Prosfislaes said:
A game of Pictionary that gets played for classroom credit at an art college is an entirely different game, an entirely different type of game, then one played by drunk people at a party.
Read more:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Illusion-of-Game-Balance/page42#ixzz3HaFwqFiM
No, it isn't. It's exactly the same game. Nothing about that game is any different. The rules are the same, the exact same set up is used and the same materials.
The only thing that is different is the idiosyncratic elements that
have been added by the players. Which aren't actually part of the game and have nothing to do with the game as it is written. Nothing in Pictionary assumes that you are going to be graded on your art. In fact, that's kinda the point of Pictionary - that your artistic abilities are not the point of the game - the point of the game is, can you communicate non-verbally to a small group of people a specific word or phrase. That's what Pictionary is about.
I can use D&D in my English as a Second Language class to teach English to second language learners. Does that mean D&D is a teaching tool? Not really. I've re-purposed it for that, but, outside of my classroom, my experiences aren't going to help anyone. Unless you want to use D&D as a teaching tool, which means, you have to pretty much copy my experiences if you want to get similar results. Which is the biggest problem I have with the idea that we have to only look at how the game is being used. That's the argument that you see all the time in edition wars - "Well, at my table we do X, so Y is not a problem. If you are having a problem with X it's because you are not doing Y" with the presumption that Y is the right thing for all groups.
As soon as we start dueling anecdotes and stop looking at the actual text of the game, we dive down a rabbit hole that you simply cannot find the end of. Every situation devolves into competing ideas for what is the "right" solution and no one can ever fix anything. Any change is viewed through the lens of "How does this impact my table specifically" and not "Does this make a better game?" Everyone becomes an advocate for their own, specific table, and no one can come to any agreement on methods for resolving issues.
Heck, I've got another thread right now on the 5e boards where this is being claimed:
I'm glad that I'm not the only one who makes that distinction. I guess the difference for me is that I enjoy roleplaying games, and I actively dislike storytelling games. Hence my desire to excise any and all storytelling elements from D&D, in favor of roleplaying.
THIS is why we need to nail down definitions of genre, at least in broad terms. Adding elements like Inspiration or Action Points to D&D hardly makes D&D a Story Telling game. The language that he's using right here doesn't make a whole lot of sense. No story telling elements in D&D? Huh? That's the point of playing D&D - a story. He means, he wants to excise any player authorial control from the game. But, because the language we're using is so imprecise, his meaning gets lost.
And, I will agree, the idea of role playing game should be the umbrella term. This sort of thing is just noxious. Traditional game vs story telling game might be a better comparison.