But, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], you rarely have anyone else in the kitchen when preparing a meal. You aren't making any sort of presentation while cooking, because, well, typically you're by yourself. OTOH, during a game, a DM is always presenting. The DM is presenting every single element of the game that isn't being presented by the other players.
Of course DMing is a performance. I'm actually a bit surprised that this is contentious. DMing isn't conversation
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Gaming is partially performance. Great gaming is very much a performance by all participants who are engaged in creating something that everyone finds entertaining. Simply laying out dry bone facts on the table and then asking which the players want to engage with isn't a fun game to me. That's Warhammer, not role play.
I don't agree with the comparison to Warhammer. And I want to stick by my comparison to conversation. I'll try to explain.
Central to RPGing on the player side is
being one's character. Some people use the term "immersion" but personally I find that that terms carries a lot of baggage. So I prefer to talk about
inhabitation of one's character. What I mean by inhabitation, by being one's character, is that - as a player - the choice situation in the game should (in some sense) be the same as the choice faced by one's PC.
Because they're (obviously) not
literally the same, imagination is involved. The player has to imagine him-/herself as the character. This imaginative projection is what makes events in the fiction
matter - eg the reason why I, as player, am shocked by the discovery that Evard was my (PC's) grandfather is because I, as player, am imaginatively projecting myself into the fiction of my character. A good game system should help with this - for instance, it should be designed so as to engender correpsonding emotions in player and PC (eg it should produce a sense of tension in the player that correlates to moments of tension for the PC, which can be done through the design of action resolution rules).
This is the difference from Warhammer. Warhammer - and similar tabletop wargaing/boardgaming - don't involve this imaginative aspect of inhabiting the character, and they don't locate it at the heart of making choices in the game.
Turning to the comparison to conversation. Conversation isn't monologue, and isn't performance: it's
engagement with another person, responding to what they say and inviting their response to whay you say. It's a back-and-forth that is more than just the turn-taking of a boardgame or wargame.
The back-and-forth in RPGing is structured, and focused, in a way that differs from typical conversation. But it's still a back-and-forth of response and invitation-to-respond. The GM has to present (imagined) situations that invite response from the players. And the players have to not only respond, but respond in ways that invite something
to come next.
DMing isn't conversation - that implies a completely equal level and type of participation by everyone in the conversation. I present an idea, you agree or disagree, present your idea and back and forth. But, running a game isn't like that. You are running a game, not engaging in a back and forth exchange of ideas. Even in pass the story stick type indie games, you still generally have the idea that the person presenting the information is doing so in such a fashion as to increase the entertainment at the table. Or, at the very least, keep things moving along.
I think this may be the core of our different opinions on this matter.
I think that RPGing very much
is the presentation of an idea, and agreement or disagreement. Of course - and here we do agree - the roles of GM and player (in a typically-structured RPG) aren't the same. The GM has to present one category of idea -
the engaging situation - and the players a different category of idea -
here's how I respond - and the motivations are also different from normal conversation - the player, in particular, should be deriving responses from imaginative inhabitation of his/her PC.
But it's still a back-and-forth of ideas: ideas about the shared fiction. The function of the game mechanics, when they get activated, is to settle disagreements about those ideas when the two participants are each sticking to their guns.
Just as a conversation sometimes falls flat, or comes to a halt, so can RPGing. Keeping it going, by responding and inviting response, is a skill (but not an
artistic performance skill). Inexperienced players, or players who have developed bad turtling habits at a particular sort of table, have trouble declaring actions that invite a
here's what comes next from the GM. Inexperienced GMs sometimes have trouble framing situations that invite response - in particular, they can sometimes want to write in the response also (this takes many forms: some examples include GMPCs or dominating NPCs; deus ex machina resolutions; flat-out railroading; etc). They can also have trouble with establishing consequences that invite response rather than shut down response (and too much of this can lead to the aforementioned turtling, which in my personal view is a death-spiral for good RPGing).
Simply laying out dry bone facts on the table and then asking which the players want to engage with isn't a fun game to me.
That's not whay I'm describing.
Asking the players what they want to engage with isn't presenting an engaging situation to them.
Just the same as offering someone a list of possible conversation topics isn't conversing with them. In fact, a typical way in which a certain sort of shy or socially inept person demonstrates that shyness or social inaptutide is by presenting a list of topics rather than actually conversing.
But what I am asserting is that
presenting an engaging situation isn't an artistic performance challenge. It's not about eloquence of wording. It's about the idea - the
invitation to respond which the player then picks up on.
Which is what I was pointing to in the Strahd example: a situation containing
covered furniture,
an open window through which enters a breeze and moonlight, and
a mirror that does not reflect is an invitation to respond. That's where the power of the description lies when considered from the point of view of RPGing.
