My Attempt to Define RPG's - RPG's aren't actually Games

[Hussar]

When you logically critique a definition, single examples that argue against the definition are revealing. However, I'm not doing this, I'm questioning the very premise you're starting with. Defining RPGs by the creation aspect isn't valid -- there are many games where creation is critical to play, Pictionary being a useful example. Nothing in Pictionary tells me what to draw, only what I need to get my teammates to guess to win a point. This is closely analogous to setting a scene in an RPG -- I create this to get the players to engage with it using the rules to achieve the goal of play. Again, you're method focused, which is going to fail for you because you seem to have a huge blind-spot to non-D&D, non-DM-centric RPGs and how they function (which can be wildly different from D&D). For instance, no myth games are predicated on the premise that nothing is made up outside of play -- all facts for the game are presented by the players during play and become the setting, not the other way around. The players literally create the setting in play via their action declarations.

Instead, you should look to goals of play -- outcomes. There's a pretty general definition of the goals of RPGs, and it differs from other games to a useful degree.

But, Pictionary DOES tell you to draw a picture. You cannot do anything other than draw a picture. Granted, the picture you draw is up to you, but, again, the game is directly telling you what to do, even if it doesn't tell you how. In creating a scenario, the RPG game does not tell you what to create, other than "create a scenario" which is so broad and vague that it literally can mean anything. I reject [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s equivalence that all set-up is the same. The fact that you have to step outside of the game in order to create the scenario is a major distinction.

Even in a no-myth game, you MUST create something before you can play it out. Granted, it's mashed up in play, but, it's still a clear causal line - material is created, that material is then played out then more material is created, then that material is played out, wash, rinse, repeat. There is no real difference here - the creation must come first, the stuff that is created is not dictated by the game itself and play is then shaped by that material that is created, which is not actually part of the rules of the game.

Again, you're focusing on the timing. That's not the point. The point is, the material that must be created in order to actually play the RPG isn't created through the RPG itself. It's added onto the RPG and then played out and, until it's created, you simply cannot play at all. If I decide there's a hammer in the shed that I can use to fight the zombies that are chasing me, I'm creating the fiction first and then playing out that scenario - fighting the zombies with that hammer. The in-game fact that there is a hammer in that shed is not created by referencing any rules of the RPG. It's something I've drawn from the outside to add in and I have to add it in before I can progress forward. If I do not add it in, play cannot progress down that line.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm struggling to follow you here. If Pictionary is in a grey area, there's a ton of games in the same grey area -- enough that the distinction you're claiming isn't very strong at all, even if I were inclined to agree with it.

Fair enough.

Well, yes, and that's the problem.

I suppose it's a question of which is more important - means (methods) or ends (achieved goals).

Just to take your position for the sake of argument here, but how are cards that are part of the M:TG ruleset to be considered from outside the game? This doesn't even work assuming your points are true and correct.

A rough equivalent would be a particular chess move or action allowing you to put a 17th piece on the board, from a different chess set.

Lan-"I tried building entire decks around those stupid 'Wish' cards, and all of them lost every game they played"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] called the creation process set-up.

Yes, the creation step is a part of set-up that a) many other games don't have and b) can sometimes occur even during the run of play, again unlike a great many other games.

Given that both are set-up, they are both set-up. That's what they have in common.

Yes, this is true. But what shuffling cards for a card game does not include is having to draw and paint some new and different cards for each game even during play, which is more analagous to what happens in an RPG when background and-or setting are (in some cases) prepared beforehand and (in all cases) expanded on during play.

In Pictionary if I get a card that says to draw Cagney and Lacey, I can in my attempt to draw Lacey, draw the following. An item with a lot of lace, bag of potato chips and the sea, a person lying down with his hand to his eyes trying to see something, or Lacey herself. The game did not tell me what to draw and I have a lot of creative leeway to draw whatever the heck I want in my attempt to get the other person to guess right. Cagney I'm stumped on what the heck to draw.

The rules say to draw something, as opposed to trying to act it out or give synonyms or move pawn-to-king-4. As a result of this, you draw something (and yeah, drawing for Cagney would stump me too).

