My Attempt to Define RPG's - RPG's aren't actually Games

[pemerton]

That, line, right there, is what I'm talking about. The DM "creates the adventures". Not, "You will play the game and go through adventures." Unless the DM creates those adventures, there is no game to play.

But many wargames required decisions to be made about starting positions. I play an old Avalon Hill tile game (Mystic Wood) with my kids, and the first step in that game is laying out the tiles.

The setup for some RPGs is more complex than for most boardgames, but that's a matter of degree. And of course you can play D&D without the GM-side set-up, by using the random dungeon and random encounter talbes in the AD&D DMG. And I've played other RPGs - Classic Traveller, Cortex+ Heroic - with no, or almost no, GM-side setup, in the case of Traveller using the random tables and extrapolating/ad libbing as needed, and in the case of the latter making up relevant fictional elements as we go along.

I think you're trying to generalise a feature of traditional D&D play across all RPGs, and trying to draw a distinction between RPGs and other somewhat similar game forms (some wargames, some board games) that is not there. If you want to identify what is distinctive about RPGs in general, and/or what distinguishes different ways of playing RPGs, its the presence of a shared fiction, and the ways of engaging and establishing that fiction, that are key. (And the GM prepares an adventure is one, but only one way, of establishing some fiction.)

As far as meta-game mechanics go though, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], I'm going to disagree with you here. In Traveler, your chargen is random. You, the player, have zero input in what happens during chargen other than maybe choosing to roll on this or that table, which, again, doesn't really have any in game correlation. Never minding something like Inspiration in 5e, which is awarded entirely based on the player's actions, not any actual event in the game fiction. While meta-game mechanics can correlate, they don't have to and often the correlation is added after the fact to justify the mechanics.

That's why I used the word "typically". PC gen, as I already said, is part of set-up, not play in the strict sense - generating a Traveller PC also generates a whole lot of fiction (mostly PC backstory). And I don't agree with you about inspiration in 5e - it does correlate to something in the fiction, namely, the character trying harder or being lucky or otherwise benefitting from a moment of inspiration. (I know some people think it's a weak mechanic of that sort, because while the recharge is connected to PC motivations etc the expenditure is not; I personally don't agree with that criticism, and in its basic structure don't see it as wildly different from the "artha" rules in Burning Wheel, which accrue fate points etc via playing to the PC's traits and allow them to be spent as the player chooses.)

But look at it this way: a game in which every player move, or even most player moves, was an establishing of fiction that did not play out via a game piece which is a distinct character within that fiction, wouldn't be a RPG. It would be some sort of shared world creation game, or shared storytelling game.

I get where you're coming from. And, true, those are some pretty decent definitions of rpg's. The only problem with those definitions though, AFAIC, is that they are not restrictive enough. They include too many computer games and board games as well.

I think you are using a more liberal notion of creating a shared fiction than I am. Or, perhaps, are excluding some things from RPGing that should be in.

My knowledge of computer games is weak, and of board games is a bit better but not terrific, but I'll try and stake out some parameters:

A computer game like WoW or EQ does not involve a shared fiction. It's all just flavour text, but the actual game moves are purely mechanically mediated. The computer doesn't need to "imagine" anything about a fictional world; it just applies mechanical rules to mechanically defined game states. (Some people think that this is also true of 4e, and hence that 4e is not a RPG. I thnk the conception of RPGs that underpins that criticism is reasonably sound, but that those critics are simply wrong about 4e, mostly because they've missed the importance of 4e's keywords as mechanics-to-fiction mediators.)

A board game like Talisman or Mystic Wood is in much the same situation. There is flavour - "You're at the river" or "You're lost in the forest" - but a player can't play the fiction. Eg in Mystic Wood there is no option for a character stuck at a dead end to hack through the woods at the risk of blunting his/her sword or tiring him-/herself out. Whereas in a RPG, that sort of thing is permitted - that's the literal meaning of the "you can try anything" slogan often used to describe RPGs.

EDIT: This later post is also on point:

But, each time you play, the game is still the same. Sure, some things will change - different board layouts will bring in new strategies, but, again, you are still playing the game straight from the rules.

You are not requiring one player to create a completely new game every single time.

<snip>

in an RPG, one campaign doesn't really need to share anything. One campaign might be entirely urban, while the next is entirely wilderness and the next is entirely dungeon crawling. One might be serial and the next episodic. And, while some games do randomly generate a board, you don't actually have to to play that game.

There's a lot more to campaign creation than simply generating a map.

I think by describing the set up for a RPG as "creating a completely new game every single time" you are begging the question in your favour!

Let's put to one side those moments of RPGing that don't require GM-side prep (although in my experience there are many of them). I don't actually see the difference that you do between drawing a map, establishing other setting elements, etc, and laying out the tiles in a tile game.

