RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[FrogReaver]

Also how about LARP? Like sure, we are imagining being someone we are not, but besides that it is just interacting with people and environs that are actually there.

IMO. Outside the pretending to be someone else - LARP makes heavy use of physical tokens to represent fictional locations and items. Those tokens highlight the lack of needing a shared imaginative space as they fulfill the same purpose - just without requiring the imaginative space.

 

[Lanefan]

For similar reasons, I don't count Choose Your Own Adventure or Fighting Fantasy books as RPGs.

Agree with this post except for the quoted: I personally would include CYOA books as RPGs, though certainly on the fringe; as the required elements are present:
--- described setting that requires imagination to visualize (just like reading a novel)
--- active input required from the player (choosing the next option, which directly maps to an action declaration)
--- game state changing in response to player choices (the choice leads to what happens on page X rather than on page Y)

It's pawn-stance all the way, of course, but it's still an RPG.

That said, if part of your definition of an RPG includes a requirement that there be at least two participants then that's different; but as far as I remember that bit hasn't yet been stated.

 

[pemerton]

Why can’t that be resolved via a board game rule?

You could design a board game with a I carry my friend through ponds rule. Forbidden Island has a version of such a rule.

But if you read the Moldvay Basic rulebook you will not see any such rule, because Moldvay Basic is not a board game.

Here is the basic rule for permissible player-side move (ie action declarations) in Moldvay Basic (pp B2, B3, B4, B60):

The D&D game has neither losers nor winners, it has only gamers who relish exercising their imagination. The players and the DM share in creating adventures in fantastic lands . . .

This game . . . does not use a playing board or actual playing pieces. All that is needed to play are these rules, the dice included in this set, pencil and paper, graph paper, and imagination. . . .

At the start of the game, the players enter the dungeon and the DM describes what the characters can see. . . the players should select one lay to speak for the entire group . . . That player is named the caller. When unusual situations occur, each player may want to say exactly what his or her character is doing. . . .

"That's not in the rules!" The players will often surprise the DM by doing the unexpected. . . . All DMs learn how to handle both new ideas an unusual actions quickly and with imagination. . . . One quick way for a DM to decide whether a solution will work is by imagining the situation, and then choosing percentage chances for different possibilities.​

What characterises D&D, and other games in the same family of games (generally known as RPGs or "TT" RPGs), is that the permissible moves are not defined in advance by a set of rules or formulas or mechanics for defining and transforming the "gamestate".

Permissible moves are whatever everyone at the table agrees is possible for this character in this imagined situation. The rules and mechanics help shape that agreement and that shared imagination.

 

[Lanefan]

Also how about LARP? Like sure, we are imagining being someone we are not, but besides that it is just interacting with people and environs that are actually there.

LARP is a separate but adjacent/parallel branch stemming from the Braunstein root; and in Braunstein at least there was still quite a bit of imagination required. For example, in my role as the University Chancellor I had to imagine (and then in-character convince others to imagine) that where I was standing in the room was in fact my office at the University. By the same token, the player of the City Mayor had to convince everyone that the sofa was in fact city hall (we were plaing in someone's condo).

The same goes for what became LARP as we know it. If I may be allowed to bust out a few stereotypes, consider Vampire: the Masquerade players - they're standing in a forest clearing but the shared imagination has their characters interacting in a Transylvanian castle.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Why restrict to a single medium?

Because it seems to be the intent of the OP to discuss TTRPGs. Because despite the similarities, there are some significant differences between the two types of games.

Also how about LARP? Like sure, we are imagining being someone we are not, but besides that it is just interacting with people and environs that are actually there.

Well, as you point out, it involves imagination about being the character, and accepting that everyone else is a character. It also involves imagining some kind of space… that a convention room is actually a secret night club or a starship. That props or tokens, if used, represent something else.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

LARP is a separate but adjacent/parallel branch stemming from the Braunstein root; and in Braunstein at least there was still quite a bit of imagination required. For example, in my role as the University Chancellor I had to imagine (and then in-character convince others to imagine) that where I was standing in the room was in fact my office at the University. By the same token, the player of the City Mayor had to convince everyone that the sofa was in fact city hall (we were plaing in someone's condo).

The same goes for what became LARP as we know it. If I may be allowed to bust out a few stereotypes, consider Vampire: the Masquerade players - they're standing in a forest clearing but the shared imagination has their characters interacting in a Transylvanian castle.

