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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6990006" data-attributes="member: 42582">I have no idea how &quot;win or lose&quot; fits into this - I haven't even told you what I think win/loss conditions might be for an RPG!But you are correct that I regard fiction (clouds) that don't matter to downstream resolution as mere colour. As I said, you can have that playing a board game. My daughters overlay mere colour, in this sense, on their play of Monopoly or of Mystic Wood (the latter is a 1980 tile-based Avalon Hill exploration/quest game, a bit like Talisman but better eg because it finishes in a reasonable time) - but not their play of (say) chess or Connect 4. I think this is because the first-mentioned games use flavour text that relates to human choices in an imagined scenario - they have a &quot;role adoption&quot; element that chess or Connect 4 lacks.But personally I don't see the principal function of RPGing as &quot;making me imagine stuff&quot;. I don't really get that from playing Monopoly, but even I - an experenced gamer - get that from Mystic Wood, though not to the same degree as my kids. In my view, it becomes RPGing when the fiction that is generated matters to subsequent moments of resolution - that is, when rightward arrows are generated from cloud to cube. (Eg, because I'm covered in blod, I get a reaction roll penalty on my interaction with the duke; because I have a scratch, I have an increased chance of infection when I shove my hand into the murky pond; or whatever it might be.)At this point, it's not just that I'm imagining stuff. Rather, my imagination of stuff is - via a systematised procedure which means I can do it with my friends without arguments breaking out - driving the imagination of more stuff. There's a dynamic of fiction generation that we're all participants in, that has complex emergent and iterative aspects to it that don't arise merely from being prompted to imagine or give voice to mere colour.To me, that's what RPGing is, and why it's a worthwhile activity.As I said, I have no idea how or why you see that as connected to &quot;winning&quot;/&quot;losing&quot;.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6990006, member: 42582"] I have no idea how "win or lose" fits into this - I haven't even told you what I think win/loss conditions might be for an RPG! But you are correct that I regard fiction (clouds) that don't matter to downstream resolution as mere colour. As I said, you can have that playing a board game. My daughters overlay mere colour, in this sense, on their play of Monopoly or of Mystic Wood (the latter is a 1980 tile-based Avalon Hill exploration/quest game, a bit like Talisman but better eg because it finishes in a reasonable time) - but not their play of (say) chess or Connect 4. I think this is because the first-mentioned games use flavour text that relates to human choices in an imagined scenario - they have a "role adoption" element that chess or Connect 4 lacks. But personally I don't see the principal function of RPGing as "making me imagine stuff". I don't really get that from playing Monopoly, but even I - an experenced gamer - get that from Mystic Wood, though not to the same degree as my kids. In my view, it becomes RPGing when the fiction that is generated [I]matters[/I] to subsequent moments of resolution - that is, when rightward arrows are generated from cloud to cube. (Eg, because I'm covered in blod, I get a reaction roll penalty on my interaction with the duke; because I have a scratch, I have an increased chance of infection when I shove my hand into the murky pond; or whatever it might be.) At this point, it's not just that I'm imagining stuff. Rather, my imagination of stuff is - via a systematised procedure which means I can do it with my friends without arguments breaking out - driving the imagination of more stuff. There's a dynamic of fiction generation that we're all participants in, that has complex emergent and iterative aspects to it that don't arise merely from being prompted to imagine or give voice to mere colour. To me, that's what RPGing is, and why it's a worthwhile activity. As I said, I have no idea how or why you see that as connected to "winning"/"losing". [/QUOTE]

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