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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 6726889" data-attributes="member: 3192">[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], for the sake of example, I'll use Tic-Tac-Toe again to describe the differences between games, puzzles, and stories. Tic-Tac-Toe is a game when someone seeks to accomplish an objective within its design.It is a puzzle when someone seeks to solve its underlying pattern by deciphering it.It is a story when someone uses it to communicate a message.--First, all games are pattern designs. This isn't under debate. It is the base entry point into game culture making it different from others like narrative culture. As I explain in the example above, to play a pattern as a game is to actually attempt to achieve objectives within it. In the case of D&D this is done by proxy. In order for this to happen successfully a player must attempt to decipher the design which is a consequence of taking actions. However, most game play happens for the player in their mind as they decipher out their own perception of the pattern before moving the game. This is called strategy, the act all games are designed to engender.Second, improvising a story cannot occur during the playing of a game because improvised storytelling is an act of invention, while game playing is the act of discovery through interaction. Storytelling will always be limited to resulting in a pattern after the fact. Playing a game means deciphering a pattern in the moment. Therefore, the act of reading is like playing a game, while expressing interferes with it.Third, all games must have an actual existing pattern in place prior to play. This is the game people will be playing. This need becomes obvious when we remember a game cannot be played without rules in use throughout, the mental pattern accompanying that of the field of play. As I believe you probably already know, a pattern is only a game for us because we are understanding it as such. This is exactly the same as how sequential patterns are often considered narratives because people willfully comprehend them to be, not because they actually are so. We are engaging with things outside ourselves, but limiting ourselves to a finite set of ideas when addressing them as either a game or story (or anything else). To clarify, story and game cultures are two separate sets of ideas affixed to actualities by people currently understanding them as such. In neither case are these objects (game boards, pieces, mental processes, etc.) actually "truly" a game or story.--Now to your points, 1. Since its publication many people have not played D&D as a game, and since the 80s en masse as a functional game. That is well known. That you wanted to tell a story and yet play a game, that you continue to confuse the two acts does not couevidence of your position. On the contrary, it is evidence of your confusion. Treating a game design as not a game is not proof it isn't a game.2. A referee in D&D moves, measures and relates portions of the current state of the hidden game to those players who are playing it. They are not players themselves as they do not have any playing pieces on the board. Like any referee they are not there to create anything, only to generate out via calculation results. Specific to D&D, these results include, but are not limited to, To Hit dice roll results, Saving Throw dice rolls, Ability Score dice rolls, and yes, map creation dice rolls. At no point are referees to interfere with the game, as you say "improvise" by moving stuff around, removing or adding pieces as not directed to under the rules. This is paramount for every ref. The result of doing otherwise is akin to gaslighting the players and discounting the game. In other words, not only does no GM ever need to improvise during a campaign, they are interfering with the game if they do. That Gary left many mechanical necessities of the game up to DMs to determine prior to play doesn't change this fact. After all, most of what he wrote wasn't known game rules, but suggestions for generating the hidden design to be gamed. This covers all the examples you give as neither of us know what mechanics the GM in your examples was using to determine the results. As to Mr. Musson's bad advice, see my response to 1. Evidence of someone not running D&D as a game is not evidence D&D isn't one. And I'd assume Mr. Musson would be happy with not randomly rolling monsters to populate his dungeon and wandering monster tables too thereby removing the game of players seeking out monsters, avoiding them, etc. as well as playing the dungeon as a maze.3. First off, let's drop The Forge "narrative theory is dogma" schtick. --There is no such thing as "gamism". - The last thing anyone needs is more "isms" in their life. Treat a pattern as a game you are playing a game. Treat it as something else and you're engaged in something else.--"Shared fiction" never occurs in any game. - There is no such thing as actual fiction or nonfiction except as one culture's ideas of how they understand their world. In stark contrast, games require actual designs which must exist throughout the playing of a game. Remove the design and a game can't be played.--There are never "fictional characters" in games. - What I believe you are thinking of are game constructs meant to be gamed. So, FYI, NPCs and their behaviors as contained within their statistical design just like every other game component. They can be gamed through code breaking --the act of mastering a game-- and manipulating the game design. These statistics are largely in AD&D books, but mechanics like reaction rolls, alignment charts, racial relations, morale, loyalty, and plenty of other bits and pieces throughout the early published games do exist. But they are limited as to what the cover, I agree. You desire more depth of pattern complexity within the game subsystem these rules cover. That's admirable, so do I. But this does not mean NPCs aren't pieces of games. It simply means not much in the way of mechanical suggestions were published. The example of reasoning you mention sounds like players attempting to decipher the social situational patterns of your story creating and treat them like a game. As stories being created are non-repeating narrative sequences being formed into a pattern it is impossible to game them. At best, stuff like that should only be done ironically.And I see Mr. Musson is clearly misguided about D&D. "Make a plot for the players to follow" when refereeing a cooperative strategy game. That's a horrible idea.So, all your examples about NPCs refer to game components not improvisation. Or with S2 to the generated game board. All these things must be on the GMs map behind the screen and tracked by them just like any referee running any other game. That was in the rules until the deluded people publishing 2e moved the rules in front of the screen and turned D&D into a half-assed broken game.Well you're just trying to persist a falsehood. Remember, White Wolf declared their product to not be about gaming, but a game about storytelling. It split the hobby through the 90s and since then that crew of storytellers have not only attempted to rewrite history and the other side out of existence, but they are attempting to write games out of existence too. Heck, gaming and roleplaying are practically the opposite act of storytelling. Just read any history book (that hasn't been whitewashed by critical theorists practicing a highly suppressive variety of narrative absolutism).</blockquote>

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