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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7480189" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, I only focus on it because you keep mentioning it - see eg the above quote: You must create a game before you can play.It's not (necessarily) a step. Again, that's framing it as prep. It's not something that must be created before you can play. I gave examples - ]url=http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?530990-Into-the-North-Cortex-Plus-Heroic-Fantasy-actual-play]the Cortex+ Heroic[/ur] is the best - where the "scenario" (ie significant parts of the shared fiction) was established as part of the back-and-forth of play.The GM/referee telling the players Here's what your PCs know and see and then asking What do you do about it? is part of playing the game. Just like throwing a ball in basketball isn't a step that you take before you can play the game. It's part of playing the game.The rules of backgammon don't tell me what a good move is. I work that out through combination of mathematical reasoning and setting a floor on the risk I want to take.Part of learning to play backgammon, and enjoying the play of it, is learning how to work those things out.The rules of Traveller don't tell me exactly what I should tell the players about what their PCs know and see, though they give me useful resources for establishing some parts of that. Part of learning how to be a good referee for Traveller, or a compentent GM in general, is building up your ability to work out what to say in that respect; and working out what to say when they answer the question So, what do you do?But that's all playing the game.Some RPGs encourage working out the answers to those things in advance; and some RPGers strongly prefer that sort of approach. One could liken that to studying all the opening in chess, although the resemblance obviously is imperfect. But working that stuff out in advance isn't inherent to RPGing. Whereas the stuff that I've emphasised - the GM tellling the players what their PCs know and see, and asking them, on that basis, what they (ie what their PCs) do, and then responding to that - is inherent to RPGing (or at least all mainstream approaches to it).</blockquote>

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