Chess is not an RPG: The Illusion of Game Balance

[Bedrockgames]

Why would you claim we don't know this? Or are you now claiming that players who play entirely in Pawn stance, not assuming any roll at the table are the mainstream of play?
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I am not a fan of the term pawn stance, but if I understand what you mean by it, I think they are a bigger chunk than you realize. And I think, while not a majority, not the mainstream, they make up a huge enough portion of how people approach RPGs, we shouldn't leave them out of a definition of the term, of the hobby. The impression I get is some gamers don't much care for people in perpetual "pawn stance" so they don't want that to be considered roleplaying. I have no problem with roleplaying including that. It isn't how I personally play but I've seen it at enough tables to know it is common and the people doing it still regard what they are doing as roleplaying rather than playing a board game. These people used to drive me nuts, until I realized they are doing nothing wrong except having fun playing D&D.

 

[Janx]

I am not a fan of the term pawn stance, but if I understand what you mean by it, I think they are a bigger chunk than you realize. And I think, while not a majority, not the mainstream, they make up a huge enough portion of how people approach RPGs, we shouldn't leave them out of a definition of the term, of the hobby. The impression I get is some gamers don't much care for people in perpetual "pawn stance" so they don't want that to be considered roleplaying. I have no problem with roleplaying including that. It isn't how I personally play but I've seen it at enough tables to know it is common and the people doing it still regard what they are doing as roleplaying rather than playing a board game. These people used to drive me nuts, until I realized they are doing nothing wrong except having fun playing D&D.

In my experience, in a D&D game, players who are "perpetually in pawn stance" are not considered to be "role playing" though they are still playing D&D and still playing a Role Playing Game (RPG).

I think the double-meaning of the world "role playing" in that context is part of the communication problem.

 

[Bedrockgames]

In my experience, in a D&D game, players who are "perpetually in pawn stance" are not considered to be "role playing" though they are still playing D&D and still playing a Role Playing Game (RPG).

I think the double-meaning of the world "role playing" in that context is part of the communication problem.

I think it is true roleplaying has a double meaning and a lot of folks (myself included) use equivocation on that double meaning to prove their style of play is The Style, the right way. Sometimes I say Roleplaying to mean "talking in character and seeing things through your characters eyes". That is certainly a deep point on the roleplaying spectrum but I think someone who is just controlling a character in the setting can also be said to be roleplaying. It is certainly still an RPG in my opinion, even if people are not talking in character or viewing their character as a piece on a board.

To me so long as a world beyond that board exists to be interacted with, your still roleplaying. To me that is the chief difference between an RPG and a board game. All action in a board game needs to be contained within the boundaries of the board...whatever that means for the particular game. Roleplaying games don't limit you to that. One of the reasons the GM exists is to adjudicate actions that were not thought of in advance by the designers. It doesn't have to explicitly say in the rules that you can go to 7/11 and buy coca cola. But if you are in a setting with a 7/11 then the GM will allow you to try. Board Games are not really meant to accommodate that kind of going off the grid, and when they do, it is because they are veering into RPG territory.

I think the term Pawn Stance though really muddles things here, because it isn't incompatible at all with talking in character from what I understand. Pawn Stance is more about how you make your decisions as a character. So my understanding is it means using your motives as a player rather than the character's to arrive a a decision (I could be wrong on that, but that is how it has been explained to me). If that is all Pawn Stance is, then I think it really just means "playing yourself" and playing yourself is totally fine in my opinion. My guy might be called Uloff instead of Brendan, but if I am basically making decisions as Brendan, that is still roleplaying IMO. Most people don't play this way, but many do.

Again though I think this just shows how problematic these kinds of discussion are because they really ultimately do come down to trying to establish some styles as proper RP and some as being outside what an RPG is supposed to be.

 

[prosfilaes]

Why would you claim we don't know this?

Because I quoted you saying that we don't know this.

I'd say we have a pretty decent idea how the mainstream of players play. ... I don't care how people are playing the game. It's pretty hard to know that.

Those are two contradictory statements.

But, even without knowing how the game is being played at a given table, we should still be able to look at the rules themselves and figure out what the game is about.

For the same reason we can't just look at an airplane engine and figure out how it's going to work, as the designers of the 737-400 found when one of there planes crashed on the M1 due to engine problems undiscovered in testing. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Why would you insist on including "how we play the game" in a definition of game genre? Why can't we simply look at the game itself?

Because a definition of game genre that doesn't care how we play is like a definition of food types that doesn't worry about who eats it or how it tastes. 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. A Vampire game that's all talk is different from a Vampire game that's all combat.

I care about what the game says it's trying to do.

That's useless. Utterly and incredibly so. And not even terribly consistent with what you've said before; is The Galactos Barrier a science fiction setting because it says so in the preface? Are most storygames roleplaying games because they say they are on the title page? Going back to an example I've used several times before, I suspect despite the high concept intros, at least some White Wolf material was written to be R-rated supers for the R-rated supers fans. What good does a genre division that ignores that do for anyone?

