That's great news. That's not what I was told repeatedly from people on that site 10 years ago.
First, if you were told that, then they were wrong. The Big Models official documentation, the Wikipedia entry, and the web domain dedicated to the The Big Model all indicate that it is a theory of RPGs and not a theory of games generally. I suppose some people might have tried to experimentally extend the concepts in the model to non-RPGs, but at this point I don't trust you to accurately report a conversation, so I have no idea what you may have been told.
You know, that's really funny. The reason I first heard about the Forge was as part of a story about some crazy guy online who was claiming all games were actually just "scenery shifting" (and wasn't being ironic). You've never heard that about them before?
I know what "scenery shifting" means. And I know that it is a term appropriated from stage craft. But again, at this point I have no reason to trust you to relate any anecdote accurately, so I have no idea what this "crazy guy" was trying to explain to you or what you took from that. In any event, googling "scenery shifting" and RPGs, Forge, and "The Big Model" does not return a lot of results so this "crazy guy" was clearly not trying to explain something central to any of the major proposed theories. I think either you or perhaps the person you were in a conversation wit were misremembering a term and reporting a very incomplete versions of an explanation of "framing a scene" and the relationship of a game engine to adjudicating changes of a game state. That language could be applied to just about every game, though in most cases I think it would be pointlessly over complicating the description.
I said in my Tic-Tac-Toe example earlier in this thread: a game is only a game if we treat it as such.
I don't think that is well established or accepted, and its a very novel rather 'post-modern' view of what a game is. Even if we say something is a game, it doesn't become a game any more than saying a tail is a leg makes it a leg. Saying that a forest is a game doesn't make it a game. I think that there is a general agreement among game theorists that a game has certain features, and if it has these features it is a game even if we do not play it. And with perhaps a bit less agreement, if it lacks these features, even if we make a play of it, then it isn't a game - although this assertion depends on the definition of play and whether it is different than game (a proposition complicated by the historical switch in meaning of the two terms back in the 14th century).
Gaming is its own unique culture. Storytelling is too. Both are great, but their ideas largely have no crossover. I'm not willingly going to let one be painted over by another no matter how self certain a group of true believers may be.
I don't even know what you mean by all of this, and whatever you may mean by it, it appears to be a rather strained and overcomplicated way of explaining yourself. Games are independent of the culture of gaming. A game remains a game regardless of how we culturally respond to it. A story is a story whether or not there is any culture of story telling. Culture is what we believe about things. It isn't the thing itself. And of course, there can be a cultural crossover between stories and games. You earlier asserted that video games were the true inheritors of a RPGs before they became corrupted. But of course we can respond to a video game as both a story and a game, and a story can be in the form of a game and a game can be in the form of a story. A game like Mass Effect, or Fallout, or Grim Fandango, or Skyrim, or Witcher III or even something like Nethack is both a game and has a story. And because it is a game, the playing of the game creates a particular story unique to that play experience. Things may happen in the game that don't happen in other plays of the game. And naturally, as both a game and a story, designers of video games draw on ideas from games, from game design, and from stories, and theories about narration. And when these things are well done, the story and the game interact with each other in ways that are immersive, compelling, and artistic.
And no one is painting over anything. No serious game designer creating an RPG or game with RPG elements is going to tell you, "Because I can tell a good story, I can do without good gameplay." as if tedious or pointless game play didn't diminish the experience, nor would any one say, "Because I have good game play, that game play is automatically diminished by story elements." And generally speaking, the creation of Mass Effect didn't paint over the culture of book lovers nor get lots of books thrown into the fire as pointless, nor did it paint over the culture of game lovers and cause gaming to be abandoned as a past time. Nor do I think there are very many people who have this as a goal.
To explain the quote: Games are pattern designs.
Just stop there. What is a "pattern design"? You are employing a term of art with a meaning known only to you. When I hear pattern design, the first thing I think of is embroidery.
They actually exist as such, whether it be in the world outside or minds or the piece of reality which is called fantasy which is our minds.
There seems to be some grammatical errors in that sentence that makes your meaning unclear. Most of it I can guess at, but to make sure I understand you, "Fantasy" is in our mind, but it is not literally the mind itself.
These patterns can be puzzled out as puzzles.
