Chess is not an RPG: The Illusion of Game Balance

[Hussar]

I don't agree. You're making the same escape as John Wick did, of overly narrowing your characterisation.

Any definition that rules out ToH or WPM has ruled itself out!

The role of the fiction in framing and adjudication is enough to differentiate from board games and most video games.

As I said, ToH in particular is very much an outlier for modules and D&D experiences though. It's not like there are a slew of ToH style modules out there (although there are a few). There are far, far more adventures out there where the goals of the character drive the game. Playing ToH might be role playing, but, it's a singular enough experience that I'm not terribly worried about a definition of RPG's that doesn't exactly include it. ToH style play certainly isn't the presumed style of play for most tables, IMO.

I mean, could you really see designing a campaign around ToH style adventures? And ongoing, say, eighty session campaign? I certainly don't see it.

Again, we shouldn't be trying to define things by the edges. Find the stuff in the middle that is generally common and build the definition from there. The S series modules are one data point, but, we shouldn't get too tied up on them.

Just like you can add roleplaying to just about anything, turning something like Battletech into a roleplaying game, for example, you can also strip out a fair degree of role playing and make an RPG less an RPG and more a board game or a simple tactical simulation.

 

[pemerton]

Ever reached it? I haven't. I've not gone beyond mid-Paragon, and the 30th level endgame is largely theoretical. Most of the type of game I'm talking about take up to half a dozen sessions.

I agree that "tightness" of the end game matters. But my 4e campaign is currently at 28th level, and 30th is coming up. The campaign is in its endgame, and endgame in some ways forseeable from the earliest sessions.

Taking things a step back ToH was not designed for tournament play. It was designed for Gygax' ongoing game with cocky and greedy adventurers. Who accepted and destroyed the challenge.

That doesn't change the fact that, in ToH, the fiction is meant to matter, and did matter, to resolution; but that character motivations are meant to be irrelevant to how the module is tackled.

As I said, ToH in particular is very much an outlier for modules and D&D experiences though.

<snip>

ToH style play certainly isn't the presumed style of play for most tables, IMO.

<snip>

we shouldn't be trying to define things by the edges. Find the stuff in the middle that is generally common and build the definition from there. The S series modules are one data point, but, we shouldn't get too tied up on them.

Just like you can add roleplaying to just about anything, turning something like Battletech into a roleplaying game, for example, you can also strip out a fair degree of role playing and make an RPG less an RPG and more a board game or a simple tactical simulation.

ToH might be an outlier, but the definition still needs to include it.

The relevance of fiction to framing and resolution is enough to distinguish an RPG from a board game or a tactical simulation. Why the need to add in as essential, what is a strictly optional if nevertheless typical element, of PC motivation mattering to what choices the players make?

 

[Hussar]

Because the relevance of fiction to framing and resolution doesn't exclude Microsoft Flight Simulator, as far as I can see. To me, something like Tomb of Horrors is not really meant as an RPG exercise. There's no story, particularly, there, no character motivation, no real reason to do X and not Y, other than a pretty much entirely meta-game level examination of the situation. Many of the traps could not be solved by a character within that game world. Only someone with real world information could resolve many of the traps. And that was the point of the exercise, to challenge the players and not the characters.

An RPG which ignores character, is not longer role playing. It's still a game, sure, but, what role playing is going on when the player is forced to make decisions based on his own real world knowledge, and not through the lens of the character that he is trying to portray. In order to have an RPG, you need an R.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think that NeonC might be on to something here - an RPG is a game where the motivations of the character are meant to be a driving element of the game, isn't a horrible starting place for defining an RPG and nicely separates RPG's from most board games and even most video games as well.

I don't think starting with the goal of RPG is a good definition though. That gets us right back into Wick territory. On the surface this sounds reasonable but plenty of people play RPGs as themselves and don't care at all about character. But more than that, this definition suggests that tables where the motives of the characters are not a driving force (and in some types of adventures or styles of play they might not be) are not RPGs. I think these kinds of reductionist definitions are not helpful. At best we can describe what RPGs include and what they look like (i.e. generally a group of players taking on the role of characters with a GM managing play and dealing with externals like setting, but there are exceptions so these need to be included in the definition as well). I think we need to start honestly describing what people are doing rather than what we'd like them to do (and I include my own sets of biases and assumptions in here as well).

