Players choose what their PCs do . . .

[Guest 6801328]

Or you could define roleplay the proper way as I have done and then analyze the mechanics in question as I have been doing to determine if they are roleplaying mechanics or not - which is really the only proper way to have a debate about such things in the first place.

But if nobody agrees with your definition....?

 

[Manbearcat]

They are role playing mechanics - the games just model that a person's impulse responses may not match their ideals. The reason the players are removed from the PC response is because there are defined mechanics that are checked to determine behaviour in certain circumstances. "I'd never steal money!" "Well, there's a bag of unattended money in front of you..." "I shouldn't have taken the $30,000! Now what do I do!!?!?"

Champions/Hero System has a related set of mechanics where the player defines specific personality issues for a PC and is constrained to play within them. The more extreme the reaction, the less player control can be exercised when they are triggered.

Players need not have complete control of their PC on a role playing game. Indeed, if there are any mechanical systems for social interaction or strong emotion then almost by definition the players cannot have complete control.

Good post.

I think one of the big problems we have in this sort of discussion relates to your first paragraph.

There is a common refrain shared by a lot of TTRPG players that people (in this case their PCs) possess a level of cognitive continuity and coherency, or a lack of disunity among the various mental states and hardware that we all inhabit/deploy simultaneously, the sum of which means that every action that a person takes is some kind of expression of perception bias-less, maximal agency and coalitional consensus (amidst the various "selves"). Anything that falls short of that isn't immersive or unrealistic or something of the sort.

Modern cognitive and neuroscience very much disagrees with this.

One part of you being beholden to another (possibly unknown at the time of the decision-point) part (or parts...which in turn may be beholden to an externality) is pretty much par for the course in human experience.

 

[FrogReaver]

But if nobody agrees with your definition....?

They are welcome to propose one.

 

[Guest 6801328]

They are welcome to propose one.

Ok. Fun game.

Here's my first attempt:

A roleplaying game is a game with the following characteristics:
- The "tokens" controlled by players represent characters that are defined by a composite of qualitative and quantitative descriptors.
- Instead of choosing from a prescribed list of legal moves, players engage in free-form play, describing their interactions with an environment.
- The rules help one or more participants adjudicate in the case of ambiguity.

EDIT: Bear in mind I'm trying to define the kind of "roleplaying games" we are talking about here. I'm not including something you might do in group therapy, in the privacy of your bedroom (or perhaps not your bedroom but a by-the-hour hotel room), or other activities which happen to carry the same appellation.

 

[hawkeyefan]

A game in which the participants take on the roles of characters in a shared fiction.

Seems pretty straightforward.

I don’t see how the question of who decides how an action is resolved really affects the above. Different systems will have different ways of doing that to appeal to different play experiences and/or achieve different play goals. Doesn’t change the fact that the participants are taking on the role of characters in the shared fiction.

 

[FrogReaver]

Ok. Fun game.

Here's my first attempt:

A roleplaying game is a game with the following characteristics:
- The "tokens" controlled by players represent characters that are defined by a composite of qualitative and quantitative descriptors.
- Instead of choosing from a prescribed list of legal moves, players engage in free-form play, describing their interactions with an environment.
- The rules help one or more participants adjudicate in the case of ambiguity.

EDIT: Bear in mind I'm trying to define the kind of "roleplaying games" we are talking about here. I'm not including something you might do in group therapy, in the privacy of your bedroom (or perhaps not your bedroom but a by-the-hour hotel room), or other activities which happen to carry the same appellation.

That's a subtle shift in the initial request - define roleplaying vs define roleplaying game as you did - but I'll go along.

There's one clause that seems a bit ambiguous to me "describing their interactions with an environment." It seems that could refer to the player describing the action and the outcome or just the action or even just the outcome. Did you have something more specific in mind here?

But even with without knowing the answer to that I'd like to point out one conclusion your definition leads to that I think you will find surprising. If players are the ones describing their interactions with an environment then would a game where the DM describes a players interactions with the environment not be considered a roleplaying game by your proposed definition? What about a game where most interactions with an environment are described by a player but some are described by the DM?​

 

[FrogReaver]

A game in which the participants take on the roles of characters in a shared fiction.

Seems pretty straightforward.

I don’t see how the question of who decides how an action is resolved really affects the above. Different systems will have different ways of doing that to appeal to different play experiences and/or achieve different play goals. Doesn’t change the fact that the participants are taking on the role of characters in the shared fiction.

How exactly does one take on the role of a character in a shared fiction?

Is the answer that they choose what their PC does?

 

[hawkeyefan]

How exactly does one take on the role of a character in a shared fiction?

Is the answer that they choose what their PC does?

I would expect that the answer will vary. I feel that RPG is a category of game, not one game. So there would be any number of ways to play one.

