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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5098494" data-attributes="member: 4937">Hmmm... I'm unsure where to take this because I'm not sure in which way I'd rather be misunderstoood.It's not just D&D that suffers from this.  If I say, "I play M&M.", I'm leaving unsaid more than I say as well.  There is probably some common experience to playing M&M, but when you consider the range of CL's to play at from grim and gritty to movers and shakers at the galactic level, and the range of styles to play at from Golden Age Paragons to Iron Age Anti-Heros/Anti-Villains, and whether you are playing Freedom City or a homebrew setting or converting DC/Marvel (or Heroes or The Incredibles) or in space or something more directly 'Earth', and whether you set the story in 'the Past' or the far future (possibly post-apocalyptic), and whether and how the characters advance in power, and so forth you quickly realize that the range of experience is equally broad.The problem is that words don't do this really in any case.  It's not a problem confined to RPGs.  All of communication is limited in this way, which is why words are so easily misunderstood.  You probably mainly notice the problem in the case of D&D.  In part I think this is because D&D and other PnP games create a metalanguage for describing events very precisely and so its natural to assume a shared experience... until you start talking about it in detail and you discover that that metalanguage is not nearly as comprehensive as you may have first thought.  Very simple games create a universe of so few rules (and consequently such great constraints) that its impossible to have very divergent experiences of play.  I could create a metalanguage for discussing games of tic-tac-toe which would let us precisely communicate everything about our game experience.  However, as games get more non-redundant rules (and consequently though not necessarily generally gain more freedom of play), this ability very quickly goes away.  The number of possible game states becomes too large to describe easily, and hense when you try to communicate something about your game state there is always information you are leaving out and the hearer may easily imagine a game state different from the one you are trying to describe.  This problem occurs fairly frequently between players at the same table, so that it occurs between tables is hardly unexpected or avoidable.This is why the bulk of the DMG can never be considered to be much more than general guidelines if the RPG is remain an RPG.  The only way to create a truly shared experience is to limit the number of possible game states.  When you create a rule rather than a guideline, you vastly simply the game states metarules - the unwritten set of rules for handling a situation not covered by the guidelin.  You also as a consequence limit the player/referee freedom and as a consequence limit the game to a smaller set of situations.  Do this enough and the necessary ambiguity of an RPG dies and what you are left with is something more akin to a fairly complex boardgame.Incidently, the experience of 'Basketball' isn't as uniform as all of that either.  While the experience of 'Basketball' is more uniform than the experience of 'Football' precisely because its easier to play the game as intended than it is to play 'Football', out in the real world Basketball is not always played 5 on 5, not always played on a full court, or with a regulation backboard, or with a net, nor is it always played at the same competitive level (which changes the experience), or even with a standardized ball.  If I say, "I played basketball.", that doesn't tell you nearly as much as you seem to think it does.</blockquote>

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