Play Is Paramount: Discuss

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

books that are interesting to browse sell better than those that play well but don’t read well.

I don't think this has ever been tested.

No company, as far as I know, is making both OSE style books and wall of text books. Without that, it quickly becomes extreme apples to oranges.

Yeah, WotC sells more books with their wall of text than Necrotic Gnome does with OSE, but that's because they're selling Dungeons & Dragons. Any impact of the wall of text style is impossible to tease out from the Dungeons & Dragons of it all.

 

[MichaelSomething]

For reference, I think you should check out my NPC writing session thread.

D&D General Thread 'The NPC writing session'

Sep 7, 2025

Hey Enworlders! I just developed a great new idea that will move D&D forward!

How about once every ten (ish) or so sessions is spent completely on writing up NPCs/monsters? Like instead of the characters going to a dungeon or whatever, all the players spend the whole time writing up NPCs/monsters??? I think that would massively improve the game! People who want more realism/optimization/whatever out of NPCs/monsters can just create what ever they want to encounter for themselves!!!

No need to thank me, just give this post EXP. Have a nice day.

• MichaelSomething
• Replies: 7
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

• 

 

[Reynard]

For reference, I think you should check out my NPC writing session thread.

To what end?

 

[MichaelSomething]

To what end?

Now that I'm awake, I'll explain.
If building NPCs was really a form of play, then getting your whole group to do it with you would be a viable idea. Turns out, people don't think spending a session just making NPCs is a good idea so I submit it shouldn't be considered a form of play.

 

[myrkulyte]

Now that I'm awake, I'll explain.
If building NPCs was really a form of play, then getting your whole group to do it with you would be a viable idea. Turns out, people don't think spending a session just making NPCs is a good idea so I submit it shouldn't be considered a form of play.

I actually have spent a session rolling up NPCs for 3.5 after 2/3rds of the other players cancelled last minute.

But I take your point, no one would intentionally plan to spend the evening that way. That said, if you have some dropouts and are playing in person and can't just boot up a game on steam and no one feels like playing a board game or something I think you could totally have a good time just making some GURPS or Traveller characters while you hang out. I would still consider that to be 'play' to some degree.

Speaking to the larger conversation, whenever I do any prep/worldbuilding I always think about play at the table, even when I have no intention of running a game with the stuff I'm working on. Thinking about how something would play is part of what makes prep enjoyable. It's the same if I'm reading a product I'm never going to run, the fact that it could be run is still in the back of my head somewhere and is part of what makes reading some bit of worldbuilding different from reading a novel.

 

[Umbran]

Now that I'm awake, I'll explain.
If building NPCs was really a form of play, then getting your whole group to do it with you would be a viable idea. Turns out, people don't think spending a session just making NPCs is a good idea so I submit it shouldn't be considered a form of play.

Monopoly. Kind of a crappy game, imho. I'm not interested in engaging in it. Does that mean it isn't a form of play at all? For anyone? Anywhere? No, it just means it is a kind of crappy game. So maybe building (say, 3e D&D) NPCs and monsters is kind of a crappy game.

Alas for your assertion, I noted that "not all play is with the other players." I did this with RPG GMs in mind, actually. Some play is solitaire. So, no, getting the whole group together to do it is not required to be a form of play. If the GM likes noodling with NPCs and setting elements and creating encounters, for that GM, it may be a form of play, rather than work.

Though, interestingly, before traditional play begins, before even creating characters, the Dresden Files RPG has a group minigame/activity of creating the city they will play the game proper within, including a bunch of major NPCs that they'll be interacting with.

I've been through it, it was pretty fun.

So, I think before throwing it away as non-play, maybe we'd have to consider the context and method - it may be a form of play for the group if it is structured and positioned appropriately.

 

[Umbran]

Most time and energy (and money) put into RPGs does not lead to an actual game with players around a table.

Among crafters, it is often noted that purchasing crafting supplies and actually using crafting supplies are two separate hobbies.

 

[aramis erak]

I think I at least agree with the direction your thesis points at. None of the things you mention--rules or prep or ephemera--matter if they never arise in play; and at least in principle the point of all of them is shape the experience of play to be what the creators (the people who write the rules, the people who make the handouts, the people who prep the sessions) want it to be. Obviously, people will want different experiences of play, and even people who want the same might see (or prefer) different ways to get to them; your absolutist thesis doesn't seem to me to point to one-way-ism, in other words.

prep that doesn't get used in play can still affect play. The encounter I ran last sunday was enabled because I prepped two paths, and the players picked one... but the other path ruled out how I handled the chosen path. If I hadn't had the male bandits on the main path, the female Hare clan jizamurai on the second wouldn't be jizamurai.
The dual prep resulted in two different encounters and which was used was by player choice, but the prep itself had impacts upon other prep.