In both situations, the rules that establish and govern player moves remain the same. The tiles (in the boardgame), or the setting elements (in the RPG) simpy set parameters of adjudication. In Mystice Wood, my knight can't move from one forest tile to the next if no path connects them. (That's a mechanical rule, with flavour text laid over it.) In D&D, my naked figher can't move from the floor to the ceiling if the wall is coated in ice. (That's a result of the fiction, plus mechanical features of the game such as that players of fighters don't have a mechanical option to trigger miracles.) In another D&D game, it won't be a naked fighter in an ice-wall room; it will be a mud-covered barbarian and the sentencing judge - but the resolution principles remain the same (does the fiction allow the barbarian to persuade the judge to acquit? is there some mechanical rule - such as a divine intervention rule - that allows the player of the barbarian to inject some new element into the fiction?)

Of course the adjudication in a RPG is often far more intricate than in a boardgame. And it draws on the fiction in a way that boardgame adjudication does not. And that fiction can vary widely from table to table and campaign to camapgin and rulebook to rulebook. But that just takes us back to the role of the shared fiction in RPGing!

 

[Hussar]

Sure but that is all scenario material. You are talking about making people and places. The core rules of the game and/or the guidelines generally operate the same from scenario to scenario (and because it is an RPG, a key feature is going to be some flexibility managing the rules by the GM). This just seems like a very unusual argument to me. I get that RPGs have a feature many other games don't: customized scenarios and campaigns. But there are other games that have comparable things, and the presence of those elements doesn't make RPGs not games (after all every game has its own unique features that separates it from other games). The big thing that separates RPGs for me from other games is the attempt to remove the usual limits and constraints that a board or computer game would have. In an RPG, there is this idea that you can at least try anything. If you want to talk to the guard about his married life, the GM needs to react to that, and a GM can react to that in a way a board game or computer game simply can't.

Ok. For the fifth time now.

RPG'S ARE GAMES.

Now, ahem, with that out of my system, there is a significant difference between a campaign an RPG and customized scenarios for a game. For one, you cannot play an RPG without a campaign. Full stop. Your RPG books are really pretty paperweights until someone makes/buys a scenario to play and then runs it. You can make characters, read setting books, and do whatever you want with your RPG books, but, without that created scenario, which is created, not directly from the rules of the RPG, but, from the creator who then applies the mechanics during play.

A Euro game generally has a board that changes every time you play. So, part of set up is creating that new board. But, the difference is, you can just play. Nothing has to be created from scratch before play can begin. Everything in a board game is right there in the box. You can't rearrange the tiles in Catan to make a murder mystery. No matter what you do, you will play that game.

However an RPG campaign is a self contained thing that must be created before anyone can play. Like I've said before, you have two levels in most games - the game and play. In an RPG, you have three - Game, Creation, Play.

 

[Hussar]

But many wargames required decisions to be made about starting positions. I play an old Avalon Hill tile game (Mystic Wood) with my kids, and the first step in that game is laying out the tiles.

The setup for some RPGs is more complex than for most boardgames, but that's a matter of degree. And of course you can play D&D without the GM-side set-up, by using the random dungeon and random encounter talbes in the AD&D DMG. And I've played other RPGs - Classic Traveller, Cortex+ Heroic - with no, or almost no, GM-side setup, in the case of Traveller using the random tables and extrapolating/ad libbing as needed, and in the case of the latter making up relevant fictional elements as we go along.

But, there's the rub. That "ad libbing" is the Creation level of an RPG that is 100% absent from other games.

/snip
I think by describing the set up for a RPG as "creating a completely new game every single time" you are begging the question in your favour!

Let's put to one side those moments of RPGing that don't require GM-side prep (although in my experience there are many of them). I don't actually see the difference that you do between drawing a map, establishing other setting elements, etc, and laying out the tiles in a tile game.

Again, you cannot play any RPG without that DM side prep. You admit it yourself that the campaign lies in the ad libbing part, not in the game itself.

The point is, that without that third level, what I'm calling the game creation level, you can't play an RPG. Without that extrapolation/ad libbing, there's no actual role playing game going on.

 

[Maxperson]

They are still the same game, they just have you set up a bunch of hexes randomly to create a new board each time (but the rules of play are the same). It is the rules, not the scenario, that is the game.

Okay. You're confused. There are two ways to use game. You can use it as the title of the game in question, such as D&D and Settlers of Catan. And you can also use it when speaking about individual instances of playing the game. D&D doesn't have an end point. It just goes until the campaign ends, anywhere from hours, to days, to years, to decades sometimes. All one instance of playing the game. Settler of Catan, though, doesn't continue on past the individual game instance. I can sit down with my friends and play 3 or 4 games of Catan in a night. Each different game of Catan involves setting up the hexes randomly to create a new board each time. So yes, while it is all the game of Catan, there are still 3 to 4 different games of Catan being played.

