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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5567281" data-attributes="member: 27160">My previously promised responses - this turned out LOOONG - sorry!Exactly.  When the focus is entirely on the systems, props and numbers it can't be roleplaying.  But, while I agree that the system used affects whether or not those are the entire focus, I do not agree that it determines whether or not those are the entire focus.I disagree, because I think a miniatures game can be roleplayed - but more on this below.I have grouped these excepts from your posts together because they all illustrate one assumption I think you are making and that I want to point up as an assumption, not a necessary fact.Throughout all this 'chess as roleplaying' discussion you assume that the "world" of chess is much like our own.  Knights have swords, and can use them to cut down creatures standing next to them.  Bishops are physically capable of being tortured.  A 'knight's move' represents a lance charge.You do the same also with Monopoly - the "world" of Monopoly necessarily has hookers, penthouses and the characters there desire some "blow time".This is what I am talking about when I refer to "aesthetics".  Having a world where more-or-less mundane "real world" features largely apply is your 'taste' in roleplaying games.  But it's not a required basis for any roleplaying game.  For me, roleplaying games range far wider than that in their potential scope of "realities" they might cover.This is just one example of how a treacherous 'Chess Knight' might behave if he was living in "the world of chess" where the world "physics" really do constrain him as the rules of chess stipulate.  Note, though, that, to be fair, you have already added a rule - that the characters in chessworld are psychologically capable of treason.  A chessworld canon purist might take issue with you over that point... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />No, what happens is that there is a disconnect between the fiction as it is described by the rules that were accepted as the basis for the game world, and what you think the world should be like.  Who says the knights in chessworld have swords?  You do.  Who says that physical adjacency must be what enables attacks in chessworld physics?  You do.You are limiting "roleplaying" to only being acceptable in worlds that fit your own personal aesthetic of what roleplaying worlds "should" be.  There is nothing wrong with you limiting yourself to that - that is entirely your prerogative.  But understand that that is not a definitive restriction on what roleplaying worlds can conceivably be.  Even if we accept the limitation that the roleplaying world should accord with the aesthetics of those playing, peoples' aesthetics differ, so not everyone will share the same set of limitations.Just to pull things back a little, I agree with this - chess would be a really poor basis for a roleplaying game.  I think the reason is not so much the tight constraints as the lack of easy, intuitive "hooks" to allow the players to really grok the world's physics.  I can't imagine ever actually roleplaying chess except as some sort of challenge, to prove to ourselves that we can do it!Even if I could not do it, though, I can still imagine how another could, so I would still maintain that it could be roleplayed - it would just require extraordinary powers of imagination.OK, but this happens in all roleplaying, regardless of the system in use, regardless of the props in use, and even if there is no actual table.  This is simply a description of a shared fiction - by description, either aided by system conventions and props such as miniatures or not, we share additions to the fiction to keep all our fiction-models in synch.  The fact that we may have agreed descriptions of the gameworld physics in the rules, or agreed representations of the gameworld situational layout formed by a battlemat and figures merely defines the techniques we are using to communicate our additions to the fiction in a codified, clear and unambiguous way.  We can still decide, each for ourselves, the form of the "imagined space" in our minds that is taking input from those representations.  It's interesting that I nearly said "whether or not we have an "imagined space"" in that last sentence.  Then I realised that we necessarily, always, must have some sort of model in our minds - it's just how we operate as sentient beings.  All we really can control is whether that "imagined space" contains representations of miniatures, rulebooks and a battlemat or representations of creatures and elements in an imaginary world.So you want the power to add rules and capabilities to the gameworld.  That's fine - not necessary, in my opinion, but fine.  It may well be helpful in more closely aligning the gameworld to your aesthetic of what the gameworld "should" be.But my view of roleplaying is simply that we approach it from the angle of picturing the imaginary world in our minds as we play, instead of picturing the props and people in the "real" world that we are gaming with.  How we settle upon the forms and rules of that world is an immensely mutable thing.  A thing that determines what style or focus of roleplaying we are doing - but does not determine whether what we are doing is "valid" roleplaying or not.And here's why I said last night that I need to further explain my use of the word "aesthetic", because I do not just mean "colour" or "fluff".By "aesthetic" what I mean is what quality of imaginary world you are happy to roleplay in.  What aspects of world physics, what "truths" of reality are needed in the imagined setting for you to be capable of and/or comfortable with roleplaying in it?  Some people find the very idea that fireballs in 4E are cubic unpalatable; but, really, why should a world not exist where fireballs are both possible to create and cubic?  Certainly, it's a world somewhat different to the one we ordinarily interact with, but there really isn't anything that says such a world cannot (or even should not) exist.I even specifically include ideas about "reality" in aesthetics, here.  A short illustrative story as to why:Back in the day I was a fan of "realistic" combat systems.  We used complex mechanics where every weapon had statistics for reach, 'speed' and so on.  Hand-and-a-half swords, naturally, had fair reach, slow speed and were severely handicapped if the combatants were "inside" (close together).  Then I saw some professional recreators fighting with bastard swords in the style they had recreated from medieval fighting manuals.  I suddenly realised that just about everything I had been assuming about how fighting with such swords worked was wrong.  Fair reach - yeah, OK.  Slow?  Garbage.  Disadvantaged in close? Drivel.  I realised that there was only one sort of fighter that would use such a sword as I had previously imagined - one with an extremely short life expectancy!My lesson from this is that we all have a picture, a model in our minds, that is vast and complex and represents how we think the "real" world works.  But it's not necessarily accurate for any specific case - and, overall, it's most definitely not accurate for all cases.  