Another difference between Pictionary and any RPG that just occurred to me: in Pictionary, any creation that happens is temporary: the pictures you draw for that particular round have no influence or use beyond that round. Your picture of Lacey, for example, won't be at all relevant two rounds later when you're trying to represent Hogwarts School in a drawing; and when you play again next week will have probably long since been tossed in the recycle bucket.

But in an RPG what's created is permanent: it sticks around and has the possibility of influencing the game at any time from that moment forward. Once Pemerton's noblewoman is determined to be a widow, for example, that fact about her remains locked in as part of the setting background until and unless something happens within the game to change it; and might still be relevant next time you play or sometime many sessions after that.

And because the ongoing use of this creation step in any RPG results in permanent additions to the parameters of play at that table it becomes a) something quite different than the temporary creation steps seen in Pictionary and other games and b) worth a closer look.

Lanefan

 

[pemerton]

But, now, you're playing a different scenario. And, in order to play a different scenario, you still need to create THAT new shared fiction.

You are putting a lot of weight on the idea of "scenarios" as discrete things that one plays. That is why I keep equating your position to a type of RPGing that involves running the players through a pre-established dungeon (or one that, even if some of it is made up on the spot, is notionally or "as if" pre-established) or a pre-established module story like Dragonlance etc.

But that's not a good fit for the sessions I described. Eg in one of the Classic Traveller sessions, the players decide - on their way to the planet their patron has sent them to - to engage in some trading at a stop-over world. So I had to work out what trade goods that world had available (Traveller has a chart for that). That wasn't "playing a different scenario" - at each point it's just a case of the players declaring actions for their PCs that engage with the current ingame situation.

Of course there are genre-based, and "this is how we do it in our group"-based, understandings about the parameters for those declarations: if the player had declared "We land onworld and use our ship's engines to destroy all the local wildlife" that would have brought the session to a bit of a WTF moment.

But there aren't scenario-based expectations. "The scenario" isn't a governing concept in how we're approaching the game. In the Prince Valiant game, if the player decides that the marital status of his PC is not interesting and shifts the focus onto something else - say, more detailed attention to training the young son on how to be a knight - well then that's where the focus of play would go and that wouldn't cause any issues. There's no sense of "changing scenarios".

When the actions of one PC brought it about that the cat had to be called as a witness in the son's sorcery trial, that wasn't a change of scenario even though the written material in the book didn't say anything about that but just assumed that all the calling of witnesses took the form of brief GM narration of interaction between NPCs. It didn't cause any issues at the table - I was easily able to narrate an adjournment of the trial and a party riding off to get the cat, and to resolve the antics of the PCs who joined that party.

Again, that's just part of playing the game.

 

[pemerton]

But, Pictionary DOES tell you to draw a picture. You cannot do anything other than draw a picture. Granted, the picture you draw is up to you, but, again, the game is directly telling you what to do, even if it doesn't tell you how. In creating a scenario, the RPG game does not tell you what to create, other than "create a scenario" which is so broad and vague that it literally can mean anything.

Instead of telling you to draw a picture, it tells you to write or speak some words, that is, to produce a linguistic description. (If you're playing classic D&D you have to draw a picture also - the dungeon map.)

The game also tends so specify the topic of the description, perhaps expressly, perhaps implicitly. In Traveller, my description should probably include space-y stuff. I could use Traveller to run a pre-industrial tech survival game (Supplement IV has barbarians and rules for bows) but why would I? That's getting into the neighbourhood of using a snakes and ladders board to play chess - at a pinch it could be done (just ignore 2 rows/columns of border squares to go from 10 x 10 to 8 x 8), but I don't think anyone would recommend it.

Likewise I could try and use D&D to run a scifi game, but as everyone knows D&D's mechanics don't work superwell without magic items and spells, the whole of the rulebooks are pitched at a certain type of pre-industrial fantasy, hit points are wonky enough with mediaeval ranged combat and shifting to gun combat as the norm only exaggerates that, etc.

