RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[Emberashh]

without those later things, D&D’s still not an RPG? That doesn’t seem right.

By today's standards? Yeah, it kind of isn't. But that has to be said, thats oDND. Later editions, even those immediately adjacent to it, are a different story. ODND is a premiere example of a game that didn't survive contact with players.

Plus, one can go read oDND. Its pretty short all things considered. You know what struck me as rather fascinating?

Nowhere does it say you can do anything. In fact, Im fairly certain it doesn't even imply you can do anything, anywhere in the text.

Instead its pretty explicit about what you can do and gives you nothing to do anything but those things.

But it makes sense why people dragged it into that direction, resulting in the overall genre we know and love today. When you're in a dungeon slaying monsters and getting loot, eventually someone's going to run up against a wacky encounter, and they're going to be inclined to try something out of the rules.

Thats how the implicit improv game ends up being a part of the game, and its arguably because this was never properly addressed and integrated that we end up with a tradition of DND being hella difficult to get into if you don't basically apprentice to a GM.

The first is it where it cites RPGs as a quintessential example of playing-style reinforcement, which suggests that there are other (non-RPG) games using playing-style reinforcement.

First person shooters. A shotgun plays very differently from a sniper rifle, and combining the two makes for a wholly new style distinct from either one alone. I related in the other topic that this is why I think so many FPS games end up becoming rpg-esque sooner or later.

Only strict difference is that FPS games are explicitly player skill oriented, whereas RPGs can be either one, but were traditionally character skill oriented.

It even refers to OD&D as a role-playing game.

ODND doesn't call itself that, however, which is a distinction I think matters and one that, if I could speak to the authors, they'd probably agree on. Given how old the game is (and how quickly it stopped being what the vast majority of people refer to as DND), I'm not inclined to read into their commentary all that deeply.

The text isn't an exhaustive study of RPGs specifically, after all, and it'd be beyond the scope of what it sets out to do to go that far on one specific type of game.

It seems that having playing-style reinforcement is neither necessary nor sufficient for a game to be an RPG (particularly for tabletop RPG).

Hence my comments that most RPGs are a hybrid of that and an improv game. And id add to that that some games just aren't actually RPGs and its fine to recognize that they should be called something else. A game isn't lesser just because it isn't actually an RPG, nor are they lesser if we recognize that a given game thats called an RPG may actually be 2 or 3 different games in one.

 

[niklinna]

The thief class added in Supplement I advanced according to the table. That was also the case in Holmes Basic and B/X. AD&D 1e also had a static table for the thief class. NWPs, allocating thief skills, etc all came later. That seems to agree with what you’re saying, but I want to make sure I’m understanding it correctly: without those later things, D&D’s still not an RPG? That doesn’t seem right.

In particular, two things in the cited text stick out to me. The first is it where it cites RPGs as a quintessential example of playing-style reinforcement, which suggests that there are other (non-RPG) games using playing-style reinforcement. The second is where it starts the examples section by noting many tabletop RPGs use playing-style reinforcement — but many is not all. It even refers to OD&D as a role-playing game. It seems that having playing-style reinforcement is neither necessary nor sufficient for a game to be an RPG (particularly for tabletop RPG).

Wow, you actually read that text? I couldn't get past its obfuscatory syntax.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Then you have a rather limited view of RPGs.

What RPGs don't involve shared imagination?

The only ones that I can think of might be solo games such as Thousand Year Old Vampire or Gentleman Bandit, because there's no one to share the imagination with during play.

But otherwise, I think RPGs require some amount of shared imagination. How could they not?

 

[Umbran]

What RPGs don't involve shared imagination?

He said, "at the core". You say "involve". Those aren't the same. Pemerton's position should be held to the words he used, not your softened restatement.

It may help to consider what reasons folks might have to push back so on the OP. One major reason is likely that such structures are typically used to exclude, to gatekeep - these things are RPGs, and these things are not.

It is, in effect, claiming the authority to push things (and the people who like those things, by extension) into the Out-group, out of the clubhouse. As social creatures, humans will tend to resist that push, and resist the assumption of authority underlying it.

Trying to redefine things that folks take as part of their identity - we are gamers here, we consider it part of who we are, our personal definition - is fraught.

 

[hawkeyefan]

He said, "at the core". You say "involve". Those aren't the same. Pemerton's position should be held to the words he used, not your softened restatement.

