RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[AbdulAlhazred]

@AbdulAlhazred

No disagreement on the trajectory.

But (i) I don't think that that sort of character development is what is being referred to as "role" in Men & Magic or in Gygax's PHB. Both present role in terms of class, and alignment, and to a lesser extent race. The elaborately-developed character is more of a by-product, or an emergent result, of the underlying features of the game we've discussed in this thread: (a) the game takes place in imagination, with imagination (constrained, obviously, by situation and by role) as the limit on what can happen; and (b) players engaging the shared fiction by declaring actions for a particular character who is "theirs".

And (ii) I think that there is a significant degree of system-level collision between some of the core game processes, and that emergent orientation towards character. The XP rules are probably the most obvious, and it's no great shock that the original OA had to tweak them in various ways, and that 2nd ed AD&D changed them wholesale. The action resolution rules are another, as they are not all that robust once the situation moves beyond the core focus of dungeon crawling: 2nd ed AD&D just punts on this, while 3E, 4e and 5e D&D all respond in various ways.

The struggle over (ii) - manifested in everything from Why does V:tM, or even Traveller for that matter, need elaborate combat rules?, to the declining proportion of D&D rulebook real estate devoted to doors over the editions, through to the invention of non-map-and-key techniques for presenting situations, and the various sorts of approaches that now exist to social conflict resolution - can be seen as defining much of the history and direction of RPG development over the past four to five decades.

Yeah, I spotted your post about role in original D&D, I think that was a fair analysis of what Gygax meant. 'Role Play' was, AFAIK, not a term at the time, though certainly 'playing a role' in the sense of 'being an actor and depicting a specific character' would be a potential interpretation of that phrase. Still, I believe you are correct in diagnosing that Gygax is discussing the role a given PC plays within the adventure, and not talking about players in some other sense separate from the character.

D&D certainly didn't require, nor even especially actively promote RP in the modern sense. It could be motivated within the rules you cited which discuss things like the proper time to 'give full XP', but even there Gygax seems to mostly be concerned with substantive actions and not characterization. However I think that's a blurry line in many cases, so a player acting out being a leader when playing the Fighting Man, for instance, kind of falls in both kinds of 'role'.

I do think there's a trajectory though, and the emergence of 2e's XP system, as well as OA, indicates that sometime after 1979 or so that the idea of role playing as a thing in and of itself became more and more important to game designers at TSR. Certainly when OA (1985 IIRC) was published it seemed to lean in that direction. While you pass off 2e as not addressing task resolution, it does do SOMETHING, NWPs are there, granting they're not the greatest mechanical implementation of a skill system. OA and DSG/WSG also had them, so the idea was there (and even the original PHB had to talk about secondary skills).

There are other signs too, thieves get more abilities, and the right to decide which ones are important to them. So you can be a pick pocket, or a wall-climber, or a trapsmith, or a bit of all three (the totals actually sum to the same numbers as 1e thieves). The much-maligned UA thief/acrobat class similarly points to a desire to broaden the action resolution system. I think TSR simply was reluctant to really break with existing D&D in a more substantive way. Given the violent reaction to 4e I'm not sure I blame them!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

4 pages in... and my takeaway so far is that Pemerton is attempting to shame anyone not using RPGs as fallbacks for pure narrative play.

And that several others are in denial that for some, D&D, even from the GM seat, can be a pure wargame.

There's no bright line between the two, but a spectrum, and this is the third or fourth thread this quarter where the thread comes across to me as an attempt to claim there's some privileged ideal playstyle.

Yeah, I'm mystified by the idea that anyone is being shamed. I don't feel shamed, yet I played quite classic pawn-stance D&D at one time. Today there are many people who think I don't really RP much because I don't do a lot of talking in character.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, I'm mystified by the idea that anyone is being shamed. I don't feel shamed, yet I played quite classic pawn-stance D&D at one time. Today there are many people who think I don't really RP much because I don't do a lot of talking in character.

These days, if I'm GMing AD&D, I'm only interested in pawn stance, with perhaps a bit of caricature overlay if someone is playing a Half-Orc or an Elf or whatever.

 

[pemerton]

I do think there's a trajectory though, and the emergence of 2e's XP system, as well as OA, indicates that sometime after 1979 or so that the idea of role playing as a thing in and of itself became more and more important to game designers at TSR. Certainly when OA (1985 IIRC) was published it seemed to lean in that direction.

Yes, agreed, I posted the same.

While you pass off 2e as not addressing task resolution, it does do SOMETHING, NWPs are there, granting they're not the greatest mechanical implementation of a skill system. OA and DSG/WSG also had them, so the idea was there (and even the original PHB had to talk about secondary skills).

<snip>

The much-maligned UA thief/acrobat class similarly points to a desire to broaden the action resolution system.

I did run roughshod over NWPs, yes. That may have been unfair.

The DSG/WSG ones really don't expand much beyond the original context of dungeon- or hex-crawling. The OA ones do, as do some of the 2nd ed ones. But how they fit into the overall game is very much left as an exercise for the GM and players.

I think TSR simply was reluctant to really break with existing D&D in a more substantive way. Given the violent reaction to 4e I'm not sure I blame them!

Well, quite.

 

[Lanefan]

There are other signs too, thieves get more abilities, and the right to decide which ones are important to them. So you can be a pick pocket, or a wall-climber, or a trapsmith, or a bit of all three (the totals actually sum to the same numbers as 1e thieves). The much-maligned UA thief/acrobat class similarly points to a desire to broaden the action resolution system. I think TSR simply was reluctant to really break with existing D&D in a more substantive way.

