any tabletop RPG, actually checking the PC releases a half breath and holds is going to slow the game down to a ridiculous crawl. Are you saying that all RPGs (and all movies) should follow real world physics? At best correct technique is going to be rolled up into some form of guns skill.

I don't really use or understand the term "story game", except that I often see it used as a label by those who don't like them to characterise the things they don't like.

It's also a term used for a variety of post-Forge games.

But 4e does at least incline towards a defined end-point: 30th level and the resolution of a PC's epic destiny.

Ever reached it? I haven't. I've not gone beyond mid-Paragon, and the 30th level endgame is largely theoretical. Most of the type of game I'm talking about take up to half a dozen sessions.

Does having an end point managed via GM adjudication rather than mechanics make a game less of a story game?

Yes.

I prefer your second go to your first, if only because a well-designed modern RPG will have mechanics that, with appropriate adjudication and player/GM negotiation, will permit the resolution of any move declared by the player.

Me too

Furthermore, I don't think that the second clause in your first go is right: Tomb of Horrors clearly counts as an RPG scenario, but no one playing ToH is meant to have regard to intangibles such as PC motivations. In fact, if you're playing ToH and you give your PC a personality or motivations you've already missed the point of the exercise!

If you read the original tournament report on ToH

Taking things a step back ToH was not designed for tournament play. It was designed for Gygax' ongoing game with cocky and greedy adventurers. Who accepted and destroyed the challenge.