It may help to consider what reasons folks might have to push back so on the OP. One major reason is likely that such structures are typically used to exclude, to gatekeep - these things are RPGs, and these things are not.

It is, in effect, claiming the authority to push things (and the people who like those things, by extension) into the Out-group, out of the clubhouse. As social creatures, humans will tend to resist that push, and resist the assumption of authority underlying it.

Trying to redefine things that folks take as part of their identity - we are gamers here, we consider it part of who we are, our personal definition - is fraught.

Oh, no softening was intended. At the core is very much what I meant. I am genuinely curious what RPG doesn't have shared imagination at its core.

I had asked @ichabod but I'll happily accept an answer from you. Do you have any examples?

 

[pemerton]

Then you have a rather limited view of RPGs.

I don't think so. What RPG do you have in mind that doesn't have shared imagination at its core? I don't know of any, or at least none is coming to mind.

 

[pemerton]

What RPGs don't involve shared imagination?

The only ones that I can think of might be solo games such as Thousand Year Old Vampire or Gentleman Bandit, because there's no one to share the imagination with during play.

But otherwise, I think RPGs require some amount of shared imagination. How could they not?

If we think of solo play of (say) T&T, or of AD&D using Appendix A of the DMG to roll up a random dungeon, the imagined stuff is clearly sharable in principle - although only one person is involved, there's no obstacle to generalising the imagination to another person.

It's different, in this respect, from (say) writing a story on one's own.

But that sort of solo play is also clearly not a core case of RPGing: it's much closer to a Fighting Fantasy gamebook using some of the AD&D resolution mechanics. For instance, what happens when - in my solo play - I try to lever open the sarcophagus with my trusty crowbar, and fail? There is no one to adjudicate that: I have to be my own referee.

 

[pemerton]

When we want to talk about the mechanics of an RPG, the above is what we're talking about.

Not really. I don't think that's a very interesting description of RPGing at all.

By its own admission it doesn't capture classic D&D, which is (paradigmatically) a RPG. It doesn't capture Classic Traveller either. Nor Call of Cthulhu one-shots. And that's just to give a few examples.

What you've posted seems to be a description of one particular mechanism for developing certain elements of character build in a game that is intended to encourage long-term, skilled play via permitting the player to adopt and improve a strategy. This is a very narrow range, and aspect, of RPG design.

PBTA et al are not strictly just RPGs; they're also story games and so they're introducing different mechanics the above doesn't (and doesn't need to) consider.

I don't know what it means to say a game is not strictly just an RPG. Apocalypse World is a RPG. So is classic D&D. The features they have in common, in virtue of which they are both RPGs, are in my view pretty evident: shared fiction that matters to resolution; most participants engage via the "player" role, which means developing the fiction primarily by declaring actions for a particular character; and central to the game rules are processes for establishing, if an action is declared, what happens next in the shared fiction

An RPG that prescribes its possible actions and thats it is still an RPG (see every cRPG ever made, from Pokemon to Skyrim to Elden Ring), but as soon as you introduce the idea of doing "anything", you're hybridizing with an improv game.

I hoped it is clear, given the forum that I am posting on, that I am talking about "TT" RPGs - ie the family of games that begins with D&D. I am not talking about cRPGs, which obviously don't have shared imagination at their core at all, but fit within my category of non-RPGs that invite imagination on the part of the player.

Original DND is a mini's based wargame. That changed over time as the wargame elements were emphasized less and less in favor of emphasizing playstyle. The Thief was the first instance of the pattern being used and it only exploded from there.

Edit: it actually explicitly calls itself a wargame. The conflation of that wargame with roleplaying (the implicit improv game I was referencing) came later.

D&D called itself a wargame because the vocabulary of RPG was not yet available.

But it is not a miniatures wargame, and (based on accounts that I have read) =that was obvious to Gygax as soon as Arneson demonstrated it to him. From the outset, in D&D the field of possible moves for a player was limited only by what everyone together would imagine was possible for the character that player was controlling. This combination of fiction matters to resolution and each player engages and changes the fiction by declaring actions for a particular character is at the core of RPGs, and was there from the start.

Plus, one can go read oDND. Its pretty short all things considered. You know what struck me as rather fascinating?

Nowhere does it say you can do anything. In fact, Im fairly certain it doesn't even imply you can do anything, anywhere in the text.