 

[Maxperson]

But, each time you play, the game is still the same. Sure, some things will change - different board layouts will bring in new strategies, but, again, you are still playing the game straight from the rules.

You are not requiring one player to create a completely new game every single time.

Nor are you with D&D. It's also always the same game, straight from whatever rules you use. Different characters and different scenarios in D&D are the same as different characters and different scenarios in a board game.

But, in an RPG, one campaign doesn't really need to share anything. One campaign might be entirely urban, while the next is entirely wilderness and the next is entirely dungeon crawling. One might be serial and the next episodic. And, while some games do randomly generate a board, you don't actually have to to play that game.

And yet they all use the same rules, the same skills, hit points, AC, feats, etc. You are in fact playing the same game.

 

[Hussar]

Nor are you with D&D. It's also always the same game, straight from whatever rules you use. Different characters and different scenarios in D&D are the same as different characters and different scenarios in a board game.



And yet they all use the same rules, the same skills, hit points, AC, feats, etc. You are in fact playing the same game.

So, in one campaign, we play a high RP game with virtually no combat and barely reference any rules for sessions on end. In another, we play a down and dirty dungeon crawl with pretty much zero RP and nothing but endless tactical combat.

I'm playing the same game?

Or, put it another way. Let's see you create my Primeval Thule campaign. We're using the same rules right? So, you should be able to create my campaign with no problems.

 

[pemerton]

So, in one campaign, we play a high RP game with virtually no combat and barely reference any rules for sessions on end. In another, we play a down and dirty dungeon crawl with pretty much zero RP and nothing but endless tactical combat.

I'm playing the same game?

The issue here, in my view, is not that RPGs require creation but that the two campaigns are probably using different systems (though perhaps both derived, more or less tightly, from the same commercially published product), and certainly have different expectations about what counts as a "proper" move.

You've probably noticed that I rant against the use of metaphor to describe RPGing, and (attempt to) insist on literal descriptions of techniques being used. The example you're providng here is the sort of thing that underpinds my rants! So trying to be literal:

(1) In the "high RP" campaign, most moves consist of player descriptions of things their PCs do, or attempt to do, in the fiction. Most adjudicaiton consists of the GM deciding, by reference to fiction some of which has been collectively established and some of which s/he has in his/her mind but hasn't shared with the rest of the group, whether or not the player's proposal/attempt becomes part of the shared fiction. Because the published rulebook being referenced (if D&D) probably has fairly express rules about what to do when an attack is declared (which aren't "the GM decides whether or not it succeeds"), we can infer from the mode of resolution back to the sorts of actions declared - ie its inherent in a "D&D" game that involves few or no dice rolls that most of the declared actions did not involve combat. (Or spellcasting, for that matter, although referencing spell descriptions may sometimes be glossed over when D&D players talk about applying or not applying the rules.)

For a range of reasons - it shifts resolution from GM adjudication of the fiction to the dice; it disrupts the unfolding of "the story"; it's a bit gauche - there is probably a social expectation in this sort of game that attacks won't be declared very often, and perhaps only if the GM leads the group into giving some sort of signal (formal or informal) of permission.

(2) In this game, there are two, perhaps three, main categories of socially-sanctioned moves. One is the combat moves that you describe. Another is to declare movement of one's PC within the dungeon. This is highly analogous to a boardgame, as far as tracking the movement is concerned, but because its a RPG there are moves here that permit "breaking" or "bypassing" the board by directly engaging the fiction - eg "I dig through the wall" or "I cast dimension door to get to the other side of the chasm". This is the third category which may or may not be permitted, depending on how the table rolls. Some players dislike this sort of thing, precisely because the way it engages the fiction and hence requires GM adjudication makes it not fully amenable to mechanical resolution. But I think we can fairly say that if the game has none of this at all, and only combat moves and move-through-the-dungeon moves then it isn't really a RPG at all (whatever book might be being referenced in play) but in fact a wargame or boardgame. (This was a common accusation levelled at 4e.) I think that some 3E and 4e tables that really embrace the "rule for everything" approach while eschewing adjudication of the fiction (eg in 4e via p 42 and other elements of the rules; I don't know how a 3E GM is meant to adjudicate the fiction) probably get pretty close to this sort of wargaming-under-the-guise-of-RPGing, with no shared fiction that serves as anything but flavour text.​

For me, therefore, your example doesn't show that RPGs are game creation engines, but rather that people will play rather different games - based on different suites of moves, different adjudication methods, different social expectations as to what play consists in, different attitudes to the shared fiction - but will refer to the same commercially published text while doing so.