 

[Celebrim]

Dislike it all you like. According to AndyK, who runs the Story-Games forum that was what people were objecting to in My Life With Master that meant that it couldn't possibly be an RPG - so they came up with the term "Story-game" to describe it. And it's the main point of difference between a lot of story games and most trad RPGs.

Sense when has an appeal to authority ever carried any weight with me? If that was sufficient, citing that Wick was a game designer would be enough to get me to agree with him. AndyK is simply wrong. He's wrong at the level that we can point to counter examples. Hillfolk is pretty obviously a story game, but is open ended. If we play Tomb of Horrors as a one shot, and that tournament style format is my tables sole experience with D&D - every time we play it we run a stand alone scenario - then by AndyK's definition D&D is a story game. Worse, we've now covered a set of games with goals and experiences that are radically different. If by story game we are accepting D&D at its most tactical and least story centered mode of play belongs to the same genera of as a narrative generation system like Hillfolk, then surely the central element that they share is not a focus on 'Story'. The term we've chosen 'story' is far less descriptive of the group as a whole than something like 'short' or 'closed'. It would be like defining story as the characteristic that distinguishes short stories and novels.

The more examples I think about, the more I'm certain that the difference between a story game and an RPG is a lack of procedural mechanics. If you look at a traditional theater game (and working with the assumption that those games belong to a different class of games than D&D), you have a director that will assign roles and motivations and dramatic goals at the beginning of a scene - and sometimes intervening and prompting players if the scene appears to be flat. Theater games have no procedural mechanics. By and large story games play out exactly like theater games with one major exception - they have some sort of fortune mechanic that at least in part replaces or informs the role of the director in the game. So by referring to those mechanics, you can decide what the roles are like, what sort of elements the scene might have, what sort of motivations the characters might have, and how the scene is to play out - as tragedy or comedy, or which character is intended to get the upper hand in the scene. But in contrast to RPGs, story games like a means of resolving the actual process of the scene. They rely on the players sense of timing and drama for how the processes are to play out, bearing in mind the stage direction given to them by the narrative or director mechanics. "I got the low dice, I have to figure out how this goes badly for me." Where as RPGs use fortune mechanics to resolve processes for individual events, story games are focused on resolving processes at the level of scenes.

Consider a game like Dogs in the Vineyard. This is clearly a nar game with a focus on creating story. But the game still allows for process resolution within the scene - whether or not you intimidate or persuade, whether or not you can beat a character on the draw, etc. Dogs in the Vineyard remains an RPG with a story focus. My Life with Master moves one step further away from that. It's a story game with a clear RPG heritage.

I'd not go for that side at all. "In an RPG you can and are expected to use pre-existing elements of the fiction for which there are no clearly defined mechanics in the rulebook." To me that's the critical difference between an RPG and various games like Descent and Arkham Horror.

It is certainly important, and I'd like to go there. But if I went there, I'd be as bad as Wick. I admit that 99% of RPGs as they are played at tables assume that the rules set is open ended - that is they assume the traditional "Rule Zero". But just as 99% of RPGs as I've seen them played at tables involve some amount of method acting, I don't agree that any RPG that is played without method acting isn't an RPG - because tables can still choose to play them without method acting and they'd be missing IMO but still playing an RPG. This is obvious to me as a computer programmer where I know Rule Zero can't be implemented - yet Mass Effect is surely an RPG - but also because I know some tables hate Rule Zero and do play with a largely closed set of rules were nothing that isn't explicitly permitted is allowed. Yet, just because there imaginary space has a one to one correspondence with a game board, doesn't make it less of an RPG. Consider my example of Chess played as an RPG a simplification of the type. There'd be rooms in the dungeon. There'd be roles to play in the party. There'd be monsters to overcome and goals of scenarios. It's an RPG.

Which bit of "Whose line is it anyway"?

Well, all of it.

Tabletop RPG or Trad RPG. Or even Tactical RPG.

It still think it's not reasonable to relegate D&D to being something other than an RPG. Saying that D&D is a TRPG is in the same category of saying its "not an RPG" if by that you mean it belongs to a subcategory of this sort, and not merely "an RPG played on a tabletop". Plus, story games are played on table tops as well. That's as bad as saying that "story game" is meant to exclude types of play based on length.

No argument. I'd also call it an RPG.

Why? It is a theater game with some randomization elements regarding the roles and scenes you play.

