FrogReaver
As long as i get to be the frog
I’d love an example.
RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point
- Thread starter pemerton
- Start date
aramis erak
Legend
Baker designs and plays games where the players can be each other's nemeses... PVP is a part of his normal range of play, or at least was when I was active on the Burning Wheel Forums. (It's also part of Luke Crane's playstyle repertoire, too. See also the Burning Wheel demo entitled The Sword.) Even when not in full PVP, many of their games
When PVP is an allowed and common part of one's play repertoire, negotiation and consent are much bigger elements than in traditional party-as-allies dynamic.
It's part of why the rules of The Burning Wheel Revised (and BW Gold) make a standard of agreement upon failure and success in terms of effect (in addition to agreement on the method) before the dice may be rolled is a standard rule. In any player initiated action, if the stakes are two high, they can cancel the action and "walk away" from the challenge the roll was to overcome.
It's a part of the general approach of many Forge-influenced designers to include negotiation as part of task resolution and consent to PVP actions on an action by action basis.
aramis erak
Legend
While some story games aren't RPGs, most meet the most common definitions of RPGs, too. Where the other end of the overlap hits is far less clear, but the pure non-RPG story games are notable - Once Upon A Time, Hobbit Tales from the Green Dragon Inn, Aye, Dark Overlord... those all being card games where the cards provide required elements of the story... but they generally put each player in narrator mode rather than in character, and the interactions with other players are not with characters controlled by other players. They are games where a story is a major part of play, but which don't have the usual marks of RPGs.My grasp of the general consensus is that Fiasco usually is on the RPG side of the line.
Whether or not the boardgames like Gloomhaven (or the old GW HeroQuest) count as storygames or RPGs is a hot debate... they're character scale, each player controls a single character, there's advancement, play is intended to scope past a single session...
clearstream
(He, Him)
Interesting question. Control of character, progression, and multi-session arcs are typical of CRPG. Thus, I'm going to argue that there is a sub-category of all-RPG which is TTRPG, differentiated as outlined in the OP.
FrogReaver
As long as i get to be the frog
For the purposes of understanding the differences between RPGs, I don’t see why the medium they are played on is a particularly important observation.
clearstream
(He, Him)
Well, at least up to now imagining has been more a TT thing, than a C thing
Pedantic
Legend
I see the point, but I'm not sure we should emphasize the medium as the divide. Open forum roleplay, MUDs and so on are quite specifically computer driven experiences, but are also very much imagination driven.
FrogReaver
As long as i get to be the frog
the question I am getting at -
Is imagination an absolutely necessary part of RPGing? If so, then in what ways?
Making a box of RPGs that require imagination and saying ‘let’s just talk about these’ completely elides that question.
clearstream
(He, Him)
I see what you mean. I am not actually dividing between mediums, as much as means.
When I search using "CRPG" I find the sorts of computer games that I intended to indicate, which are not open forum RPGs, MUDs, etc. So I think it is reasonable to use that label to mean games that don't rely on [imagine] in the ways discussed in the OP and investigated in my earlier posts such as #205 and #220.
Equally, when I search using "TTRPG" I find the games I intended to indicate. Conceding your point however that I did not really intend to exclude imaginative-RPG (IRPG) based on medium.
@FrogReaver I see that my flippancy obfuscated my point. The "TT" I referred to, and the "C", were intended to evoke the labels above, and the games that would be categorised under them, not medium per se. I anticipated that the reader would add "RPG" and see what was intended... but that was plainly less clear to others than I pictured.
FrogReaver
As long as i get to be the frog
Expanding my thoughts a little. Right now I’m thinking of Skyrim. Is a person playing a roleplaying game if they create a persona for their character and then make their decisions on what to do by imagining what that persona would do. Obviously they’ve accepted skyrims premise of play and so they are constrained to creating a personality to imagine that can complete the game.
Contrast that with if the player never imagines a character persona and just treats the PC as a piece on the game board, and the choices presented solely as strategic concerns. Is this person roleplaying?
I don’t mind limiting discussion to just ttrpgs but I think conclusions based on just games in that medium leave open the definitional questions of whether the medium and properties derived from that medium are necessary for roleplaying games as a whole or whether we are just defining how some higher level properties associated with role playing games across all mediums appear within that particular medium.
So if I had to rephrase my question - is the necessity ‘to imagine’ in ttrpg’s a specific medium based characteristic that is derived from a more generally applicable medium agnostic characteristic, such that the general characteristic applies to all RPGs but becomes something other than ‘to imagine’ in other mediums.
Contrast that with if the player never imagines a character persona and just treats the PC as a piece on the game board, and the choices presented solely as strategic concerns. Is this person roleplaying?
Tabletop or TT and computer or C are mediums though. As such, I don’t think you can reference those labels even with RPG at the end without referencing those mediums.
I don’t mind limiting discussion to just ttrpgs but I think conclusions based on just games in that medium leave open the definitional questions of whether the medium and properties derived from that medium are necessary for roleplaying games as a whole or whether we are just defining how some higher level properties associated with role playing games across all mediums appear within that particular medium.
So if I had to rephrase my question - is the necessity ‘to imagine’ in ttrpg’s a specific medium based characteristic that is derived from a more generally applicable medium agnostic characteristic, such that the general characteristic applies to all RPGs but becomes something other than ‘to imagine’ in other mediums.
Last edited:
