D&D 5E The Illusion of Experience Points that Everyone Disbelieves

[howandwhy99]

You've gone to a lot of trouble to to reiterate information I think we both know we both know. I'll give you some answers, basically going over again how you remain in your way of seeing things, but I don't see anything to go forward with. You want all RPGs to be storygames. I know the hobby began and is still sought after, if not everywhere played, to be a game about gaming a role.

You don't need to imagine untrue events, characters and situations to play Battleship.

An RPG is different.

A storygame is different. Roleplaying and RPGs as I understand them are games, they are all about the actual acts performed by the players. RPGs and other games make boring stories just like sport games usually make boring stories because they are not designed to make good ones. They are designed to be games. We expect that they are not fiction making even though participants may be following rules, a script used when playing them.

Consider, for instance, the following episode of play: player 1 rolls an attack against an orc, hits and deals damage, and the orc dies. The GM then announces "You slice off the orc's head, which goes rolling along the ground." Then player 2 says "How far is it from me? I want to pick it up and throw it at the skeleton - how much damage would it do if I hit?"

Your GM is narrating not describing what he rules say. When we narrate that's when we stop refereeing. The referee shouldn't invent what should rather be determined by the rules. Colour, or inconsequential elements, are usually culled from games and should be from RPGs too.

But when player 2 declares that his/her PC is going to pick up the orc head and throw it: now the imagined situation matters for the play of the game. The GM has to answer the question, What would happen if PC 2 were to throw the orc head at the skeleton? This is a counterfactual that has to be evaluated relative to an imaginary situation.

No, it has to be evaluated according to the map behind the screen as generated by the rules.

I think it has to be emphasised that there is no algorithm for answering the player's question. No D&D rulebook, for instance, has a damage listing for orc heads. (They don't even all have damage listings for thrown rocks - eg Gygax's PHB and Moldvay Basic don't - which is perhaps the nearest analogue.) Does it do bludgeoning damage (due to its thick skull) or slashing damage (due to its sharp tusks)? Which matter, given that slashing damage will be halved against the skeleton.

OD&D has damage by location. It's hardly the only game to have it. Moldvay would have DMs make up rules on the fly. I'd disagree with that. Not having rules for something in a collection of suggestions doesn't deny that if you're going to have rocks, throwing, orcs, orcs with heads, and hit points in the game you need mechanics for those. This should have been handled during prep by the referee.

As I said, this is counterfactual reasoning about an imagined situation.

Counterfactual meaning contrary to the established facts? Counterfactual reasoning meaning reasoning about what we know isn't? RPGs aren't contradicting the established facts because DMs have game rules and resulting game elements to refer to.

Scientists do this sort of reasoning. They call it "performing a thought experiment". In a thought experiment, the imagined situation is specified with sufficient precision that the upshot of the counterfactual can be deduced as an entailment.

When a GM does it, there are no entailments:

An entailment meaning a necessary and inevitable consequence? Like the result of a mathematical equation? Or the algorithm that is the game rules used by the DM? I'm getting tired because your talking more about storygames to tell a story rather than games played to game the system/the game.

I am certain that hundreds, probably thousands, of GMs have picked up White Plume Mountain and run it without having a rule for handling the frictionless corridor. In fact, given that the number of crazy schemes players might come up with to shatter the pyramidal water-tanks, to cross the hanging discs, and to traverse the frictionless corridor is in practical terms unlimited, it would be futile to even try to work out rules for it all.

Yes, lots of people have played D&D and have waved elements rather than applying rules. But you don't deny that millions of players have faithfully followed rules when the books suggestions did cover what the modules also did? That modules added in design without adding rules isn't the fault of the game designer or the basis of "follow all the rules until we handwave it" play common even today.

Rather, GMs do what Moldvay advised them to do: they reason counterfactually from the imagined starting point and the hypothesised PC action to a stipulated outcome (or stipulated probability of an outcome).