If you read Moldvay Basic, or Gygax's less-well written advice in his D&D, you get a fairly clear idea of what you should do to play the game if you've never played it before: have one person draw a dungeon, write down what's in it, translate at least some of that into mechanical terms, then tell the (other) players that their PCs have arrived at the entrance and ask them what they do.

It's obviously a bit more intricate than Pictionary, but the structural comparison isn't hopeless. Most of the difference is in the detail that is expected in the drawing and in the descriptions that accompany it. Obviously the play is different from pictionary, but that's not in dispute as best I'm following the thread.

Prince Valiant has quite different set-up instructions from those classic D&D texts, but it has some. And they also involve coming up with some descriptions, and the range of topics is set out pretty clearly (through a mixture of advice and panels from Prince Valiant comics).

Even in a no-myth game, you MUST create something before you can play it out. Granted, it's mashed up in play, but, it's still a clear causal line - material is created, that material is then played out then more material is created

This notion of material being created than played out is the key. I've explained several times why that is a narrow framing of what RPGing involves, but you haven't engaged with that at all.

I'll have another go, and I'll strengthen my claim to try and provoke a response: I categorically deny that the Prince Valiant session I played on the weekend took the form of first create something, then play it out.

Another difference between Pictionary and any RPG that just occurred to me: in Pictionary, any creation that happens is temporary: the pictures you draw for that particular round have no influence or use beyond that round. Your picture of Lacey, for example, won't be at all relevant two rounds later when you're trying to represent Hogwarts School in a drawing; and when you play again next week will have probably long since been tossed in the recycle bucket.

But in an RPG what's created is permanent: it sticks around and has the possibility of influencing the game at any time from that moment forward. Once Pemerton's noblewoman is determined to be a widow, for example, that fact about her remains locked in as part of the setting background until and unless something happens within the game to change it; and might still be relevant next time you play or sometime many sessions after that.

The drawings in Pictionary are as permanent as you want them to be - if one is really funny you might stick it on the fridge; if one is really beautiful you can frame it and hang it on the wall.

The drawings in Pictionary don't generally do any work for gameplay after the game is done, but that's true for the fiction of a RPG. Since my last Rolemaster campaign finished 9 or 10 years ago, the only work done by that fiction is to be remembered for the bits that were funny, the bits that were exciting, the bits that were surprising, etc.

Even while a campaign is still on-foot, individual bits of fiction created for it might cease to be relevant. In a Moldvay Basic game, if the PCs enter a dungeon and have a random encounter with 2 giant rats, it's highly unlikely that particular bit of fiction will ever matter to anything that happens again. That might be true even of a random encounter with 2 hobgoblins! - depending on the approach the GM takes to integrating random encounters into the non-random components of the dungeon setting.

Trying to analyse RPGs through the metaphysical status of their fictions is in my view a dead end, as well as being an almost surefire way to make assertions that won't hold true. (Maybe she's not a widow at all but everyone just thought she was . . . that could happen easily enough in my game, and even more easily in a game with time travel, or memory horror, or dimension hopping, or whatever else aspects to it.)
[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is on the right track by focusing on the process of play rather than its product: the fiction produced by playing a RPG isn't inherently different from any other fiction produced in some other way, and if we go more abstract, the "artwork" produced by playing a RPG isn't inherently different from any other "artwork" produced in some other way, including by the play of some other game. His mistake is to generalise a process that is true for most D&D play (both pre-and-post DL), and for quite a bit of play that is pretty similar to D&D, but that isn't true of RPGing in general.

 

[Maxperson]

But, Pictionary DOES tell you to draw a picture. You cannot do anything other than draw a picture. Granted, the picture you draw is up to you, but, again, the game is directly telling you what to do, even if it doesn't tell you how.

But D&D does tell you to create a scenario. You cannot do anything other than create a scenario of some sort. Granted, the scenario you create is up to you, but, again, the game does directly tell you how to create it. The DMG has some really great sections on scenario/world creation.

In creating a scenario, the RPG game does not tell you what to create, other than "create a scenario" which is so broad and vague that it literally can mean anything.

