Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8303571" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think, in the world of RPGing and theorisation, it's often better to start with existence proofs rather than generalisations.Of course existence proofs tend to rely on testimony, which is notoriously unreliable, but this is where actual play reports become important. Presented in sufficient detail (sufficient here might often be relative to context and audience familiarity), an actual play report can reveal how something or other took place at an RPG table. And so it helps show us what is or isn't possible.When it comes to skilled play, it seems to me that some questions to which existence proofs are relevant include:1. Is it possible to have RPGing in which playing with skill is a (or the) major preoccupation of the game? 2. If the answer to (1) is yes, is it also possible to have RPGing in which meeting challenges is a (or the) major preoccupation of the game, but skill does not loom especially large? 3. If the answer to (2) is yes, is it also possible to have RPGing in which outcomes in confronting challenges turns more on what the players do in the moment of play than on prior input from players or decision-making by the GM?These aren't the only questions one might ask, but answering them already gives us a picture of many different approaches to RPGing, which it might be helpful not to mush together in our generalisations about RPGing.For instance, the answer to 1 seems to be yes because we have, as examples, Gygaxian D&D and The Green Knight.The answer to 2 also seems to be yes because we have, as examples, Burning Wheel and (perhaps, at least in some moods) Tunnels & Trolls. Perhaps also, at least in some moods, 5e D&D.The answer to 3 also seems to be yes - Burning Wheel and T&T would both be examples again. 5e D&D, though, perhaps not. BW has clear principles for extrapolating consequences by reference to player choices in the moment of play; T&T uses a lot of dice rolls that yield consequences in the moment of play; 5e, on the other hand, seems (at least as often played) to rely much more heavily on GM decision-making and on "spotlight" considerations.These differences aren't mysterious, either. We can look at what is present or absent in these various systems (mechanics, principles, techniques, especially in the domain of action resolution) and see how they support different sorts of orientation towards challenges, player skill and player decision-making in the moment of play.And we can look at other RPGs where the notion of meeting challenges doesn't seem particular apt at all: Cthuhlu Dark, Wuthering Heights, maybe even Apocalypse World. How if at all does skill fit into these games? Without challenges as a focus of play what might it mean for the PCs to lose, and how would this relate to the players winning or losing?Teasing out these differences in how RPGing can be approached and can work seems (to me) more profitable than trying to frame abstract generalisations beyond very basic ones, such as that the basic dynamic of RPGing is fiction => action declaration => mechanics => (new) fiction.</blockquote>

Verification