RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[pemerton]

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.

Agreed.

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.

This is the sort of thing that can break a paradigm, or at least push it beyond what was once thought to be its limits.

 

[bloodtide]

If anyone could offer an example, then I think that would lend the argument some merit. Do you have any examples?

A good half or more of all people have little or no imagination. It's just how human minds work. And this also follows that half of the RPG players have little or no imagination.

Disclaimer: now note there is nothing bad or wrong about only having a little or no imagination. Everyone has strengths and weakness. And not everyone is and can do everything 100% perfectly. Just like some people have good memories...and some people have bad ones. And so on.

Many posters only careful pick gamers with great advanced imaginations from the big pool of gamers to play in their games. And it is possible to have a big shared imagination game play with such people. Though note it does leave out the vast majority of gamers.

I have gamed with thousands of such people. They play and interact with the DMs set imagination framework, but they themselves add nothing to the game. If the DM says there is a door, then the player might say they knock on the door. But that is it.

A great many players can only, at best remember things and re use them. Bob has an elf ranger named Bob. When Bob gets a fancy magic sword, the DM suggests that Bob give it a name. After thinking about a name for several minutes Bob says "I will name my new magic sword 'Twinkle' !"

Are you proposing an RPG in which someone else has done all the imagining for you? How would that work?

Well, this would be the most classic play style for RPGs. And it's sure the classic way to play D&D. The DM does all the imagining and the players just tag along. When or if the player needs something to be imagined, the DM will simply tell them what it looks like.

 

[FrogReaver]

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

Glad we agree here.

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".

Long before TTRPG's there were War Games and they didn't always have the whole set of permissible moves defined in advance either.

What you are talking about is not a core defining feature of TTRPG's - it's a core defining feature of any game that relies on a referee to adjudicate game moves.

Permissible moves are whatever everyone at the table agrees is possible for this character in this imagined situation.

Or just a single referee - as was traditionally envisioned - but that's just me being nitpicky.

 

[hawkeyefan]

A good half or more of all people have little or no imagination. It's just how human minds work. And this also follows that half of the RPG players have little or no imagination.

Disclaimer: now note there is nothing bad or wrong about only having a little or no imagination. Everyone has strengths and weakness. And not everyone is and can do everything 100% perfectly. Just like some people have good memories...and some people have bad ones. And so on.

Many posters only careful pick gamers with great advanced imaginations from the big pool of gamers to play in their games. And it is possible to have a big shared imagination game play with such people. Though note it does leave out the vast majority of gamers.

I have gamed with thousands of such people. They play and interact with the DMs set imagination framework, but they themselves add nothing to the game. If the DM says there is a door, then the player might say they knock on the door. But that is it.

A great many players can only, at best remember things and re use them. Bob has an elf ranger named Bob. When Bob gets a fancy magic sword, the DM suggests that Bob give it a name. After thinking about a name for several minutes Bob says "I will name my new magic sword 'Twinkle' !"

I don’t think you’re describing a specific game so much as players with lower imagination. It’s quite contrary to my experiences, and I expect there are other factors, but their play is still dependent upon the shared imagination.

 

[clearstream]

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

I haven't said anything so far in this thread as I agree with your core argument. As others have observed, games may be diagrammed out as boxes containing functions with relationships defined between them. In TTRPG, at least one of those boxes is [imagine]. Importantly, [imagine] is not indescribable. TTRPG draws upon specific features, such that it can be productive to move on to discussing them. For example, it seems evident that at least five things matter

• The set of what will be imagined as part of play is not wholly known at the outset.
• The set of what may be imagined during play is open-ended.
• Norms apply to what is accepted into that set: among the more powerful are a) mimetic norms, b) those established by game text, c) those established by preceding play.
• Very salient to conversation here and elsewhere, are the mechanical promptings for [imagine], that compel and structure the ludonarrative.

Additionally, it might be right to differentiate between [character-imagine] and [world-imagine]. Not just because those can be assigned in different ways, but also because the relationship between them is that the latter contains the former, along with differences in representation.

Folk have discussed pawn-stance, and should see that TTRPG pawn-stance is not akin to the pawns in Chess that it reminds of. In each case we may very well have a representational token. In Chess, the moves that token can make are wholly known at the outset. (I assume for the sake of argument that players are grasping and upholding the FIDE Laws of Chess.) In a TTRPG, even furnished with a figurine and character sheet, the moves that token can make are open-ended etc. Moreover, it makes those moves within a game world that itself is open-ended etc. Unlike the wholly known confines of a Chess board. In this regard, I found a close study of the use of tokens in the Blinding Light episode 5 video of Stonetop, about an hour in where the players are addressing a creature and a stone stela in an algae-scummed pond, revealing.

Rather than resist what seems to me to be a hugely powerful and coherent way to recognise TTRPGs as a sub-category of the Games super-category, the real work is surely to say something accurate about [imagine], rather than leaving it as a mystery. What are its features? How are they best drawn upon? Are there perhaps subdivisions - sub-categories of TTRPG - that depend on such choices? An interesting example there is Thousand Year Old Vampire. The reason I would call it a TTRPG is because it's play loop contains [imagine], but that doesn't mean it is the same kind of TTRPG as other TTRPGs, necessarily. Perhaps an analysis is possible that classifies TTRPGs according to how they treat that most defining attribute?

