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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7483330" data-attributes="member: 42582">The rules of the system address it, but leave it open. Here is the relevant passage (p 49 of my copy, which is the Kickstarter printing; I don't know if it's the same pagination as the original version):Men often contend for the hands of fair maidens. A reward of a lovely young heiress’s hand in marriage is a terrific boon for the Adventurer and for the story. The player may wish to control the character of the wife, but the Storyteller ought to assign her to another player, referring to the Advanced Rules. This will allow far more interplay than a Storyteller can hope to provide, since the two players can concentrate on each other, unlike the Storyteller who must find time to deal with all the players.Because my player had decided - at the Description stage of PC generation, which is the fifth of nine steps set out in the relevant chapter of the book - that he was a middle-aged knight who has accomplished little; and another player had decided that his young knight with an (unplanned) almost identical set of skill choices was the son of the middle-aged knight; the issue of whether or not said PC had already won the hand of a "fair maiden" was put into play.More generally: the rules of the game include make up fiction together, with a particular focus on these protagonists, and using these rules to help generate it and engage it. Making up some fiction about one of the protagonists is not outside the rules of the system: its the main thing the rules tell us to do! (I'll cheerfully concede that the Prince Valiant rulebook is strikingly clear on this point compared to many RPG rulebooks. That's why its widely regarded as one of the best RPG books ever written.)I've already addressed the last sentence. And in an earlier post I've explained how things which must be decided in order to take further moves in playing a game may themselves be moves in the game.But even the first sentence is not true. The player could have just ignored the whole thing, declined to make a decision about his PC's past, and the focus of play would have shifted. It's not like I've got no ideas to keep the session moving unless we sought out this marriage thing!The session started around 2.30, I think, after the early arrivers had finished their boardgame and the late arrivers had arrived. With half-an-hour or so for the two new players to write up their PCs and some recap of the last session, I'd say that play proper started around 3 pm. The question of whether or not the knight PC was married or widowed came up around 5 pm. We didn't say - "OK, let's take a break from playing this game so we can do this bit of prep so we can keep going." I asked "Is Gerren married, or widowed?" The player and I and the player of his son discussed it for a few minutes and decided that it made sense that he was widowed, which led to him losing his wife's estate (consistent with the already-established lack of nobility of these two knights) and heading out, with his son, on his travels. None of that is preparing for anything. It's playing the game, establishing salient shared fiction.It's not even in principle or notional preparation, because we literally could not have had that discussion prior to play, as we wouldn't have known all these things about these two knights which helped provide the context for constructing a suitable backstory.The fundamental act in RPGing is establishing some shared fiction. Which is what we were doing. We were playing the game.That's because the play of most boardgames doesn't involve creating fiction, and so it's not the case that creating fiction is a necessary component of playing them.In a boardgame, if no one will move their piece then the game can't go on. That tells us that moving pieces is important to boardgames. In a RPG, if no one will establish any fiction, nor engage any established fiction (which itself requires making up at least some modest fiction, such as "My guy looks through the window"), then the game can't happen. This tells us that shared fiction is important to RPGs. It doesn't tell us that RPGs are engines for creating games. They are engines for creating fictions, but in my preferred approach, those fictions are primarily outputs of play, not things created in advance of play.</blockquote>

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