MGibster
Legend
Where's @Snarf Zagyg when you need him? This seems right up his alley.
He says the rulebooks are a mess, and that people having fun playing AD&D 2nd ed are selecting from and/or adding to the books to create the actual game they're playing.
This actually relates to @kenada's point about design. A lot of published RPG books take it for granted that the players of the game will build a good chunk of the process of play themselves. Gygax and Arneson got away with this, because they expected their readers/players to bring tabletop wargame intuitions and procedures to the table. But it's weird that RPGing has stuck to that paradigm - of presenting incomplete rules texts - for so long.
Not universally, of course, but in many cases.
I immediately think of people like @pemerton and @Manbearcat who do seem to be getting a lot of happy, satisfying gaming.
Hence more. Look at how many video games are released (e.g., ~14k were released on Steam last year per SteamDB). A lot of those are crappy or derivative (or asset flips), but sometimes someone hits on something new or an interesting take on an existing genre.I understand your urge here, but the truth is, genuinely original work is rare in everything; even the majority of what most people consider high quality creations are recombinations that do something useful, different or entertaining.
Hence more. Look at how many video games are released (e.g., ~14k were released on Steam last year per SteamDB). A lot of those are crappy or derivative (or asset flips), but sometimes someone hits on something new or an interesting take on an existing genre.
Given that GNS is, in part, supposed to tell you why people have fun playing RPGs... Yes, he is probably wrong. Because, IIRC, many of the games he claims are "bad" or "played wrong" are, for the people actually playing them, wildly fun.Yes, but is he wrong?
You're going to have to be more specific.I think your only experiencing a fraction of the medium then, maybe? Mechanics and process of play can lead to a number of things. I might agree there's an immediacy to narrative in RPGs that is not generally present in other games, certainly not with the same depth. Verisimilitude might not always be the primary goal though.
Yep, in the video he mentions it could be cultural as well as rule based. I think he wanted to focus on rules that would lead to better tools and hence improvements at the table. And give more alternatives if the table isn't a good fit. For tables where all are having fun, there's nothing to worry about.Of course that can often be less a flaw in the game per se, than them using the wrong tool for the job. And there can be any number of practical reasons for doing that, most of them more social than anything else.
He veers strongly away from GNS theory in the videos and focuses more on tables with players who are struggling with their current tables or rules or player agency. He goes out of his way in the video to define 'bad' as player unhappiness with their current cultural and rule approaches, not 'bad' games. He's pointing to narrative approaches as one of things that can help those players.Given that GNS is, in part, supposed to tell you why people have fun playing RPGs... Yes, he is probably wrong. Because, IIRC, many of the games he claims are "bad" or "played wrong" are, for the people actually playing them, wildly fun.
In other words, for a theory that's supposed to describe why people have fun with RPGs, it doesn't seem to describe why a lot of people are spending their free time having fun playing the RPGs that they do. Instead, it tries to tell those people that what they're doing is badwrongfun. That's weird. A design theory shouldn't tell us why the players are wrong. It should tell us why the design is wrong. Because we have to trust that the players are going to choose what works best for what they want.