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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8498676" data-attributes="member: 82106">I think the FUNDAMENTAL FEATURE of RPGs is that the above is not true. I will just go back to a day in 1975 when I was introduced to a little game called 'D&D'. This was THE revelation of D&D, that there could be a situationally open-ended game in which there were both rules and NO FINITE GAME STATE. That the rules included arbitration mechanisms, and in part ARE arbitration mechanisms (I think this is the gist of Vince's view of rules) which allow for the creation and play of the game through these dynamically instantiated, and dynamically invented, states.According to that view, Chess and D&D are FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT ANIMALS. So your argument, IMHO, fails. I think this is something that is often held by RPG players too, who do not consider chess to be an RPG, even though you might be able to 'tell a story of a chess game' that describes warriors battling and fortresses overthrown. The reason being that chess is finite and that the rules do not include any sort of fiction and thus there can be no feedback from fiction to the state of what Vince is calling 'cues' (IE the board in chess). In fact we can see this in even another way, in that you can play chess in your head (well, some people can) but this doesn't create any added dimension to the game, there are no imaginings that take the game beyond what could be represented on a board involved, it is simply a form of mental discipline to do away with the physical cues.But the imagination is BEYOND any cue, it can take infinite states and isn't constrained by cues. I mean, I can remember a day, long ago, when DMs at our club would INSIST that you must have a figure for your PC, and that it must LOOK RIGHT, or else you could not play! I don't think this is usual or part of the established norm in RPGs generally, it was something taken from wargaming (like in Napoleonics where you really DO NEED to have a stand of Old Guard or else they cannot appear on the field of battle).I think it is fair to call instances in board games 'mistakes' or 'cheating' however, and that games played in such a way are non-canonical in some sense that is not true for RPGs, generally.I don't see the point here, really. It is non-controversial that RPGs often employ such mechanisms. They exist to help the players decide what fiction to enact, don't they? Again, as you pointed out above, things are not always done by the rules! This is, IMHO, because the rules don't always produce the desired outcome, and this view has been endorsed since 1974 AFAIK...</blockquote>

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