That's just your theory
You're right. It is my theory, just like gravity is a theory.
Theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Subjectivity, Objectivity, and One True Wayism in RPGs
- Thread starter Mercurius
- Start date
You're right. It is my theory, just like gravity is a theory.
Theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Starfox
Hero
Care to explain these terms?
howandwhy99
Adventurer
Convergent and divergent are terms from academia regarding role play, mainly the field of sociology. They refer to roleplay simulation (RPS) more often than drama therapy, the work of Moreno, and psychodrama. RPS had literally millions of participants by the 1970's, while psychodrama was practically dead. So most people at the time of the RPG hobby's founding understood roleplaying as role training from a single trainer perspective (i.e. convergent). The game design of D&D followed in kind.
Convergent simply means the truth of what is being explored is held by only one person while the others interact with that person to discover it. Divergent design is where every person determines the truth at different times. If you know RP terminology, consider it a static versus alternating state of the Director position.
Convergent
Divergent
Divergently designed RPGs are currently held as the only functional game design mainly because of predominant theories in the industry. This means GM has no real special status in the game, but is only one of the many determiners of truth at the table. The determination of Director status is the actual game, normally a competitive game played peripherally to the story in order to gain storytelling rights. The emotions generated by the exterior game can be very complementary to those in the story. But the game rules themselves are not the story.
Convergently designed games are really just one game IMO, but more indicative of all RPGs in the past. There is exclusively only one person who is always the Director, the GM or DM or Referee. The game is played as an interactive pattern finding game where all the other players are in the position to determine what comes next based upon everything that has occurred so far. Here, the game is actually the fiction being expressed by the GM. Most PFGs call the other participants a "cooperation group" (I'm using this term from another PFG website), though a game does not need to be set up as a cooperative game.
From my study of the rulebooks, early D&D appears to be designed as the latter form with hidden rules as suggestions or guidelines and with a balance of difficulty towards a cooperative game. This really only means cooperative strategies by the players are rewarded more heavily than working individually or in competition with others. Cooperation is not assumed in a cooperative game, but is a meaningful choice. These types of games can be hard to accept for anyone who simply wants to work together as a rule (something not insured beyond table rules in D&D).
You're right. It is my theory, just like gravity is a theory.
Theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Quantum gravity has not been experimentally verified yet. It's largely been a series of failed theories, one after another for the last 80+ years.
Starfox
Hero
You are trying to say that in most modern RPGs, all players including the gamemaster has an equal say in the shape of the game and on what is true in the campaign? That is NOT my experience. Yes, there has been a trend towards "player empowerment" in RPGs. You get to make the decisions about your character, not the dice. And there are rules that limit the ways the gamemaster can play around with your character. That is one of the uses of rules, for players to use as leverage and to enforce a common world view. But to go from there to saying that all players have equal say in the game world is... I don't agree with that. If it is a trend in game design, then its not the one used at WotC.
If you meant something different, could you please explain this point further? Maybe you were not talking about RPGs as entertainment but RPGs as therapy? Or this might be some indie design trend I've not heard much about?
Fifth Element
Legend
I daresay it wasn't the thought, but the appeals to authority and/or name-dropping, depending on how you look at it.
Snoweel
First Post
Raven Crowking
First Post
(Shrug) The man writes from within the scientific community, makes a better argument than I could, and backs up his statements with research. You could look at it as "appeals to authority and/or name-dropping", or you could look at it as "citing source". I guess it depends upon reader bias.
Raven Crowking
First Post
Especially if it can be made extremely mathematical and/or theoretical.
No reference to suggesting reading material for those who are interested, I note. Although, perhaps the posters thought they were doing so. The specific claims are complication, math, and theory. That sounds like "Thought = Elitist!" to me, but it could just be my reader bias.
RC
howandwhy99
Adventurer
Check back on my previous post. This is not about more or less storytelling rights for one person. There were no rules in D&D about determining who gets to say the story next. The DM had final say on everything. Rules for trading off story rights are a storygame creation. That game form is inherent to divergent RP.
The term GM has been redefined, so it is no longer a unique position required by the game form. Instead it becomes simply a holdover from the past where one player has more storytelling rights than others. In a PFG, there are no storytelling rights of the players. They are not trying to express their desires, but guess what is going to happen next in order to accomplish goals. A person in a storygame with more story rights than others are not Game Masters. There are no impartial referees, DMs, or GMs in those games as originally defined.
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