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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 9198217" data-attributes="member: 70468">He didn’t add it after the fact. OD&D developed out of the Braunstein play that Arneson had been doing. The addition of role-playing in those campaigns lead to Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign which eventually resulted in the creation of D&D. It didn’t happen the other way around.I disagree that it’s accurate. The wargaming culture out of which D&D developed played games that were not completely codified. The referee was expected to do considerable work when putting together a campaign, and OD&D mentions this several times that this as an expectation. That it doesn’t tell you how exactly to do that is the problem we’ve identified that leads to difficult on-boarding for outsiders.Consider how the introduction indicates that, “(the 3BB) provide the framework around which you will build a game of simplicity or tremendous complexity — your time and imagination are about the only limiting factors, and the fact that you have purchased these rules tends to indicate that there is no lack of imagination — the fascination of the game will tend to make participants find more and more time.” How does saying the game is limited only by your time and imagination not necessarily imply it includes “improv play”?I moved these back together because they seem to be making the same point.I agree that games should do more and do better jobs of instructing GMs on how to perform their role. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s an easy problem to solve because of the changes to the play culture that would require. At least one can look to examples of alternatives when designing new games even if D&D is likely to continue relying heavily on being taught via the play culture. I moved this down to better contextualize my response.My position is that the play culture cannot be separated from the game, especially given where D&D originated. It also seems contradictory to me to lament on one hand how games require being taught how to GM separately from the game text while not allowing the same affordance on the other when assessing whether OD&D is an RPG.I wouldn’t expect (what appears to be) a book on game design to go into those details, but it’s reasonable to expect the authors to have done their homework before writing it.It’s citing OD&D as an example of a role-playing game that doesn’t possess a certain trait. The intent is pedagogical. Citing “fun facts” in a section meant to educate the reader undermines the effectiveness of the work and raises questions about what else should not be taken seriously. (I think it should be, so I assume the intent in this section is to educate rather than just convey “fun facts”.)Let’s recall that I observed in <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/rpging-and-imagination-a-fundamental-point.701162/post-9197789" target="_blank">post #9</a> that playing-style reinforcement was neither necessary nor sufficient for a game to be an RPG, and your reply in <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/rpging-and-imagination-a-fundamental-point.701162/post-9197808" target="_blank">post #11</a> seemed to agree. I don’t think we can look at an element some RPGs possess and use it to conclude something about RPGs generally that is unrelated. To be clear, I’m suggesting there is an RPG base upon which playing-style reinforcement and other elements can be layered.I don’t know whether the book attempts to define the traits of RPGs generally (independently of hybrid elements such as playing-style reinforcement or “improv play”). I would guess it pertains to the player’s relationship to their avatar, particularly in how they make decisions about play. (Continued below)Using this section as an example, one might posit that an RPG is a game where the player has reasons beyond just optimizing success in a game to perform a particular action. Making a particular choice might allow them to embody a particular conception they have of their avatar. Intent also matters. It’s different if you choose to play a more difficult route for increased challenged versus if you are doing it because the experience says something to you.For example, you have the choice of not killing enemies in Deltarune even though that game does not have a pacifist route (unlike Undertale). The secret bosses in particular are hard if you opt not to kill them. Jevil took me quite a few tries to save because of how long you have to survive against some pretty tough patterns. However, it was important to me that Kris not harm anyone regardless of the fact the route’s ending does not change.I disagree strongly that role-playing games are about building up a character’s abilities. When I chose to play the pacifist route in Undertale, my abilities never progressed because I never gain any EXP or acquire LV. The fact that I can make that choice seems to be what makes it an RPG rather than whether it has progression.[SPOILER="Undertale spoilers"]Especially since EXP stands for “execution points” and LV for “Level of Violence”. Undertale heavily subverts typical RPG tropes. For example, grinding is not an unusual practice is other RPGs, but doing it in Undertale leads to the genocide route where you literally depopulate the random encounters of monsters because there are none left to show up.[/SPOILER]I’m using “improvised play” for what you are calling “improv play”. I dislike the appropriation of terminology from other creative fields and tend to refrain from using it because it usually comes across as pretentious. I find the use of “improv” particularly problematic because the GM in many games has ultimate authority, and what players can introduce to the game is very limited beyond the action declarations they make, which is not how improv works. I opted for the euphemistic term in my reply because the quoted form of “improv play” could be read as dismissing its legitimacy rather than as simply an identifier for a particular element of play.Without the clarification above, this makes sense. It should be obvious that non-RPG games can have improvisation. Just from a speed run or do a raid in an MMO to see how people adapt and perform unusual (and often unintended) strategies. However, I don’t think that’s what was meant by “improv play” nor is it what I mean when referring to it euphemistically as “improvised play”.</blockquote>

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