D&D 5E Roleplaying in D&D 5E: It’s How You Play the Game

[clearstream]

And yet words clearly exist, both literally as physical objects when written down, and in a logical sense. Ask any software developer, we manipulate text all the time! Cutting edge software does much more, discerning the structure within the text, creating representations of that, and manipulating them according to rules which were generated by repeated feedback, so called 'machine learning'. Clearly there is meaning inhered into the sequence of words, but the words, absent any specific meaning, can still be manipulated, merely by understanding the rules of grammar, which don't reference meaning at all. I'd also note that, to the extent that we can train ML algorithms to manipulate by reference to meaning, we have to INSTILL THAT UNDERSTANDING in them, it isn't 'just there'.

Indeed, but we are discussing symbols onto which we have conferred meaning. I generally discern two layers of meaning in game symbols.

The top layer is the evocative: what does this symbol make me imagine? Say a game piece looks like a doctor. Certainly the piece is not a doctor (it is a shaped and coloured piece of resin), but it might make me imagine a doctor. The evocative is redoubled by the immediate context of the rest of the game materials.

The other layer is the mechanical: what does the piece actually do in the game system? Is there anything doctorish about what it does? What ideas about what it is to be a doctor are expressed by it's mechanics and mechanical positioning?

Likewise if you write a story about a chess game, the story wasn't inherent in the chess game. It isn't like LotR, you had to bring the meaning, ENTIRELY from outside, and it could have been anything. I could tell 100 contradictory stories about a single chess game, none of them is canonical. It isn't fiction itself, and that is FUNDAMENTALLY because it isn't self-referential. No part of what happens on the chess board reflects a fictional interpretation of previous moves, which is totally unlike D&D.

I think you are just setting criteria for a good story, rather than a story. Things happen. The board changes. Each next change relates to those before it, and foreshadows those after it.

On that level, there is a single canonical story. Once we add our own fictional layers to it, you are right that there is no canonical story? How is that a problem exactly? Are you pointing to some shortfall in every RPG that lacks a canonical story?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's simpler than that. Non-linear systems can be described in terms of their phase-space: a topological mapping of every state of the system.

As for there being no such closed set for RPGs, what comprises the game artifacts is continuously added to and taken away from by participants. A frank boardgame like Descent possibly does have a bounded phase-space: does traversing it tell any stories?

Well, a phase space requires continuous variables, and independence of those variables, formally. Each variable forms a dimension of your space. However, many of these state spaces are not really useful in describing the phases of a system. Anyway, suffice it to say that the state of a Descent game, for example, doesn't really count. It could be described by a STATE MACHINE, but that's a different thing. So, you might consider that in terms of game process, though its more informal and you might best think of something like a 'process diagram'.

As far as playing a game of Descent telling a story... Its basically the same as chess, though Descent is certainly meant to EVOKE some fictional imaginings. There's no arrow back from those imaginings into the other elements of the game however (to get back to that Edward's model with the arrows and boxes). I have to side with @pemerton on this one, so far Edwards' description seems far more useful, overall.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So why the fervent disagreement!? Game provides structure to the RP. Implying that the structure of game has a relationship with the structure of RP.


What RPG in fact forgoes them? You may have RP, but not RPG.


That's incorrect. It's the dissonances and lacunae I notice in enthusiastic claims that lead me to question. Debate on whether games might be a new form of non-linear narrative is not settled. If games are a form of narrative, they might narrate in ways that are different from preexisting mediums.

I can't tell if you agree with me or not that RP+G is distinct from RP - ie that G has some consequence for RP - because you seem so determined to find fault and disagree.

What ways do games produce narrative? Approach that as a question about games, and not stories.


The question I have in mind is whether it is possible to separate rules from pieces the way Baker supposes? You've raised objections to points that haven't been argued for.

Whether your figure exactly matches your character is beside the point. Just as it is missing the point to say that there is much about a character that isn't on the sheet.

Once the figure is conferred with the property of a token in the game system, or once the character sheet has an XP track that matters, I am interested in the productive flow between them. Does it matter that one game relates the figure to this and that other component? How do the rules address the figure?

If you think these are settled questions then you may like to read more of the literature on games.


Yes, I was aiming to do that... but distractions abound.

