Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8932994" data-attributes="member: 42582">Sure. Your improv/chess comparison sits in the same place as my novelist/mathematician comparison. It doesn't deny the contrast I'm drawing - I feel it tends to reinforce it.As I read it, &quot;in service of the shared story&quot; means that the outcome of the reasoning about the rules will lead to someone making a decision about the content of the shared fiction, with the other participants will agree with. That seems true.But that doesn't show that it is engaging with, or reasoning about, the fiction in the sense I've been emphasising. A GM rolling on a random encounter table will likewise lead to new agreements about the content of the fiction. So does resolving a hp-attrition content - when one character is reduced to zero hp everyone will agree they're out of the combat, dead or unconscious depending on the details of the rules being used. But that doesn't mean these things - making dice rolls, noting their results, consulting tables, keeping tallies, etc - is itself any sort of engagement with the fiction.I think there are RPGs with D&amp;D-style complex magic systems that don't rely on the same approach to focused parsing of detailed rules text. I'm thinking of Rolemaster (most of the time; not every time), T&amp;T (at least that's my impression), 4e D&amp;D, and Burning Wheel/Torchbearer (in my play experience of these systems).I can't say anything more about T&amp;T. But in the case of the other systems, a couple of differences are that they integrate their spells a bit more tightly into the general resolution framework and rely a bit more on systematised rules concepts (eg keywords in 4e D&amp;D).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8932994, member: 42582"] Sure. Your improv/chess comparison sits in the same place as my novelist/mathematician comparison. It doesn't deny the contrast I'm drawing - I feel it tends to reinforce it. As I read it, "in service of the shared story" means that the outcome of the reasoning about the rules will lead to someone making a decision about the content of the shared fiction, with the other participants will agree with. That seems true. But that doesn't show that it is engaging with, or reasoning about, the fiction in the sense I've been emphasising. A GM rolling on a random encounter table will likewise lead to new agreements about the content of the fiction. So does resolving a hp-attrition content - when one character is reduced to zero hp everyone will agree they're out of the combat, dead or unconscious depending on the details of the rules being used. But that doesn't mean these things - making dice rolls, noting their results, consulting tables, keeping tallies, etc - is itself any sort of engagement with the fiction. I think there are RPGs with D&D-style complex magic systems that don't rely on the same approach to focused parsing of detailed rules text. I'm thinking of Rolemaster (most of the time; not every time), T&T (at least that's my impression), 4e D&D, and Burning Wheel/Torchbearer (in my play experience of these systems). I can't say anything more about T&T. But in the case of the other systems, a couple of differences are that they integrate their spells a bit more tightly into the general resolution framework and rely a bit more on systematised rules concepts (eg keywords in 4e D&D). [/QUOTE]

Verification