S/Z: On the Difficulties of RPG Theory & Criticism

[Aldarc]

Well, let's put it this way. I've been told you can't tell who is going to win in a sports game. I disagree. There's an entire industry devoted to predicting the outcome of sports. And, you know what? They're pretty good at it. Not perfect, true. But, pretty good. Right more often than wrong.

It's competitive play, Hussar. If there was any money in betting about whether the party at the table could make it in and out of the dungeon, then that would be a thing in D&D too. Or bet about which character will make it based upon the play expertise of the player. And the same could be said for board games too. Will the group win at Pandemic tonight? Who knows. Or how about Settlers of Catan? But you could probably bet on these things too and attempt to predict the outcome. The problem is that the gambling industry doesn't care about applying their efforts in these matters.

I think that you are trying to force this D&D exceptionalism a little too hard and are in the unfortunate position of being stuck scrambling to defend a sinking argument full of lots of holes. But when so little people find your argument compelling or sustainable, at what point do you abandon the ship?

If I ask you to play 2 on 2 basketball, or Monopoly, or NFL football, you have a very, very good idea what's going to happen. Sure, some of the specifics (as in who wins) will be undetermined. It is a game after all. But, the process from start to finish will be pretty predictable.

There is no real "order of play" in an RPG.

Actually I don't know what is going to happen if you ask me to play 2 on 2 basketball. Are we playing for a set time? Are we playing to a certain win condition? Are we playing full court or half-court? Do we take the ball back to half-court and bounce the ball back into play? What constitutes a foul? How are fouls adjudicated and enforced? How high is the goalpost? How much time do we get in offense? Is there a shot clock? What are we playing for? What does a victory achieve? Am I doing this as a work out? Do I enjoy basketball? How competitive are you going to take this?

Likewise with Monopoly, Parker Bros. discovered through in-house research, much to their own surprise, that people rarely played Monopoly per the rules. It was only when they realized this that they essentially started printing common house rules in the instructions. Even then, I feel that everytime that I sit down to a game of Monopoly, the players frequently have to negotiate the rules and the agreed upon terms of play.

Saying that we're playing NFL Football is more akin to saying, "Hey we're running an Adventurer's League game of Tomb of Annihilation." And there will be more procedures in place here than in a standard "pick-up-game" of D&D.

 

[Sadras]

...(snip)... they'll spend half the session dividing a small treasury, do a bit of shopping (there's not much available in the town they're in), some characters will finish training into new levels, and with any luck they'll get back into the field on their next adventure the goal and vague location of which they already know.

Funny enough we also have an admin session coming up next - evaluating and sharing some treasure taken from a dragon's lair, library/sage research, making some necessary contacts within the city, commissioning items to be made, restocking equipment. And the very next session is made up of an extended sociopolitical scene with much decision making.

 

[Hussar]

It's competitive play, Hussar. If there was any money in betting about whether the party at the table could make it in and out of the dungeon, then that would be a thing in D&D too. Or bet about which character will make it based upon the play expertise of the player. /snip

How do you know there is a dungeon to be found anywhere in a given D&D campaign? Might be, might not be.

As far as you basketball example goes, let's be honest, you know that if we're going to play 2 on 2, while there are some variations (as you say, half court, full court), you do know that we will have a basketball, and at least one hoop. We know that we're not going to play with racquets. You can be pretty sure that no one is going to be allowed to kick the ball at any time.

Terming it as "exceptionalism" is bringing in pretty loaded language. Can we not distinguish between an RPG an other kinds of games? I was told recently that Clue is not an RPG. Why not? Why is Clue, or Monopoly, or Baseball not an RPG?

 

[Umbran]

Now, predict what my next D&D game looks like. Heck, can you even predict your next session?

With respect, that's not the appropriate question - we aren't talking about results of play, or the content of play. We are talking about general process of play. We don't need to be able to predict what happens in the session, so much as be able to understand how you go about playing.

The question is, can a new player sit down at the table and join in the action with minimal discombobulation? Or are you like, resolving social encounters by doing the Hokey-Pokey such that everyone stands up and starts dancing with no explanation?

 

[Fenris-77]

With respect, that's not the appropriate question - we aren't talking about results of play, or the content of play. We are talking about general process of play. We don't need to be able to predict what happens in the session, so much as be able to understand how you go about playing.

The question is, can a new player sit down at the table and join in the action with minimal discombobulation? Or are you like, resolving social encounters by doing the Hokey-Pokey such that everyone stands up and starts dancing with no explanation?

I think the answer is generally yes, and that yes is why despite differences that specific games of D&D can still be called 'D&D' without involving too much suspension of disbelief. I think the interesting meat of this topic is in finding some vocabulary and ways to talk about how play is actualized, and maybe identifying some decision points where games start to diverge a little in what they look like at the table.

 

[Umbran]

I think the interesting meat of this topic is in finding some vocabulary and ways to talk about how play is actualized, and maybe identifying some decision points where games start to diverge a little in what they look like at the table.

I largely agree. I note this mostly because,if we are talking mostly about small differences in play, focusing a lot of vocabulary on the large bits won't hurt, but may also not actually get you very far into the meat, as they are discussions about stuff most of us are doing the same.

