Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 8461944" data-attributes="member: 85870">Two quick notes --- I think player typologies are useful, but moderately to largely overstated as a driving factor in RPG game development / theory evolution. I love board games. I love deep, tactical, heavy resource management and combat in board games (FFG Imperial Assault, LotR Living Card Game, Gloomhaven). But when I sit down to an RPG play session, I largely desire to engage with game/milieu on a different level than what I get just by playing Gloomhaven.I'm a huge "gamist" when I play board games. I'm something radically different when I play RPGs. I think most of us like RPGs because they combine multiple game sensibilities -- gaming, drama, narrative, challenge, character building, resource management, imagination. I find that people who are generally ONLY interested in just one facet of gameplay largely steer away from "traditional" RPGs. Off the top of my head I could name half-a-dozen acquaintances that are massive board game "geeks" / Warhammer combat geeks that have absolutely zero interest in RPGs, because they're just not interested in the additional facets of gameplay they are expected to engage with.The existence of a growing "story gaming" population as a sub-set within the RPG player population is evidence that there's a lot of people who like inhabiting a role / engaging in a shared fiction / storytelling who simply aren't interested in memorizing D&D-style rules for combat positioning, facing, damage, exception-based-design combat feats and abilities, etc. The unique thing about RPGs is the ability to engage in the fiction development loop --- proposition >> evaluation as to the truthiness of the proposition within the fiction >> consensus that fictional state has changed >> players engage with new fiction state. Second, the disagreement around whether there's actually any theory development on these boards is less than important than the ability to be exposed to theory. The theories don't have to be new---they only have to provide value to someone who hasn't been exposed to them before. And being elitist to people who have never been exposed to the theory before is terribly uncharitable. Sure, we can be dismissive of those who have never been exposed to the Fourfold / Threefold / GNS / Big model concepts before. "Go read up on 3 decades of theory and then come back." Or we can be charitable and try to help those who aren't familiar come into contact with the theories in helpful, productive ways.</blockquote>

Verification