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<blockquote data-quote="MoogleEmpMog" data-source="post: 3317615" data-attributes="member: 22882">No, it's not.Playing make believe is the ultimate in playing make believe, if you mean ultimate in the sense of 'the purest expression of the activity.'Improv theater (formalized playing make believe with meta rules and a social contract to guide the process and help newbies understand it) could be described as the ultimate in playing make believe, in that they take the process, formalize and codify it without essentially changing the activity.RPGs with a strong immersionist bent, which focus their mechanics on getting the players in character and reward getting and staying there, as opposed to rewarding players for canny knowledge of the system, could perhaps be described as the ultimate in playing make believe.No version of D&amp;D has been any of those three things.&nbsp; OD&amp;D began as a one player/one character extension to a tabletop wargame, adding in the concept of role-playing Game as it developed out of Chainmail; D&amp;D has never strayed far from that model.&nbsp; At no point have the rules, hidden or otherwise, provided tangible rewards for playing make believe - merely nebulous guidelines regarding roleplaying XP.&nbsp; Meanwhile, pages upon pages are devoted to spells whose primary function is combat, classes whose abilities are balanced, if at all, around combat, monsters - of which many are essentially either living traps or combat machines - and the actual rules to resolve combat, including to-hit charts and the d20 mechanic alike.&nbsp; The existence of that information is an enticement to use it (a reward for the player for the tactical/combative style), and knowledge of it brings success within that style (a reward for the character and thus reinforcement of the player's metagaming).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MoogleEmpMog, post: 3317615, member: 22882"] No, it's not. Playing make believe is the ultimate in playing make believe, if you mean ultimate in the sense of 'the purest expression of the activity.' Improv theater (formalized playing make believe with meta rules and a social contract to guide the process and help newbies understand it) could be described as the ultimate in playing make believe, in that they take the process, formalize and codify it without essentially changing the activity. RPGs with a strong immersionist bent, which focus their mechanics on getting the players in character and reward getting and staying there, as opposed to rewarding players for canny knowledge of the system, could perhaps be described as the ultimate in playing make believe. No version of D&D has been any of those three things. OD&D began as a one player/one character extension to a tabletop wargame, adding in the concept of role-playing Game as it developed out of Chainmail; D&D has never strayed far from that model. At no point have the rules, hidden or otherwise, provided tangible rewards for playing make believe - merely nebulous guidelines regarding roleplaying XP. Meanwhile, pages upon pages are devoted to spells whose primary function is combat, classes whose abilities are balanced, if at all, around combat, monsters - of which many are essentially either living traps or combat machines - and the actual rules to resolve combat, including to-hit charts and the d20 mechanic alike. The existence of that information is an enticement to use it (a reward for the player for the tactical/combative style), and knowledge of it brings success within that style (a reward for the character and thus reinforcement of the player's metagaming). [/QUOTE]

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