Not everyone does this and this doesn't constitute role playing.

This role of the fiction in RPG play is what distinguishes RPGing from other forms of game, in which the permissible moves are confined to a predetermined list. And it has nothing to do with storytelling.

There are no permissible moves in D&D either. The players don't know the code, they are deciphering it while attempting to achieve objectives. Anything they can capably convey to attempt can be attempted. What isn't covered by the pre-existing code must be included by the referee according to the rules. You know, so it is integrated and can be deciphered within all the rest of the game.

One reason why RPGs need a referee is because a key element of RPGs as games is that adjudication requires counterfactual reasoning within imagined situations: RPGs need someone who is empowered to stipulate the outcome of such counterfactuals. (Scientists doing thought experiments don't need referees, because the outcomes are entailed. No stipulation by a reasonable but independent party is required.)

All games have entailed results except games were players take turn making up stories (and even then that's a required result of the rules). All RPGs need a referee to refer to the code behind the screen the players are discerning, and also to discern any attempts not currently within it which can be added. Computers can capably do the former and the entire videogame category of RPGs can be seen to be doing so. But computers can't capably do the latter. Nor do their presentations enable players to build their own imaginary maps of what the Referee relays, which is also a big part of the appeal: more labor from the participants, more difficulty for the players to improve themselves within. D&D players IMO are amonst the best imagineers around.

This is confusing and, I think, confused.

Games obviously are not fictional. For instance it is true, not fictional, that I played both D&D and Battleship on the weekend.

The imaginary, on the other hand, does not exist.

We've gone over this before. You keep treating the imagination as a story, a referential rather than an actual. Reflecting on your own mind, is the concept of imagination suitable to describe part of what we do in our minds? Sure. I'm putting forth we treat the imagination as existent like we treat fire or mental awareness as existent. The imagination is only fictional or non-fictional in reference to things outside your mind. D&D is a type of boardgame occurring in the imagination of all participants - though all sides use maps and notes to aid them.

Characterisation may be an emergent property of playing old school D&D. But for many D&D players it is not an emergent element but a core goal. And this has been so for the 30-odd years that I've been RPGing.

You do not need to pretend a fantasy personality to role play. We role play every day in real life too. That's because role playing is playing a game. Kids for the first 15 years of D&D were told this wasn't about pretending to be an elf. That was a disparaging attack on the RPG hobby. Playing an elf in D&D is like playing an elf in WOW, it's a playing piece in a game. That's why they are Ability Scores not attributes. D&D for 30 years was about role playing as defined as playing a role, not exhibiting a fictional personality. As I've said before, no rules are needed for players to pretend or not pretend such while playing a game. Those are strategies.

But a D&D player who decides that his/her PC spares a rescued prisoner or defeated enemy because s/he "likes the look of it" is not failing to play D&D, and doing some other thing. Making action declarations for PCs on the basis of their imagined emotional responses to the imagined situations in which they find themselves is a core element of play for many people. At which point it is no longer "emergent". Nor is the imagined emotional response "mere colour". It has become a crucial contributing factor to the play of the game.

It is accidental to role playing. Pretending to be someone else is still an unnecessary quality in a role playing game and role playing in general, not the design focus.

In 1995 Iron Crown Enterprises...
Another book I have ready to hand is Night's Dark Terror, a B/X module published by TSR in March 1986...
the Dragonlance series begins in 1984...
I believe they will have had their origins in the prior actual play experiences of their authors.

The 90s were rife with attempting to treat roleplaying games as storytelling and not game play. It led to plot following adventures, but Follow the Path is still not achieving a game objective, a necessary element for game play to occur. The terms weren't there, but the concepts were, right? I'd suggest these designs were woefully misunderstanding what games are designed for, much less attempting to copy D&D or what it was designed for.

To reiterate: story telling is not inherent to RPGing, although the authoring of fictions (which is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of storytelling) is. The existence of modules like ToH and White Plume Mountain is sufficient proof of both these claims.

