Search results

Robin Laws has an essay in the Over the Edge rulebook, called "The Literary Edge". It includes the following passage (on p 193 of my 20th anniversary edition): Role-playing game changed forever the first time a player said, "I know it's the best strategy, but my character wouldn't do that."...

If the best move invokes the player's fictional position, then no. It is a player's fictional position, as mediated by the (imaginary) circumstances in which their PC finds themself, that makes a RPG a role-playing game.

Seems plausible! But there is also a strong normativity around "munchkin", "optimiser", "power gamer" etc. As if trying to make moves that the game permits, in order to succeed at the game, is some sort of departure from ideals. That normativity didn't exist in the early days of RPGing!

"Simulationism" - in the sense that the players of a RPG should have no aspiration beyond experiencing the fiction, as some combination of mechanics and GM narration present it to them - seems to have become a predominant orientation in the early-to-mid 1980s, and to have continued, perhaps in...

"Fictional positioning" means that the players' position - the moves available to them in the play of the game - depends upon a shared fiction. Most games do not have fictional positioning. Whether or not the play of a game tells a story isn't relevant to it having fictional positioning. Eg the...

I don't think that JRRT's work suggests that "the world sucks, people suck, etc". His work is optimistic, and that optimism is theological. Because it is theological, it is sceptical about the power of merely human agency; but that is not the only agency at work in the world, as JRRT sees it...

Well, if bows make the Goblins tougher, then shouldn't that increase their CR? I mean, isn't CR meant to be a (rough but not worthless) measure of toughness?

I've often made this point about Planescape. But D&D doesn't have to be played with this sort of nihilistic cosmology.

In classic D&D, clerics as well as MUs can undertake spell research, and thereby create spells that only they know (unless they choose to share them). So there is precedent, all the way back to 1974, for cleric spells that are not able to be memorised/prepared by all clerics just by dint of...

I could say the same thing about playing touch rugby with my friends. It was nearly 30 years ago now, so my memory is pretty foggy. I have no idea of what the scores were, or who was scoring, but I do remember having fun.

Someone who thinks there's something at stake in insisting that RPGs are not games, but rather activities, must think the semantics matter. Otherwise why would they care? I'm engaging with that person. I've played backyard cricket, and kick-to-kick, with no ultimate win-state. But there are...

Like backyard cricket, kick-to-kick football, friendly hands of cards, etc, etc. These are all games.

Agreed! Of course RPGs are games. They are structured activities that are played for amusement. The participants have rules-governed positions, and those positions underpin their participation in the activity in rules-governed ways. If it looks like a game, and quacks like a game, and calls...

I'm not sure I really follow the ostensible contrast between a function, a mode of play, a format or a medium. Especially because at one point you say that "RPG" does not describe a format, but on the other hand you say that - as a specific product category - it does describe a format...

Only Fea-bella emptied hers - because she'd refilled them from the rivulet flowing out from the pool with the corpse in it. But the others hadn't emptied their waterskins, and those were the ones that got tainted. Think of it as a bit like a skill challenge, but with checks on both sides...

Gygax's PHB (1978) has this on p 7: Swords & sorcery best describes what this game is all about, for those are the two key fantasy ingredients. ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is a fantasy game of role playing which relies upon the imagination of participants, for it is certainly make-believe, yet...

Here's an example of how I managed this sort of thing in my most recent Torchbearer session:

If there is going to be a more systematic approach to consequences for resting - to reduce the "fuzziness" that @Campbell described - then that will be linked directly to "what's on hand", by use of clocks and other aspects of prep. Apocalypse World, with its rules for fronts and the way clocks...

One of the original winning tournament teams approached it pretty aggressively! I mean, they used good wargame-y tactics, but they didn't shy away from combat: as the victory report in The Dragon 19 says, The WV group’s philosophy has always been that of slash and hack with a large dose of...

Sure. I prefer to use methods other than GM decides to handle this sort of thing. I started a (long) thread about this earlier this year: GM fiat - an illustration I was just making the basic point that INT 8, at least to me, doesn't seem to entail is incapable of reasoning. The closest I've...