NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5801438" data-attributes="member: 42582">A critic, sure, but not a critic just of the products of RPG play, or just of RPG texts. He has a theory - obviously a contentious one - of how RPG play works as a social activity, and what it's social point might be.The Lumpley Principle, for example, is a sociological conjecture. Likewise <a href="http://C:\Users\Patrick\aaRoleplaying\zzGames Info\The Forge\lumpley games Roleplaying Theory, Hardcore.htm" target="_blank">the contention that the primary function of RPG rules - whatever else they might do - is "to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table".</a>(Admittedly these aren't Edwards, but they're from the same school, and he says similar sorts of things, although not always as clearly!)I think the 4e rulebooks could do with more of this. The DMG talks about various sorts of player, using Robin Laws' categories (I think - I don't actual have the Laws of Good Gamemastering). But there is little attempt to relate these social dynamics of play to the structuring of scenarios or the incorporation of story elements other than fairly banal stuff like "If you have an Actor than include some NPCs to talk with". And all of the Monster Manual is presented in ingame, fictional terms rather than at the metagame and social level. Worlds and Monsters was better in this respect, in my view, talking at the metagame level about how story elements are to be used. But it still doesn't include advice on the social dynamics of shared story creation.Simplest example: the DMG says that players can create Quests, but says nothing about how this is actually to be handled at the table. Who designs the encounters? According to what principles? Who decides how much treasure there will be? What if the quest is to find a partiuclar treasure? It's not as if there is nothing useful to be said about how this all might be done - about how realworld negotiation at the playing table might be eased and constrained.</blockquote>

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