This post tries to say a few things about RPGing.
To begin, the caveats. I'm not going to say anything about the social dynamics of RPGing, of what is involved in persuading people to play a game, of the difference between "casual" and hardcore players, etc. I'm assuming committed players who take the play of the game seriously.
And I'm assuming mainstream RPGing in which there are two distinct participant roles: the GM, and the other players. Games like AD&D, Classic Traveller, Rolemaster, Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World, etc, etc are all examples of this.
Next, the key proposition: at the heart of RPGing is shared imagination. Imaginary people do imagined things in imagined places.
Some boardgames also involve imagined things. But in a boardgame the imagination is optional and epiphenomenal. When I play Mystic Wood, for instance, and my knight fights the troll, I can imagine a fight going on. But all that matters to game play is the numbers on the playing pieces, and the numbers on the rolled dice. The flavour text makes the game more fun, but doesn't actually affect the game play. In a RPG, this is not the case. The fiction matters.
The main difference between the participant roles is how they contribute to the fiction and how they engage with the fiction. The players "insert" themselves into the fiction by way of imagined persons who are at the centre of the shared fiction, in the sense that most of the shared fiction is concerned with the events involving and surrounding these imaginary people. The players contribute to the fiction first-and-foremost by saying what it is that their characters do.
The players can only perform that function if there is some context in which their characters act: an imagined situation in which those character find themselves. The GM's principal job is to provide that context.
Different RPGs set different rules for what the players are allowed to tell us about their characters; and for what the GM is allowed to tell us about the situation/context. That difference across RPGs seems to reflect some significant differences in preferences among the RPGing community. Just to give some examples, starting with situation some RPGs require the GM to take the situation, or perhaps extrapolate the situation, from prior preparation (Moldvay Basic is one example; Torchbearer is another); some RPGs invite the GM to construct the situation in part based on asking questions of the characters (eg "How do you find yourself here?" or "Why is so-and-so really angry at you?") - Apocalypse World and Marvel Heroic RP are two examples; some RPGs expect the GM to construct the situation by building on cues provided by the players as part of their own process of building their characters (Burning Wheel is an example; 4e D&D can come close with its player-authored quests). An example of establishing situation/context that comes close to violating the normal participant role boundaries is the Sorcerer-style "kicker", where the player authors the event/situation that spurs the character into the action the game will be concerned with, and the GM is obliged to incorporate and build on that in their initial framing.
When it comes to players telling us about their characters, there are a lot of differences too. In Classic Traveller, what a player is allowed to tell us about their character is heavily circumscribed by a process of rolling on tables. It's typical, in D&D, for what a player is allowed to tell us about their character to be constrained by rules about race/ancestry, character classes, and starting level (so eg in AD&D it's not typically permitted for a player to introduce us to a character who is a Dwarven Wizard-King of such-and-such a realm; by contrast, the MHRP Annihilation Event Book is chock full of playable characters who resemble just that). In Cthulhu Dark, the rules for character build are: tell us your name and tell us your occupation. That's much more permissive than many RPGs.
Moving on: suppose the GM provides a context, and a player says "Cool, I do [= my character will attempt to do] such-and-such". The next step is to work out what happens in the fiction. How does the shared imaginary stuff change? Up to that moment, everyone was imaging one thing - some combination of what the GM said about the situation, and what the player said about their character. What do they have to imagine now?
This is where action resolution comes in. The variety here is at least as much as the variety in rules about establishing characters and establishing contexts. A given RPG (eg 5e D&D) can itself contain a wide variety of rules on this issue, that are sensitive to such things as what sort of character and what sort of context and what sort of action. Of the RPGs I'm familiar with, I think the two that have the highest degree of internal unity in how they handle action resolution are Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic, and Agon 2nd ed.
This post is not going to try and identify even a fraction of the possible approaches to action resolution. But here a few things that can be relevant:
There's a lot more that could be said, and more examples that could be given. But maybe the above is enough to prompt some replies?
(By way of acknowledgement: while I've not cited anyone else in this post, it draws very heavily on the work of Vincent Baker and is also influenced by reading Luke Crane (Burning Wheel) and Robin Laws (HeroWars, HeroQuest revised.)
To begin, the caveats. I'm not going to say anything about the social dynamics of RPGing, of what is involved in persuading people to play a game, of the difference between "casual" and hardcore players, etc. I'm assuming committed players who take the play of the game seriously.
