Play Is Paramount: Discuss

[Fenris-77]

I care about setting and verisimilitude more than play at the table, and believe the mechanics should follow and be informed by the fiction. Once those areas are addressed to my satisfaction, then I will turn to play experience at the table as a priority.

Yup, that sounds correct. Pin this and we'll move on.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I imagine that people who do hundreds of hours of solo worldbuilding, for example, will say that it adds depth to the game and therefore adds to the experience of play.

It certainly adds to my general enjoyment of the hobby as well as the depth of the world, which increases immersion for me.

 

[prabe]

So when the OP says 'play is paramount' your interpretation is that it means 'every part of the hobby is paramount'?

I think the play a given person or group does is paramount for that person or group. Someone who doesn't play HERO at a table but still does chargen for fun is still getting some pleasure from the game, I don't know that it's play but I don't really care, either. I think if that person played HERO at a table, that'd almost certainly be more important overall than the chargen someone might do without any expectation for those characters.

I think it's obvious that people can seek whatever pleasures they want wherever and however they want, whether it's all "play" is maybe less relevant.

 

[Reynard]

Eh. Chargen is definitely something, and it's engaging with the rules. It's lacking the interactive and social aspects, but so (arguably) is something like Thousand-Year-Old Vampire. (Yes, the latter is specifically written for solo play, there's still no social interaction happening.) Session prep seems to be something similar, though given that it's intended and expected to land on a table where people are playing the TRPG, it's probably harder to argue for it as "play," though there are certainly people who derive a good deal of pleasure from it.

I think character generation fits into the paradigm of the OP.

If you are making a character, it is of the top order importance that the character you make enhances play at the table. That means a lot of things, and may include things like making a character that works with a party, and doesn't abuse the rules to the detriment of play, and enhances play through character building choices.

With respect to the OP, just making characters is NOT play.

 

[ART!]

I can see how making characters can get you excited about playing characters, and would also increase your knowledge of a game. I lean towards "making characters" not being play, but it can contribute to play or make play better. Of course, if you use your excitement or knowledge of the game to make playing the game less fun for others, it could make play worse.

 

[Reynard]

I do think there is an interesting discussion to be had about what constitutes "play" in a broad sense, but my overall thesis was directed at "play" meaning actually sitting at the table doing the thing. I probably should have more rigorously defined that.

 

[hawkeyefan]

What comes to my mind when thinking about “play is paramount” is to think of an after report of play. Recently on another website, I was reading an actual play report, but all it did was describe the fiction that was established in play. Which to me is interesting because the person whose play report it was would fight tooth and nail if you said an RPG is “making a story” or anything similar.

So I think seeing a play report that doesn’t actually discuss the play… what the real people taking part are doing… is a kind of odd thing. So it struck me that if play is paramount, then after play, that’s what we’d talk about. What this player did, how the rules were used to resolve this part of play, how the GM handles that situation, and so on.

I know that may not be exactly what the OP was about, but these were recent thoughts I was having and they immediately came to mind when reading this thread.

 

[Lanefan]

What if we flip the question and ask things from the other side.

Assume "play is paramount". How does the game accommodate for all the things that aren't play? How much does the game accommodate for things that aren't play? How can a game encourage things that aren't play without detracting from play?

Corollary question: should a game even try to do any of these things?

 

[Lanefan]

Eh. Chargen is definitely something, and it's engaging with the rules. It's lacking the interactive and social aspects,

There's nothing saying char-gen can't have those interactive and social aspects; even if you're all rolling up characters on your own, if you're doing so together in the same space it's socially pretty much the same as a regular session.

In other words: session 0 = roll-up night.

 

[payn]

There's nothing saying char-gen can't have those interactive and social aspects; even if you're all rolling up characters on your own, if you're doing so together in the same space it's socially pretty much the same as a regular session.

In other words: session 0 = roll-up night.

Some systems better than others. Traveller, for example, is very socially engaging.