Let's say I have a token representing my character, and I'm playing a game where the token is a useful cue. A dog runs into the room, grabs the token, and eats it. Has the game or any fiction that has been created been altered by this event -- the thing that happens to the token? If the answer is no, then this is why cues can be separated from the fiction in a model -- they're representative, yes, but they are not the same thing. They are separate things. We often invest symbols with conceptions, but that doesn't mean that they are not separate things. The flag of a country is often used to represent that country as a whole, and yet it's never actually that country. I can separate countries and flags. This is the separation of the model -- these are different things being used in conjunction to play a game. They are never the same thing.

The idea you have, that there's some flow between pieces, would require that you first clearly identify what properties or concepts adhere to each so that you can define what the interfaces are and what is traded across them. The model discussed by @pemerton does this, clearly, by indicating that the Lumpley Principle stands at the head of everything, and then how each piece of the model interacts to bring this to bear. Cues exist to help share imagination and foster consent (the requirement of the Lumpley principle). The rules exist to help constrain the possible and to resolve issues of disagreement so that consent can be reached. However, at all points, the one thing that matters is that we (at the table) all consent to an introduction into our imaginations of what's going on -- the fiction being created. You're arguing that there's some other process of flow. Cool, enunciate it. In the meantime, your questions and quibbles about the model discussed aren't holding much water -- you're asking questions as if you want to know how to play chess on a backgammon board.

By the by, the suggest that I should read more on game design while you're defending a bad review of a game that clearly failed to grasp how that game is structured is somewhat ironic. Do you have experiences with Brindlewood Bay? With PbtA games? Forged in the Dark? Cortex Prime?

I'm not interested in telling stories with a few bits and pieces of game as conveniences. I'm interested in how stories might emerge from game as game. If you and @AbdulAlhazred cannot see the possibility of this, then it is not my aim to persuade you.

I'm very unclear as to what you mean, here. What do you think "stories...emerge from game as game" means? No story emerges from chess, for instance. And story told about a game of chess is arbitrary. I don't think a game can create story without people inserting it at all. Even a classic dungeon crawl with pawn stance play creates a story of what happened, but requires that the GM sow those seeds via prep and the players reap those seed through action. In a game like Blades in the Dark, there's story sown in the sparse setting details, and in the intent of play, but it doesn't emerge unless the GM and players start pushing hard against each other to establish what they want to be in that story. Game as game is anodyne and incapable of producing story. Story is uniquely a human endeavor.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So why the fervent disagreement!? Game provides structure to the RP. Implying that the structure of game has a relationship with the structure of RP.

What RPG in fact forgoes them? You may have RP, but not RPG.

The model you espouse seems rough and in some people's opinions apparently isn't serving their analytical needs. Frankly it seems somewhat ambiguous. I suspect if you were to have put it forward back in the heyday of the Forge you'd have ended up where Edwards is now.

That's incorrect. It's the dissonances and lacunae I notice in enthusiastic claims that lead me to question. Debate on whether games might be a new form of non-linear narrative is not settled. If games are a form of narrative, they might narrate in ways that are different from preexisting mediums.

I fail to see these 'dissonances and lacunae' frankly. The Edwards model is pretty clear and how it maps onto actual RPGs and play is quite explicit.

I can't tell if you agree with me or not that RP+G is distinct from RP - ie that G has some consequence for RP - because you seem so determined to find fault and disagree.

Nobody is disagreeing that RP by itself is the same as an RPG. RPGs bring a particular type of process and particular elements (varying by game) to the process of story telling and role play. I don't see how anyone could realistically hold any other opinion (certainly I would not consider such a position to be very defensible, no doubt someone has tried). I don't believe games ARE a form of narrative. I believe they MAY participate in the characteristics of narratives, in which case they are probably 'narrative games', though perhaps not all such are actually RPGs (I can't cite an example, but maybe other people can of a narrative non-RPing game, but I think they probably exist, and certainly COULD exist). Certainly RPGs are an example of a narrative game, IMHO. Nobody disagrees with that, and I think 'finding fault' might be the wrong way of looking at it. Simply pointing out ways in which pre-existing analytical frameworks improve on the one you have suggested is not really finding fault, though it is criticism in the most classical sense.

What ways do games produce narrative? Approach that as a question about games, and not stories.

