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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Indaarys" data-source="post: 9507662" data-attributes="member: 7040941">I think this is definitely an issue at play here, but from my perspective its more that RPGs are a lot of things at once. I touch on it the idea of the Duality, but as you relate, it can go farther than that. I think Gloomhaven, among other games, is a good example of how you can pull these games to be more focused on those other motivations, and that wouldn't be the case if players couldn't approach RPGs from the desire to just focus on those aspects over others. In the same way, games that eschew what appeals to those players to focus on some other aspect are doing the same sort of thing.I think there is a genuine middle ground between these two, though.I would argue Fiasco in particular is an exceptional case, given if you eschewed the dice mechanic, it wouldn't functionally be anything other than a pure improv game. And a very well designed one at that, to be clear; it actually is an example of the ideal the essay speaks to, but it enjoys that distinction because its only incorporating a single, very simplistic mechanical system, so it would've been remarkable if it somehow still managed to cause problems.Funnily enough we had that discussion before some months ago I believe. A more refined take is that, at a base level, we have improv dynamics, which is pretty easily understood through the idea of Follow the Follower: Someone starts, and you follow them, and they follow you, and you follow them, repeat until the sessions over (which can come in a lot of different forms, like the Story Spine). Its a back and forth feedback loop that keeps changing the gamestate, which in this instance we consider the fiction; the story we are telling. When it comes to RPGs, Game Rules obviously intercede in this dynamic, and we have to think about how we reconcile that, right?Not quite, because virtually all improv is fundamentally operating on some type of rule. Follow the Follower is a procedure, but often its not just that. The actual excercise that rule comes from involves a rule about mimicry; each Player needs to mimic the actions of all the other players, often with the caveat of doing More with each instance. If someone coughs, you start hacking up a lung, that sort of thing. We can understand this as being a reinforcement of playstyle, because the feedback you receive is a reflection of how you play. If I begin a scene by playing the tragic orphan, vowing to avenge my parents, and you jump in as my well-to-do butler whose also a ninja cowboy astronaut badass willing to teach me everything you know, and then I take you up on that and become the hero known as Man, then we've reinforced how each of us played. Now, in most cases, Improv games are pretty simplistic just like that exercise, doing no more than contextualizing the feedback between the players. But with RPGs, rules are typically not that simple, and they provide their own kind of feedback. As such, we have to recognize that RPGs, by way of hybridization, are iterating on the original dynamics. We don't just have Players, but GMs and, as I propose, the Game itself. We have to move from player to participant when we describe the improv dynamics involved, and we have to recognize the new dynamics introduced by the nature of these three different participants. If you remember their machination diagrams, the way you can visualize the dynamic specific to RPGs, with regards to its difference from standard improv, is like this:[ATTACH]385972[/ATTACH]Throughout play, we have this throughline of fiction being created ad infinitum, and we can understand this as the game state at any given time. The moment something in the fiction triggers the feedback loop (most often its the game defining when this occurs, but it can also happen by GM or Player choice), then ideally all three Participants begin to bounce off of each other as they resolve the loop, and inject back into the fiction a change in the game state. But, as noted, these three Participants have different roles, which I think are self explanatory. The Players occupy the same space as they do in improv, and the Game Rules act as a fixed yet dynamic point of normalcy for the dynamics to revolve around; if you engage them, you're going to get feedback from them that you have to respond to. The GM meanwhile sits between the two, often bridging the other two roles together. All three have to engage and acknowledge each other throughout play, and the contention tends to be that the game, intentionally or otherwise, doesn't, leaving the other two roles to become imbalanced. The reason why is because the game can be an equalizing participant in the inherent imbalance of a GM-Players relationship. To relate it back to improv, its very much like having one Player dictating 80-95% of the show while the other 6 people on stage jump in at points the first player says, but with RPGs its not always necessarily because one player is just a tyrant, but because the game is so poorly designed they have to do a lot more to produce a coherent experience than they should have to, and this produces unwelcome dynamics that are noticeable by the other players. If that doesn't sound familiar, I laid out all the ways these manifest in the essay. (Not that I think you Kenada wouldn't get me, just for anyone else reading)A game can be an equalizer, offloading a lot of what the GM does and allowing for a more equitable distribution across all three Participants, but in order for that to work, Players and GMs need to be primed to trust the game to do this. To give a practical example, I'll just point to my game's Event system, as I've talked with you about before. When you're travelling or otherwise exploring, the procedure of play expects you to take some kind of Action as part of that. One example of such an action, is Gathering. Lets say I'm going to Prospecting, because I'm working on my Mining and Smithing skills, and I want to try and find some iron ore. In this procedure, I just do it, just as every other player is doing whatever they decided to do. No need to strictly announce, and usually doing so would interrupt the Keeper, whose job it is during this time to set the scene for this particular round of travelling or exploring. I make my Gathering roll and look up my results on a handy reference sheet that includes all the info I need about the ores I collect, but then I also have, through these results, a possible Event that the game wants me to engage with, in addition to whatever the rules say I found while out prospecting, which could either be exactly what I was looking for, in lesser quantity, or a greater quantity of random stuff, or something inbetween. The game has effectively given me two kinds of feedback to my choice to go prospecting on this leg of our groups journey. This one has always been my favorite, so lets say for my Event I got "They are coming...run!". Its up to me to interpret this Event how I see fit. To keep it simple, lets say I just want to inject a little excitement, so when we go around the horn to resolve everyones Turns, lets say I go first, probably because in this instance I just go for it. I could initiate a scene where I describe myself running back into the party, deeply out of breath, and explain how I came under attack by rabid Pidgin bandits trying to take my iron, how I barely escaped, and now they're headed this way. What happens here is that the feedback loop continues. I started an input that triggered it, the game gave me two bits of feedback, and now Im introducing that feedback to the group. Now they can not only start to respond to that input and add on to it, perhaps combining their own Events, but the GM is also participating, acting not just as the world itself as needed, but also facilitating more opportunities for the game to provide even more feedback, and ensuring that what is introduced stays within the bounds of the group's chosen game tone. But beyond that, as this one Event spirals out, a whole bunch of mechanics could start flying. Perception checks, stealth roles, Construction to lay down traps and cover, Spells being cast and weapons drawn and Stances established; on and on it goes, and that's just what the Players can do. The GM has all of this more than they can start engaging as they prepare those Pidgin Bandits to come into conflict with the party. (And this was a real example, as it happens. We got wrecked and robbed because Pidgins are giant Varangian Pidgeon people and they dived bombed us)All of these, by design, are set up to continually provide feedback as the players and the GM engage them, adding more dynamics as play continues. What this system does in isolation goes beyond just merely dictating that things happened or being an excuse to trigger something the GM was gonna run no matter what. Its a collaboration between three participants in an improvisational experience, that in its best form, none of them could have told alone. Im more thinking of things like Go Aggro, where's there's specifically written things that happen as a part of engaging that move. (And for clarity, I keep going back to that one because its been a hot minute since I've even looked at AW, yet that move for whatever reason occupies my mind rent free)</blockquote>

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