No, they are part of the imagination. Fictions are parts of stories. Both are obviously real
Allow me to reiterate part of the definition of "fiction" I cited upthread: "an imaginary thing or event, postulated for the purposes of argument or explanation".
Orcs, in the playing of D&D, are imaginary things, postulated for the purposes of reasoning about them - eg what happens to them when the PCs (also imaginary things) attack them with swords.
Orcs are not "obviously real". They are obviously imaginary. Polar bears are obviously real. Dodos were, in the past, real but now are extinct. Orcs have never existed. They are made up!
The imagination is real, in the sense that it is a real human faculty. The objects of imagination are not real, though - they are imaginary! (And "imaginary" is an antonym for "real".) In this respect the objects of imagination are like the objects of hallucination, of delusion, of false belief.
I am setting up a predefined game world (of tried-and-true rigorous game design) for the players to actually be able to discover and manipulate
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.
The players of D&D can't do stuff that characters are said to do in books. For instance, REH's Conan climbs sheer walls barehanded, fights off werehyenas, pulls himself of a cross, leads bands of pirates, slays hordes of picts, etc, etc. The players of D&D don't do any of that stuff. They sit around tables, rolling dice, performing simple arithmetic calculations, and making various notations on bits of paper.
The only connection between the player of D&D, and REH's character of Conan, is that a player of D&D sometimes
imagines his/her PC doing things like Conan did. In that respect, the game is different from chess - it is no part of playing chess to imagine the pieces fighting, for instance, or to ask what colour the black queen's eyes are. Whereas those sorts of things are part and parcel of playing D&D (for instance, when meeting an NPC queen, it's perfectly permissible for a D&D player to ask the GM what colour the NPC's eyes are, and then declare "I compliment her on the [insert colour word here] shade of her eyes - does that give me a bonus to the reaction roll?").
Your gameworld, predefined or not, is also imaginary. The land of Greyhawk does not exist. Maure Castle does not exist. The Duchy of Ursnt does not exist. These are all made up. As the old logo used to have it, they are "Products of the Imagination".
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.
Edwards has never said that RPGing requires or expects the performance of a fictional personality. In fact he expressly denies this, thereby agreeing with you. He even has a label to describe RPGing in which no one is required or expected to perform a fictional personality. He calls it "pawn stance".
However, Gygax absolutely thinks that RPGing requires imaginary
persons (called characters, both player- and non-player- versions thereof). He thinks they're so important that he dedicated pages and pages of rules explaining how to create them as, and out of, game elements. Some of those game elements do not engage the game fiction (eg hit points, experience points, arguably saving throw bonuses and experience levels). Others of them do. For instance, the rules for how much time actions take in melee are to be worked out based on imaginative projection from the established fictional situation. Consider, for instance, p 100 of the PHB: "The time required to cast (read) a scroll spell is exactly that shown for the memorized spell. Of course, this assumes the scroll is in hand and ready to read". That is not a rule about the
player's hand. It is a rule that engages the
imagined hand of the (imaginary) player character.
Consider, also, p 64 of the same book: "The relatively short casting time for those spells with a material component assumes the magic-user as decided upon which spell he or she will employ, and the material or materials needed are at hand . . . If this is not the case, there will be a delay commensurate to the situation. . . having to search through a pack to locate some component is as good as wasting 5 segments - 30 seconds."
In the passage just quoted, once again the "hand" in question is not that of the player. It is the imagined hand of the imaginary character. The situation, also, is not a real situation - the delay is not commensurate to some event taking place in the real world. The delay is commensurate to some
imagined event, such as the (imaginary) character searching through his/her (imaginary) backpack.
Edwards gesture of "gamism" towards actual game play and games is as biased as they come.
<snip>
Every bit of Edwards' philosophy is founded on games as stories.
<snip>
There are far more, seemingly endless biases and deliberate misrepresentations on his part
Nothing in the passage I cited asserts or implies that games are stories. Consider the most important sentence I quoted: "The players, armed with their understanding of the game and their strategic acumen, have to Step On Up. Step On Up requires strategizing, guts, and performance from the real people in the real world". This is a statement about the players. It states what they need - namely (i) an understanding of the game, and (ii) strategic acumen. It then states what they have to do - namely, evince "guts" and strategise and perform.
That is a perfect description of what a chess player does. A chess player, armed with his/her understanding of the game of chess (eg rules, known openings and defences, having read through games played by past masters, etc) and with his/her strategic acumen, has to step on up and perform in the real world.
It is not remotely an adequate description of what a novelist does. A novelist does not need an understanding of any game, nor does s/he need strategic acumen. A novelist does need guts, but the way s/he evinces guts is completely different - she puts her creative product out in the world for others to see and therefore (by implication) to subject to aesthetic evaluation.
In short, nothing in Edwards' description of gamism bears any connection to storytelling.
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.
As others have noted, player characters have been called just that -
characters - from the beginning of the hobby. In the PHB (p 103), Gygax says this under the heading of "Traps, Tricks and Encounters":
During the course of an advanture, you will undoubtedly come across various forms of tricks and traps, as well as encounter monsters of one sort or another. While your DM will spend considerable time and effort to make all such occurrences effective, you and your fellow players must do everything within your collective power to make them harmless, unsuccessful or profitable.
And earlier, on p 101, he says:
Dungeon Adventures: Adventures into the underworld mazes are the most popular. The party equips itself and then sets off to enter and explore the dungeon of some castle, temple or whatever.
These all fall under Edward's definition of
situation - they are "the imaginative-thing we experience during play." That is, in playing Gygax's D&D, we experience underworld mazes with traps we want to avoid being harmed by, tricks we want to render unsuccessful, and encounters from which we hope to profit. In each case the consequence occurs both to the player and that player's character: harming the character is harming the player, by worsening his/her position relative to the gameplay (eg reduced capability to make "moves" during play); tricking the PC involves also tricking the player, into making an ill-judged move; profit to the PC is profit to the player, because of the XP-for-gold rule, which means that profit to the PC is an improved game position and increased capability for the player. (In AD&D, magic items are a double profit because they both confer XP
and directly confer an improved game position. For gold pieces this is not the case - they only
indirectly confer an improved game position, because you have to engage in further gameplay in order to get the benefits of your PC spending his/her money.)
We also can see here
setting - the dungeon and its backstory - but these are not relevant to play in and of themselves, but rather as material to be engaged in play - ie as situations. So far from Edwards rendering "every bit of content ungameable" (a phrase you use in a post not far upthread), Edwards is insisting that only gameable content is relevant to gamist play. He is saying that those RPGers who enjoy the setting and the story for its own sake are, from the point of view of Gygaxian D&D play, "pissing about" with irrelevant stuff.
That there is
colour here I think we can take utterly for granted - for instance, in quoting the spell-casting rules above I elided the references to the "numerous pockets and folds of the magic-user's garb"; and I haven't cited any of the level titles, all of which help establish the colour of the gameworld. That there is
system is also obvious - for instance, on p 105 of the PHB Gygax has a heading "combat procedures", and
procedures here is a synonym for
system. And it is not a mathematical system, by the way - as elaborated on pp 61ff of the DMG it is a series of steps for processing action declarations and determining the results of them.
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.
If you want to ignore me, whatever. That's no skin of my nose. But if you're going to impute opinions to me that I don't hold, have never asserted, and have
explicitly denied in posts that you have read and to which you have replied, then I will respond to set the record straight. You're entitled to your view about RPGing, but it's against board rules to misrepresent or make false imputations about other posters.
