My Attempt to Define RPG's - RPG's aren't actually Games
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
In the above, I've coloured all the bits that are set-up/creation. (and in the giant steading example there seems to be an awful lot missing such as visual descriptions, narrations, etc. - if this is all that was actually said this seems like a very sparse game. But, I digress...) The uncoloured bits are play.
Creation is a prelude to play even if it occurs during play - that's the bit you can't seem to grasp here. The player creates the ox (set-up) then uses that ox in play by leading it into (what he hopes is) the chieftain's hall.
The player creates the pallisade in the same sentence he has his PC climb up said pallisade. Set-up and play happen simultaneously here.
Lanefan
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Creating the fish vendor comes from the PCs. Players in [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game create goals, such as "I want to free my brother from the Balrog." and the like. That's all the set-up his game has. The rest of it is like Pictionary. Where Pictionary tells you what to draw and then you create within that framework, the goals set forth by the players on their PCs informs [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] on what types of things to improvise and then he creates within THAT framework.
He doesn't have to create before playing it out. He creates as a part of play. In [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]'s example, he did not create the fish vendor and then have the PCs go there. He created the fish vendor as the PCs walked there. Play and creation are done together in that style of play.
My very first post on this subject was that almost all games have set-up, but RPG creation is longer and more involved that most. I never said that the different kinds of set-up were the same or equal. That was all you reading things into my words that just plain weren't there.
Drawing is not part of the set-up, but it is creation. This is identical in how it plays out to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s style of play. In his game the creation of the bazaar with the angel feather was not set-up, either. It was creation that happened as a part of playing the game, withing the framework set up by the players. No scenario is created as a part of set-up with his playstyle.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Technically, the player proposes the fish vendor and the mechanics validate or reject it. The GM here is doing nothing except narrating that validation or rejection. Essentially, the GM gets to play when the players fail.
The self-quote is from the first page of this thread. I was the first poster in this thread to identify creation of a shared fiction as a key element in RPGing.
That's not in dispute.
What's in dispute is what I have bolded in the two quotes from [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]: that creation is preparation for play rather than, itself, a key component of RPG play.
No argument in favour of that proposition has been put forward in this thread. It's not true to my own experience. And it seems to rest on an unsound generalisation from two ways of playing D&D: (i) the GM draws a dungeon map and writes notes, and the heart of play is the players declaring moves that enable them to learn what the GM created and thereby make it true, in the fiction, that their PCs are looting the dungeon; (ii) the GM writes up a series of events - a scenario, like DL or any of dozens of post-DL modules/APs - and then the players "play through" the adventure.
But as far as my own episodes of play, which I've posted an linked to are concerned: when I tell the players, ie my friends, who are sitting with me about a dining room table, "You're at a market in Hardby. A peddler of trinkets has an angel feather for sale. He says its from the Bright Desert," I'm not getting ready to play. I'm playing the game. I've just made a "move" in the game, namely, establishing some piece of shared fiction that is also an invitation to them to make "moves", by declaring actions for their PCs and thereby establishing some more shared fiction.
You seem to accept that drawing, in Pictionary, is simply playing the game. Why do you deny that the GM making stuff up in the course of playing a RPG is simply playing the game?
Why do you insist that playing is not playing? What do you think is at stake in framing that moment of my play as, in fact, preparatory to play?
(I can think of some possible answers - eg you don't regard anything which is not action declaration for a PC or NPC as a "move" in the game - but I'm curious as to what your actual answer is.)
This isn't true. You yourself quoted the rules from Moldvay Basic, which tell the GM and players what is involved in playing a game: the GM will draw a dungeon map, and write up a catalogue-like description of its contents, in advance of play; and play will then consist of the players saying what things their PCs do to try and explore that dungeon and take the treasure out of it.
The rules for Burning Wheel, Prince Valiant and Marvel Heroic RP contain rules that occupy the same functional space, although the details of the instructions are different.
It's true the rules for Burning Wheel don't say "Tell the players they're in a market with a peddler." It's equally true that the rules for Pictionary don't tell you, when drawing a picture in response to the card that says "knife", you should draw a serrated or a non-serrated knife. Playing Pictionary has an inelinimable element of making stuff up. Playing a RPG has a bigger, more expansive element of making stuff up. That's what playing the game consists in.
(Also, the last sentence in this quote is consistent with a conjecture that you only regard action resolution as actually playing a RPG. If that's the case, it would probably help the thread if you state it clearly, plus your reasons for thinking this.)
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Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Where, in your example, does the DM play? This is another problem with your concept -- the DM doesn't ever play the game.
To look at Blades in the Dark, again, here's the list of who gets to make the call on what:
As you can see, the players have quite a bit of discretion in dictating how play goes. They have the final say on what can be done. The GM gets to moderate that with how hard what can be done is and what consequences occur (and, not listed here, is there's a player mechanic for denying consequences) and when a roll is needed. So, the players dictate what is happening, the GM sets if there's a check and how hard that check is and what happens if it fails. Otherwise, the players are calling the shots through their play.[URL="https://bladesinthedark.com/core-system" said:
Now, Blades has a setting that's intricately tied to the mechanics. Everything has repercussions, essentially, and the setting is a strong element of play. But, even there, the setting is very high level because what those details actually are is meant to be determined by the players through play. So, even single game of Blades is unique in setting, because the sketch given is filled in by the players, not the GM, and it's done during play.
