Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art

[Neonchameleon]

Every bit of Edwards' philosophy is founded on games as stories. They are "Characters" not playing pieces. They are "Situations" not designs. They are "Systems" (a term he often had to repeat was not mathematical system) not patterns. They are "Setting" and "Color" not Out-Of-Game elements not relevant to gaming or game play.

There are far more, seemingly endless biases and deliberate misrepresentations on his part, but I've not seen your posts for some time now to discuss them. Which makes me uncomfortable as I shouldn't have Mentioned you if I couldn't. I apologize for that.

In fact I've got a couple of questions for you.

1: Which RPGs do you play?
2: Can you find me any professionally published RPGs that refer to:
a: Playing pieces rather than characters?
b: Designs rather than situations, scenarios, or encounters?
c: Patterns rather than an RPG system?
d: Out of game elements not relevant to gaming or game play rather than settings?

Because going back to the 90s and even 80s I can think of RPGs that talked about characters and NPCs (hell, D&D did in the 70s), encounters and situations, called themselves RPG systems (like GURPS - the Generic Universal Role-Playing System (aka the Great Un-named Role-Playing System)) and settings like Warhammer, Darksun, Planescape.

Your problem here is quite literally that Edwards is using standard RPG terminology and so far as I can tell you really really​ aren't.

 

[Bawylie]

A little strange to refer to Edwards' gibberish as standard game terminology. It only became standard after everyone started repeating that waffle.

 

[Neonchameleon]

A little strange to refer to Edwards' gibberish as standard game terminology. It only became standard after everyone started repeating that waffle.

GNS wasn't standard before Edwards. But the cases mentioned by Howandwhy and that I listed were all standards back in the 90s.

 

[howandwhy99]

I don't believe this!

We've referred to characters, either as Player Characters or as Non-Player Characters right back to the 1E DMG. Gygax was happy with this terminology and it has been standard for RPGs ever since - while talking about playing pieces has not. Because there is, as you say, a huge conceptual gap. The rest of it is all also standard RPG terminology.

If this is your argument you are rejecting all RPGs right back to Gygax's AD&D, if not oD&D itself.

Gygax was making a game. One of the game designs in those games was labeled a "character" because he was accustomed to creating simulation games. No one was ever required or even expected to perform a fictional personality. He was trying to make games emulate the stories he loved. And like almost every other living person in the 1970s he didn't think games were stories. D&D was chocolate & peanut butter, but at it's heart and soul it was always a game. Meaning this wasn't about enabling players to create stories, it was about making games where players had to succeed in game designs similar to how Conan was shown to succeed in Robert E. Howard short stories. However, unlike reading or writing a story the players needed to actually succeed at the game. Their Conans could fail, even die due to players failing at the game.

"Character" and "Settings" are narrative terms usurped by Gygax to become game terms. Who knew that world would be flipped on its head and passed off as "the way it's always been"?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Gygax was making a game. One of the game designs in those games was labeled a "character" because he was accustomed to creating simulation games. No one was ever required or even expected to perform a fictional personality. He was trying to make games emulate the stories he loved.

And trying to make games emulate the stories the author loves is the purpose of story-games. I don't understand your problem with them.

"Character" and "Settings" are narrative terms usurped by Gygax to become game terms. Who knew that world would be flipped on its head and passed off as "the way it's always been"?

Who knew that things done at the creation of the hobby would be considered the way the hobby has always been?

RPGs are not wargames. And you yourself admit that the terms used are the ones Gygax himself used. There is very little always for RPGs that predates Gygax and Arneson.

 

[howandwhy99]

In fact I've got a couple of questions for you.

1: Which RPGs do you play?
2: Can you find me any professionally published RPGs that refer to:
a: Playing pieces rather than characters?
b: Designs rather than situations, scenarios, or encounters?
c: Patterns rather than an RPG system?
d: Out of game elements not relevant to gaming or game play rather than settings?