Perhaps. But this is unnecessarily complicating the description. When I play a game like Bloodbowl or Chess, and I make a tactical decision in the game, I don't think of the process of figuring out what to do next as puzzling out a pattern. I only think of patterns as being highly relevant to the decision making process when the game contains some sort of predictable pattern, such as a shooting game where the waves come in predictable patterns, or a side scrolling platformer where obstacles always appear in the same way every time the game is run. Is the game is randomized and in particular highly randomized, then I don't think of myself as puzzling out a pattern at all, because the game is unpredictable and all I'm doing from moment to moment is responding to the currently observable game state.
They can also be played as games by deciphering the pattern to achieve objectives within them.
Again, by 'pattern' you just seem to mean the current game state. You don't actually mean 'pattern' in its normal usage as a repeated and reoccurring feature or the process of making something repeating and reoccurring. Or perhaps you are using "pattern" as a synonym for "formula" or "function"?
This means a garden maze is a game when treated so.
No, or at least, only if you mean something other or more than what you actually wrote. A garden maze doesn't become a game until we give some additional features to it, like a goal, "Get to the center of the maze" or "Get to the center of the maze as fast as possible." Usually we also implicitly or explicitly have rules of some sort, like, "Don't kill the other players." and "Don't like climb over the hedges.", and so forth. Only after we have made "the garden maze game" is it a game. But the garden maze itself is never a game in and of itself. It is at most, a component of the game.
Again, the forest is never a game itself. It is at most a component of a game once a game has been created like "Hide and seek". "Hide in seek" is never the forest. It is just something you could play in the forest.
So, my point was, the origins of games do not come from people. They are games when treated as part of game culture.
So that's nonsense, and even more obviously nonsense than your assertion that a forest is a game if you treat it as such. Culture comes from people. Games comes from people. They are both things created by people. A game remains a game even if it has no culture and there is no cultural response to it. I have no idea what you mean by "culture" in this context. And the only game I can think of that is claimed not to have come from people, is the Mayan sacred ball game. Now that was a gaming culture, but its pretty obviously not the same gaming culture that exists now. I have no idea what you mean by a "gaming culture" as it is pretty evident that the culture of say football, fantasy football, and chess are different. I think you are using "culture" as a loose and perhaps inappropriate synonym for some other word or idea.
DMs drew their own mazes prior to play.
Stop. Again, DM's could be said to have drawn maps prior to play, but they could not necessarily be said to have drawn mazes. A map is not necessarily a maze, and usually isn't. A maze has distinctive topological features. A maze is a puzzle or game only if it has certain goals and rules we apply to it. The purpose of the map was not necessarily the same as the purpose of a maze, nor where the same rules and goals applied to it. It's perfectly possible to have an RPG map which doesn't have the purpose, "Explore this map.", because it is possible to have an RPG map which only documents what is already observable and communicated to the player, and it is possible to have an RPG map which lacks obstacles to navigate around. B2 actually has maps like this when documents the Keep that is on the borderlands, and the taverns and so forth. They are places where play can occur, but they aren't intended to be mazes.
This is required by the rules since 1974. Just see my post to MaxPerson upthread. This was mandatory, just like any wargame requires terrain.
Moreover, we know for a fact that not all RPG play occurs on a map. Leaving aside this assertion you make about the rules explicitly requiring it, whether they did or not, we know that not all activities occurred on a map. For example, the 13th level of Castle Greyhawk had a chute trap that deposited you on the other side of the world. At one point in the trap was activated and two players landed in what would become Kara Tur. At the time, no map existed for where you landed when the chute dropped you off, and there is no evidence that any maps were created for the characters adventures returning back to Greyhawk. The players were off the map and had been moved off the map by the map. But play didn't stop because of that. So clearly play didn't have to occur on a map, and therefore the map isn't mandatory.
More to the point, right from the start, the main claim I've been arguing with you is your assertion that RPGs (in their true form) have no improvisation. But it's quite clear you don't believe that. Because not only do you describe DMs drawing their own map, which is clearly improvisation, but its clear that since the very beginning of RPGs, DMs have been prepared to and at times instructed to improvise maps during the middle of play.
No one needed to be told that. It's the basic act of playing game that anyone in wargames knew instictively. Unless you also believe playing Axis & Allies is "collaborative storytelling" with the game "author". (Hint: It's a dynamic pattern that enables players to decipher it so they might achieve objectives more capably within it.)