Of course there are some other (less well-selling) commercially published RPG texts that attempt to indicate the mode of resolution they are suited to, to settle the applicable suite of rules, etc - DitV would be one example. Do you think your "game creation engine" idea, with its contrasting campaigns, makes sense in the context of DitV?

Let's see you create my Primeval Thule campaign. We're using the same rules right? So, you should be able to create my campaign with no problems.

Well, that's a bit like me asking you to recreate the game of backgammon I played yesterday - how are you supposed to do that without any actual record of how the game unfolded?

So let's up the pressure of the example a bit, to give it more bite:

Suppose you provided my group with all your background notes, the PCs as pregens, etc, it remais overwhelmingly likely that the game would turn out differently. But that could be related to system issues of the sort I described earlier in this post.

So let's suppose that we also agree on what counts as good play - so that my players are trying to do the same sort of thing with the moves they declare, as your players are in your game, and we don't have the sort of system divergence I described in the earlier part of this post. In the context of backgammon, assuming the same dice rolls, this should produce literally the same game, at least in the ideal case (as everyone is agreed on what sorts of risks to take, etc).

But in the Primeval Thule case, even under those conditions, you would expect the two campaigns to turn out differently. Why? I assert that this is because of the role of the fiction. You can't play a RPG without generating shared fiction more-or-less continously during play. And that ficiton feeds back into action declaration - player 'moves' - and action resolution, making the outcomes of play extremely path dependent.

Whereas a wargame/boardgame should turn out like the backgammon example. So if we are "rule for everything" types who reject the idea of GM adjudication of the fiction, then if my group plays the same dungeon crawl as your group with an agreed criterion for what counts as good play and the same dice rolls, you would expect my group to have the same campaign as your group. Some classic tournament-style play can come pretty close to this, I think!

 

[Bedrockgames]

So, in one campaign, we play a high RP game with virtually no combat and barely reference any rules for sessions on end. In another, we play a down and dirty dungeon crawl with pretty much zero RP and nothing but endless tactical combat.

I'm playing the same game?

Or, put it another way. Let's see you create my Primeval Thule campaign. We're using the same rules right? So, you should be able to create my campaign with no problems.

yes, because those are parameters set by the rules from the outset. Which rules come up, which don't are contingent on what happens in play. The rules do not require that people be able to replicate one another's campaigns. The rules of RPGs are the mechanics, guidelines and general advice on how to run them. But part of the point is you get to run them in you own way. Even games with more rigid rules systems rarely play out exactly the same every time though.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Okay. You're confused. There are two ways to use game. You can use it as the title of the game in question, such as D&D and Settlers of Catan. And you can also use it when speaking about individual instances of playing the game. D&D doesn't have an end point. It just goes until the campaign ends, anywhere from hours, to days, to years, to decades sometimes. All one instance of playing the game. Settler of Catan, though, doesn't continue on past the individual game instance. I can sit down with my friends and play 3 or 4 games of Catan in a night. Each different game of Catan involves setting up the hexes randomly to create a new board each time. So yes, while it is all the game of Catan, there are still 3 to 4 different games of Catan being played.

I am not confused. People are equivocating on ‘game’. Here you are using it to mean an instance or session of of play (I.e. a full game of Catan or Chess). I meant game as in the rules system (I.e. this is the game of chess). Those are two very different meanings of the same word. I don’t know when we shifted to the former use but this conversation started out seeming to make the case that D&D wasn’t a game in the latter sense by relying on the former definition of the term, which is classic equivocation. If you are making some other argument, I have no objection.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Ok. For the fifth time now.

RPG'S ARE GAMES.

Now, ahem, with that out of my system, there is a significant difference between a campaign an RPG and customized scenarios for a game. For one, you cannot play an RPG without a campaign. Full stop. Your RPG books are really pretty paperweights until someone makes/buys a scenario to play and then runs it. You can make characters, read setting books, and do whatever you want with your RPG books, but, without that created scenario, which is created, not directly from the rules of the RPG, but, from the creator who then applies the mechanics during play.

A Euro game generally has a board that changes every time you play. So, part of set up is creating that new board. But, the difference is, you can just play. Nothing has to be created from scratch before play can begin. Everything in a board game is right there in the box. You can't rearrange the tiles in Catan to make a murder mystery. No matter what you do, you will play that game.

However an RPG campaign is a self contained thing that must be created before anyone can play. Like I've said before, you have two levels in most games - the game and play. In an RPG, you have three - Game, Creation, Play.

I don’t think anyone is denying prep is part of play, or denying RPGs have qualities that set them apart. But campaign creation is usually part of the rules. Most rule books have advice, guidelines and even mechanics for preparing campaigns and adventures. And if they don’t it is usually because the book assumes you already know that aspect of play. But prep is part of the game.