Well, by RP, but when we call them 'games' we are also constraining ourselves to a specific type of activity, game-playing. This implies some sort of reasonably formalized set of rules understood in common by the participants and which influence the process of play, which in this case definitionally produces a narrative. So we have the players, who play, the rules which influence the process, possibly cues, and then the fiction and narrative, which is the unrolling of fiction in the course of play. I would personally also state that 'story' might be considered a more precise definition that simply 'narrative', which could be construed to be pretty much any description of things which happened. A story needs specific structures, protagonists, conflict, etc. to produce drama. So, perhaps we might classify D&D as 'narrative', but not 'dramatic', as it has nothing to say rules or cue wise about drama particularly. Dungeon World on the other hand is a dramatically focused game, drama is a direct intentional consequence of playing by its rules. I think I've basically drawn Edwards' diagram here all over again. It sure feels to me like an almost inevitable analytical construct. I fail to see where it falls short.

The question I have in mind is whether it is possible to separate rules from pieces the way Baker supposes? You've raised objections to points that haven't been argued for.

Rules govern interactions. Pieces do nothing without rules. Yes, rules can have reference to 'pieces' (cues) such as "when it is your turn throw 2d6 and move your piece forward around the board a number of spaces equal to the total." This is a Monopoly rule, right? It references your piece, but the piece and the rule can quite easily be separated into 2 distinct things. The player uses the piece to play by the rule. Now, maybe you don't feel like being so formal sometimes and you just say 'the game' or something instead of distinguishing, but the distinction seems valid to me.

Whether your figure exactly matches your character is beside the point. Just as it is missing the point to say that there is much about a character that isn't on the sheet.

Once the figure is conferred with the property of a token in the game system, or once the character sheet has an XP track that matters, I am interested in the productive flow between them. Does it matter that one game relates the figure to this and that other component? How do the rules address the figure?

I think it is useful to point out that the figure is an abstraction, and that the sheet is a play aid. I mean, think about it this way, if you had a phenomenal memory you could simply play D&D without a character sheet, right? Whenever any rule referenced it, you would simply consult your memory and carry out the indicated process. You would still be playing D&D, right? If you tossed away the rules and simply did stuff with the character sheet, would that be D&D? I would say 'no' if you aren't following the rules, like say you used AC as a damage reduction number, or something like that (granting that we generally allow for a pretty wide latitude of house ruling without getting pissy about what name you call your game).

If you think these are settled questions then you may like to read more of the literature on games.

I've certainly read some of the formal literature on the subject, though long ago. I am of the opinion that Edwards is actually pretty much within the established academic understanding of games, although I don't think I am confident enough to say anything much about that. Maybe you could cite some work that would illuminate this area.

Yes, I was aiming to do that... but distractions abound.


I'm not interested in telling stories with a few bits and pieces of game as conveniences. I'm interested in how stories might emerge from game as game. If you and @AbdulAlhazred cannot see the possibility of this, then it is not my aim to persuade you.

I've played SOME games that are pretty minialistic in the game area, which might warrant this description to a degree (IE PACE, which is a very lightweight system, though it does have rules). OTOH my own game is about 300 pages long right now, at a rough guess. I don't think it would qualify as 'a few bits and pieces'

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Would you agree that very often such games share out the job of establishing facts about the game-world. If so, why do you think that is?

And why don't games that focus on arbitrating real world outcomes typically do so, in your view?

Well, narrative type games have to give the players SOME role, otherwise it would be a pretty uninteresting game (I mean, Tic Tac Toe is usually labeled as a game, but as an example of one where choices literally do not matter I think we can agree it is a pretty degenerate case). So, yes, pretty much of necessity narratively focused Story Games provide some mechanism by which the players can make choices about what elements of the fiction serve as things like dramatic needs, stakes, character flaws, antagonists, etc. Something a player does, probably mediated by the rules, will allow for this, in general.

I don't think there's any sense in which games have to be one or the other, it is more a matter of game culture that there is seen to be any significant divide. So, classic D&D pretty much eschewed the idea of players having a formal role in anything beyond deciding the actions of their designated PCs (and rolling dice). Even classic D&D though has non-fictional elements, like hit points, which players use to reason AS THE CHARACTER (IE I'm going to stop here and let the cleric cure me because my hit points are low, not 'because I've run out of luck' or 'because I am tired', etc.). AD&D 2e added on a concept of motivation "I'm going to steal that sack of gold because as a thief I get XP for doing that." but it really doesn't change things much.