For what it's worth, the thing that sold me on Blades is 'this is a game where you play scoundrels doing bad things, usually to other bad people. If you want, you can have a criminal enterprise that involves selling drugs to ghosts.' It turns out that selling drugs to ghosts isn't something the rulebook has in it, but you can certainly have that happen in play. It's very, very different from D&D, but it totally scratches that itch for heist/skullduggery games that D&D struggles with. Don't get me wrong, I love 5e, but Blades does a very different thing. It's nice to have more than one toy, sometimes.
You're mistaken - I understand what you're saying, I just know that it's not true.
Here's one way I know it's not true: X is set up for Y entails that X occurs prior to Y entails that X is not simultaneous with Y.
And also: X is a prelude to Y entails that X occurs prior to Y entails that X is not simultaneous with Y.
Your equation of creation with set-up is leading you into obvious contradiction. And there's an obvious solution: abandon that equation, and actually look at what is happening at the table where the game is being played.
The biggest obstacle to having serious discussions about how RPGs work is this tendency to insist on dogmatic frameworks that have no foundation in the full variety of RPG play. (Typically they idealised versions of a type of 70s or 80s D&D play. Which is weird in [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s case, because I know that he's played plenty of non-D&D RPGs.)
Imagine a table playing classic dungeon-crawling D&D.
The PCs are in a corridor that is 100' long, with corners at each end leading in both cases to more dungeon with extensive corridors, rooms and contents.
When the players are halfway down the 100' long corridor the GM makes a wandering monster check. It comes up 6 (or 1, depending on the table's convention) and an encounter is called for. The GM rolls on the appropriate chart and gets 5 orcs. The GM calls for a surprise check - neither side is surprised. The GM rolls for encounter distance: it's 60', which means that the orcs are around one or the other corner. It seems likely that the PCs can hear them - no surpise has occureed, after all.
But before the GM narrates "You hear a group of people apparently not far around the corner . . .", s/he has to know which corner the orcs are around. To the best of my reclollection neither AD&D nor Moldvay Basic has a rule that willl tell the GM which corner the orcs are around. The GM has to make it up - either arbitrarily, or because one corner seems to make more sense given what the GM knows of the dungeon, or by rolling a die, or by some other means or combination of means.
During this whole process - which, with a skilled D&D referee shouldn't be taking more than a minute or so - what is the GM doing? S/he is playing D&D. Which is to say that s/he is playing a RPG.
This insisted-upon contrast between creation of fiction and playing a RPG is spurious.
The PCs are in a corridor that is 100' long, with corners at each end leading in both cases to more dungeon with extensive corridors, rooms and contents.
When the players are halfway down the 100' long corridor the GM makes a wandering monster check. It comes up 6 (or 1, depending on the table's convention) and an encounter is called for. The GM rolls on the appropriate chart and gets 5 orcs. The GM calls for a surprise check - neither side is surprised. The GM rolls for encounter distance: it's 60', which means that the orcs are around one or the other corner. It seems likely that the PCs can hear them - no surpise has occureed, after all.
But before the GM narrates "You hear a group of people apparently not far around the corner . . .", s/he has to know which corner the orcs are around. To the best of my reclollection neither AD&D nor Moldvay Basic has a rule that willl tell the GM which corner the orcs are around. The GM has to make it up - either arbitrarily, or because one corner seems to make more sense given what the GM knows of the dungeon, or by rolling a die, or by some other means or combination of means.
During this whole process - which, with a skilled D&D referee shouldn't be taking more than a minute or so - what is the GM doing? S/he is playing D&D. Which is to say that s/he is playing a RPG.
This insisted-upon contrast between creation of fiction and playing a RPG is spurious.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
There are variations of that style I'm sure. The way [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has described the game play with the angel feather, the players created goals for their PCs and he was able to introduce content leading towards those goals. He created the bazaar and angel feather in response to the PC goal of freeing his brother from the Balrog. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] creation was just constrained by the players' vision, not restricted playing when they fail. The player then failed an arcana check I think it was and the feather turned out to be cursed as a consequence.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
The DM plays the game during combat, and when role-playing one or more established NPCs either in or out of combat, and when adjudicating things specified under the rules. Most of the rest of what a DM usually does comes under set-up.
So here the players are taking on some of the GM's set-up duties; and the GM is more of an adjudicator.
The same relative amount of set-up vs. play still occurs, only the people doing it and the times it is done are different than in a traditional game.
Anything to do with defining the setting is by definition set-up. Seems here that some high-level stuff is done by the GM ahead of time (choosing to use the default setting and all that follows from this choice) while the players - and maybe the GM to an extent - do the low-level set-up during play. Simple enough.
Cool. I've occasionally managed to do some heist/skullduggery stuff using 1e but yeah, the system does tend to fight back.
The question in reverse then becomes: is Blades flexible enough to decently run a Gygaxian dungeon crawl?
Lanefan