SNIP

But though story telling is not inherent to RPGing, the idea that RPGing might be done in some way that involves story telling (or something very like it) as an important aspect or aim is not some 21st-century novelty: the existence of a mid-80s module like Night's Dark Terror is sufficient proof of that.

No one is denying players wanted to follow a story or DMs wanted players to follow one was common early in the hobby. I'm suggesting they are losing the game element of RPGs to do so. And the inversion of the objective in RPGs in the new millennium has led to "make a story" games, which aren't really about addressing a game either. But either play style is okay to do, as I've said.

SNIPPED ABOVE (And you are just wrong to say that The Forge thinks all RPGing, let along all gaming, is story telling. Ron Edwards has an essay on non-storytelling RPGing. He can also tell the difference between an RPG and a wargame. The former involves fictions - imagined situations - as a necessary component; the latter doesn't. He correctly identifies M:tG as a wargame, not an RPG or a near-RPG. Someone who plays a Shivan Dragon might emulate it's roar, but this is like my joke about a "radar error" in Battleship: the authored fiction is mere colour that has no bearing on gameplay. Whereas in an RPG it would matter to resolution: my PC can try and fry eggs on a red dragon's scales, for instance, and the GM has to adjudicate that attempt even though there is no algorithm in any edition of D&D for egg-frying via draconic heat.)

Edwards only and ever refers to the defining element of role playing in RPGs as people making up a character. So he isn't going to refer to the role playing from the 40s to the 70s, when included in games (i.e. D&D) as role playing games. And thus "D&D isn't a role playing game" is presented as an absolute certainty just as it was argued by one side of the hobby in the 80s and early 90s. "Storytelling games are not role playing games" is another refrain heard often enough during the same time from the other side. D&D players inherently understood what they were doing was seeking to play a game, not make a story. The definition of role playing as pretending to be another person didn't popularize itself in the hobby until the early to mid-1980s. When you simply say the same thing as he does, however unknowingly I believe, that "D&D is a wargame, not a role playing game!" you're perpetuating not only an untruth, but an absolutist ideology. There is no fiction in role playing, role playing is what we actually do. And that's what D&D is designed for.

 

[pemerton]

You want all RPGs to be storygames.

Given that in my post I expressly denied that all RPGing is about storytelling, I don't know what your evidence is for this. Perhaps you need to reread my post.

I said that all RPGing involves creating fictions, but that has nothing to do with storytelling. Einstein created fictions too ("Imagine an infinitely long railway track running parallel to an infinitely long mirror") but he wasn't storytelling. He was proving the truths of special relativity.

Of course sports competitions don't involve creating fictions. They don't even require speech by anyone other than the referee! Although planning for a match may require creating fictions ("Suppose that team A does XYZ, then what should we do? I know - if they do XYZ then we'll do PQR.") All counterfactual reasoning involves reasoning from a fictional situation. (That's part of why developing a formal logic of counterfactual conditionals is such a significant technical challenge; because in a simple conditional logic, a false (= fictional) antecedent entails the truth of any consequent whatsoever.)

There is no fiction in role playing, role playing is what we actually do.

This is garbled. It's like Graham Greene saying "There's no fiction in writing an novel, it's what I actually do." Of course when you play an RPG you actually play an RPG. But part of that involves creating a fiction. One thing that RPGers really, truly do is create fictions. Just as part of writing a novel involves creating a fiction; the novelist really creates a fiction. Just as part of undertaking the thought experiments that demonstrate the truth of special relativity involves creating a fiction; the physicist really creates a fiction.

You keep treating the imagination as a story, a referential rather than an actual. Reflecting on your own mind, is the concept of imagination suitable to describe part of what we do in our minds? Sure. I'm putting forth we treat the imagination as existent like we treat fire or mental awareness as existent.

