Chess is not an RPG: The Illusion of Game Balance

[howandwhy99]

I don't understand; if the player says he's going to jump down on the goblins from above, it's not the GM's job to adjudicate what dice need to be rolled to make the attempt?

What the probability curve is is predetermined by the game rules, or the code in the case of D&D. The GM could ask for any roll of dice that are isomorphic to that probability curve. That's not the important part. Applying the rules is the important part and what a referee does. They don't play, which is kind of the whole point of having refs and umpires and judges. Yes there may be some measuring involved here and there on the map, probably some calculation, but that's what's running a game. It isn't playing the game to achieve an outcome within it, which is playing a game.

[MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] - Dog is not a role play. Pretending to be a dog in a park catching a frisbee is role play. Doctor is not a role play. Pretending (or actually being I suppose) a doctor in a hospital dealing with patients is role play. It appears that you are confusing role with role play. The two are certainly not synonymous.

People performing roles is roleplaying. Whether it be fantasy or reality.

What I'm saying is what others have since said as well. You have a singular schema you are not looking out of for RPGs. It isn't what's actually occurring. If you are like me and more interested in playing and enjoying the game of D&D, the one I know I grew up with and still play, then narrative theory doesn't apply because it wasn't part of what those games were and still are. Nor is storytelling or acting in character what roleplaying was then. And still don't have to be.

So, I ask again, can you give me an example of role play that does not involve character, setting and plot? I honestly can't think of one.

You just did so with people being doctors. There are no settings, characters, or plots in hospitals. But there are many people role playing.

On another note, there are three major issues I'm drawing here.

1. Howandwhy's definitions would include Microsoft Flight Simulator as a role playing game. It's pure math and your job playing the game is to game the game to succeed. You have a role - a pilot, and a game. Ok, fine. But, this breaks down when the same definition then excludes any version of Dungeons and Dragons. That's a pretty hard row to hoe if you want to have a definition of role playing game that doesn't account for D&D.

Yep, check out Roleplay Simulation. That's roleplaying. Dungeons & Dragons was created as that, the only kind of roleplaying anyone did for decades before D&D came about. But TSR didn't follow up with that design philosophy. Even Gary didn't later, he even joined the skill game camp after the disagreement over GURPS. By the 1990s no one knew what the hell they were doing designing RPGs but kept building systems which were in front of screens and only covered half the content. Then the Forgites came and basically mocked that design philosophy (which I don't know so well) and 3e D&D design and players until they quit making it.

4e and 5e edition are wholly storygames. No one's disputing that. But no definition can cover all these games now. Claiming every "version" of D&D must be included is poisoning the well.

2. H&W's history is severely lacking. He comments that the idea of playing a fictional persona was added in the 80's. This is flat out false. Anecdotes from Gygax's table disprove that, as well as the genesis of Dragonlance, which was played in the 70's before being published in the 80's. Role playing requiring or at least being enhanced by, taking on a fictional persona was part of the game from day one. Reread the accounts of the Braunstein games and you can see this. Never mind Blackmoor or other examples. Playing in pure Avatar Stance has been possible since day one, but, certainly not the only way to play.

Heck, Gygax mentions the need to fudge die rolls in the 1e DMG. If results are not to the DM's liking, the DM is advised to over rule the rolls. That's not an impartial Referee as H&W is characterising it.

No one had to express a fictional persona back then, they just liked to. That wasn't the roleplaying part of it. The game is immersive, like a flight simulator. Now imagine a conversation with people simulator. Think people are going to exhibit personalities? Knowing that it's D&D many still didn't. It isnt' the game and isn't roleplaying. It's the usurpation of roleplaying into a completely different act. But that's how history actually went.

Oh yeah, and AD&D and Gygax's bad advice. Thousands of gamers knew that was horrible game advice and no one should ever do it. AD&D was not the great achievement. It had and has hundreds of flaws. Making the flaws justification for promoting "how people actually played" was Forge followers attempt to rewrite history to conform yet again to the one true explanation.

3. By making continuous connections between those that disagree with him and fascists and doublethink, any claim to academic standards goes straight out the window. He's essentially Godwinned himself by doing this and repeatedly characterising those that disagree with him as either uneducated, or guilty of ulterior motives instead of actually providing any substantial proof of his claims.