In part I suspect that to not really break with existing D&D was their specific intention in order to keep the various editions somewhat compatible such that, say, BX or 1e modules could be used by 2e DMs with minimal conversion required; or that new things from 2e could be easily ported into existing BX-RC-1e games. Remember, at least one version of Basic (was it RC? I've never owned that version) was still in print well into the 2e years, and if things from one system could be used in another then (in theory) that meant more sales for TSR.

Given the violent reaction to 4e I'm not sure I blame them!

The difference there being that their stated intention was a clean break with what had gone before, with no attempt at compatibility with earlier editions and no intention of supporting two editions side-along.

 

[aramis erak]

This is nonsense. Half the thread has been me arguing that D&D has been a RPG from the start, using map-and-key techniques as the means for presenting situation.

That is the EXACT "MY VIEW ONLY OR ELSE" that's triggering me.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In part I suspect that to not really break with existing D&D was their specific intention in order to keep the various editions somewhat compatible such that, say, BX or 1e modules could be used by 2e DMs with minimal conversion required; or that new things from 2e could be easily ported into existing BX-RC-1e games. Remember, at least one version of Basic (was it RC? I've never owned that version) was still in print well into the 2e years, and if things from one system could be used in another then (in theory) that meant more sales for TSR.

The difference there being that their stated intention was a clean break with what had gone before, with no attempt at compatibility with earlier editions and no intention of supporting two editions side-along.

Well, I agree, TSR was certainly well aware that B2 was perfectly playable with 1e or even 2e despite technically being a pre-Molvay Basic product (it doesn't hurt that the 1e MM itself seems to be written to conform to original D&D rules, not AD&D). Certainly we played B/X modules and such in our AD&D play without actually bothering to 'convert' anything, as about the worst you'd run into would be AC off by one and really who cares about 1 point? Maybe a few monsters have slightly different hit dice or something here or there, but most of the ones that appear in both systems have the same stats (again, modulus a point of AC maybe).

I think the to-hit numbers are pretty close as well in most cases, though you probably looked those up anyway, and if you were playing 2e and using THAC0 you'd have had to do that anyhow before play (you could use the 1e charts since they yield the same numbers for all but a few fairly obvious cases).

But yeah, it held back the system a lot in some ways. I still don't however get why 2e couldn't have had a better skill system. Its not like MOST of 1e officially had much anyway. I get the feeling TSR hoped that OA and WSD/DSG could continue to be sold as '2e books' effectively since they had a massive supply of them left over.

However: The beefing on 4e as breaking compatibility rings VERY false, because 3e is JUST AS MUCH incompatible with 2e as 4e is with 3e! Every bit! Like NOTHING from 2e works at all with 3e. You can argue that the same classes exist in 3e, and the same races (modulus a couple of things), but then you'd have to also admit that the same is true of 4e. If you can convert your level 12 half-orc ranger from 2e to 3e, then you can surely convert him to 4e as well! Both conversions will result in a somewhat different character, though exactly HOW different may depend on the degree of tinkering and reflavoring you're willing to do.

So honestly, the whole "4e breaks D&D!!!!!!!!" gnashing of teeth gets not even a drop of sympathy from me. Its just not going to fly.

 

[aramis erak]

However: The beefing on 4e as breaking compatibility rings VERY false, because 3e is JUST AS MUCH incompatible with 2e as 4e is with 3e!

So honestly, the whole "4e breaks D&D!!!!!!!!" gnashing of teeth gets not even a drop of sympathy from me. Its just not going to fly.

Did you miss the first two years of D&D 3.0 where a large portion of discussion of 3E was people bitching about its incompatibility?

THat was still early enough that the few WWIV boards left in Anchorage were filled with some hate in both directions. And the internet boards were also a mix of ire and adoration for one or the other.

I think part of the blind spot there was that 3.5 had been a number of minor tweaks... but 2 to 3 and 3.x to 4 were larger jumps. 5 has bits of both 3.x and 4 in it. I think 5E is the best D&D yet, until one adds Tashas Cauldron or later.
But when I run D&D, my preference is for D&D Rules Cyclopedia (BX/BECMI/Cyclo are 3 minor variants of the same core)...
And, on that score, I also treat much D&D as a boardgame of dungeon penetration, with an unlimited range of action attempts subject only to GM and table acceptance. That is, to say, Fantasy Kriegspiel, not improv radio-play with dice. story arising from mechanics

I think D&D 4E was a better game but worse as D&D, simply because the core tropes were so different.

 

[pemerton]

That is the EXACT "MY VIEW ONLY OR ELSE" that's triggering me.

Well, who else's view do you want me to set out?

The claim was made by @Emberashh that Arneson and Gygax's game was not a RPG; and that it did not involve resolving actions in the context of a shared fiction/imagination. That claim is false. I posted the rules text that shows its false. And the whole history of the game shows it to be false. Ten foot poles have no use in the game, outside of the context of a shared imagining of characters manipulating and poking things with them.

 

[pemerton]

I think D&D 4E was a better game but worse as D&D, simply because the core tropes were so different.

The core tropes of 4e are D&D through-and-through: classes, races, Kobolds-to-Orcus, hit points as non-physical until the fatal blow, etc, etc.