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General Tabletop Discussion
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RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point
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<blockquote data-quote="niklinna" data-source="post: 9202499" data-attributes="member: 71235"><p>It can be worthwhile to examine the extreme edge cases of a proposition. But just tossing out a "well what about X, huh?" doesn't do much except ask somebody else to do the examining. Sure, I'll bite.</p><p></p><p>If you remove <em>everything</em> from an RPG except shared imagination, it is probably not an RPG. The "game" part remains to be accounted for, and so for that matter does the "roleplaying"—it's the whole phrase and its total central concept that have to be borne in mind. See [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER]'s several quotations of Vincent Baker's essays on the subject of <strong>why we need rules</strong> in roleplaying <strong>games</strong>.</p><p></p><p>Chess has no shared imagination (by default), so chess would pretty clearly still be chess. I know there are people who do play chess without a shared board, each having their own copy for example, and even without a board at all, hence necessitating they both imagine theiri board. But now we are getting into the territory of semantic theory and prototype vs. category models of concepts. Feel free to dig that deep if you want, but it's below my level of concern on the actual topic at hand.</p><p></p><p>Similarly, if all you're imagining is tokens moving on a board, well then, that's just playing chess (for example) and imagining the pieces on the board. The OP plainly stated as much. How does this particular statement illuminate the proposition at hand, or what can you infer from the statement that does? This, I'm not going to bother biting on, and you can elaborate if you like.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="niklinna, post: 9202499, member: 71235"] It can be worthwhile to examine the extreme edge cases of a proposition. But just tossing out a "well what about X, huh?" doesn't do much except ask somebody else to do the examining. Sure, I'll bite. If you remove [I]everything[/I] from an RPG except shared imagination, it is probably not an RPG. The "game" part remains to be accounted for, and so for that matter does the "roleplaying"—it's the whole phrase and its total central concept that have to be borne in mind. See [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER]'s several quotations of Vincent Baker's essays on the subject of [B]why we need rules[/B] in roleplaying [B]games[/B]. Chess has no shared imagination (by default), so chess would pretty clearly still be chess. I know there are people who do play chess without a shared board, each having their own copy for example, and even without a board at all, hence necessitating they both imagine theiri board. But now we are getting into the territory of semantic theory and prototype vs. category models of concepts. Feel free to dig that deep if you want, but it's below my level of concern on the actual topic at hand. Similarly, if all you're imagining is tokens moving on a board, well then, that's just playing chess (for example) and imagining the pieces on the board. The OP plainly stated as much. How does this particular statement illuminate the proposition at hand, or what can you infer from the statement that does? This, I'm not going to bother biting on, and you can elaborate if you like. [/QUOTE]
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