This is a misdescription. First, it is obvious that imagination is real, in the sense that I have imagination and presumably so do you. But it is equally obvious that imagined things are false - eg there are no fairies or unicorns. Not all imagined things are stories, though - when David Lewis invites a fellow philosopher to "consider a world", he is asking them to imagine - ie to entertain a proposition that the person knows to be false - but he is not asking them to tell a story. Not all imagination is story telling, thankfully: if it were then we could never have had the thought experiments that establish the basic principles of special relativity.

Follow the Path

<snip>

No one is denying players wanted to follow a story

I don't know exactly what you mean by "storygame" - it's not a term I use, and you haven't given any examples - but the bits of your post I've quoted here don't describe any game that has come out of The Forge or those influenced by it. They do describe some bad D&D modules, both from TSR and WotC, but Night's Dark Terror is not one of them. (Despite some confusion in the introduction from the authors, who lacked the vocabulary they needed to explain their adventure.)

When you simply say the same thing as he does, however unknowingly I believe, that "D&D is a wargame, not a role playing game!" you're perpetuating not only an untruth, but an absolutist ideology.

I didn't say this, nor imply it. Nor does Edwards. I said that Edwards is right to say that M:tG is a wargame. But M:tG is not D&D. Of those two games, only D&D involves creating an imagined situation and then working out what happens in that situation.

Edwards only and ever refers to the defining element of role playing in RPGs as people making up a character.

From here:

Exploration means "shared imaginings." The sharing has to be explicit and agreed upon, usually through the spoken word although any form of communication counts. The imaginings have to be the subject that is shared, which is why me reading aloud to my wife does not constitute Exploration. We are independently imagining based on the spoken word, but neither she nor I is telling the other what we imagine from that point. Exploration means that such communication is occurring.

The five elements of Exploration are interdependent: Character + Setting make Situation, System permits Situation to "move," and Color affects all the others. This concept applies only to the imaginary causes among the elements; the real people's actual priority or cause among these things, in social and creative terms, varies widely.
​

There is nothing there about story-telling: only "shared imaginings", which as I've already pointed out has little to do with story telling. You can have a shared imagining without telling a story - the physics lecturer says to the class, "Let's imagine an infinitely long plane mirror with an infinitely long railway track running alongside it" - and you can have story telling without imaging - I might recount the story of my life, or at least a part of it, purely from memory.

Also, there is nothing in here about "RPGs is defined by people making up a character". RPGs = setting - "the map", in your terminology; plus character - ie the player characters, which have been part of D&D from its beginning and are generally regarded as its major innovation (as opposed to the wargamer's "unit"); plus situation - ie the character in the setting ("You're at the entrance to the dungeon - what do you do?"); plus system - "the rules", in your terminology; plus colour - the fictional details of the situation ("I try to open the door" "It's too heavy for you to push; you'll have to try something else").

Using Edwards' terminology, I can state my key contention as follows: RPGing of necessity involves colour, that is, the fictional details of the situation matter to the resolution of actions declared for the PCs by the players. That is the difference from a boardgame or most wargames. When WPM says, for instance, that the corridor is frictionless, that is colour. It's not a statement of system - there is no rule in D&D for adjudicating frictionless surfaces - but the GM is expected to adjudicate interactions by the PCs with the corridor based on extrapolation, via counterfactual reasoning, from the details of the imagined circumstances (ie Edward's "colour").

Of course Edwards has preferences: he prefers characters whose definition includes motivations; he prefers situations which speak to those motivations so as to engender "dramatic needs"; he prefers colour which downplays engineering details like heavy doors and frictionless corridors, and plays up dramatic and symbolic details; but those preferences aren't inherent in his definition of RPGing. All that is inherent in his definition is the obvious point that you can't have an RPG without (i) having player characters, (ii) having imagined circumstances within which those characters are located, and (iii) having rules for adjudicating what happens to those characters within those circumstances.