It's an aesthetic.  It's the way we think the world is, combined with a bit of how we think the world should be.  But it's still a fiction - our own, personal conception of the "shared imagined space" that is "reality", if you will.Right - if the (small circle) roleplaying is inside the (big circle) aesthetic then you are saying that only worlds fitting with your aesthetic count.  I don't say that - my venn diagram has two circles that overlap, but part of the 'roleplaying' one falls outside the 'my aesthetic' one.You would only need houserules if, instead of deciding to play in a world where the physics was determined by the Squad Leader rules, the physics were those of your personal model of the "real world" or otherwise fitted some specific (non-rules-described) aesthetic that you (and, presumably, the rest of the players) had decided to use.I suppose I'm asking you to see that this choice is arbitrary.  You are choosing to play (exclusively?) in world settings that are defined by your personal aesthetic.  There is nothing essential or definitional about this - it is a choice.  It's a perfectly valid choice - there is really nothing wrong with you playing the way you wish to play - but it is not a choice that everyone else must, should or will select, for a simple reason.  Their own aesthetics will differ from yours; indeed, part of finding a "good gaming group" might be finding others whose aesthetics fit well with your own.  The reason I said my venn diagram had areas of "roleplaying" outside the "my aesthetic" circle is that others will have different "aesthetic" circles, and the parts of "roleplaying" that fall outside my "aesthetics" circle may well fall inside theirs.  Just as one example, to me, roleplaying in an Anime-styled world sounds difficult and cludgy, but to others it sounds easy and fun!Right - I mentioned that only because some people do seem to see the "authoritative version" model as required.  I wanted to make it clear that it's a possibility, but not a requirement - I think we're on the same page, here.I grouped these two excepts because they seem to highlight a contradiction - or maybe a clarification.  If the game group defines 100ft leaps as impossible, isn't that a "box"?It seems to me as if what you are saying is "for a roleplaying game to be really roleplaying, the players should (implicitly) agree that the game setting (the "fiction") should be defined by the unstructured aesthetics and predefined assumptions of the players about what a roleplaying world "should be", rather than by any text or similar world definition".  My question is "why should the game world for D&D not be described by the text of the rules?"  Sure, subordinating the rules to the players' personal notions of "D&D world" is a valid option - and can be a fun one.  But it's not the only valid option.I'm in danger of being repetitive, but who says that, in arkhamhorrorworld, "hailing a taxi" is a meaningful concept?  Or that it does not result in the character moving through locations as restricted by their movement points?  You say "I can't make any decisions about my character other than the prescribed actions", but if "I say, "I leap 100 feet into the air..." and everyone else is looking at me like I'm an idiot", isn't that exactly analogous?  It seems to me that we are discussing how the rules of the gameworld are defined and ascribed, not whether there are such constraints at all.Sure - stories are ways we organise the relation of past events when presenting this relation to others for social and political reasons, they have no direct relation to roleplaying (or, indeed, to "truth").Yeah - it's a way to sell more stuff.Not to be too cynical, but I am certain that CR (well, the Ashardalon game, to be exact) can be roleplayed - I have done it - but it doesn't support a persistent roleplaying world in the way D&D does, for sure.I'm not sure I really "hate" this manner of decision making.  I would certainly ideally prefer the chain of thought to be more intuitive and subliminal than such explicit evaluation of the rules systems, but in the end I see this as the player only clumsily mimicking the character's native understanding of how the gameworld works.  Unless we take the (in my view lazy and unnecessarily constraining) view that only world settings that are immediately and intuitively understandable by the players are valid for roleplay, then I think some period of adjustment, as the players get used to how the game world operates, is inevitable.I have grouped these two as pointing up a distinction that I failed to make, earlier.  Page 42 and similar rules are certainly part of the game rules, but what they do is interesting.  They do not describe or define the world setting - they describe and define who has the authority to describe and define elements of the world setting that are not already described and defined.As such they are not part of the definitional structure of the game setting - the "agreed model" - that I was lazily referring to as "the rules".  They are a description of how new elements of that "world physics model" may be created.  This is a very valuable rule to have in any roleplaying game - but I still maintain that the rules as published (for a gamist game, I should perhaps specify) are better if they have already done the job of "world physics model definition" for the majority of cases that come up in the game as it is intended to be played.  Having said this, it's perfectly true that you can have a functional roleplaying system that only defines how and by whom the world definition may be created - Universalis is a fine example of this.I agree that the player's understanding of the game world should, ideally, approach the level of facility that the character has, with their native, intuitive comprehension of the world in which they live their lives.  But, unless we restrict ourselves entirely to imaginary worlds with which we are already familiar, some period of "acclimatisation" is going to be needed for every new world.  Simple worlds that are very similar to ones we already know will require less adjustment time; complex worlds with significant differences will require more, as a general rule.I would say that, following on from what I wrote above, the D&D character is limited by the conception of the gaming group of how the D&D universe works.  Page 42 tries to shape this conception by adding some sketchy guidelines, but even when specific rules are given the "real" limitation in most roleplaying groups is "what the group sees the world as being like".  Some take their cues from existing rules for this, some follow the DM's lead, some discuss and collaboratively agree a world model and some assume a model based on preconceived or previously used ideas.  All methods are fine, but it can help to be clear which you are using.An invitation like this is good.  I really like the ideas of terrain powers and such like, too, to expand the interactions between characters and environment, for example.  But more useful, still, might be increasing clarity on what the world model that is in use is based on, exactly.</blockquote>

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