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<blockquote data-quote="Jack Daniel" data-source="post: 9097936" data-attributes="member: 694"><p>Oh, I've got a few hills. Perhaps I'll just keep it to the extra spicy for today. My top two:</p><p></p><p>2) <em>Rules engines</em> are always separable from <em>game settings</em>, and it's only the setting that does any real work emulating a genre of fiction. Rules engines do <em>modes of gameplay</em>. In the same way that you can have a sci-fi shooter, platformer, or action-RPG among video games (say, <em>Gradius</em> vs. <em>Metroid</em> vs. <em>Mass Effect</em>), you can have a sci-fi dungeon-crawler or a sci-fi tacti-trad game or a sci-fi storytelling game on the tabletop.</p><p></p><p>Thematically, the genre and the mode can reinforce the other, but that doesn't always have to be the case. There can also be productive dissonance. Horror offers a good example. <em>Call of Cthulhu</em> is a game whose genre is cosmic horror, and the mode of gameplay is thematically consonant: investigation. If you play a <em>Ravenloft</em> game with AD&D 1e, on the other hand, the genre will be a mix of Gothic horror and high fantasy, but that doesn't really alter the dungeon-crawler mode of play.</p><p></p><p>Even if you come up with a rules engine that seems so inextricably bound to its setting that it must, in your mind, be doing work to produce a genre-appropriate "feel," I <em>guarantee</em> you that I could pressgang it into working beautifully for an entirely different setting associated with an entirely different genre, with trivial or no alterations to the rules engine itself.</p><p></p><p>1) <em>Roleplaying</em> is nothing more or less than controlling an avatar in a game that we've all collectively decided is a roleplaying game.</p><p></p><p>Roleplaying is <em>not</em> performative thespianism, affecting a voice or an accent, improvising dialog, or any other kind of playacting. Nor is RP making decisions that you, the player would not make: it isn't making choices based on the internal motivation/psychology of the character as distinct from the player, it isn't avoiding metagaming, it isn't "getting into character." It's just <em>controlling</em> the character, i.e. making decisions, any decisions, regardless of how you, the player, justify them.</p><p></p><p>It does not matter if (to use some old Forge terminology) you're taking an actor stance, a pawn stance, an authorial stance, or a directorial stance; what matters is that you're controlling a character in a roleplaying game, which as far as I can tell is any game where the player can try anything in spite of whatever game mechanics are present, and those attempts—those decisions—can impact both the mechanical game-state and the fictional universe. In other words, roleplaying games are games that have both fictional positioning and tactical infinity, and <em>roleplaying</em> must be construed as <em>every single game-impacting decision that we make</em> while playing such a game.</p><p></p><p>To privilege, e.g., a motivated actor stance as "real" roleplaying is untenable anyway, because players are <em>constantly</em> shifting between stances as they play. It's entirely possible to make a decision based purely on character psychology one moment, and then make a tactically sound metagame decision in the next, and <em>there can never be any way for another player (let alone an NPC) to meaningfully tell the difference</em>.</p><p></p><p>It is nonsensical to tie roleplaying to "what the character would do," since doing anything in game de facto makes whatever was done <em>exactly</em> what the character would do. Even if we're rationalizing it post hoc, it doesn't matter. The player made the character do it; so, whatever it is, it's what the character would do. And even if that seems to defy reason or previously established patterns, it doesn't matter. The PC is by definition "possessed" by the player; constraining oneself to consistency with previously established patterns is <em>not</em> a requirement.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jack Daniel, post: 9097936, member: 694"] Oh, I've got a few hills. Perhaps I'll just keep it to the extra spicy for today. My top two: 2) [I]Rules engines[/I] are always separable from [I]game settings[/I], and it's only the setting that does any real work emulating a genre of fiction. Rules engines do [I]modes of gameplay[/I]. In the same way that you can have a sci-fi shooter, platformer, or action-RPG among video games (say, [I]Gradius[/I] vs. [I]Metroid[/I] vs. [I]Mass Effect[/I]), you can have a sci-fi dungeon-crawler or a sci-fi tacti-trad game or a sci-fi storytelling game on the tabletop. Thematically, the genre and the mode can reinforce the other, but that doesn't always have to be the case. There can also be productive dissonance. Horror offers a good example. [I]Call of Cthulhu[/I] is a game whose genre is cosmic horror, and the mode of gameplay is thematically consonant: investigation. If you play a [I]Ravenloft[/I] game with AD&D 1e, on the other hand, the genre will be a mix of Gothic horror and high fantasy, but that doesn't really alter the dungeon-crawler mode of play. Even if you come up with a rules engine that seems so inextricably bound to its setting that it must, in your mind, be doing work to produce a genre-appropriate "feel," I [I]guarantee[/I] you that I could pressgang it into working beautifully for an entirely different setting associated with an entirely different genre, with trivial or no alterations to the rules engine itself. 1) [I]Roleplaying[/I] is nothing more or less than controlling an avatar in a game that we've all collectively decided is a roleplaying game. Roleplaying is [I]not[/I] performative thespianism, affecting a voice or an accent, improvising dialog, or any other kind of playacting. Nor is RP making decisions that you, the player would not make: it isn't making choices based on the internal motivation/psychology of the character as distinct from the player, it isn't avoiding metagaming, it isn't "getting into character." It's just [I]controlling[/I] the character, i.e. making decisions, any decisions, regardless of how you, the player, justify them. It does not matter if (to use some old Forge terminology) you're taking an actor stance, a pawn stance, an authorial stance, or a directorial stance; what matters is that you're controlling a character in a roleplaying game, which as far as I can tell is any game where the player can try anything in spite of whatever game mechanics are present, and those attempts—those decisions—can impact both the mechanical game-state and the fictional universe. In other words, roleplaying games are games that have both fictional positioning and tactical infinity, and [I]roleplaying[/I] must be construed as [I]every single game-impacting decision that we make[/I] while playing such a game. To privilege, e.g., a motivated actor stance as "real" roleplaying is untenable anyway, because players are [I]constantly[/I] shifting between stances as they play. It's entirely possible to make a decision based purely on character psychology one moment, and then make a tactically sound metagame decision in the next, and [I]there can never be any way for another player (let alone an NPC) to meaningfully tell the difference[/I]. It is nonsensical to tie roleplaying to "what the character would do," since doing anything in game de facto makes whatever was done [I]exactly[/I] what the character would do. Even if we're rationalizing it post hoc, it doesn't matter. The player made the character do it; so, whatever it is, it's what the character would do. And even if that seems to defy reason or previously established patterns, it doesn't matter. The PC is by definition "possessed" by the player; constraining oneself to consistency with previously established patterns is [I]not[/I] a requirement. [/QUOTE]
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