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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6310134" data-attributes="member: 42582">Just a footnote to [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION]'s post above:In this thread I already mentioned the early 80s Puffin book "What is Dungeons & Dragons?" That book involves players authoring gameworld content outside their characters in the form of backstory - eg mentors and rival colleges, in the case of a magic-user PC.That book also takes for granted that PCs will have fictional personalities, and it assumes that players will play their PCs having regard to those fictional personalities eg that the player of a halfling will have his/her PC respond with greater concern to a fellow halfling being tortured, than s/he would respond to a human suffering in the same way.I don't assert that either of these things is inherent to roleplaying. But they are not recent innovations.And here is Gygax on p 112 of his DMG:[T]here must be some purpose to it all. There must be some backdrop against which adventures are carried out, and no matter how tenuous the strands, some web wich connects the evil and the good, the opposing powers, the rival states and various peoples. . . [C]haracters being as as less than pawns, but as they progress in experience, each eventually realizes that he or she is a meaningful, if lowly peace in the cosmic game being conducted. When this occurs, players then have a dual purpose for their play, for not only will their player characters and henchmen gain levels of experience, but their actions will have meaning above and beyond that of personal aggrandizement.This is not ambiguous, it is crystal clear. Gygax is advising that the campaign should have rich colour, and thematic weight, with which the players will gradually but increasingly become emotionally engaged. They will still be playing to "win" (earn XP, gain levels) but that won't be the only reason they are playing.There are also some interesting quotes from Gygax, writing in 1974, in the <a href="http://grognardia.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/gygax-on-tolkien-again.html" target="_blank">blog</a> that Neonchameleon linked to. Gygax, as quoted, refers tothe different aims of a fantasy novel (or series of novels) and a rule book for fantasy games. The former creation is to amuse and entertain the reader through the means of the story and its characters, while the latter creates characters and possibly a story which the readers then employ to amuse themselves. . . [Iin fantasy] there are no absolutes or final boundaries simply because it does draw upon all of these [literary] sources with the bonus of individual imagination added by those who play it.Gygax also refers to the players identifying with, and relating to, their PCs:Would a participant in a fantasy game more readily identify with Bard of Dale? Aragorn? Frodo Baggins? or would he rather relate to Conan, Fafhrd, the Grey Mouser, or Elric of Melnibone?By way of contrast, <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">here</a> is Ron Edwards nearly 30 years later describing narrativist RPGing:All role-playing necessarily produces a sequence of imaginary events. Go ahead and role-play, and write down what happened to the characters, where they went, and what they did. I'll call that event-summary the "transcript." But some transcripts have, as Pooh might put it, a "little something," specifically a theme: a judgmental point, perceivable as a certain charge they generate for the listener or reader. If a transcript has one (or rather, if it does that), I'll call it a story. . . The real question: after reading the transcript and recognizing it as a story, what can be said about the Creative Agenda that was involved during the role-playing? The answer is, absolutely nothing. We don't know whether people played it Gamist, Simulationist, or Narrativist, or any combination of the three. A story can be produced through any Creative Agenda. The mere presence of story as the product of role-playing is not a GNS-based issue. . . Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence be addressed in the process of role-playing.Gygax, in suggesting that players will come to have a "dual purpose" for playing the game, is opening the door to narrativist play: that the reason for playing the game won't simply be to show your guts and acumen by earning XP, but also to do things that have meaning, that is, address an engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence, such as good and evil, political disagreements or the fates of peoples.Now that is not the only door that Gygax is opening. The other form of "dual purpose" and meaningfulness is that the players become caught up in someone else's story - for instance, they identify with the already-authored campaign setting and care abouot the place of their PCs within that setting.These are two different, but completely viable, ways of developing that "dual purpose" that Gygax refers to. Historically, in the 80s and then 90s, TSR went through the second of those two possible openings. But Gygax's words leave the other, "storygaming" alternative equally open, and I am very confident that I am not the only D&D player to have gone down that path in the 80s, or even earlier.</blockquote>

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