Search results

No, no, no. RPGs are also meant to be played, regardless of what some people may or may not enjoy doing with them. I feel like you're working to defend your own interests, which is unnecessary. I'm not judging anyone's engagement, I'm just saying that the principle that organizes most engagement...

Organizational, maybe? Play is what connects all the parts we're talking about, for most people anyway.

How individual people engage with the hobby is, oddly, pretty unimportant to my point (plus we aren't striving for a definition based on edge cases). Games are indeed meant to be played. Most gamers who are reading RPG books are going to play RPGs, designers design their games to be played, and...

That's interesting. I wouldn't put it like that at all. 'Important' is an idea that's pretty subjective and up to the individual. My point was more that RPGs are games, and games are supposed to be played (that is their specific purpose). From this it follows that all the non-play RPG...

Or the completely unexpected fourth person.

You can disagree all you like. I don't think that the idea that the core telos of games is to be played is even remotely controversial. Nor was this an assault on anyone's enjoyment of the non-play aspects of the hobby like worldbuilding, session prep, or whatever.

What the 'point' of RPGs is. Like in the thread title.

I don't actually think it matters it what ways various different RPG hobbyists find their happiness. Some people read, some people write, many actually play, it's all fine. But these are games we are talking about, so the index here is to play, regardless of whether or not that's everyone's...

Anything that would surprise folks when you invite them to play x is probably a good general guide.

I don't think it's obvious at all that engaging with the game outside of the narrower definition of play (i.e. the conversation) is play at all. When I'm planning a session I don't consider myself to be playing the game for example, nor when I'm thinking about what a PC of mine might do in an...

People interact with the hobby away from the table, there's no doubt about that. I'm not sure how much of that activity actually counts as 'playing' the game in any meaningful sense, as opposed to planning or something else. Perhaps I'm not thinking of something specific that you meant, or...

Yup, that sounds correct. Pin this and we'll move on. :LOL:

Let's not try to make people take a stance unless we have to....

No, I mean that most RPGs do a terrible job of explaining the 'conversation'. Newer games are more likely to do a better job of course.

When you say 'a lot' I assume you mean 'most'.

This can be taken way too far. Take the GM for example. They might decide to do all manner of world building that won't ever really directly impact play at the table, but it does serve to better locate them next to the 'thingness' of the setting. Deciding that that work simply isn't useful is...

IDK man. That GM doing GM stuff is doing something game related. Anyone who wants to try and parse it differently is selling something. It's not play exactly, but it's still game adjacent. Just like players thinking about how to advance or play their characters between sessions.

The other thing that I like about this topic is that is locates 'the conversation' as the central mover of RPG play. Not rules, not mechanics, but the conversation. That's where play happens. I'm going to step down off this soapbox now, I think my biases are showing.

I think this is an important idea. People sometimes talk about systems as things in and of themselves that 'do things' but they really don't. Only the game played at the table is any real measure of a system. Now you might need to talk about 'usual play' or some kind of equivalent, but I don't...

Yup, some people are just using whatever they like and daring the CR holders to do something. Or they're too dumb to realize they're doing the wrong thing. One of those. Or a combo. There are so many products there's no easy way to police it. We haven't even talked about using art you don't have...