I mean, even within a very traditional RPG like D&D, you have people roleplaying in different ways and with different rules applied. I don’t think that anyone would claim that the DM isn’t roleplaying because the characters he plays are more subject to the actions of the PCs.

Role playing is as basic and simple as the two words imply. Playing a role.

 

[FrogReaver]

I would expect that the answer will vary. I feel that RPG is a category of game, not one game. So there would be any number of ways to play one.

But surely there aren't many different ways to take on a role of a character in a shared fiction? Are you incapable of even attempting to define what taking on the role of a character means? If so I'd say that you've not really provided much of a definition at all, as it can mean whatever the reader actually wants it to mean, based on however the reader interprets "take on the role of a character".

I mean, even within a very traditional RPG like D&D, you have people roleplaying in different ways and with different rules applied. I don’t think that anyone would claim that the DM isn’t roleplaying because the characters he plays are more subject to the actions of the PCs.

There are times a DM is roleplaying an NPC. Pretty much anytime he is having an NPC interact with the PC's would be a time he could be considered to be roleplaying. A large portion of his job isn't just controlling NPC interactions with PC's though. It's also creating the setting/world etc. That part isn't roleplay.

Role playing is as basic and simple as the two words imply. Playing a role.

The Chess is a roleplaying game! No? Then maybe it's not quite as simple as playing a role...

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] - there's more than one thing going on in your post but I thought I'd start with this one, as it speaks directly to the OP:

In a way, it's not about "What do you do?" although I ask that question all the time in my game. It's really about "What do you hope to accomplish?"

The OP, following in the lead of Donald Davidson, is really asserting that "do" and "accomplish" are synonyms.

So opening the safe is something that the PC does. And finding X in the safe (or not, as the case may be) is also something that the PC does. And nimbly moving his/her fingers while listening to the fall of the tumblers is also something that the PC does. And these are all the same thing, although under different descriptions - just as moving my finger, flicking on the light switch, illuminating the room and alerting the prowler that I've come home are all descriptions - different descriptions - of the one action.

Building on this point, the OP is asking about who, at the table, gets to decide what descriptions are true and is pushing for answers to this - which of course might be different for different systems, different contexts of play, different preferences, etc - which go beyond the player decides what the PC does. Because once we recognise that what the PC does is something amenable to multiple descriptions, at varying levels of "thinness"/"thickness", some of which are intended and some of which - like the alerting of the prowler - might be inadvertent - then we can see that it doesn't take us very far to say that someone gets to decide what the PC does. Because we need to know what sorts of descriptions is that person entitled to make true.

If the PCs are already looking for something specific....let's say they've broken into a place for the specific purpose of finding a map....then that's potentially going to influence how they declare actions. "I want to see if the map is in this safe" is more specific than "Let's see what's in this safe". A given method may or may not work for both these instances. Rolling and consulting a table may not help when something specific is sought, for example.

One issue this raises is - what is the connection between player desire about the outcome of an action, PC hope/intention in performing an action (which may be the same as what the player desires, but perhaps not always), and true descriptions of the action?

In fairly traditional D&D action declarations which have no very rich intention behind them - say, I open the safe to see what's inside it - are fairly common. And the GM has a correspondingly very extensive licence to settle true descriptions of those actions- You open the safe and see nothing, or maybe You open the safe only to realise it's a gateway - your mind is blasted as you look on the face of Demogorgon at the other end of the interplaner portal!" Of course there are various principles that are expected to govern the formulation of those descriptions - including (say) fidelity to pre-written notes; cognisance of both PC level and dungeon level; not adopting such a "gotcha" appoach that skilled play becomes impossible, etc. But player desire and PC intention don't play a huge role.

Conversely, in BW an action declaration without some fairly rich specification of an intention or a hope isn't really well-formed. Which then has a big effect on how true descriptions are established: if the check succeeds, then we know that, in the fiction, there is a true description of the action which is the PC getting what s/he wanted. The rule book even describes this as "sacrosanct".

Does the above help make clearer what I'm trying to get at and ask about in the OP?

When you say "richer, wider, consequence-laden descriptions of what the PCs do..." are you just speaking to results of an action? Because I don't think establishing the result falls into the same bucket as descriptions of what the PC's do.

Hopefully the earlier parts of this post help with this. When I turn on a light switch with the result that I illuminate a room and alert a prowler - with the motion of the switch itself being a result of moving my finger - these are all the same thing that I do], albeit described differently.

Of course in a RPG system you might impose a rule that (say) the players can make true such-and-such sorts of descriptions (eg descriptions about PC bodily movements) and the GM can make true such-and-such other descriptions (eg of what they see when the look somewhere) and maybe use random tables for something else, and make some authority subject to some mechanical checks, etc - but that is a decision about who gets to establish what descriptions as true. The point of the OP is that you can't get to it just by contrasting (so-called) actions with (so-called) results. That contrast is downstream of, not upstream of, a decision about who gets to establish what descriptions as true.