No, but I don't claim Axis and Allies is an RPG either. I claim Axis and Allies is a wargame. And once again, you've made no attempt to actually show that Axis and Allies is "code breaking" or "pattern design". I play Axis and Allies, and I don't think of it in those terms tuitively or intuitively. I really just don't think "pattern design" is a good synonym for decision making.
Games can't be played without game rules.
At last we agree on something. But this would seem to contradict your earlier assertions about what a game is.
Again not synonyms. Maze isn't even an RPG term of art the way that "dungeon" is for historical and cultural reasons. And many games do quite well without "campaign maps" at all. You don't actually need a campaign map to play D&D, and Greyhawk began without one. When it found a need for a world map, EGG mentally borrowed a map of the United States for the purpose, placing the City of Greyhawk IIRC where Chicago would be and working from there. But RPGs don't need a campaign map. I could probably blow your mind by asserting that they don't need a map at all, although they aren't well suited to long term play without creating maps because eventually they need a more tangible description of the place the game is happening.
- a portion of which is a module -
No. A module is not merely a portion of a map. For one thing, the module can be played by itself, which would make its maps (if any) the whole map. For another, a module has many features other than possibly having a map. Module is a description of a scenario that usually has maps because things normally happen in places where it matters what the shape of that place is.
must be drawn by the DM before anyone could even think to play it (i.e. engage in solving to one or more objectives).
Again, just no. It's possible to begin play and even continue play without a map. Heck, it's often the case that play takes place off the map or I have to improvise a map because where it is taking place has not been mapped. There are many cases where this is true:
a) The actual space the scenario takes place in isn't particularly relevant, or interesting, and if it ever becomes relevant it would be easy to improvise a map. A good example would be starting a campaign with an encounter that is simply "on a road" or "in a tavern' or "in the street". I can begin play with, "You are travelling down the King's Highway, seeking your fortune in the great cosmopolitan city of Talernga, when - as you round a bend in a wooded area - a group of scruffy looking men walk out of the woods ahead of you. They are wearing armor and carrying weapons such as a peasant militia might have, but in ill-repair. Nonetheless, they seem confident and their evident leader - holding a morning star in two hands hails you by saying, "Top 'o the morning to ye, my lairds. I be Captain Jenkins, and these be my brave men and true. We are collecting tolls for the use of this road which you are travelling on, and we hope you will cooperate." And that's a perfectly good scenario even if I haven't mapped the road, or the campaign world, or the city of Talernga, and even if the MM doesn't assert that there is a percentage chance bandit leaders will be armed with morningstars.
c) Quite often, even if I do have a map of a region, I'll detailed at 30 miles to the inch or 5 miles to the inch, and that scale is utterly useless when the party has an encounter in a forest, desert, settled farmland, or anything else. So even if I decide that it matters that I have a map of the immediate environs of the encounter, I'm still going to have to improvise that map. But I don't actually need the map until the party interacts with the scenario in a way that a map actually matters. If the encounter is in grasslands, and the encounter occurs over a small region, I don't really need a map. Or if the encounter ends up being non-hostile, then I really don't care about the tactical positioning of the various factions that are interacting. I just have a scene that happens in a space.
d) In the case of something like an encounter in the high astral or far ethereal, there is often literally no terrain to begin with, so there is no need for a map at all. And I'm not going to create maps for whenever a character goes traipsing off into the Dreamlands for a short duration, to try to spy on a sleeping character or cozen someone sleeping into revealing information to them. Ditto for going into the Ethereal to seek a spirit to negotiate with, or anything of that sort.
e) Quite often, in wilderness trek, an unplanned encounter will occur that implies the existence of a lair of some sort - a cave, a ruined castle, a village, a mine, a den, a bog, a graveyard, a hollow tree, a boat, or who knows what. When that happens, it may become necessary to just make up a map on the spot. There is no pattern to what I might make up. It's in fact, patternless. It's probably not a maze in many cases. It's a tangible place for the encounter to happen in.
Screens hide this maze players are mapping on the other side.
If you are trying to say that one of the jobs of the GM is to be the secret keeper, and withhold information from the players until they discover it, then I agree. However this would contradict somewhat the idea that the only purpose of a GM is to be a referee, because in most games it is not the purpose of the referee to be the secret keeper. And in some games, players and not referees are the secret keepers. And in your Mastermind example, it is not clear to me that the secret keeper is a referee. And again, what secret is being kept isn't necessarily and often isn't a maze. And likewise, what may be hiding the information from the players is not necessarily a screen. The screen is in fact not mandatory.