 

[Hussar]

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.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

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.

The problem is that none of these terms ever gain traction, so we're stuck going back to the old GNS theory just because that's the only thing that everyone has heard of.

Roleplaying vs Storytelling is a spectrum, and it's the same spectrum as Actor vs Author, which is similar to Character vs Player. I suppose you could use 'Roleplaying Game' as the umbrella term, and separate them based on the degree to which they include Storytelling elements; but, I don't see why that's any better than using 'Roleplaying Game' for only pure roleplaying games with no storytelling elements, and 'Storytelling Game' for roleplaying games which include such things.

It's not as though there are any pure Storytelling Games out there, devoid of roleplaying elements. (Are there?)

 

[Mishihari Lord]

It's not as though there are any pure Storytelling Games out there, devoid of roleplaying elements. (Are there?)

I'm pretty sure collaborative writing qualifies, and there are probably more people doing that than RPGs.

 

[Hussar]

The problem is that none of these terms ever gain traction, so we're stuck going back to the old GNS theory just because that's the only thing that everyone has heard of.

Roleplaying vs Storytelling is a spectrum, and it's the same spectrum as Actor vs Author, which is similar to Character vs Player. I suppose you could use 'Roleplaying Game' as the umbrella term, and separate them based on the degree to which they include Storytelling elements; but, I don't see why that's any better than using 'Roleplaying Game' for only pure roleplaying games with no storytelling elements, and 'Storytelling Game' for roleplaying games which include such things.

It's not as though there are any pure Storytelling Games out there, devoid of roleplaying elements. (Are there?)

But, that's not the spectrum. You don't do storytelling games without role playing. At least, not when we're talking about RPG's. Role assumption is fundamental in all role playing games. If you're not taking on a role, you're not playing an RPG. That shouldn't be controversial. The same way as if every single decision point was pre-determined before play started, you wouldn't be playing an RPG, because there's no game there.

A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book isn't an RPG. Collaborative story telling or improv theater isn't an RPG either. There's no G there. It's no different than what Howandwhy99 was trying to do earlier - break the term apart and pretend that there is no larger meaning when you examine each individual word.

A role playing game needs all three elements - role assumption, some sort of random mechanic for determining outcomes and a narrative that follows causal links. Without any of those three, I'd say you aren't really playing an RPG.

So, no, roleplaying is not the other side of the spectrum from story gaming. There's a reason you still have a character in story games - the presumption is, you are going to act in accordance to the dictates of that character. Granted, in a story game you ALSO have degrees of authority over the game as a whole, but, you still have a character in front of you.

D&D doesn't stop being a role playing game because I use Inspiration (a purely player resource) to affect some change in the game world. That's ridiculous. Nor do I stop roleplaying just because I have inspiration points. Inspiration points are there to promote role play - you gain them by promoting the character that you are playing. AD&D used Training in the same way. If you played your character against type, you were penalized. It took longer and was more expensive to train if your fighter acted cowardly, for example. Paladin's lose their status if they don't behave in a certain way. It's the same thing, just approached from the carrot perspective instead of the stick.

 

[prosfilaes]

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?"

For something like a roleplaying game, "a better game" is one that impacts many tables positively. Far from not needing to worry about the issue of how it works in play, "a better game" means that you need to worry about a broader spectrum of how it works in play.

 

[Bedrockgames]

A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book isn't an RPG. Collaborative story telling or improv theater isn't an RPG either. There's no G there. It's no different than what Howandwhy99 was trying to do earlier - break the term apart and pretend that there is no larger meaning when you examine each individual word.

I don't think these kinds of definitions are particularly useful. I see them a lot in my circles and find them not to be descriptive of rpgs at all. Words are not defined by their roots. The root words can matter but terms change over time to go beyond the meanings of the compounds. I've seen dozens and dozens of definitions of RPG that take each individual term (Role-Playing-Game) define them and put them together. It doesn't matter what those individual components mean, what matters is what people mean when they say roleplaying game. Others have already pointed this out. English isn't latin and I think it is pretty obvious when the term was adopted it was a term of convenience, one that seemed to describe something fairly new and exotic going on at the table (but the people who first employed that term were not using RP in the full sense of the word as it was used in Psychology circles for example, and we would be foolish to think any working definition of RPG needs to also be therapeutic with the aim of reducing conflict simply because it shares a word with a psychological technique.

In terms of whether you can define it as a game where you take on a role, I think people might not disagree but it really depends on what you mean by that. If you mean, to use your language, that being in pawn stance the whole time makes it not an RPG, I would disagree, because you are still a character in the setting, even if it is being informed by your metagame concerns. I've seen many players over the years play a character as if it was them, freely using player knowledge and desires in place of character knowledge and desires. It may have irked me because it isn't how I like to play, but I would never look at that and say the person isn't roleplaying. It is just one style of RP just like min/max, kick down the door, thespian, etc are all valid approaches to an RPG.