Not Fascists, fascists, which is a fair approximation of the article's attempt to close down thought. No one actually believes anyone here is Hitler. Instead, let's not try and close this thread .

howandwhy99 - it's time to either piddle or get off the pot. Show me your proof. Give me examples of role play that does not require all the elements of a story. Games? Oh, hey, games don't need stories at all. There's certainly no narrative (small n, not the Forge term) involved or assumed in Tic Tac Toe or Poker or Chess or Monopoly. In fact, a narrative wouldn't make much sense in those cases other than a simple relating of the events that occurred during the game. There is no "in game fiction" to talk about. A role playing game will always (at least as far as I can think) have an in game fiction that is distinct from the actions of the players.

It's nice to see you don't believe games need to be stories. Roleplaying games that are not storygames do not include fiction or fiction creation. There is no "story cloud". There is always a game board that is to be gamed by the players. So no, story doesn't need apply.

 

[prosfilaes]

What the probability curve is is predetermined by the game rules, or the code in the case of D&D. The GM could ask for any roll of dice that are isomorphic to that probability curve.

If you're playing GURPS, that might be more of the social expectation, and I can't imagine a GURPS GM call for a check that wasn't 3d6. In D&D, on the other hand, DMs will call for rolls on whatever weirdass dice they have around. Could be a d20, but also could be d2 or d100 or even d1000, and d100s are likely to explode in some DMs' games. My Pathfinder DM has us each roll percentile for random encounters and the like, and if anyone gets, say, 01-05, we get one. I don't know what probability curve that is, but I'm pretty sure it's not mentioned in the book.

They don't play, which is kind of the whole point of having refs and umpires and judges.

Unlike refs and umpires, we have people lining up to be DMs. (When's the last time you say a playground game have an ump?) One might argue that something like a D&D Encounters DM is umpire-like, but a home DM in drawing the "board" for the game is hardly a neutral arbitrator. Using these analogies, we might say that a DM is actively designing the game, frequently changing it in play.

4e and 5e edition are wholly storygames. No one's disputing that.

I think everyone who compared 4e to WoW did. 5E is basically AD&D 1 with some rejiggering of numbers plus skills and feats. There's some difference, but not at the 40,000 foot level.

But no definition can cover all these games now.

Most human things have that problem. There's no definition that can cover all things that are generally called "games" and exclude everything that's not called a "game. Likewise for "phone" or "book" or "computer". Human internal definitions are generally prototype based; we know these things are games and those aren't, instead of working from a definition of game.

 

[Celebrim]

Certainly part of the reason I'd consider storygames RPGs is sociological; storygamers consider themselves playing RPGs, and the two groups are entangled; also, storygamers aren't a big enough group to need separating out.

I'm not entirely sure where to draw the line myself. I know where the box gets fuzzy, and I know what lies outside the box, but in that fuzzy area around the box it not only would be easy to make a mistake and speak too quickly, but based on my own theory of RPGs its highly likely that some groups are playing those edge cases as actual RPGs and some are playing them as story games. System itself wouldn't tell us enough to make a judgment. How you think about a game and how you prepare to play are at least as important as the rules themselves.

You play a Prime Time Adventure about the cast trying to escape a building overrun with zombies, and the producer secretly makes a map and the cast members play as if the map is an unalterable part of the fiction and bring with them other similar preconceptions, you are going to produce a game that resembles D&D or other traditional RPGs even though it doesn't have rules that suggest this result.

I discovered this problem trying to run a game of Paranoia. My disposition as a story teller and my particular mental and social skills (or their lack) prevented the game from being the game intended by the designer. The longer I ran the game, the more it started to resemble a serious investigation of a science fiction dystopia until at some point the game wasn't funny - but frightening and angsty. I learned that I could not think about the story Paranoia wanted to tell. It was just not something I could do. I could play the game; but it was something I couldn't run - at least not as intended. Conversely, I run CoC really well.

For my purposes, I feel safe to say that the following isn't an RPG:

"Whose Line is it Anyway" (the TV show): WLiiA involves roleplaying and is a game by the definition of being structured play, but I feel pretty confident in saying that isn't a RPG. WLiiA is just the most visible example of a long history of Theater Games. Modern RPGs have over the years borrowed or at least convergently evolved many of the same forms as Theater Games, but they are distinctive. howandwhy99 would object, and I would agree, that one of the problems with a Theater Game being an RPG is that there is no game board - nothing exists concretely in the shared imaginary space. Actors take turns adding to the story, passing the hat as it were, and there may even be a director that sets the stage, but neither actor can propose a concrete move that may or may not successfully alter the game board. There is no formal conflict resolution. If someone points a finger gun at you and goes, "Bang." You decide how to follow from that lead based on what you think will be funny or dramatic according to the story goals. Or in other words, the Fundamental Law of Role Playing is not in effect in this game. Hense, it's not an RPG.