The objectives of the subgames in Whose Line is it Anyway are almost entirely meta. Montsegur 1244 has logic following from the characters.

No wait a minute. Theater games also have logic following form the characters. Absolutely the scenes in WLiiA involve following the logic of the stage direction and the assigned characters.

On this we agree Where we differ is that Story Games are RPGs

Only if we use RPG as the umbrella term for all sorts of dramatic play. I don't agree that that is the best approach.

Nope. Doesn't fit either My Life With Master or Monsterhearts (which bills itself as a Story Game). Or about half the other games under the banner of Story Games. Of course what they choose as stats is ... non-traditional.

They have a fortune mechanic, but it doesn't dictate the process of play. Focus some more on that 'non-tradional' aspect.

Fundamental Law?

"Thou shalt not be good at everything."

Trad Drama isn't a game in the same way.

No, but it is play.

 

[billd91]

Because the relevance of fiction to framing and resolution doesn't exclude Microsoft Flight Simulator, as far as I can see.

If I'm reading pemerton right, if the fiction element pretty much has to allow the player's representative in the game to do just about anything it wants to try to do not just what the code or rules constrain it to doing. If you can't make crank phone calls to Ed Begley, Jr in-game while flying your aircraft at sufficiently low altitude to be picked up by the cell towers, then it's probably not an RPG. Otherwise, I don't think that definition would work because I don't think it would be able to distinguish a game like Advanced Squad Leader from an RPG either.[/QUOTE]

 

[Umbran]

Like any genre, you are probably better off trying to define the center and not the edges. When does fantasy become SF is an endless wank with no resolution.

I think we need to start honestly describing what people are doing rather than what we'd like them to do....

And, now, these two points should get hooked together.

It also helps to sprinkle in qualifiers. Rather than say, "In an RPG, players do X..." aim for, "In an RPG, players typically do X..." Speak about what is common, but not what is always or never done - genre definitions based in absolutes often fail.

Oh, and figure out *why* you want a definition. What purpose does the definition serve? What *can't* you do without the definition?

 

[billd91]

I think people are being too quick to dismiss Tomb of Horrors and other S-series modules from the realm of PC motivations. Isn't that sort of thing up to the individual campaign to decide? Return to the Tomb of Horrors presents a fairly interesting in-campaign reason PCs might investigate and explore the tomb aside from just the desire for filthy lucre (which is a motivation for plenty of PCs - it certainly seemed to motivate the PCs in the original campaign).

I think it's true that most RPGs don't challenge just the PCs but also the players. I don't think it's very realistic to expect them not to and so I think any definition that expects the PC's motivations to be primary is probably too limiting. Playing a role isn't an on-off sort of judgment - it's a spectrum. If I play just based on the PC's mechanics, I am still playing a particular role that will be different from a role based on PCs with different mechanics - it's just not very far along the spectrum toward immersion. But I would submit it's still different from playing the role of "white chess player", "monopoly player", or "Munchkin player" in the sense that the game itself incorporates and encourages (even with just explanatory text and flavor rather than mechanics) developing and taking on the individual character's POV.

 

[Janx]

If I'm reading pemerton right, if the fiction element pretty much has to allow the player's representative in the game to do just about anything it wants to try to do not just what the code or rules constrain it to doing. If you can't make crank phone calls to Ed Begley, Jr in-game while flying your aircraft at sufficiently low altitude to be picked up by the cell towers, then it's probably not an RPG. Otherwise, I don't think that definition would work because I don't think it would be able to distinguish a game like Advanced Squad Leader from an RPG either.

[/QUOTE]

Probably the key virtue in a TableTop RPG is that if we are in a modern setting with Cellphones and my PC has a Ed Begley Jr's number, then the GM inherently has to allow me to attempt to call him. Even though the rules don't cover it specifically. The GM is expected to abjudicate it, even though it's outside of the rules.

I suspect it is relying on the Simulation aspect of the game, where the GM is trying to process things reasonably and plausibly.

In other games (like Advanced Squad Leader), that's not even possible. If the squad captures a farmhouse, they can't dial the phone to call back home and tell Mom you're OK. Because the rules don't exist and it is outside the scope of the game.

Personally, I would consider that an RPG typically has this flexibility of scope, and a non-RPG does not. However, Computer RPGs have always lacked this capability, and if nothing else it is the dividing line for Table Top vs. Computer RPG.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Sense when has an appeal to authority ever carried any weight with me? If that was sufficient, citing that Wick was a game designer would be enough to get me to agree with him. AndyK is simply wrong.