Here Edwards describes some aspects of gamist play:

Gamist play, more than any other mode, demands that Situation be not only central, but also the primary focus of attention. You want to play Gamist? Then don't piss about with Character and/or Setting without Situation happening, or about to.​

So he actually mostly agrees with you: if you want to play D&D as a game (in your rather narrow sense of that term), then don't piss about with characters or settings for their own sake. Don't piss about with dramatic needs, and brooding skies. Just stick the PCs on a map - that's situation! - and start doing stuff.

My only point is that people have been playing D&D in ways other than this for over 30 years, and hence that your repeated insistence that they're actually playing D&D wrong is a little futile, if not insulting.

You do not need to pretend a fantasy personality to role play.

No one said you do. I certainly didn't say such a thing. I said that you can, and offered the textual evidence that you asked for that doing so goes back at least to the mid 1980s (plus some reasons for thinking the practice would predate those texts).

Not having rules for something in a collection of suggestions doesn't deny that if you're going to have rocks, throwing, orcs, orcs with heads, and hit points in the game you need mechanics for those. This should have been handled during prep by the referee.

<snip>

you don't deny that millions of players have faithfully followed rules when the books suggestions did cover what the modules also did? That modules added in design without adding rules isn't the fault of the game designer or the basis of "follow all the rules until we handwave it" play common even today.

I didn't deny that people follow the rules. When I play I follow the rules. I pointed out that, when the rules run out, play can keep going. And that it is inevitable that the rules will run out, at least in a rules system of the style of D&D, because the number of plans the players can come up with is practically unlimited, whereas the time and wordcount for designers and GMs is quite limited.

Moldvay would have DMs make up rules on the fly. I'd disagree with that.

<snip>

Not everyone does [what Moldvay advocates] and this doesn't constitute role playing.

OK, so now that we've worked out that Moldvay didn't know how to play D&D, and was just another storygamer (approx. 20 years before the Forge), I think I can sign off this conversation.

 

[pemerton]

I found this in another thread:

The Theocracy of the Pale might have by outward appearances all its members followers of a single god. While the nearby Bandit Kindoms is probably a mix of all three types of individuals.

In case you haven't heard neither The Theocracy of the Pale nor the Bandit Kingdoms - nor the entire World of Greyhawk, as it happens - is real. They don't exist. They are imaginings. They are fictions. In the quote, you are reasoning about them. You can't play an RPG without doing that sort of thing.

Also, when you say "the nearby Bandit Kingdoms is probably a mix of all three types", did your algorithms fail? Did your map run out? Or are you stipulating an answer based on your reasoning about the imagined situation without appealing to either algorithm or map?

 

[howandwhy99]

I understand now you're not looking to end proselytizing your one way view of the game. That's okay, I'm not looking to open every mind to other possible ways of understanding role playing games. But do me the favor of at least addressing mine when writing back. I'm not here to be sold your understanding or that I'm somehow "not getting it".

I said that all RPGing involves creating fictions

Which isn't true at all.

All counterfactual reasoning involves reasoning from a fictional situation.

Yet this isn't part of role playing or role playing games.

This is garbled. It's like Graham Greene saying "There's no fiction in writing an novel, it's what I actually do." Of course when you play an RPG you actually play an RPG. But part of that involves creating a fiction.

Except it isn't. No fiction is created when role playing.

This is a misdescription. First, it is obvious that imagination is real, in the sense that I have imagination and presumably so do you. But it is equally obvious that imagined things are false

Only and ever in reference to them as non-imagined things. Imaginings are real in and of themselves. They are fantasies, but we are actually experiencing them.

I didn't say this, nor imply it. Nor does Edwards. I said that Edwards is right to say that M:tG is a wargame. But M:tG is not D&D. Of those two games, only D&D involves creating an imagined situation and then working out what happens in that situation.