1. We play a helluva lot in our group. OD&D, Basic Blue Box, Pathfinder (a few), 3.5 (a lot), Necessary Evil, Deadlands Savage Worlds, original Marvel Superheroes, Silver Age Sentinals, Hackmaster, and some one offs of stuff like Call of Cthulhu, plus a lot of boardgames, some card games. Unless you count Magic:tG, which I don't play but many of the guys are quite good at. Plus a lot of console games, especially fighting games of which some guys are rated. These I just do on occasion casually.

2. Gygax put in play narrative terms for games, something that obviously has come back to bite gaming in the tuckus. But games where studied for centuries before The Big Model came around to redefine the entirety of RPG-land and more besides.

Again, in no way is that theory relevant to RPGs prior to the millennia. 2e and White Wolf withstanding, those games were simply very badly run. The first due to poor management, the second due to fear of going too far out of games and into stories with its rules. D&D was never in anyone's right mind designed to tell stories. It's a game through and through.

Your problem here is quite literally that Edwards is using standard RPG terminology and so far as I can tell you really really​ aren't.

When did you join the hobby? Mid-90s at the earliest? Last decade? Your game terms are usurped from narrative traditions. And because previous designers failed to see the need to define those terms in actual game theory Edwards used them to deceive it redefining the whole hobby as the telling of stories (it never was before regardless of bad 90s press) removing the possibility of even playing a game as a separate, unique act. He's a narrative absolutist though. All existence is narrative for him.

 

[Neonchameleon]

When did you join the hobby? Mid-90s at the earliest? Last decade? Your game terms are usurped from narrative traditions. And because previous designers failed to see the need to define those terms of actual game theory Edwards redefined the whole hobby as the telling stories (it never was before regardless of bad press) removing the possibility of even playing a game as a separate, unique act. He's a narrative absolutist though. All existence is narrative for him.

The game terms are usurped from narrative traditions because as you yourself said Gygax was trying to make games that work like stories. As for Edwards redefining the whole hobby as telling stories, firstly Edwards reach hasn't been that broad - and secondly the most influential system of the 90s was quite literally the Storyteller System.

 

[howandwhy99]

And trying to make games emulate the stories the author loves is the purpose of story-games. I don't understand your problem with them.

You bothered to read the rest of what I wrote right? Storygames aren't "gaming the fiction" as Edwards so derogatorily put it. They separate the game design from "the shared fiction" and from that point on pretty much fail to be RPGs instead of storygames.

RPGs are not wargames. And you yourself admit that the terms used are the ones Gygax himself used. There is very little always for RPGs that predates Gygax and Arneson.

Obviously you didn't read what I wrote. A label isn't meaning.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You bothered to read the rest of what I wrote right? Storygames aren't "gaming the fiction" as Edwards so derogatively put it.

The thing is Story games are games. You have established in the past that you don't play or understand storygames. You've made up your own definition of what storygames are that bears a little resemblance to freeform roleplaying and excludes a lot of storygames. They are games where playing them with skill will end up with a story that looks very much like the sort of story they are trying to emulate, whether Teen Horror (Monsterhearts) Gothic Horror (My Life With Master), Cohen Brothers (Fiasco), Mad Max/Streets of Fire (Apocalypse World), or others. But they are games - and in at least the cases of AW and Monsterhearts games where you gain XP and influence.

Your claims of what they aren't merely show that you don't know what they are and can't be bothered to look.

Edit: And labels do have meaning. Why do you think we use them? It's basic semiotics and basic communication.

 

[howandwhy99]

The game terms are usurped from narrative traditions because as you yourself said Gygax was trying to make games that work like stories. As for Edwards redefining the whole hobby as telling stories, firstly Edwards reach hasn't been that broad - and secondly the most influential system of the 90s was quite literally the Storyteller System.

You remember GenCon 1990? How WW thumbed its nose to the entire hobby and claimed it wasn't an RPG, but a Storytelling Game? And most D&D players didn't want anything to do with them or telling stories after the Dragonlance debacle? I have no problem with storygames being in a different hobby. I don't think you realize that's where you are, in a different hobby. It's Edwards that made Storygames de rigeur for all "RPG" labelled games.

Gygax was simply trying to make games. He wanted games that were actually games, but where you could do the stuff characters were said to do in books. Not games where game play was written out of the equation and every bit of content became ungameable.