Anyway, I wanted to chime in with support for the thesis, and perhaps turn some folk's thoughts to its implications rather than its veracity.

 

[clearstream]

I don’t think you’re describing a specific game so much as players with lower imagination. It’s quite contrary to my experiences, and I expect there are other factors, but their play is still dependent upon the shared imagination.

I feel like there are qualitatively different kinds of imagination. @bloodtide seems to me to be speaking of what I will call "creative imagination", whereas there is a moment-to-moment, "practical-imagining" leveraged in TTRPG - for example to imagine a door that may be represented nowhere else, and go on to imagine that it is wood, and can be stoved in, etc.

 

[pemerton]

Long before TTRPG's there were War Games and they didn't always have the whole set of permissible moves defined in advance either.

What you are talking about is not a core defining feature of TTRPG's - it's a core defining feature of any game that relies on a referee to adjudicate game moves.

It's a core of RPGs. The fact that it is core to some other games doesn't change that. (Two different things may share a core feature - eg engines are core to plans, cars, trucks and steamships.)

Your point about wargames is one I've already made upthread:

The game Arneson and Gygax invented was not a board-based wargame, but rather inherited from the free kriegsspiel/Braunstein tradition.

(i) the fiction matters to adjudication, like some wargames but unlike a boardgame, and (ii) the non-referee participants engage and change the fiction by declaring actions for the particular characters with which they are associated, and (iii) as a result of (i) and (ii) the list of player moves is limited only to what everyone can agree to imagine a character doing in the fictional situation.

 

[pemerton]

[imagine] is not indescribable. TTRPG draws upon specific features, such that it can be productive to move on to discussing them. For example, it seems evident that at least five things matter

• The set of what will be imagined as part of play is not wholly known at the outset.
• The set of what may be imagined during play is open-ended.
• Norms apply to what is accepted into that set: among the more powerful are a) mimetic norms, b) those established by game text, c) those established by preceding play.
• Very salient to conversation here and elsewhere, are the mechanical promptings for [imagine], that compel and structure the ludonarrative.

Additionally, it might be right to differentiate between [character-imagine] and [world-imagine]. Not just because those can be assigned in different ways, but also because the relationship between them is that the latter contains the former, along with differences in representation.

Folk have discussed pawn-stance, and should see that TTRPG pawn-stance is not akin to the pawns in Chess that it reminds of. In each case we may very well have a representational token. In Chess, the moves that token can make are wholly known at the outset. (I assume for the sake of argument that players are grasping and upholding the FIDE Laws of Chess.) In a TTRPG, even furnished with a figurine and character sheet, the moves that token can make are open-ended etc. Moreover, it makes those moves within a game world that itself is open-ended etc. Unlike the wholly known confines of a Chess board.

<snip>

Rather than resist what seems to me to be a hugely powerful and coherent way to recognise TTRPGs as a sub-category of the Games super-category, the real work is surely to say something accurate about [imagine], rather than leaving it as a mystery. What are its features? How are they best drawn upon?

My personal starting point for thinking about [imagine] is Ron Edwards' work - what you call [imagine] he calls [exploration].

He identified five elements of it, in RPGing:

*Setting (your [world-imagine])

*Character

*Situation - this is the immediate motivating circumstance in which the character(s) find(s) themselves

*Colour - atmosphere, tropes, "mere flavour", and the like

*System - how the content of [imagine] changes - system is what puts the game into motion​

Vincent Baker's analytical work in relation to system is (as you know) extensive, and in my view powerful. Your third and fourth dot points (norms and mechanics) pertain to system.

Your first two dot points seem to me like articulations of (what is in my view) the key idea that the principal limit on a player's moves (via declaring actions for their characters) is what everyone is prepared to imagine together (which is, of course, informed by system).

I think the relationships of character => situation and setting <=> situation are very interesting. These relationship differ in different RPGs, and are key sites of differences of system.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's a core of RPGs. The fact that it is core to some other games doesn't change that. (Two different things may share a core feature - eg engines are core to plans, cars, trucks and steamships.)

Your point about wargames is one I've already made upthread:

I think I’ve found the problem. When I talk about core in relation to games I use it to describe distinctive features that separate it from other games.

This is just another one of those times where we are arguing not about the concept but about the semantics.

I agree that that a feature can be important to 2 different types of games - I wouldn’t call that core but that’s rather beside the point.

 

[pemerton]

I think I’ve found the problem. When I talk about core in relation to games I use it to describe distinctive features that separate it from other games.

This is just another one of those times where we are arguing not about the concept but about the semantics.

I agree that that a feature can be important to 2 different types of games - I wouldn’t call that core but that’s rather beside the point.

OK. I'm not familiar with that particular usage of "core"; Oxford Languages via Google gives me the part of something that is central to its existence or character which seems pretty standard to me and doesn't imply uniqueness. (Eg integrity might be core both to Eliot Ness's and Superman's personalities.) And I think the OP and my subsequent posts have been pretty clear that that is how the word is being used.

Anyway, my posts have not been about the meaning of words; they've been about what is central to playing games that are in the same family as the one Arneson and Gygax invented.