Most of playing M:tG occurs in the players' imagination. Just as high level Chess players can get rid of the pieces and play in their imaginations, D&D players can play a game - the pattern designed by the rules - in their imaginations. The key element making D&D and M:tG different is one person must referee to hold onto all the hidden information the players learn through play. They are essential to the rules of D&D and RPGs in general. Otherwise, how can anyone learn to role play?

Exploration means "shared imaginings." The sharing has to be explicit and agreed upon, usually through the spoken word although any form of communication counts. The imaginings have to be the subject that is shared, which is why me reading aloud to my wife does not constitute Exploration. We are independently imagining based on the spoken word, but neither she nor I is telling the other what we imagine from that point. Exploration means that such communication is occurring.

This is a special definition of a rather prejudiced philosophy. Exploration means: "Exploration is the act of searching for the purpose of discovery of information or resources. Exploration occurs in all non-sessile animal species, including humans." from Wikipedia. It's as good a common usage definition as any. D&D Players do this, while referees do not.

Using Edwards' terminology, I can state my key contention as follows: RPGing of necessity involves colour, that is, the fictional details of the situation matter to the resolution of actions declared for the PCs by the players. That is the difference from a boardgame or most wargames.

Again, you're making all RPGs a highly specific, uni-directional game design and calling D&D a wargame and not a role playing game. That's insulting. You're buying in to his one-true-wayism about what role playing is and what RPGs are. And they're not.

And then you go on about Edwards philosophy which isn't relevant to designing a role playing game (or really any non-story creating game) at all.

My only point is that people have been playing D&D in ways other than this for over 30 years, and hence that your repeated insistence that they're actually playing D&D wrong is a little futile, if not insulting.

I've never said they are playing the game wrong. I'm saying many people in our hobby don't play games according to the rules or what their designs support. And while that isn't bad, it isn't the reason D&D was designed as it was in the first place.

I didn't deny that people follow the rules. When I play I follow the rules. I pointed out that, when the rules run out, play can keep going.

Sure, anyone can enjoy themselves when they aren't following rules. But enjoyment from gameplay comes from following rules. --If you are not following the rules when playing a game, you're no longer playing a game.

And that it is inevitable that the rules will run out, at least in a rules system of the style of D&D, because the number of plans the players can come up with is practically unlimited, whereas the time and wordcount for designers and GMs is quite limited.

I've already gone over this. You don't seem to be remembering. Referees add player attempts after digging down to understand any which aren't in the game when initially attempted. Doing so allows the player to make the attempt and have it be fully integrated within the game system so it too can be gamed. (This isn't that hard, but it helps to have a good code and well designed module).

OK, so now that we've worked out that Moldvay didn't know how to play D&D, and was just another storygamer (approx. 20 years before the Forge), I think I can sign off this conversation.

No, with all due respect I don't think most of the folks in early D&D understood why D&D was designed why it was either. Certainly 2e was as backwards on how to play in the DMG as games come.

Your posts keep getting longer and longer after I've asked you whether you have anything to talk about yet and not simply reiterate how your position is right and my position isn't. I don't need to know anymore about Edward's bad game theories or how role playing requires fiction and all the rest. Games have rules in order to be playable. If players stop playing by the rules, they aren't playing a game.

EDIT:
Also, I understand you don't know how to run a role playing game, so just take it for granted that talking about a campaign setting or a game module before its been converted to a game has nothing to do with running or playing it in a game.

Mod note: This, "you don't know how to run a role playing game," and "what your doing is not a role playing game" stance is not showing respect for others and their opinions. Nobody here owns the definition of RPG, nor has authority to declare others out of bounds. So please, folks, do not respond to such - responding to such with acrimony is not constructive. ~Umbran

 

[Balesir]

I understand now you're not looking to end proselytizing your one way view of the game. That's okay, I'm not looking to open every mind to other possible ways of understanding role playing games. But do me the favor of at least addressing mine when writing back. I'm not here to be sold your understanding or that I'm somehow "not getting it".