 

[Fenris-77]

I largely agree. I note this mostly because,if we are talking mostly about small differences in play, focusing a lot of vocabulary on the large bits won't hurt, but may also not actually get you very far into the meat, as they are discussions about stuff most of us are doing the same.

I wasn't talking about the same-y bits. I do think we could use some common vocabulary for those bits though, that would let be more sure what bits we're talking about. The 'actualization of play at the table' is what each group does with those same-y bits, and where the differences start creeping in. That not the only place, but it's one of them.

 

[Aldarc]

How do you know there is a dungeon to be found anywhere in a given D&D campaign? Might be, might not be.

(1) @Umbran's criticism is apt here.

Terming it as "exceptionalism" is bringing in pretty loaded language. Can we not distinguish between an RPG an other kinds of games? I was told recently that Clue is not an RPG. Why not? Why is Clue, or Monopoly, or Baseball not an RPG?

(2) IMO, you are approaching this the wrong way, even apart from Umbran's excellent point.

I get the impression that you are looking for some sort of rule, law, or key identifier for what constitutes an RPGs or makes them special where there is none. Instead, probably the best way is by gathering a set of typical features found in things that are recognized as RPGs. Don't focus on what isn't present in RPGs vs. sports, board games, or improv comedy class; only focus on what is commonly found in RPGs. Trying to argue from a position of exceptionalism only leads to people shooting cannonballs in your argument.

 

[Umbran]

Can we not distinguish between an RPG an other kinds of games?

Sure we can, but we do so by inclusion, rather than exclusion.

RPGs are a genre of game. And you decide whether a thing fits in the genre by deciding if it has enough of the genre tropes and traits - if you have enough, you are in, and if you don't, you are out. Genre determination typically doesn't care about other things you might include - If you have a sci-fi space opera, and the main character wears a ten gallon hat, that's not a point against it being a sci-fi space opera.

I was told recently that Clue is not an RPG. Why not? Why is Clue, or Monopoly, or Baseball not an RPG?

We might use some of @Celebrim 's language here - in Monopoly, for example, the player never gets to make a proposition. The player merely responds to events and opportunities given by the game mechanics, typically by responding to a yes/no choice. You move some spaces as given by the dice, and you buy or not. You bid at auction or you do not.

Baseball seems to allow a player to make propositions ("I propose I get to run around all the bases!"), and a mechanic for determining success, but it is not a role playing game because it lacks a fictional narrative. You can tell the story of the game, but it is non-fiction, as those events actually happened in the real world.

 

[Celebrim]

@Hussar: So, you make a good point. If we take a game like soccer or baseball, and if we read the rule book, we'll find that the overwhelming majority of the rules are actually defining the equipment that the game is played with and the field that it is played on. If you read the rules of Major League Baseball for the first time, you might be surprised to discover that only a tiny fraction of the rule book has anything to do with the process of playing baseball. In fact, most of the rule book is devoted to describing the circumstances in which play is to take place - as if you picked up an RPG rule book and it spent 30 pages on who should bring snacks and what sort they should bring.

RPG rule books for the most part give no exacting guidance about the field of play or even the type of play that is to take place in the session, so you are right that we can't expect a dungeon or a dragon in a game of D&D the way we can expect a diamond in baseball. In point of fact, the field of play is left entirely up to the imagination of the participants, and could be literally anything.

So what then can we expect? How do we know if someone is playing D&D? Well, for that we have to look at what the rules do describe.

Well, first, there will a secret keeper, usually a human Dungeon Master who is a participant in the play but has a special role as secret keeper and judge.

The other participant(s) will have a character, who represent the avatar they control within the game. And the character will have attributes represented by mathematical values.

The secret keeper will describe a fictional setting that your character is a part of.

And you and the other participants will take turns speaking to the secret keeper. The most important thing you can say to the secret keeper, and the one thing the game really cares about, are propositions to alter the fiction - or to be formal about it to "change the fictional positioning."

When you propose to change the fiction, one of three things will happen. Either the secret keeper will say, "No", or they will say "Yes", or they will say, "Roll a D20, add a specific number from your character sheet, and report the result." If you observe the game long enough you'll eventually discover that that roll of the D20, usually with a modifier added to it, is being compared to a target number, and if your total is equal to or higher than that number, then the change you want to make to the fiction or something quite like it will probably happen. But if your modified roll is below that target number, then it probably won't. Critically, regardless of what happens it's usually the secret keeper that explains the results of your proposition. Also critically, it's usually the case that you make the proposition before you roll the die, and the the outcomes are described after the die is thrown and the result known. And you can continue to make observations of this sort and eventually you will be able to report, "Yes, we are playing D&D".

What this tells us is that the game of D&D is mostly a collection of rules for achieving agreement between the participants with respect to a series of changes in the fiction. But the actual process of playing the game is as much or more about the fiction than what the rules describe. Above and beyond the rules, there is a whole bunch of ideas about the sort of things that might populate the fiction - like say orcs - but none of those things are essential to the game being D&D. What RPGs tend to cover in all of their hundreds of pages are either aids to brainstorming fiction, or else the equivalent of the tiny section of the rules of baseball that describe what players actually do to resolve whether someone gets around the bases and scores a point. The rules are usually silent on most of the things that sports rules care very deeply about.

It is therefore absolutely true that the event of play each table performs is unique in a way that baseball match isn't. But there are still some commonalities between those tables so that we can tell they are playing the same game.