Games I'm Fuzzy On:

Amber Diceless Roleplaying: I've got limited experience with this system, just sitting in for a few hours, but based on my experience with it it's more of a theater game than it is an RPG. With no fortune mechanic, and rather minimal concrete guidance on how propositions and conflicts are to be resolved, much of the game involved 'back channel' negotiation and cooperation regarding what the best outcome for the scene would be - where best generally meant 'a compromise that satisfied all parties'. That to me felt more like my experience with theater games than it did RPGs. Hense, I'd be fairly confident in asserting Amber is in the world of 'story games'. That said, it's hard for me to be fully confident in that until I spent a lot of time with the system (which frankly, I wouldn't want to do).

Fiasco RPG - I'm even less confident in declaring Fiasco is a story game than I am Amber, perhaps because I have even less direct experience (ei, none). Also, it declares itself to be an RPG and has won awards as an RPG. Also, in a strange way, it seems to implement the Fundamental Law. However, if it is an RPG then its possible that all story games and all theater games are actually subsets of an RPG and Gygax and Arneson didn't invent anything we actually have a unique term for. The issue that I have is that the mechanics of Fiasco seem to mostly resolve around who gets to play the role of the director during a theater game, but the game itself seems intended to play from that point more like a theater game. There is no conflict resolution. There is no propositions and no real fortune mechanic. All you have is some basic rules for allocating stage direction to everyone playing the game in a cooperative fashion. However, for all that the Fundamental Law does seem to be present in some form. It's not possible for a player to demand a good result, because while you are in the player role someone can take the director hat and require you to play out a scene in a failing fashion. What I'm fuzzy on is whether that really counts. It feels like you have two games going on here. A metagame which is not an RPG, because no roleplaying occurs in it, which allocates resources fairly. And a theater game, which does involve roleplaying, but which has no game component. The part that is a game doesn't share in the roleplaying, and the part that is roleplaying doesn't share in the game. Does this count? I'm not sure, though at a certain level it doesn't really matter. It looks like with the right people it could be fun, and whether we label it a story game or an RPG probably doesn't matter a lot.

 

[howandwhy99]

If you're playing GURPS, that might be more of the social expectation, and I can't imagine a GURPS GM call for a check that wasn't 3d6. In D&D, on the other hand, DMs will call for rolls on whatever weirdass dice they have around. Could be a d20, but also could be d2 or d100 or even d1000, and d100s are likely to explode in some DMs' games. My Pathfinder DM has us each roll percentile for random encounters and the like, and if anyone gets, say, 01-05, we get one. I don't know what probability curve that is, but I'm pretty sure it's not mentioned in the book.

The stats progressions are listed, the algorithms aren't. Welcome to old school :rollseyes: We've had to deal with that for years.

Unlike refs and umpires, we have people lining up to be DMs. (When's the last time you say a playground game have an ump?) One might argue that something like a D&D Encounters DM is umpire-like, but a home DM in drawing the "board" for the game is hardly a neutral arbitrator. Using these analogies, we might say that a DM is actively designing the game, frequently changing it in play.

DMs generate with die rolls the campaign and game scenarios unless suggested by players. See Appendix A & B in AD&D DMG specifically, but most of those appendices apply.

I think everyone who compared 4e to WoW did. 5E is basically AD&D 1 with some rejiggering of numbers plus skills and feats. There's some difference, but not at the 40,000 foot level.

To me, that's 5e edition marketing speak. The game didn't even have the completely nongame mechanic of the "check" mechanic until the Dungeneers Survival Handbook in '85 (I think, it could have been the Wilderness guide thing).

5e is a storygame that, yes, could be rejiggered into a roleplaying game, but has no rules for doing so as of yet.

Most human things have that problem. There's no definition that can cover all things that are generally called "games" and exclude everything that's not called a "game. Likewise for "phone" or "book" or "computer". Human internal definitions are generally prototype based; we know these things are games and those aren't, instead of working from a definition of game.

Yeah, but we're ignoring the man attempt to confuse that understanding by storygame theory. By making all actions in games not game deciphering and strategy creation and enactment, but exclusively storytelling.