And as I keep saying, these mazes are the actual game design.
Then you are wrong. A map is not a game design. A map is at most a mere component of a game.
Of course they aren't. They change the entire length of the campaign.
I have no idea what that means?
Even if you clear the entire dungeon level, time passes and wandering monsters will come by and make lairs.
Maybe.
Even if you collapse the entire level you still have a level of dirt and stone for players to dig through. It never goes away.
Maybe. It's entirely possible to have a dungeon that literally goes away once left. An example would be a dungeon that was occurring entirely within the dream of some powerful being, or a dungeon on a demiplane that is collapsing, or a dungeon falling into the negative elemental plane and as such will be disintegrated soon. You are taking things that are merely the way things usually work and insisting that they are mandatory features. And you are wrong.
The vast majority of published "modules" today aren't.
We aren't talking about "today". At no point have I cited a modern module. All the modules that I'm talking about would have been available to you when you were introduced to the game in the mid-80's. All of them are part of the culture of gaming of the mid-80's. All of them are modules and are recognized as such. All of them are part of what creates the template for our notion of what a module is. I have no idea where you get your notion of what a module is.
They are single sequence stories for players to follow. There is no game element to them.
That's false and that's also false. Unlike you, I'm presenting examples. You are making crap up again.
And DMs were told to restock the DMs map per the rules of the game.
Where? Give me a citation? And what are the rules for stocking or restocking a map? Again, give me a citation. I'm pretty darn familiar with the texts of 1e publications, so I have some ideas where your vague ideas might be coming from, but I think once you give me a citation I'll be able to prove that those "rules" don't actually involve any sort of pattern or mechanism, and at best are vague and non-mandatory advice.
Every DM needs to use rules for this, a pattern of restocking, to allow players to undestand what it's happening and why.
No they don't. Investigating restocked dungeons isn't even a major component of RPGs ever.
And these rolls are not improvisation when following pre-existing rules.
Which rules, and what if those rules are improvised? And even if there are suggestions regarding how to create content, in no manner is a DM required to follow them or even his own algorithms.
And "event based" modules are railroads, or presumed rails at best.
They can be, but so for that matter can a map. They are not always railroads, and even if railroads it's not clear under any definition - including yours - that they aren't games.
Yeah, the process needs to be predetermined by the DM. I mean, they had to stock the game board the first time with monsters and treasure, right?
No.
That wasn't to be arbitrary.
Do you even know what the word arbitrary means?
Millions of game players who play games other than RPGs. RPGs have been a confused enterprise since Gary poorly explained what he was doing and then 2e happened.
Yes, but they are still playing games. Your contention earlier was that games were being destroyed.
All I am saying is UK1 is a flawed design which doesn't work with the game.
In your opinion. In mine, I'd say it's an overlooked masterpiece of design that works very well with the game, albeit it is not a design that works well with every player since - as the module admits - it's not a design that will suit players that prefer to solve all problems with combat.
What is a "calendar map"? Do you mean a calendar? Do you mean a timeline?
That's what all those early modules publications functionally (or dysfunctionally) were.
So S1 Tomb of Horrors is a calendar map?
When you extend off the map we are leaving the game.
What? So, if I don't have a map of the round in the future after this one, then I'm leaving the map and need to start to a new campaign?
1000s years in the future is like thinking we can reset the Chess board based on calculations of what it will look like 100,000s of moves in the future. Time to start a new campaign.
No, not really. That's a terrible analogy. It's actually more like thinking the campaign has moved to a new part of the map, one which the DM has just constructed. No DM actually ticks off all the events round by round that are going on where the PC's aren't.
The game is dynamic, not situational. If you sit in the dungeon as a player, you are spending the primary resource of the game: time. Sooner or later you will see events occurring due to the pregenerated timeline made before every session, the scenario.
Wait.. every session has both a pregenerated map and a pregenerated timeline? Greyhawk sure as heck didn't start with a pregenerated timeline. What are you talking about? Some groups do quite well with no pregenerated timeline at all. I once spent a summer running an open dungeon crawl in the Greyhawk style for "whoever comes" at a gaming story in a very old school style, and I assure you we had no modules and no pregenerated timeline.
Obviously I strongly disagree. I'm guessing you're not interested why D&D is designed as it is.
LOL. I'm the one continually quoting the elements of D&D's design and how it came about and why, and you are the one making crap up.
