Chess is not an RPG: The Illusion of Game Balance

[Neonchameleon]

You absolutely can if you want, but people don't have to accept your model or your definitions if they fail to reflect their experience at the table. You yourself point out we know very very little of actual play (we don't know how much char-op boards reflect widespread use at real tables for instance). I don't know what basis there is here for a working model of RPGs (and I personally haven't seen one that I have found useful for design or for play). My concern with models and definitions is they so often seem to be about getting the hobby where folks would like to see it of (don't like min-maxing? make a model of RPGs that excludes that as a valid style of play. don't like story? make a model of roleplaying where story is the antithesis of roleplaying). We can do the same with definitions. Once again this is exactly what Wick is trying to do. Clearly he favors some kind of RP-heavy campaign and is redefining RPG to exclude groups that play differently than him (even though I think most of us know a huge chunk of people play the way he defines as not roleplaying). What is worse, he also clearly doesn't have much love for D&D and so he uses definitions to claim it isn't an RPG---which is an insane claim to make). Stuff like this is exactly why folks are so wary of models and people trying to control definitions in the hobby.

What I do know is players are pretty diverse and to get a game off the ground you need to please 4-7 people at the same time. Give me a model that allows me to do that, to sell lots of books and make lots of gamers happy, and I would happily use it.

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.

And even Ron Edwards has given up on that.

My take is that it's simple. Roleplaying games are broader than any model can be (which is where the Big Model failed - it devolved into a theory that explained the presence of invisible pink hippomen and square circles). And as such models will not actually cover the spectrum of games; all they can do is highlight things and lead to a better understanding of a subset. (And from this perspective GNS was a success - the S part was a failure, but G was useful as a pushback against the "Rollplaying not Roleplaying" crowd and a focus on N (which was most of what Edwards and the Forge were interested in) lead to interesting things).

A contour map is a very useful thing as long as I don't confuse it for the whole territory.

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?)

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

And that's what's wrong with trying to use Storytelling Game for Roleplaying Games that also involve at least some author stance. That collaborative writing is numerically a much bigger field than tabletop RPGs. And Polaris and Kingdom from within the RPG community I've both heard described as storytelling without roleplaying per se. (I really must get round to reading Kingdom/Microscope).

Using "storytelling game" for a subset of tabletop RPGs is like using "Football" for a hockey rules variant in which everyone is also allowed to kick the ball. To me this is ridiculous, and the only purpose it appears to serve is to attempt to exclude people.

That's how I'd define it to. The degree to which a game is a storytelling game is the degree to which players have out of character authorial control. The extreme is collaborative writing, where all parties have authorial control, and which, contrary to an assertion above, can be done as a game. If there's another way it's used, I haven't seen it.

Possibly so And as you point out this is actually an independent factor from whether or not something's an RPG.

"Pawn stance" vs "actor stance" is another sometimes disputed term. For me it's just 3rd person vs 1st person play. If I think and act in terms of "I do this" rather than "my guy does this" that's actor rather than pawn.

It's a bit more than that. In Pawn Stance play, following the logic of your character's characterisation into making what you know to be bad choices is simply bad play. In Actor Stance play picking good choices against the logic of your character's characterisation is known as metagaming.

 

[trystero]

If Action Points are a story gaming element, you cannot then claim that 3e has no story gaming elements.

Minor nit-pick: Action Points are not present in the core 3e or 3.5e rulebooks; they were an option added (as far as I know) in the 3.5e Unearthed Arcana supplement. So it depends on whether we take "3e" to mean "core 3rd edition" or "3rd edition with all the available options".

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Minor nit-pick: Action Points are not present in the core 3e or 3.5e rulebooks; they were an option added (as far as I know) in the 3.5e Unearthed Arcana supplement. So it depends on whether we take "3e" to mean "core 3rd edition" or "3rd edition with all the available options".

There's a whole spectrum of inclusiveness on what "counts" for an edition. While Unearthed Arcana would suggest that Action Points are no more core than either generic classes or complex skill checks, Eberron ensured that Action Points were fairly popular in terms of actual play. At a practical level, the existence of Action Points would vary from table to table, much like Critical Hits in earlier editions.

 

[trystero]

There's a whole spectrum of inclusiveness on what "counts" for an edition. While Unearthed Arcana would suggest that Action Points are no more core than either generic classes or complex skill checks, Eberron ensured that Action Points were fairly popular in terms of actual play. At a practical level, the existence of Action Points would vary from table to table, much like Critical Hits in earlier editions.

I never played anything in Eberron, so I wasn't aware that it used Action Points. (Myself, I never saw them used in play in 3e or 3.5e.)

 

[Hussar]

Additionally, Action Points were part of the SRD, which meant they had pretty widespread use, IMO.

 

[prosfilaes]

Additionally, Action Points were part of the SRD, which meant they had pretty widespread use, IMO.

They weren't; if you look through http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwiki.php?title=d20:Revised-d20-System-Reference-Document , you won't find them. They're at http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/actionPoints.htm , but that's text from Unearthed Arcana, not the SRD.

 

[Hussar]

The Unearthed Arcana was added to the SRD Prosfilaes. It would be be hard for them to add them to the original SRD, considering they hadn't been written yet. It's the same way that Epic rules are also part of the SRD.

 

[Umbran]

Here's a thought I think nobody has come upon...

Just about every RPG has a section at the front - "What is an RPG?" This is to explain to the really new, uninformed player what the thing is about. Why aren't we referencing those in this discussion?

 

[Hussar]

Here's a thought I think nobody has come upon...

Just about every RPG has a section at the front - "What is an RPG?" This is to explain to the really new, uninformed player what the thing is about. Why aren't we referencing those in this discussion?

I referred to this several times upthread and got told by [MENTION=40166]prosfilaes[/MENTION] that the forewords to RPG's are meaningless.

 

[prosfilaes]

The Unearthed Arcana was added to the SRD Prosfilaes.

Not as far as I know. The Epic rules and the Psionic rules were both added to the SRD and show up in downloads of the original RTF files. Unearthed Arcana wasn't; it was released under the OGL.

It's the same way that Epic rules are also part of the SRD.

If you open a copy of the Epic Level Handbook, you'll see that it says there is no Open Gaming Content inside. If you open a copy of Unearthed Arcana, you'll see that it makes pretty much the entire book OGC. That, and not being part of the SRD, is what made it available to other publishers.

I referred to this several times upthread and got told by [MENTION=40166]prosfilaes[/MENTION] that the forewords to RPG's are meaningless.

That is not what I said, nor is the context remotely similar.