And I'm assuming mainstream RPGing in which there are two distinct participant roles: the GM, and the other players. Games like AD&D, Classic Traveller, Rolemaster, Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World, etc, etc are all examples of this.
Next, the key proposition: at the heart of RPGing is shared imagination. Imaginary people do imagined things in imagined places.
Some boardgames also involve imagined things. But in a boardgame the imagination is optional and epiphenomenal. When I play Mystic Wood, for instance, and my knight fights the troll, I can imagine a fight going on. But all that matters to game play is the numbers on the playing pieces, and the numbers on the rolled dice. The flavour text makes the game more fun, but doesn't actually affect the game play. In a RPG, this is not the case. The fiction matters.
The main difference between the participant roles is how they contribute to the fiction and how they engage with the fiction. The players "insert" themselves into the fiction by way of imagined persons who are at the centre of the shared fiction, in the sense that most of the shared fiction is concerned with the events involving and surrounding these imaginary people. The players contribute to the fiction first-and-foremost by saying what it is that their characters do.
The players can only perform that function if there is some context in which their characters act: an imagined situation in which those character find themselves. The GM's principal job is to provide that context.
Different RPGs set different rules for what the players are allowed to tell us about their characters; and for what the GM is allowed to tell us about the situation/context. That difference across RPGs seems to reflect some significant differences in preferences among the RPGing community. Just to give some examples, starting with situation some RPGs require the GM to take the situation, or perhaps extrapolate the situation, from prior preparation (Moldvay Basic is one example; Torchbearer is another); some RPGs invite the GM to construct the situation in part based on asking questions of the characters (eg "How do you find yourself here?" or "Why is so-and-so really angry at you?") - Apocalypse World and Marvel Heroic RP are two examples; some RPGs expect the GM to construct the situation by building on cues provided by the players as part of their own process of building their characters (Burning Wheel is an example; 4e D&D can come close with its player-authored quests). An example of establishing situation/context that comes close to violating the normal participant role boundaries is the Sorcerer-style "kicker", where the player authors the event/situation that spurs the character into the action the game will be concerned with, and the GM is obliged to incorporate and build on that in their initial framing.
When it comes to players telling us about their characters, there are a lot of differences too. In Classic Traveller, what a player is allowed to tell us about their character is heavily circumscribed by a process of rolling on tables. It's typical, in D&D, for what a player is allowed to tell us about their character to be constrained by rules about race/ancestry, character classes, and starting level (so eg in AD&D it's not typically permitted for a player to introduce us to a character who is a Dwarven Wizard-King of such-and-such a realm; by contrast, the MHRP Annihilation Event Book is chock full of playable characters who resemble just that). In Cthulhu Dark, the rules for character build are: tell us your name and tell us your occupation. That's much more permissive than many RPGs.
Moving on: suppose the GM provides a context, and a player says "Cool, I do [= my character will attempt to do] such-and-such". The next step is to work out what happens in the fiction. How does the shared imaginary stuff change? Up to that moment, everyone was imaging one thing - some combination of what the GM said about the situation, and what the player said about their character. What do they have to imagine now?
This is where action resolution comes in. The variety here is at least as much as the variety in rules about establishing characters and establishing contexts. A given RPG (eg 5e D&D) can itself contain a wide variety of rules on this issue, that are sensitive to such things as what sort of character and what sort of context and what sort of action. Of the RPGs I'm familiar with, I think the two that have the highest degree of internal unity in how they handle action resolution are Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic, and Agon 2nd ed.
This post is not going to try and identify even a fraction of the possible approaches to action resolution. But here a few things that can be relevant:
*In some RPGs, for some actions, the GM is allowed to say what happens next simply by (i) consulting some pre-game prep and then (ii) extrapolating, from that prep and from the declared action, what happens next. This is a particularly common approach to actions that involve moving places and looking around them.
*In some RPGs, details of the shared fiction can be very important in resolving declared actions. This can connect to the above (eg if the player tells the GM "I look in such-and-such a place while wearing my ultraviolet goggles", then the GM will reply - based on their notes - "You see such-and-such a thing"). Or it can be distinct from it - eg there might be some other way of establishing those details (eg in Classic Traveller, a player might succeed on a Streetwise check), but once established they matter importantly to resolving actions. Other RPGs may rely on a more abstract or "fuzzy" or trope-y sense of the details (I tend to find that MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, and often also 4e D&D, is like this.)