We do get a different sort of concept with 4e though, where the players and GM are asked to use dramatic considerations to structure play. The player selects a LOT of things about their PC which have attached backstory (or they can reflavor it, but it is always assumed SOME FLAVOR exists). This flavor is then fed into the Quest inventing mechanism where the player comes up with things to do which will act as XP sources. Once XP is gained, more character stuff is acquired and the loop continues. The GM is also supposed to 'say yes or roll' and 'skip to the action', and various other such statements which indicate the game is to focus on narrative story concerns. SCs also fit in here, as they ONLY MAKE SENSE as narrative devices (IE it would be preposterous to propose that slipping on the ice, then later getting lost, and then finally failing to spot the campfire smoke somehow lead in a cause-and-effect way to the Princess choosing to marry the Duke, yet this is exactly how SCs work).

 

[clearstream]

I fail to see these 'dissonances and lacunae' frankly. The Edwards model is pretty clear and how it maps onto actual RPGs and play is quite explicit.

One of the more obvious lacuna is the siting of the metagame. A dissonance is that cues mix game world up with processes and avatars.

Nobody is disagreeing that RP by itself is the same as an RPG. RPGs bring a particular type of process and particular elements (varying by game) to the process of story telling and role play. I don't see how anyone could realistically hold any other opinion (certainly I would not consider such a position to be very defensible, no doubt someone has tried). I don't believe games ARE a form of narrative. I believe they MAY participate in the characteristics of narratives, in which case they are probably 'narrative games', though perhaps not all such are actually RPGs (I can't cite an example, but maybe other people can of a narrative non-RPing game, but I think they probably exist, and certainly COULD exist). Certainly RPGs are an example of a narrative game, IMHO. Nobody disagrees with that, and I think 'finding fault' might be the wrong way of looking at it. Simply pointing out ways in which pre-existing analytical frameworks improve on the one you have suggested is not really finding fault, though it is criticism in the most classical sense.

That is well put, and I am pursuing both understanding and a way to add something. A common intuition among video game designers and people studying games is that they are far from well understood. Games resist definition, although one can say useful things about them. For instance, thinking of games as tools.

There is an oft-cited hunch that games will in time be a new narrative form. Game-narrative is by some predicted to not be done in the same way as linear narrative like book or film.

Well, by RP, but when we call them 'games' we are also constraining ourselves to a specific type of activity, game-playing. This implies some sort of reasonably formalized set of rules understood in common by the participants and which influence the process of play, which in this case definitionally produces a narrative. So we have the players, who play, the rules which influence the process, possibly cues, and then the fiction and narrative, which is the unrolling of fiction in the course of play. I would personally also state that 'story' might be considered a more precise definition that simply 'narrative', which could be construed to be pretty much any description of things which happened. A story needs specific structures, protagonists, conflict, etc. to produce drama. So, perhaps we might classify D&D as 'narrative', but not 'dramatic', as it has nothing to say rules or cue wise about drama particularly. Dungeon World on the other hand is a dramatically focused game, drama is a direct intentional consequence of playing by its rules. I think I've basically drawn Edwards' diagram here all over again. It sure feels to me like an almost inevitable analytical construct. I fail to see where it falls short.

The reason I am arguing for a narrative from game as game is to get a foot in the door. If the games we have now can produce any kind of narrative at all, then it is plausible to imagine a future game that goes further.

Rules govern interactions. Pieces do nothing without rules. Yes, rules can have reference to 'pieces' (cues) such as "when it is your turn throw 2d6 and move your piece forward around the board a number of spaces equal to the total." This is a Monopoly rule, right? It references your piece, but the piece and the rule can quite easily be separated into 2 distinct things. The player uses the piece to play by the rule. Now, maybe you don't feel like being so formal sometimes and you just say 'the game' or something instead of distinguishing, but the distinction seems valid to me.

I'm really not sure on this. Your point is a fair one, for example we have Senet which is a game artifact with lost rules. But then there is the matter of the ludic meaning of the rules and the instantiated play which is form dependent (hence in videogames, enormously different levels built using ostensibly identical rules.)

I think it is useful to point out that the figure is an abstraction, and that the sheet is a play aid. I mean, think about it this way, if you had a phenomenal memory you could simply play D&D without a character sheet, right? Whenever any rule referenced it, you would simply consult your memory and carry out the indicated process. You would still be playing D&D, right? If you tossed away the rules and simply did stuff with the character sheet, would that be D&D? I would say 'no' if you aren't following the rules, like say you used AC as a damage reduction number, or something like that (granting that we generally allow for a pretty wide latitude of house ruling without getting pissy about what name you call your game).