That the field of player action declarations was unlimited, except by what the character can be imagined to be doing, was understood from the start. This is the core of the game! The fact that the rules don't spell it out just shows they're not very well written.

The first version of D&D I read and played was Moldvay Basic. For the purposes of your "playstyle reinforcement" criterion, Moldvay Basic is no different from the original game: characters advance on a fixed table and players do not have their "playstyle" reinforced via play. But it was obvious to me, from the outset, that any action was possible. This was the difference from a Fighting Fantasy Gamebook (which I was very familiar with). And chapter 8 comes out and says as much (Moldvay wrote much clearer rules than Gygax).

 

[kenada]

By today's standards? Yeah, it kind of isn't. But that has to be said, thats oDND. Later editions, even those immediately adjacent to it, are a different story. ODND is a premiere example of a game that didn't survive contact with players.

Plus, one can go read oDND. Its pretty short all things considered. You know what struck me as rather fascinating?

Nowhere does it say you can do anything. In fact, Im fairly certain it doesn't even imply you can do anything, anywhere in the text.

Instead its pretty explicit about what you can do and gives you nothing to do anything but those things.

But it makes sense why people dragged it into that direction, resulting in the overall genre we know and love today. When you're in a dungeon slaying monsters and getting loot, eventually someone's going to run up against a wacky encounter, and they're going to be inclined to try something out of the rules.

I don’t think the intent of OD&D was to be a complete text. From what I understand, the wargaming culture of the time left a lot up to the referee. You see that kind of play today in FKR games that likewise trust the referee to handle a lot of things “modern” games might codify in rules text.

Thats how the implicit improv game ends up being a part of the game, and its arguably because this was never properly addressed and integrated that we end up with a tradition of DND being hella difficult to get into if you don't basically apprentice to a GM.

The issue seems more with delegating how to perform the role to communal knowledge. Some games (with Apocalypse World being a prominent example) are quite explicit about how to perform the role. If MCs do what AW tells them to do, a functional AW game should result. Unfortunately, that clashes with the dominant play culture where GMing is expected to be a learned skill rather than a role prescribed by the game.

Aside from that, things are a bit better today with actual plays and shows like Critical Role, but I otherwise agree games should do more to communicate how to perform the GM role.

ODND doesn't call itself that, however, which is a distinction I think matters and one that, if I could speak to the authors, they'd probably agree on.

It’s not quite that neat because OD&D marked the start of something new. It took time for people to find the language to describe it. I believe Jon Peterson explores this in The Elusive Shift.

Given how old the game is (and how quickly it stopped being what the vast majority of people refer to as DND), I'm not inclined to read into their commentary all that deeply.

The text isn't an exhaustive study of RPGs specifically, after all, and it'd be beyond the scope of what it sets out to do to go that far on one specific type of game.

I don’t find this line of thinking very compelling. It doesn’t follow that being old or not reflecting the majority play culture of today means a game is less of an RPG.

Hence my comments that most RPGs are a hybrid of that and an improv game. And id add to that that some games just aren't actually RPGs and its fine to recognize that they should be called something else. A game isn't lesser just because it isn't actually an RPG, nor are they lesser if we recognize that a given game thats called an RPG may actually be 2 or 3 different games in one.

Just a hybrid of that or a hybrid of those things and other things? What I’m trying to reconcile is the lumping together of Skyrim with D&D. There is a base “RPG-ness” that some games have, and then other things are added to it (such as playing-style reinforcement, improvised play, etc).

However, I’m not sure how useful such a base definition of “RPG” would be in this context. The OP appears to be using “RPG” as a shorthand for “tabletop RPG”. If tabletop RPGs are typified by improvised play, then the fact that non-tabletop RPGs are not doesn’t seem germane.

 

[Campbell]

For those unfamiliar with the war gaming scene at the time the sorts of war games that Chainmail and D&D were descended from were historical war gaming which featured a referee that was expected to make rulings, not just in terms of evaluating rules, but also in terms of making rulings for situations not well covered by the rules. D&D and all roleplaying games are an outgrowth of the judgement applied to a real (or sometimes fictional) scenario.

From the very beginning of the hobby what has distinguished tabletop roleplaying games (from board games and video games) is that in order to execute their mechanics the play group (usually primarily the GM) must make judgements about the fictional situation at hand. It is not just an aesthetic veneer, but central to the process of play. This is true of all versions of D&D. It is true of Vampire. It is true of Apocalypse World.