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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9866453" data-attributes="member: 42582">There's a lot of variety in RPGs. But most of them have two distinguishing features:* There is a fiction that the participants imagine together, that matters in game play, in the sense that the shared fiction constrains what moves the participants are able to make, and what follows from those moves. * The "typical" participant engages the shared fiction from the perspective of a particular character within it: the fiction is presented to them - by the "referee/moderator" participant - primarily as what that character knows and experiences, and they make changes to the shared fiction primarily by saying what that particular character does/The first feature distinguishes RPGs (and also some other games, such as some wargames) from more typical boardgames.The second feature distinguishes RPGs from shared fiction creation games that involve a more "god's eye view" approach to creating the fiction, and from wargames where the "typical" participant controls their forces from a "god' eye" perspective.Bringing these features together, I would say that the medium of play for most RPGs is a shared fiction that is being engaged asymmetrically: one participant is presenting the fiction to the others as if those others "were there" - and the others are presenting the actions that are undertaken by the characters they control.The procedures of play are the particular methods that a given game uses to manipulate the medium of play, and make it "go". Just to give two examples:* In classic D&D, the GM - in advance of actual play - prepares a dungeon, by way of map and key; and the GM then presents this dungeon to the other players, as a place for them to explore and "solve"/"beat" by means of their play of their characters. The most important procedures of play are (i) the players describing where their PCs go, with the GM tracking this on the map; and (ii) the players describing what their PCs do vis-a-vis the architecture and furniture, and the GM resolving this by reference to the key. * In Burning Wheel, the GM and players - in advance of actual play - establish a background situation together. The GM is expected to contribute the "big picture", while the players contribute their PCs, what their PCs care about, including their PCs' relationships and reputations and affiliations. There is a back-and-forth, iterative aspect to this: a player's decision about their PC's family, for instance, might feed back into the GM's conception of the "big picture". The most important procedure of play is that (i) the GM presents a situation to the players, that draws on the "big picture" and presents some sort of challenge or obstacle to the PC (based on what one or more of the PCs cares about), so that (ii) the players are provoked to declare actions for their PCs, and (iii) those actions are resolved using a moderately intricate dice pool system, with the important upshot of that resolution being (iv) how it changes the situation in ways that matter to what the PCs care about.When it comes to mechanics, I think it's helpful to keep in mind that "mechanic" is cognate with "machine". A mechanic is a particular type of process, that tells the game participants what to do next in a machine-like way.To go back to classic D&D, the rule that when the players open a door in the dungeon, the GM tells them what their PCs can perceive does not set out a mechanic. It just tells the game participants what to do under certain circumstances that will come up in play. But the rule that when a player has their PC try to open a door in the dungeon, the player makes a roll, dependent on their PC's STR, to see if they can successfully open the door does set out a mechanic - namely, the roll to open dungeon doors.The general effect of a mechanic is to take some of the decision-making out of the immediate hands of (one or more of) the participants, and to "outsource" it to a machine-like process. An important aspect of a game's rules is what it prescribes about how mechanics are to be used. For instance, the AD&D PHB and DMG set out a mechanic for determining whether a PC discovers a secret door if (a) the player declares that their PC searches for secret doors and (b) the GM's map and key indicate that there is a secret door in the immediate vicinity of where the PC is searching. But the DMG also says that the GM is free to not use the mechanic, and instead to adjudicate the declared action via the basic procedure of play I described above (that is, relying on their key to tell the players what happens when they have their PCs do stuff to the architecture and the furniture). This contrasts with (say) the rules for Burning Wheel, which say that when a player declares an action for their PC, which pertains to something that their PC cares about, the dice must be rolled: in those moments of play, the rules expressly forbid determining the outcome simply by one or more participants narrating what happens next as a result of what the PC is doing.To a significant extent, it is all these differences in procedures of play that permit such a variety of experiences to result from the use of the same medium of play. Differences in procedures of play aren't all that matters to the experience of play. But they are a big part of it.</blockquote>

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