In this case the game artifact is constituted of neurons and synapses, if it is truly isomorphic!

I've certainly read some of the formal literature on the subject, though long ago. I am of the opinion that Edwards is actually pretty much within the established academic understanding of games, although I don't think I am confident enough to say anything much about that. Maybe you could cite some work that would illuminate this area.

I'd start with Jesper Juul and Espen Aarseth for some initial definitions of game. Foundational reading would include Bernard Suits and Johan Huizinga on game playing. On rules and rule following, AJ Kreider, Indrik Reiland, Richard Royce, and Jose Trevino.

I've played SOME games that are pretty minialistic in the game area, which might warrant this description to a degree (IE PACE, which is a very lightweight system, though it does have rules). OTOH my own game is about 300 pages long right now, at a rough guess. I don't think it would qualify as 'a few bits and pieces'

I'd love to try it at some point!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Indeed, but we are discussing symbols onto which we have conferred meaning. I generally discern two layers of meaning in game symbols.

The top layer is the evocative: what does this symbol make me imagine? Say a game piece looks like a doctor. Certainly the piece is not a doctor (it is a shaped and coloured piece of resin), but it might make me imagine a doctor. The evocative is redoubled by the immediate context of the rest of the game materials.

The other layer is the mechanical: what does the piece actually do in the game system? Is there anything doctorish about what it does? What ideas about what it is to be a doctor are expressed by it's mechanics and mechanical positioning?

OK, I'm not sure why this is significant or controversial. Again, unless the evocation literally has weight on the mechanical part, then the evocative part is merely 'color' and not part of the game itself.

I think you are just setting criteria for a good story, rather than a story. Things happen. The board changes. Each next change relates to those before it, and foreshadows those after it.

On that level, there is a single canonical story. Once we add our own fictional layers to it, you are right that there is no canonical story? How is that a problem exactly? Are you pointing to some shortfall in every RPG that lacks a canonical story?

I'm not talking about story quality. I'm talking about the difference between NARRATING and STORY TELLING. You can narrate any activity, but that doesn't make it a story, just a narration. A story, as I'm using the terms, has to have certain dramatic form in order to 'work'. This is pretty non-controversial and has been commented on thoroughly since at least the classical Greek period where writers and critics of Greek plays and dramas certainly understood these concepts and indeed invented terms for them which are still in use today. You can NARRATE a game of chess. Maybe you can weave a story out of that too, potentially, but the story is not inherent in the chess game, it would have to be devised as a separate activity, after the fact. This is completely different from a Story Game style RPG where the very mechanics of the game rest on some process of allocating dramatic forms to the pieces of the narrative DURING THE PROCESS and IN ACCORDANCE WITH RULES. You can see how this is utterly QUALITATIVELY different from chess, right?

I don't know what you mean by 'canonical story' here exactly. I think that an RPG which qualifies as a Story Game really cannot have the story and the game separated in any profitable way, not during play at least. So, I doubt that in a Dungeon World game for example you could take the formal moves and their outcomes and create some 'non-canonical' story around it that was a convincing narration of DW play. Even if this were possible (maybe it is) you certainly cannot for that reason call DW the equivalent of chess because the fiction, the story, still fed back into play via rules! "Because your character wants to find the gold to cure his sister; the Spider King stole the gold!" This is literally the sort of way that DW plays, and is a CAUSAL DESCRIPTION of a GM game move. With the first clause removed it is no longer coherent in DW game rules terms.

 

[clearstream]

OK, I'm not sure why this is significant or controversial. Again, unless the evocation literally has weight on the mechanical part, then the evocative part is merely 'color' and not part of the game itself.

Heresy! We can say we don't care about the fluff (but everyone cares about the fluff.)