There's this book called the Dungeon Master's Guide. Starting on page 7 and finishing on page 316 are all of the instructions, tables and ideas on how to create a scenario. It's literally the entire freaking book.

I reject [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s equivalence that all set-up is the same. The fact that you have to step outside of the game in order to create the scenario is a major distinction.

And I reject your continued Strawman of my position. I have never said that.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, the creation step is a part of set-up that a) many other games don't have and b) can sometimes occur even during the run of play, again unlike a great many other games.

B is where we disagree. Creating a secret door is not set-up. It's creation, yes, but the only thing that happens prior to the player in a No Myth game creating a secret door in game play is the thought to do so. Thought is not set-up. If it was, then literally all game play in or out of RPGs would be set-up. Even something as simple as me having my PC say to a guard, "How's the wife and kids?" involves me thinking of what to say before hand, and creating that dialogue, which could be considered to be interaction set-up.

Set-up involves more than just a thought process immediately before creation.

Yes, this is true. But what shuffling cards for a card game does not include is having to draw and paint some new and different cards for each game even during play, which is more analagous to what happens in an RPG when background and-or setting are (in some cases) prepared beforehand and (in all cases) expanded on during play.

Okay, but other than @Hussar attributing that to me via several Strawmen, nobody I can remember has said that those are equivalent forms of set-up.

The rules say to draw something, as opposed to trying to act it out or give synonyms or move pawn-to-king-4. As a result of this, you draw something (and yeah, drawing for Cagney would stump me too).

And as I mentioned to @Hussar, the D&D rules say to create a scenario.

Another difference between Pictionary and any RPG that just occurred to me: in Pictionary, any creation that happens is temporary: the pictures you draw for that particular round have no influence or use beyond that round. Your picture of Lacey, for example, won't be at all relevant two rounds later when you're trying to represent Hogwarts School in a drawing; and when you play again next week will have probably long since been tossed in the recycle bucket.

Maybe so, but they will still be laughing at my horribly bad drawing of Cagney Even my stick figures end up lopsided.

 

[Satyrn]

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] called the creation process set-up. He did it in a post that you responded do with, "I agree completely." Given your vehement opposition to that concept, I don't think you are reading his responses very carefully.



Given that both are set-up, they are both set-up. That's what they have in common.



In Pictionary if I get a card that says to draw Cagney and Lacey, I can in my attempt to draw Lacey, draw the following. An item with a lot of lace, bag of potato chips and the sea, a person lying down with his hand to his eyes trying to see something, or Lacey herself. The game did not tell me what to draw and I have a lot of creative leeway to draw whatever the heck I want in my attempt to get the other person to guess right. Cagney I'm stumped on what the heck to draw.

a keg of beer and a knee.

 

[Lanefan]

Prince Valiant has quite different set-up instructions from those classic D&D texts, but it has some. And they also involve coming up with some descriptions, and the range of topics is set out pretty clearly (through a mixture of advice and panels from Prince Valiant comics).

I've never looked at the Prince Valiant RPG, but I have to admit you're getting me curious.

This notion of material being created than played out is the key. I've explained several times why that is a narrow framing of what RPGing involves, but you haven't engaged with that at all.

I'll have another go, and I'll strengthen my claim to try and provoke a response: I categorically deny that the Prince Valiant session I played on the weekend took the form of first create something, then play it out.

And this is where you're not quite getting something that seems clear to me; only I'm not sure why you're not getting it.

If nothing was created either before or during that session there would very likely have been no play at all. But some things were created, a widowed noblewoman being the go-to example for the moment, and play then interacted with this creation among others.

The drawings in Pictionary are as permanent as you want them to be - if one is really funny you might stick it on the fridge; if one is really beautiful you can frame it and hang it on the wall.

Obviously, or at least I hope it's obvious, I was referring to permanent within the framework of the game.

The drawings in Pictionary don't generally do any work for gameplay after the game is done, but that's true for the fiction of a RPG. Since my last Rolemaster campaign finished 9 or 10 years ago, the only work done by that fiction is to be remembered for the bits that were funny, the bits that were exciting, the bits that were surprising, etc.