*In some RPGs, for some actions, there is quite a complicated mechanical/mathematical process that must be gone through before anyone can work out what happens next. Hit point attrition conflict resolution (eg most approaches to D&D combat; the conflict resolution system in Torchbearer) are examples of this.
*In some RPGs, the players declaration of action can impose strong constraints on what happens next (eg in Burning Wheel, if a player declares an object, and then wins on the ensuing dice roll, the intent of the declared action comes to pass and not even the GM has authority to negate it be introducing new, conflicting fiction).
*Connected to the above, there can be very different connections between resolving a declared action, and what the GM is allowed to say in establishing the subsequent, new context. Eg suppose the character is exploring a sinister fortress, and comes upon a heavy door, and declares "I force it open!". In both Moldvay Basic D&D and in Torchbearer, this action declaration triggers a roll of the dice. In Moldvay Basic, one possible upshot is that nothing changes - the character fails to open the door, and is still there confronted by a heavy door. In Torchbearer, that is not a permitted result, because a failure on the dice requires the GM to either narrate success on the action, but the character suffers a condition; or to narrate a "twist".
*Still connected to the above, the role of pre-play preparation can be quite different. Some RPGs eschew it (eg this is how I generally approach Burning Wheel). Some use it as a source of inspiration/ideas for the GM in narrating consequences, especially of failed rolls by the player (eg part of Torchbearer prep includes thinking up a list of possible "twists"; part of AW prep involves coming up with fronts and threats that provide material for GM moves). Some use prep as a strong constraint - eg in Moldvay Basic, whether or not the failed attempt to open the door attracts unwanted attention might be decided by the GM looking at their map and key, and forming a view as to who might have heard the noise and how they might respond.
*In some RPGs, details of the shared fiction can be very important in resolving declared actions. This can connect to the above (eg if the player tells the GM "I look in such-and-such a place while wearing my ultraviolet goggles", then the GM will reply - based on their notes - "You see such-and-such a thing"). Or it can be distinct from it - eg there might be some other way of establishing those details (eg in Classic Traveller, a player might succeed on a Streetwise check), but once established they matter importantly to resolving actions. Other RPGs may rely on a more abstract or "fuzzy" or trope-y sense of the details (I tend to find that MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, and often also 4e D&D, is like this.)
*In some RPGs, for some actions, there is quite a complicated mechanical/mathematical process that must be gone through before anyone can work out what happens next. Hit point attrition conflict resolution (eg most approaches to D&D combat; the conflict resolution system in Torchbearer) are examples of this.
*In some RPGs, the players declaration of action can impose strong constraints on what happens next (eg in Burning Wheel, if a player declares an object, and then wins on the ensuing dice roll, the intent of the declared action comes to pass and not even the GM has authority to negate it be introducing new, conflicting fiction).
*Connected to the above, there can be very different connections between resolving a declared action, and what the GM is allowed to say in establishing the subsequent, new context. Eg suppose the character is exploring a sinister fortress, and comes upon a heavy door, and declares "I force it open!". In both Moldvay Basic D&D and in Torchbearer, this action declaration triggers a roll of the dice. In Moldvay Basic, one possible upshot is that nothing changes - the character fails to open the door, and is still there confronted by a heavy door. In Torchbearer, that is not a permitted result, because a failure on the dice requires the GM to either narrate success on the action, but the character suffers a condition; or to narrate a "twist".
*Still connected to the above, the role of pre-play preparation can be quite different. Some RPGs eschew it (eg this is how I generally approach Burning Wheel). Some use it as a source of inspiration/ideas for the GM in narrating consequences, especially of failed rolls by the player (eg part of Torchbearer prep includes thinking up a list of possible "twists"; part of AW prep involves coming up with fronts and threats that provide material for GM moves). Some use prep as a strong constraint - eg in Moldvay Basic, whether or not the failed attempt to open the door attracts unwanted attention might be decided by the GM looking at their map and key, and forming a view as to who might have heard the noise and how they might respond.
There's a lot more that could be said, and more examples that could be given. But maybe the above is enough to prompt some replies?
(By way of acknowledgement: while I've not cited anyone else in this post, it draws very heavily on the work of Vincent Baker and is also influenced by reading Luke Crane (Burning Wheel) and Robin Laws (HeroWars, HeroQuest revised.)
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