I'm not talking about story quality. I'm talking about the difference between NARRATING and STORY TELLING. You can narrate any activity, but that doesn't make it a story, just a narration. A story, as I'm using the terms, has to have certain dramatic form in order to 'work'. This is pretty non-controversial and has been commented on thoroughly since at least the classical Greek period where writers and critics of Greek plays and dramas certainly understood these concepts and indeed invented terms for them which are still in use today. You can NARRATE a game of chess. Maybe you can weave a story out of that too, potentially, but the story is not inherent in the chess game, it would have to be devised as a separate activity, after the fact. This is completely different from a Story Game style RPG where the very mechanics of the game rest on some process of allocating dramatic forms to the pieces of the narrative DURING THE PROCESS and IN ACCORDANCE WITH RULES. You can see how this is utterly QUALITATIVELY different from chess, right?

Yes, of course. The sole concession I am seeking is that even simple games can yield a narrative.

So, I doubt that in a Dungeon World game for example you could take the formal moves and their outcomes and create some 'non-canonical' story around it that was a convincing narration of DW play. Even if this were possible (maybe it is) you certainly cannot for that reason call DW the equivalent of chess because the fiction, the story, still fed back into play via rules! "Because your character wants to find the gold to cure his sister; the Spider King stole the gold!" This is literally the sort of way that DW plays, and is a CAUSAL DESCRIPTION of a GM game move. With the first clause removed it is no longer coherent in DW game rules terms.

This is a wonderful example! I gather DW is often not run that way. I've read StackExchange and Reddit discussions of how DW operates that suggest the same material is used in many different ways. My sessions have felt less different from my usual D&D because I have always built the story around the characters... except currently in ToA (in the Tomb itself), which I am not really enjoying.

 

[clearstream]

Let's say I have a token representing my character, and I'm playing a game where the token is a useful cue. A dog runs into the room, grabs the token, and eats it. Has the game or any fiction that has been created been altered by this event -- the thing that happens to the token? If the answer is no, then this is why cues can be separated from the fiction in a model -- they're representative, yes, but they are not the same thing. They are separate things. We often invest symbols with conceptions, but that doesn't mean that they are not separate things. The flag of a country is often used to represent that country as a whole, and yet it's never actually that country. I can separate countries and flags. This is the separation of the model -- these are different things being used in conjunction to play a game. They are never the same thing.

Why are you making this point? I am discussing a consequential connection or correlation that need not be always present.

The idea you have, that there's some flow between pieces, would require that you first clearly identify what properties or concepts adhere to each so that you can define what the interfaces are and what is traded across them. The model discussed by @pemerton does this, clearly, by indicating that the Lumpley Principle stands at the head of everything, and then how each piece of the model interacts to bring this to bear. Cues exist to help share imagination and foster consent (the requirement of the Lumpley principle). The rules exist to help constrain the possible and to resolve issues of disagreement so that consent can be reached. However, at all points, the one thing that matters is that we (at the table) all consent to an introduction into our imaginations of what's going on -- the fiction being created. You're arguing that there's some other process of flow. Cool, enunciate it. In the meantime, your questions and quibbles about the model discussed aren't holding much water -- you're asking questions as if you want to know how to play chess on a backgammon board.

I can see how that might be frustrating. I know slso that I am heroically bad at explaining.

By the by, the suggest that I should read more on game design while you're defending a bad review of a game that clearly failed to grasp how that game is structured is somewhat ironic. Do you have experiences with Brindlewood Bay? With PbtA games? Forged in the Dark? Cortex Prime?

Not on game design. I meant more game studies. Ludology. I gave a shortlist to @AbdulAlhazred.

I have played Dogs and run DW. I read the review of BB as I plan to run it with my family. I am not defending it or promoting it, other than to put it forward as another perspective. That said I watched Jason Cordova streaming play and I'm not seeing what the reviewer did so heretically wrongly in their written-up play. What did you spot in particular?

I'm very unclear as to what you mean, here. What do you think "stories...emerge from game as game" means? No story emerges from chess, for instance. And story told about a game of chess is arbitrary. I don't think a game can create story without people inserting it at all. Even a classic dungeon crawl with pawn stance play creates a story of what happened, but requires that the GM sow those seeds via prep and the players reap those seed through action. In a game like Blades in the Dark, there's story sown in the sparse setting details, and in the intent of play, but it doesn't emerge unless the GM and players start pushing hard against each other to establish what they want to be in that story. Game as game is anodyne and incapable of producing story. Story is uniquely a human endeavor.

I am making the modest claim that a game as game can yield a narrative. I acknowledged way up thread that it might not meet dramatic criteria.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

One of the more obvious lacuna is the siting of the metagame. A dissonance is that cues mix game world up with processes and avatars.

