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<blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 9082440" data-attributes="member: 6777737"><p>What makes you think book layout <em>can't</em> be part of the game? Books like Volo's Guide to Monsters or AD&D's Elminster's Ecologies are written as if from in-game characters. And the book layouts are presented with trappings of an in-game work. They might have art that evokes an illuminated manuscript, or feature gothic writing. Hell, Mork Borg is at least 80% <em>book presentation</em>. If that game were sold in an Unearthed Arcana-like PDF with Calibri font, Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and Normal style in two columns per page and a PDF title of "Word Document"... nobody would be playing that game at all. Mork Borg is a thing because the people who wrote it were playing it as they created it.</p><p></p><p>Is it a broad definition? Absolutely. However, the game is about collaboratively fabricating a realistic game world within which we play a series of minigames from character play-acting to tactical wargames to puzzles to a storytelling minigame. That's an incredibly broad range of ideas each with a variably complex set of tasks required to execute. And since at every level (if you'll excuse the term) everyone is, in their own way, encouraged to take as big a part of that job as they can, I don't feel like it's worthwhile to necessarily exclude anyone who does take part in it.</p><p></p><p>In short, I would rather risk including the roles of people who might not be at the game table in the discussion of what an RPG is, rather than risk excluding any form of true gameplay by assuming that my participation is gameplay while others must not be. I think it's totally valueless to draw a box around the game table and say, "Everything in this box is the game, and nothing outside this box is the game." Mostly because that doesn't make sense to me <em>on its face</em>. At least 50% of my enjoyment and at least 50% of my time with the game as a DM is the prep I do when I'm not even sitting at that table. I don't think ignoring that is useful or valuable to understanding what the hobby is at all, and I don't think it's useful to say, "X is the game, but Y is the hobby." No. TTRPGs are a game <em>and</em> a hobby, both at once. We need to start looking outside of Plato's Cave if we're going to really try to understand what a TTRPG is.</p><p></p><p>Yes, it's often <em>not</em> going to be valuable to talk about Kate Irwin when talking about gameplay, but that doesn't mean her contributions should be discarded when talking about the kind of game you actually play in 5e D&D. Similarly, we don't often need to talk about the rules for <em>addition and subtraction</em> when discussing the game or hobby. Both of those things are important to how the game actually gets played. They are a part of gameplay even if it's not the part of gameplay you're interested in talking about. However, excluding them out-of-hand because their contributions are relatively immutable is inevitably forcing your discussion to be about a <em>subset</em> of what's actually going on. The whole game is about design and creation. Why would we <em>ever</em> want to exclude parts that are designed and created?</p><p></p><p>If it's gameplay for me as a DM to make a monster, design a class, draw a map, build a city, design an adventure, write a campaign, build a world, draw my characters, paint my miniatures, create combat rules, etc., etc., etc..... If everything I would have to do to play a TTRPG is the gameplay for the TTRPG, and I think it absolutely is, then why does it stop being gameplay just because I've contracted part of it out.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Bacon Bits, post: 9082440, member: 6777737"] What makes you think book layout [I]can't[/I] be part of the game? Books like Volo's Guide to Monsters or AD&D's Elminster's Ecologies are written as if from in-game characters. And the book layouts are presented with trappings of an in-game work. They might have art that evokes an illuminated manuscript, or feature gothic writing. Hell, Mork Borg is at least 80% [I]book presentation[/I]. If that game were sold in an Unearthed Arcana-like PDF with Calibri font, Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and Normal style in two columns per page and a PDF title of "Word Document"... nobody would be playing that game at all. Mork Borg is a thing because the people who wrote it were playing it as they created it. Is it a broad definition? Absolutely. However, the game is about collaboratively fabricating a realistic game world within which we play a series of minigames from character play-acting to tactical wargames to puzzles to a storytelling minigame. That's an incredibly broad range of ideas each with a variably complex set of tasks required to execute. And since at every level (if you'll excuse the term) everyone is, in their own way, encouraged to take as big a part of that job as they can, I don't feel like it's worthwhile to necessarily exclude anyone who does take part in it. In short, I would rather risk including the roles of people who might not be at the game table in the discussion of what an RPG is, rather than risk excluding any form of true gameplay by assuming that my participation is gameplay while others must not be. I think it's totally valueless to draw a box around the game table and say, "Everything in this box is the game, and nothing outside this box is the game." Mostly because that doesn't make sense to me [I]on its face[/I]. At least 50% of my enjoyment and at least 50% of my time with the game as a DM is the prep I do when I'm not even sitting at that table. I don't think ignoring that is useful or valuable to understanding what the hobby is at all, and I don't think it's useful to say, "X is the game, but Y is the hobby." No. TTRPGs are a game [I]and[/I] a hobby, both at once. We need to start looking outside of Plato's Cave if we're going to really try to understand what a TTRPG is. Yes, it's often [I]not[/I] going to be valuable to talk about Kate Irwin when talking about gameplay, but that doesn't mean her contributions should be discarded when talking about the kind of game you actually play in 5e D&D. Similarly, we don't often need to talk about the rules for [I]addition and subtraction[/I] when discussing the game or hobby. Both of those things are important to how the game actually gets played. They are a part of gameplay even if it's not the part of gameplay you're interested in talking about. However, excluding them out-of-hand because their contributions are relatively immutable is inevitably forcing your discussion to be about a [I]subset[/I] of what's actually going on. The whole game is about design and creation. Why would we [I]ever[/I] want to exclude parts that are designed and created? If it's gameplay for me as a DM to make a monster, design a class, draw a map, build a city, design an adventure, write a campaign, build a world, draw my characters, paint my miniatures, create combat rules, etc., etc., etc..... If everything I would have to do to play a TTRPG is the gameplay for the TTRPG, and I think it absolutely is, then why does it stop being gameplay just because I've contracted part of it out. [/QUOTE]
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