Is RPGing a *literary* endeavour?

[Bedrockgames]

Ouch.

This gotta be the meanest thing anyone else ever said to me here. I mean, not even bothering to call me by name stings but that's not too bad. If you had just said I wasn't funny, that might've been okay. Jokes fall flat, it's what they do ("especially when you tell them!" cry the hecklers).

But to say you can't even see the joke?

I could see you were trying to be funny. But it also felt pretty insulting. I don't think I could be objective enough in this case to comment on the quality of the humor.

 

[Bedrockgames]

No one made the claim that you had to be in "acting" mode to depict a character. The objection has been to the OP basically claiming color is not in fact a core (distinct??? this isn't really clear either IMO) component of roleplaying games when for many (but not all) it certainly is. Some won't engage with your content/situation/whatever if the color in your game sucks.

Hussar repeatedly advocating treating playing your character the way an actor does. I think the reason pemerton is so reluctant to recognize the shifting terms performance/color/etc as core is because so much playstyle preference has been attached to them in this discussion. If you are going to say something like the GM narrating in an evocative way is a core part of game, then that is positioning anyone who approaches narration more dryly as not playing to the core experience of an RPG. These definitional arguments always center around playstyle. I have seen this on countless forums and it never really helps clarify play or improve things. It just helps push people away from each other and make people feel gross or bad for playing in ways that are not within the defined parameters.

I think you guys are seeing color through a pretty myopic lens here.

 

[Satyrn]

Except not. I know for a fact that all I'm doing is having some fun, and not even all of it has to do with you at all, and what does is just ribbing. No insults at all. If you are feeling insulted, then you are seeing insult where there isn't any. [MENTION=6801204]Satyrn[/MENTION] is one of the nicest people here, so I'm certain that she is also just having some fun with a bit of ribbing. [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] I'm not as certain about, but he has a similar humor to mine, so I think he is probably doing the same as [MENTION=6801204]Satyrn[/MENTION] and I.

I had . . . . . . a cat, a very beautiful cat with flowing white fur and the most gorgeous silver-blue eyes. And though he was a charming buffoon, he carried himself with a natural elegance, like the whole world was his catwalk.

I also had a neighbour . . . insisted on calling him by a flowery name she christened him with and referring to him as her. The cat was so beautiful, my neighbour just could not she him as masculine. This went on for years, I just stopped correcting my neighbour.

Ultimately, it was a compliment to the cat. He really was the prettiest cat in the world.

And so I will take the compliment, and accept that I am the nicest poster on EnWorld.

 

[Imaro]

Hussar repeatedly advocating treating playing your character the way an actor does. I think the reason pemerton is so reluctant to recognize the shifting terms performance/color/etc as core is because so much playstyle preference has been attached to them in this discussion. If you are going to say something like the GM narrating in an evocative way is a core part of game, then that is positioning anyone who approaches narration more dryly as not playing to the core experience of an RPG. These definitional arguments always center around playstyle. I have seen this on countless forums and it never really helps clarify play or improve things. It just helps push people away from each other and make people feel gross or bad for playing in ways that are not within the defined parameters.

I think you guys are seeing color through a pretty myopic lens here.

Yep and claiming it's not (which was the point of this thread) insinuates those who play roleplaying games for that experience as their main reaon are "doing it wrong"...

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yep and claiming it's not (which was the point of this thread) insinuates those who play roleplaying games for that experience as their main reaon are "doing it wrong"...

I just re-read the OP but I am honestly not getting that. It reads to me as him saying this is what is important to him. But just to be clear, I think there is room for evocative narration, I just don't think it is essential.

 

[Lanefan]

Equating reading a full thread of posts with educating oneself seems a real reach for me.

Well, knowing the twists and turns a conversation took to get to where it is can be useful. If all one reads is the first post and the last few pages it's easy to just end up rehashing topics that have already come and gone within the discussion.

Not everyone engages discussions on forums by reading every single post (particularly with long ones like this).

Which can, sometimes, lead to misunderstandings and confusion. No way round it.

 

[Lanefan]

Darkvision and poison resistance seem like elements in action declaration and action resolution rather than performance/presentation, so I'll put them to one side.

In most FRPGing, grooming one's beard, choosing one's food, not liking boat,s is all just colour.

Thing is, what you dismiss as 'colour' is often at the very heart of portraying one's character in terms of how and what it thinks, its opinions on various aspects of life, and visualization.

If I make it clear over time that my Dwarf is fastidious about grooming his beard and his choices of food, it can reasonably be assumed that fastidiousness extends into other aspects of his life - including adventuring - and !bang! part of both his personality and looks falls into place. This might then play in to how said Dwarf reacts to events in the field - does a foe notice how clean he is and throw mud at him to enrage him, for example.

If my familiarity with the underground, or the distinctive histories or politics of my people, actually matter in play then that will come out in action declaration - as it does, for instance, for the dwarf in my 4e game.

It might, or might not, depending on whether those things are or become relevant to the actions at hand. Further complicating things is that some systems mechanize stuff like this (e.g. Knowledge skill) while others do not; but to suggest that something only matters if it's mechanized is way over the top.

Conversely, if the only way that I can tell your character is a butler is because you make references to the sivlerware that have no bearing on the actual play of the game; or if the only way I can tell you're a dwarf is because of your repeated references to your beard that never actually matters to any actions that your character undertakes; then I wonder what the point of the descriptor is at all. How is it actually informing the role you are playing in the game?

The point of the descriptor is just that: a descriptor that allows you to better visualize (and audialize, if the player is using her own normal voice) the character being played. It's colour. And colour is good.

 

[Lanefan]

And I'm not denying that there are people who enjoy RPGs because they are entertained by performances or give entertaining performances. I'm denying that this activity is at the heart of RPGing.

Which is a fundamental difference between us: as far as I'm concerned entertaining others and being entertained in return are the heart and soul of RPGing (including LARP here); and are what make it a different - and more enjoyable - kind of activity from almost any other.

 

[Lanefan]

Quick survey for the regulars here:

Let's say that for whatever reason you know going in that tonight's session, where you're playing a well-developed character you're familiar with and enjoy playing, is highly likely to consist of nothing but in-character roleplaying and interactions with other PCs (and maybe NPCs) with no story progress likely to be made and maybe little if any reference to the story at all, and little if any chance of combat (unless the PCs decide to throw down vs each other for some reason). It's not a bookkeeping session, though. Maybe you've decided to play out in detail some discussions the PCs have while on a long ship voyage.

On a scale of 1 (dread) to 10 (bursting) how enthusiastic would you be when looking forward to the session.

I'd be somewhere between 8 and 10, with the variance dependent on situation.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Quick survey for the regulars here:

Let's say that for whatever reason you know going in that tonight's session, where you're playing a well-developed character you're familiar with and enjoy playing, is highly likely to consist of nothing but in-character roleplaying and interactions with other PCs (and maybe NPCs) with no story progress likely to be made and maybe little if any reference to the story at all, and little if any chance of combat (unless the PCs decide to throw down vs each other for some reason). It's not a bookkeeping session, though. Maybe you've decided to play out in detail some discussions the PCs have while on a long ship voyage.

On a scale of 1 (dread) to 10 (bursting) how enthusiastic would you be when looking forward to the session.

I'd be somewhere between 8 and 10, with the variance dependent on situation.

When I was younger, I would be into this. As I got older, I wanted a better mix of role-play, events, challenges and development.