I believe @pemerton noted at least once that cues are of at least 2 types, those which are referenced in order to aid in constructing the fiction (IE things like what is written on your character sheet) and things which mediate the arbitration of fiction generation (IE dice, which indicate different action outcomes stochastically). While one might want to make some distinctions there, perhaps, I haven't seen where this would be pivotal in the overall discussion. They can both profitably fit within a category of 'stuff that is used to play the game', right?

That is well put, and I am pursuing both understanding and a way to add something. A common intuition among video game designers and people studying games is that they are far from well understood. Games resist definition, although one can say useful things about them. For instance, thinking of games as tools.

Eh, everything ultimately resists complete definition. I think this is because 'om gate gate paragate parasamgate, Bodhi soha!' essentially (the universe is devoid of intrinsic semantics and is thuse 'gate', or 'empty'). I think we've done a pretty reasonable job of systematizing them however. Certainly there are various points of view, and I've no doubt new ones can and will emerge. Yet, I think if we simply reflect on what we do, we are not dissatisfied with our motivations for doing it, nor do we have great doubts about what attracts us to our favored play experiences. If I close my eyes and imagine playing, I can see plainly why I do things a certain way and I can gain a fair amount of insight about it.

There is an oft-cited hunch that games will in time be a new narrative form. Game-narrative is by some predicted to not be done in the same way as linear narrative like book or film.

I'm not sure what they mean by that. Games certainly produce characteristic narratives. I understand, some people would like to analyze something like "White Plume Mountain played with core 1e AD&D rules" as a sort of abstract 'game entity' and say things about it. OK, sure. IMHO that is more like looking at the Globe Theater and the script for 'As you Like It' and analyzing that, which is certainly feasible. You will probably conclude certain things, but you will not have experienced watching As You Like It in the Globe Theater! Now, obviously a play is more passive than an RPG, so maybe you'd need to analyze playing the lead role as opposed to just watching. I would never argue that participating in a game of the above mentioned adventure/RPG is the same type of experience exactly, but I have played enough sessions of RPGs at this point (1000's) to have a pretty good idea what they consist of. Playing one produces a narrative, which has probably got some elements of dramatic story. Now, maybe in the future the range of RPG play will extend to a wider range of types (IE there could be historical reenactment for instance, or political commentary, etc.). That range to some extent already exists and has for 150 years though.

The reason I am arguing for a narrative from game as game is to get a foot in the door. If the games we have now can produce any kind of narrative at all, then it is plausible to imagine a future game that goes further.

I'm OK with that, but I don't really need an argument. A narrative IMHO is a recounting of play (narration). I think its possible this is enough for some games, perhaps, but as I said before, RPGs really need drama, or some other set of 'rules' by which fiction and game process have a two way conversation. Classic D&D has one, Story Games have some, yes others may arise/have arisen. I'd note that since most other possible uses of games involve something akin to simulation (IE wargames like Kriegspiels) MOST of them are a bit D&D-like in wanting the factors involved to tie back to real world 'stuff' pretty cleanly. OTOH there are 'therapy games' (as an example) which don't do that at all and are not about telling a story, at least that is not their goal.

I'm really not sure on this. Your point is a fair one, for example we have Senet which is a game artifact with lost rules. But then there is the matter of the ludic meaning of the rules and the instantiated play which is form dependent (hence in videogames, enormously different levels built using ostensibly identical rules.)

Sure, I just distinguish RPGs as being games where the DRAMATIC figures back into the rules/state/process of play, at least for Story Games. Even D&D isn't quite like Senet though in terms of having an infinite game state mediated through a very loose set of rules. This is certainly a qualitative difference, no? I argue without seeing that qualitative difference, a framework which analyzes RPGs is missing critical factors. So I am advocating for going to that extra level of detail.

In this case the game artifact is constituted of neurons and synapses, if it is truly isomorphic!


I'd start with Jesper Juul and Espen Aarseth for some initial definitions of game. Foundational reading would include Bernard Suits and Johan Huizinga on game playing. On rules and rule following, AJ Kreider, Indrik Reiland, Richard Royce, and Jose Trevino.


I'd love to try it at some point!

Oh, well there is a thread, @Garthanos and @Gilladian have been playing a bit lately. We're wandering in 'figuring out mechanics' land these days I think. Seems like another player or two wouldn't hurt. lol.