Remember, the Big Model isn't an RPG theory. It's purports to reveal what all games actually are. For instance, all games require character stances by players. Even sporting games. It's far out there. He's tried to jam "games are always stories" and "roleplaying is making stories" as far up the hobby's backside as he conceivably could. And story has nothing whatsoever to do with either. Roleplaying as a term was actually come up with in 1920 to differentiate it from acting. But that's not fashionable to say anymore.

 

[prosfilaes]

The stats progressions are listed, the algorithms aren't.

I have no idea what you mean. Where are the stats progressions listed for "roll nd100 and something happens if anyone of them is below 05"? And how can a DM be a neutral arbitrator following the rules when two DMs would decide on entirely different ways of randomly determining random encounters?

DMs generate with die rolls the campaign and game scenarios unless suggested by players.

This is incredibly counterfactual. I don't think any successful DM has ever ceded control to those tables in the DMG, instead of using them as inspiration and help.

To me, that's 5e edition marketing speak.

"To me" doesn't change the fact that that statement is again provably false. I do not market 5e; I still haven't been entirely sold on it. So it's not marketing speak; it's my feelings from comparing the two games. Looking at page 5 of S2: White Plume Mountain, I could run that as is in D&D 5 with changing some numbers. I might need to play with a few other power differences, and could change a few other things to make it feel more like D&D 5, but they're not that different. Anyone considering AD&D 1 and D&D 5 different classes of things is not making sense to me.

Yeah, but we're ignoring the man attempt to confuse that understanding by storygame theory. By making all actions in games not game deciphering and strategy creation and enactment, but exclusively storytelling.

Of course there's other things in roleplaying games. I don't know where everyone arguing with you stands, but certainly several of us don't believe that at all. The problem is, you want to put it into another box where story doesn't play any part in roleplaying games, and most of the exemplars I have of RPGs are not RPGs. To go back to an earlier comment:

By the 1990s no one knew what the hell they were doing designing RPGs but kept building systems which were in front of screens and only covered half the content.

That's absurd. In the 1990s, successful game designers were designing games that people wanted to play in the 1990s. It is absurd to say that they didn't know what they were doing; they made games people bought, because they made games people enjoyed. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, not your theory about how RPGs should be designed.

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] - could you explain your Fundamental Law again? I'm following what you are saying but I missed this bit.

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] - could you explain your Fundamental Law again? I'm following what you are saying but I missed this bit.

Well, there are several ways to state it, but briefly, "Thou shalt not be good at everything."

 

[Umbran]

4e and 5e edition are wholly storygames. No one's disputing that.

I might dispute that. I have seen folks having a great time playing 4e as a straight up tactical combat skirmish game dungeon crawl, with not a scrap of story. Just, "Oh, hey, a monster, kill it and take its stuff!" The game, with all of its detailed movement rules and strategizing of how to get powers to play off each other, seems quite well suited for it. So I don't see where *wholly* storygame comes from.

In any case, did you just see us address how the really successful games serve more than one agenda? D&D is pretty much the poster child for successful game, in any edition, whcih would mena it isn't *wholly* any one thing. Didn't you just see Celebrim and I go over how GNS terminology can be *limiting*. Taking games and putting them into pigeonholes is limiting in the same sense.

If you need a definition of "storygame" for your theoretical considerations, that's fine. But we should resist the urge to shove games *wholly* into one bin or another, because, to be honest, they usually don't fit nearly as well as one would like to believe.

 

[Umbran]

People performing roles is roleplaying. Whether it be fantasy or reality.

No. Because *PLAY* has meaning.

When a doctor has your guts cut open to take out cancer, he or she is not playing at anything. Or, you darn well *hope* they aren't playing around, because those are your guts that could be on the operating room floor in a moment.

 

[Hussar]

I think I'm finally understanding why I'm having such a tough time following H&W's larger points. He's taking the word Role Playing Game, and then breaking that word apart to serve whichever meaning he needs at a given time.

A doctor might be in a particular role when operating, but, he's not role playing and there's certainly no element of game there. Not in real life anyway. It would have to be a mock surgery, a simulation of a surgery in order for it to be a role playing exercise. And even then, game still has meaning.

You can't split the word up. Role playing game is a phrasal noun (essentially a single word made up of two or more words - bus stop is a single word, even though there is a space there and the words bus and stop can stand on their own). In order to define role playing game, you cannot break it into its component words, any more than you could define bus stop by defining the words individually. English isn't Latin.