Eyewitness accounts matter. And if anyone has the right to define the term Story-Games then it's the person who runs the forum Story-games.com. Rather than people (like the RPG Pundit or, for that matter yourself) who use it to define games they don't like.

That is what the term was created to cover. It has drifted since then. The only practical definition of a Storygame I'm aware of is "A game produced by those people over there."

He's wrong at the level that we can point to counter examples. Hillfolk is pretty obviously a story game, but is open ended. If we play Tomb of Horrors as a one shot, and that tournament style format is my tables sole experience with D&D - every time we play it we run a stand alone scenario - then by AndyK's definition D&D is a story game.

The second is definitely not true - there is a difference between a game and a module. If you were to invent an entire game to play Tomb of Horrors in and boil down the game to only that which was relevant to ToH then that would qualify.

As for Hillfolk being "pretty obviously a storygame", not a bit of it. Until you called it one I hadn't seen anyone call it one. Hillfolk is certainly a Dramasystem. But where is the actual Story part of Hillfolk? It certainly draws on the Storygame tradition but is not itself one. You could certainly use Hillfolk as the engine underlying a storygame, but that's an entirely different matter.

Worse, we've now covered a set of games with goals and experiences that are radically different. If by story game we are accepting D&D at its most tactical

Then we are creating a strawman. Moving on.

The more examples I think about, the more I'm certain that the difference between a story game and an RPG is a lack of procedural mechanics.

Congratulations. You've just claimed that Monsterhearts, which claims on the cover, to be a Storygame (and is so far as I am aware universally accepted by those who use the term for things they actually play) isn't one. Disproof by counterexample.

They rely on the players sense of timing and drama for how the processes are to play out, bearing in mind the stage direction given to them by the narrative or director mechanics. "I got the low dice, I have to figure out how this goes badly for me."

And there goes the entire PBTA family. Although most of them, to be fair, aren't Storygames.

Where as RPGs use fortune mechanics to resolve processes for individual events, story games are focused on resolving processes at the level of scenes.

Except where they aren't. See Monsterhearts for an example.

Consider a game like Dogs in the Vineyard. This is clearly a nar game with a focus on creating story. But the game still allows for process resolution within the scene - whether or not you intimidate or persuade, whether or not you can beat a character on the draw, etc. Dogs in the Vineyard remains an RPG with a story focus. My Life with Master moves one step further away from that. It's a story game with a clear RPG heritage.

And yet a lot of people consider Dogs a Storygame. Not everyone does.

This is obvious to me as a computer programmer where I know Rule Zero can't be implemented - yet Mass Effect is surely an RPG

It's certainly a CRPG.

Yet, just because there imaginary space has a one to one correspondence with a game board, doesn't make it less of an RPG. Consider my example of Chess played as an RPG a simplification of the type. There'd be rooms in the dungeon. There'd be roles to play in the party. There'd be monsters to overcome and goals of scenarios. It's an RPG.

As is the boardgame Descent?

It still think it's not reasonable to relegate D&D to being something other than an RPG. Saying that D&D is a TRPG is in the same category of saying its "not an RPG" if by that you mean it belongs to a subcategory of this sort, and not merely "an RPG played on a tabletop".

D&D may be an RPG and a good early one but it does not get to define the entire category. If the category excludes it it's wrong. All Tabletop RPGs are RPGs. Not all RPGs are Tabletop RPGs.

Plus, story games are played on table tops as well.

And almost all of them are RPGs.

Why? [Montsegur 1244] is a theater game with some randomization elements regarding the roles and scenes you play.

You've never played sessions where you didn't roll a dice? It's a game with victory conditions that follow from the logic of the character in which you use the fiction of the setting while expected to do things the designer never thought of.

No wait a minute. Theater games also have logic following form the characters. Absolutely the scenes in WLiiA involve following the logic of the stage direction and the assigned characters.

In character victory conditions? And "How can you use this ridiculous foam rubber prop" isn't the same thing at all.

They have a fortune mechanic, but it doesn't dictate the process of play. Focus some more on that 'non-tradional' aspect.

What do you mean "dictate the process of play"?

"Thou shalt not be good at everything."

Alternatively: Thou shall not be the best at everything. There's nothing wrong with assuming high baseline competence.