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Message: <blockquote data-quote="apoptosis" data-source="post: 3784455" data-attributes="member: 3226">What is the pasta and what is the sauce i think has to be defined by the book and people who want one or the other chooses what book (game) that they want (ok analogy going too far)...But I think this is an important question and ties back to my initial question of roleplay vs game and how to integrate the two facets. I think figuring out this stuff is important to good RPG design.My theory (and it probably is full of holes and but it does relate back to roleplay vs game mechanics) goes back to playing lets pretend and games as a kid. When I was kid we played both "lets pretend" and cowboys and indians. You would think these games are basically the same but they weren't.Star Wars came out when I was a kid and we would play and pretend to be Star Wars characters. Well my and my friend even if everyone played one of the protagonists they would switch off being the different villains so their would be a foe (though sometimes we just imagined Darth Vader and no one played him). There were not much in the way of rules and while it was collaborative we would have different ideas of what happens in this made up story, so we made up 'rules' like we got two times where we got to decide what happens. So as kids we basically roleplayed and made up some 'rules' so we could share narrative control and resolve situations where our story ideas were different.Cowboys and indians on the other hand was not so much playing 'let's pretend' as playing a game.  It generally was pretty much "i shoot you" but I remember there would be safe bases and other made up on the spot rules. Now while some kids really got into 'being' a cowboy or and indian (myself particularly) generally it was just a thin skin covering a game of tag as you could play cops and robbers interchangebly.So this relates back to  the roleplaying and game interaction and why i think it is useful to have roleplaying mechancs and advice in the rulebooks. i think that many people come to this game from one of the two above paradigms (or some mixture of the two). If your enjoyment of an RGP comes from the fact that it is a more codified version of "lets pretend" rules and mechanics that aid roleplaying can really help these type people enjoy the RPG more.On the other hand people who come from the 'cowboys and indians' view it as a game with a 'skin' that allows the game to be more evocative. The flavor helps them enjoy the game. For instance even strict wargamers (vs RPGers) might prefer playing wargames about ancient empires vs. war games about eventeenth century europe etc (just an example, i have no ideas about which wars happenend in seventeenth century europe, i am sure they had at least one  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /> ). I think that some roleplaying advice/mechanics might help them get more drama (and enjoyment) out of the game part or possibly get a better feeling of what someone else (the other type player) might get out of the RPG.So that is why I think that the roleplaying and game aspects should not be divorced and that both mechanics and advice for roleplaying is beneficial to the game as a whole. I come to RPGs from the 'lets pretend' enjoyment side while I definitely respect that many people come from more of a cowboys and indians side (most people are probably a mixture). I think that while they call the 'roleplaying' people amateur thespians, i think saying they are closer to 'the amateur writer'. They come to game because of how it can emulate books that they read etc (similar to Gary having book sources for flavor in the original DM guide). An obvious problem with my theory is that I think the overall game came initially from the cowboys and indians side, basically from wargaming. Though given the evocative nature of Gary's writing of the early books, i think he really has gets a lot of the amateur writer enjoyment side from this hobby (of course he is a professional writer, i know, but i will ignore that to not kill my theory) and that without this side of him D&D would not have as been successful. So that was the longest-winded post I think i have ever written, i apologize in advance for anyone who couldn't get the 3 minutes of their life back. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> Apoptosis</blockquote>

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