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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7482740" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well a RPG is a game in which, by the application of certain rules, and with some players occupying a special role in relation to certain protagonists, a shared fiction is established and developed. The rules are ones which take (elements of) the fiction as inputs, and produce (elements of) the fiction as output.In some RPGs the rules may also be mediated through physical objects (eg markers on a board/map) but if it's a RPG and not a boardgame then the fiction takes primacy over the physical artefacts. (Talisman is clearly on one side of this divide; Moldvay Basic is clearly on the other; maybe there are/were some 3E and 4e tables where the location of the game in relation to this divide is unclear?)Trying to say that the game is the fiction and not the rules makes no sense to me: I could write the fiction up in a encyclopedia (like a FR sourcebook or a Story Hour) but that wouldn't be the game. The game is precisely using the rules to establish and engage the fiction.To me, this (once again) very strongly implies a module/adventure path style of play - someone (the GM?) writes the fiction in advance, and then the group plays it out at the table. That is one way to play RPGs, but not one I personally enjoy and not exhaustive of RPGing.If the creation itself takes place in the course of play, then it is not the creating of a game - it is the playing of a game!Not in Prince Valiant - or, rather, the rules tell us that the player is free to decide (with input from the referee). I think the Pendragon rules take a different approach - ie the mechanics for the winter phase dictate whether or not a PC is married and/or widowed - but I'm not as familiar with them.No. It's part of playing the game. The situation has already been established - the PCs are staying in the castle of the noblewoman whom they assisted, and early in this stay she is widowed, and so there is the possibility of the PC knight who saved her son now wooing her. Deciding whether or not the PC is married, or widowed - we took it for granted that one of these must be the case, given that he has a son, also a knight, with whom he is travelling (another PC) - is part of the play of the game. Obviously it's not an action declaration, but those aren't the only things that take place in the playing of a RPG.Again, yoiu distinction here is artificial. I could set up the same structure as you do in relation to any decision at all, in a RPG or a boardgame.Chess: the rules cannot tell you whether or not to take the knight with your bishop. (I am assuming here that the bishop is not pinned by a threatened check.) If the bishop takes the knight, the game unfolds one way. If the bishop doesn't take the knight, the game unfolds another way. And until such time as the player decides whether or not the knight is to be taken, the game cannot actually progress.Alternatively, deciding to take the knight, or not, is playing the game and is one step in progressing the game.Keep on the Borderlands: The rules cannot tell the players whether their party should enter the top cave or the bottom cave. If they enter the top cave, the challenge they face will be (let's say) the ogre. If they enter the bottom cave, the challenge they face will be (let's say) the orcs. And until such time as the players decide which cave the PC's enter, the game cannot progress.Alternatively, deciding which cave to enter is playing the game, and is one step in progressing the game.Prince Valiant: The rules of this particular RPG cannot tell the player whether or not the PC is married or widowed. If he is married, then he cannot (justly) woo the noblewoman. If he is widowed, then he can. And until such time as the player decides this fact about his PC, the game cannot progress.Alternatively, deciding the characters backstory in this circumstance is playing the game, and is one step in progressing the game.Needless to say, in each case I prefer the alternative description. Making decisions in playing chess is part of playing the game; it's not preparation for some actual play which consists simply in the physical movement of the piece on the board. Likewise in RPGing. The fact that the decision is about backstory (as in my Prince Valiant game) rather than action declaration (as in the KotB example) doesn't matter in this respect.It's not like I'm saying anything new here. <a href="http://lumpley.com/hardcore.html" target="_blank">Vincent Baker wrote the following in 2003</a>:Roleplaying's Fundamental Act Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not. . . . Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.Agreeing on what to imagine together - in the case of my Prince Valiant session, agreeing to imagine that the PC knight is widowed and yet nevertheless not interested in wooing the noblewoman - is a paradigm case of playing a RPG (eg we see the special role of the player in relation to the fiction concerning this character; and we see the special role of the GM in managing the overall backstory and framing). The fact that it didn't involve mechanics doesn't tell us that it wasn't play. It tells us that Greg Stafford didn't think this was a topic in respect of which easing and constraining real-world social negotiation mattered. (Why did he take a different view in relation to Pendragon? Interesting question - at least some of the answer is that Pendrgaon is a game about family and dynasty whereas Prince Valiant is not.)</blockquote>

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