Again you're looking outside the game. Within the game, that game's accumulated fiction would (almost certainly) have had an impact on the ongoing play.

Even while a campaign is still on-foot, individual bits of fiction created for it might cease to be relevant.

The key word here being 'might', as it implies 'might not' just as well.

In a Moldvay Basic game, if the PCs enter a dungeon and have a random encounter with 2 giant rats, it's highly unlikely that particular bit of fiction will ever matter to anything that happens again.

That particular encounter is certain to have one ongoing impact to the game: the PCs gained a few xp for it. Uncertain is whether it'll have any other lasting impact; my point is that a lasting impact of some sort cannot be ruled out entirely.

For example, it might be that particular encounter that Jocelle and Falstaff look back on several adventures later as being the point where they stopped being two individual fighters and instead became a good combat team. You just don't know.

Trying to analyse RPGs through the metaphysical status of their fictions is in my view a dead end, as well as being an almost surefire way to make assertions that won't hold true. (Maybe she's not a widow at all but everyone just thought she was . . . that could happen easily enough in my game, and even more easily in a game with time travel, or memory horror, or dimension hopping, or whatever else aspects to it.)

The fiction still has to be taken at face value, though, until and unless something happens within the game to change it as per all of your examples here.

And it's a bit difficult to analyze how and when fiction is created - and whether this creation is an extra step in game play, as per the main discussion - without pulling examples of what results from the process, and what happens to it next.

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is on the right track by focusing on the process of play rather than its product: the fiction produced by playing a RPG isn't inherently different from any other fiction produced in some other way, and if we go more abstract, the "artwork" produced by playing a RPG isn't inherently different from any other "artwork" produced in some other way, including by the play of some other game.

I think we agree here.

His mistake is to generalise a process that is true for most D&D play (both pre-and-post DL), and for quite a bit of play that is pretty similar to D&D, but that isn't true of RPGing in general.

But we don't agree here, in that even in a fully no-myth game the background (including PC backgrounds) and setting and scenario around the PCs has to come from somewhere. It doesn't matter in this case whether it comes from the GM or the players or some combination of these, it still has to come from somewhere and still has to be in place before anyone can interact with it.

That said, a player through an action declaration can put something in place and interact with it at what seems like the same time. Let's unpack a typical action declaration and see what we find.

Player: "I search the wall for a secret door."

"I search <interaction as part of play> the wall <creation, either now or earlier> for a secret door <attempted creation, to be resolved by play mechanics; or interaction as part of play with something already created>"

If the wall has been described or narrated earlier, that's creation at that time probably on the GM's part. Obviously if the player is creating this wall right now as part of this declaration (which even in no-myth seems a bit unlikely) then it's creation on the player's part.

And in any case that wall has become a permanent part of the fiction until and unless something happens to change it e.g. a Rock-To-Mud spell; and if a secret door is found then it too becomes a permanent part of the fiction. This end result at the table is no different to the end result of a GM having mapped it all out months ago - the creation process still has to happen at some point.

 

[Lanefan]

B is where we disagree. Creating a secret door is not set-up. It's creation, yes, but the only thing that happens prior to the player in a No Myth game creating a secret door in game play is the thought to do so. Thought is not set-up.

Ah, now you're getting close.

Some thought, in these cases, does fall under the creation part of set-up.

If it was, then literally all game play in or out of RPGs would be set-up.

Not at all.

Even something as simple as me having my PC say to a guard, "How's the wife and kids?" involves me thinking of what to say before hand, and creating that dialogue, which could be considered to be interaction set-up.

I see that as part of play; but whatever process put the guard there for you to talk to was creation, which comes under set-up.

Set-up involves more than just a thought process immediately before creation.

Not necessarily. If we agree that creation is part of set-up then it becomes irrelevant for these purposes when or how this creation occurs; which is kinda my whole point in this debate.

Okay, but other than @Hussar attributing that to me via several Strawmen, nobody I can remember has said that those are equivalent forms of set-up.

Regardless of equivalence, they both still come under the umbrella of set-up. Different types and forms of set-up, sure, but still set-up.