I have never been in a LARP played this way. The environs have always been "real" though of course perhaps sometimes one might need to imagination to ignore minor visual inaccuracies. But definitely not imagining that a forest is a castle or anything like that. Imagining that a room is a slightly different kind of a room sure, but even then there usually is some attempt at set decoration. (And I mean like pretending that a modern room with some set decoration is a 1920's room, not a medieval castle hall or anything like that.)

 

[pemerton]

Look, if all you are trying to say is that RPG’s in the table top medium require shared imagination then I absolutely agree. What I’m trying to say is that the shared imagination part of them isn’t the core of being an rpg, whether tabletop or not, it’s just an artifact of the table top medium we are purposefully limiting our discussion to.

This thread is not a thread about usage.

It's a thread about what is the core of a certain family of games.

Chess can be played blindfold, but that is not core to chess. Core to chess is the "patterns" of play that are generated via the interaction of board, pieces, and rules for legal moves.

While playing Monopoly, a player can imagine themselves to be a real estate mogul, talk in a funny voice, etc. But that is not core to Monpoloy. Core to Monopoly is moving around the board, performing the actions triggered by the interaction between square landed on, game rules, and ownership of property as defined by the game, and exchanging the fake money in accordance with the game rules.

The Arneson-Gygax game, and all the games descended from it, are different. The "gamestate" is an imagined, imaginary state of affairs, which includes people ("characters"). The non-referee/GM/MC participants control some of those characters, and say what they do. And the core of gameplay is working out what happens, in the shared fiction, as a result of those characters doing those things.

There are bells and whistles: in the Arneson-Gygax game, as originally presented, the imaginary state of affairs is a treasure-and-monster filled "dungeon" that the characters are exploring and looting. In Torchbearer, there are rules that set limits on how one character alone can change the situation: the party must camp, and enter town, together or not at all. When I play Classic Traveller, all the characters are humans. Etc, etc.

But the core of the gameplay is the creation, and transformation via characters doing things, of a shared fiction. It is not a mere artefact of play. It is the play of the game.

 

[pemerton]

Agree with this post except for the quoted: I personally would include CYOA books as RPGs, though certainly on the fringe; as the required elements are present:
--- described setting that requires imagination to visualize (just like reading a novel)
--- active input required from the player (choosing the next option, which directly maps to an action declaration)
--- game state changing in response to player choices (the choice leads to what happens on page X rather than on page Y)

It's pawn-stance all the way, of course, but it's still an RPG.

That said, if part of your definition of an RPG includes a requirement that there be at least two participants then that's different; but as far as I remember that bit hasn't yet been stated.

In a choose your own adventure, you can't declare whatever action you like that is possible for your character in the situation. You are restricted to choosing your actions from a menu.

So while playing the game does require reasoning about the fictional situation, the gamestate is not defined by the fictional situation.

 

[pemerton]

Some games involve resolving moves via physical processes (eg rolling dice; drawing cards; throwing and catching balls).

Some involve logical/mathematical processes (eg moving pieces on a board in accordance with rules, like chess; comparing two things, like card games or numerical totals; looking up a die roll result on a table; etc).

Obviously many games - eg many boardgames and all cardgames - involve both of the above.

Resolving moves via imagining what might happen is not a variant on a physical process or a logical/mathematical process. It's a very distinctive alternative to those!

The most systematic treatment of this point, and its significance for RPG design, that I know of is Baker's series on clouds-and-boxes:

anyway: 3 Resolution Systems

anyway: The Dice & Clouds series from 2009

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think I agree. At least when it comes to pen & paper, table top or virtual table top Roleplaying Games.

You always have to imagine the fictional world to some extent and agree on it to some extent, you share your imaginations and things happen in the game because of the shared, imagined world.

Computer RPGs tend to be different, since the imagination is turned into actual artwork, maps, character designs that the player can interact them only within the confines of the game rule system and what the creators have thought up beforehand. You can't just make up some fact and have it later become reality, it must be an option created to you beforehand. Your can't really share your imagination in the way you could in a (TT)RPG.

I think that is ultimately one of the strengths of the TTRPG genre and while CRPGs never are quite the same (but sometimes, still awesome).

And maybe at some point, the use of new AI technologies could allow the same dynamic we know from TTRPG play. I guess then we will be discussion if it's "shared fiction" if you are sharing it with an AI instead of real people? That would be exciting times, I guess.