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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 5784809" data-attributes="member: 85870">A reasonable point, but the other activities you mentioned (other than free-form "pretend") don't promote the same levels of interactivity like RPGs do. Or, more appropriately, RPGs create a more equally shared venue of interactivity than the others do. Now, in some regard, this is where the heart of Gamism comes in--because how do you have a roleplaying "game" without rules? Otherwise it becomes little more than free-form "pretend." Gamism, as Ron Edwards seems to define it, is derived from a player's need to engage (and win) in competition through their performance. Thus, "Step On Up!" happens when a challenge is presented within context of a situation and rules constraints. But the rules constraints exist in the first place as a means to create a scale of balance for player social interactivity ("My pretending is just as important as your pretending"). If those rules also provide a secondary function (Gamism), it's still secondary to the original purpose for the rules existing in the first place. And if the players engaging in Gamist play aren't interested in acceding to the existing social premise of an RPG--"We all want to pretend together"--then they're not really playing an RPG at all, but playing a glorified war game, a tactical strategy game, or some other kind of "game" that does not fall under the genre of "roleplaying game." Are Gamists doing anything "wrong" if they do this? Nope, not at all. They're having fun. But once again, as I said in my OP: Pure Gamism, as defined by Ron Edwards, is antithetical to the social contract of roleplaying games. The rules of an RPG exist to build upon the "pretending." The social impetus ("I want to pretend I'm an elf today") always precedes and supersedes the need to create rules for it. Rules only exist to structure, balance, and adjudicate what happens within the "free-form pretending." And it is the act, or impetus to "pretend" that separates RPGs from other Gamist analogs in the first place. You can, if you want, make a "game within the game" that pushes Gamist buttons and twists its dials. But Gamism only exists in RPGs because rules are necessary to transform "free form pretending" into a more egalitarian social experience. The rules don't come first. A desire to engage in a unique social engagement comes first.</blockquote>

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