Whenever I had cool superhero character ideas, I built them in Champions (now Hero System) for literal decades after the last time I played. I enjoyed doing so. Can "play" only happen at the table, or can there be mini-games like character-creation/advancement that happen away from the table.

Traveller states so in the 1981 version. Character Gen is a minigame. Subsector gen is a minigame, too, but one without significant participant input in the "game" portion.

If 'play' includes chargen and GM prep then the OP becomes meaningless. So no, I don't think these things are 'play'.

Did you play D&D yesterday soviet? "Yes, by which I mean I sat alone and read a book". Nonsense.

Reading the book and doing prep can be different things.
For example, star system generation in Traveller, Space Opera, Alternity, and a dozen other games is presented as a minigame (often low-to-no input, hence fully automatable), then followed by an interpretive step. I'd argue that both the rolling and interpretive portions are a form of play even tho' they're solo activities, in ways very different from just reading the rules.

Similarly so for interactive lifepath generation of characters (such as in Traveller {CT, MT, TNE, T4, T5, MGT1, MGT2, T20}, T2K (2, 2.2, & 4th's optional), FGU's Space Opera, FASA Star Trek: The Role-Playing Game, 2d20 Star Trek Adventures and Captain's Log) in ways that GURPS or Hero character gen isn't. They're games with player input, rolls affecting the outcomes, decisions being made, and the choices matter to shaping the outcome. (In CT, whether to continue and which skill tables are used. In STRPG and STA, which skills get raised or specializations added from the random assignments. In T2K 2/2.2/4, which skills get raised during the term.)
I've spent MANY hours doing character gen for Traveller in various editions; I don't consider it not-play just because we're doing it outside of a multi-player session. I don't consider the automation time I took for generating a whole freaking regiment for MegaTraveller (MT) to be play - but it definitely saved me a bunch of time. 1000 characters makes a lot of rolling into a few minutes of formatting output

At 75 years of age!

In the 2000's (the 00's) a guy retired from the British Army as a 40-year private. He did his job, did it well, never showed leadership, but was allowed to continue to serve until retirement. Not all services exercise the Peter Principle and of the traveller editions, only Mongoose does.
Note that a 70 year old private cannot happen in MGT due to promotion and retention being on the same roll... 70-18= 52 years= 13 terms - rare, but doable... but the support arm (the slowest promoting in MGT 1) has a promotion of 7+, and with worst case edu, needs a 9+, but to be retained he''s had to roll terms plus, so at 70, he'll have been promoted at least in terms 9, 10, 11, and 12... but he could be an ensign commissioned in term 12... or a buck sergeant. It's one of the things I bitched about in playtest as "Unlike CT/MT/TNE/T4"...

 

[aramis erak]

This seems prescriptive, rather than empirical.

Play, broadly, is an activity done for enjoyment. Sitting down at the table with the dice and sheets is, of course, play. But so is noodling over character builds you may never use. So is painting minis for use in game. So is discussing game while away from the table. We can probably include designing adventures (the GM is playing too, after all).

If the person would not be engaging in those activities without the game, then that play is engaging with the game, just in alternate ways.

For me, play is putting the rules into use (even if only in an advisory role, such as in a very talk-centric session)...
I get the looser definition you seem to be advocating, but I don't think it's useful when that broad.

 

[aramis erak]

I'm not sure what you mean. It is meant to be used at the table. But there's a culture of writing that has developed that has, I believe, become geared towards being entertaining for GMs to read, because they know that more of them will buy and read it then will run it. I don't know how many modules I've read where it gives historical context to what the PCs are meant to see that there is literally no way for the PCs to ever find out. It's just there for the GM reading it.

At first stuff like this kind of irritated me, but on reflection, I think it's smart to pay attention to actual use cases and structure your product accordingly.

There are a lot of cases (such as Hoard of the Dragon Queen) where the backstory bits shaped my GMing of the NPCs and thus affected the game. To a point, the same is true with the Strahd story. And the backstory elements of the Firefly adventure, The Wedding Crashers.