I cannot say, having followed this conversation for longer than I can really believe, whether you "get it" or not because, as an observer to this discussion, I have to say that I am still as far as I ever was from even beginning to understand your point.
[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] seems to me, far from trying to evangelise one specific approach to roleplaying games, to have tried to break them down to the absolute underlying essence. You have repeated over and over that there is some "alternative" to this essential form, but so far have given me no clue whatsoever as to what that "alternative" might comprise. Can you not give us poor mortals some clue? An example, perhaps? Some idea of what play according to this immaculate schema might look like?

Let us review a little of what we have. We are playing a game (a term the definition of which seems to be slightly at odds with common parlance, so must be approved and as such we shall try not to rely upon), where we take on roles of elves and dwarves without creating any sort of fiction... WTF??? Sorry, but I am a mere human being - I require some explanation as to how this circumstance can ever arise.

Another try: we have a "code" of some sort that is the preserve of the elite cult of DM-uber (a subset of DMs who "get it"). This "code" allows the creation of rules where none exist, without any creation of fiction. As far as I can see this "code" must therefore necessarily be a set of "rules" in itself (a sort of "meta-ruleset" that gives rules about creating rules). Any yet, computers cannot, apparently, use this "code". The only "code" of which I'm aware that computers cannot, in principle, make use is one that requires the use of judgement - in other words, of creating criteria against which to judge or in other words making stuff up (in this case, rules).

In short, absent some sort of further explanation, your "alternative" form of game looks very much like early 20th century mysticism. Funny that the title of the thread is about "illusions that everyone disbelieves"...

 

[Ahnehnois]

Let us review a little of what we have. We are playing a game (a term the definition of which seems to be slightly at odds with common parlance, so must be approved and as such we shall try not to rely upon), where we take on roles of elves and dwarves without creating any sort of fiction... WTF??? Sorry, but I am a mere human being - I require some explanation as to how this circumstance can ever arise.

I don't understand this either. Even very early D&D games posit fantastical locations, assign each player to a person within those locations, and describe events that happen. Setting, character, and plot, the components of a narrative, are all there. A lot else can change, but I don't understand how any D&D game could lack these elements.

I also don't see how the idea of a game precludes any of that.

Whenever [MENTION=4892]Vyvyan Basterd[/MENTION], [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION], and me all agree that your argument doesn't even make sense, that's saying something.

 

[Remathilis]

(This thread was inspired by the recent poll on use of experience points.)

What is the purpose of experience points?

They measure and calibrate the advancement in the stepped power curve that are PC levels, over time. The PC levels in turn give access to new powers and give the player the satisfaction of seeing his or her PC evolve.

However, use of experience points is an illusion, in most D&D games and in many other RPGs alike. Level advancement is the only required mechanic for PC power advancement.

What's the point of gold pieces? They are universally useless beyond the first few levels, when magical items trump any and all mundane gear. Gold pieces are an illusion, giving the PCs a feeling of earning something valuable when in fact they are relatively worthless except as a "high score" mechanism.

What's the point of +X items? To give the PCs some feeling of increased power when in fact higher monster math routinely take into account the added bonus (and in many cases, requires it to harm the monster, making it a barrier to play). Such things create a Christmas tree effect, require the constant searching/looting of the dead to make upgrades, and focus PCs on their gear vs. their natural abilities. Magical items are an illusion and the game would be better served without them.

What is the point of levels? They are arbitrary measures of power sliced into twenty "bite-sized" chunks that give the player a "gerbil on the treadmill" feeling of improvement. Levels themselves are obstacles to power, and the fact that Bob the cleric left town a neophyte barely able to bless water and returned 6 months later able to crack open the earth in the name of Zeus is arbitrary and unrealistic. Or that Sue the fighter slew a dozen kobolds and can now shrug off a cannon shot. Levels are an illusion of progress and the game would be better served with a natural non-level linear progression.

What is the point of hit points...

---

See, we can do this all day. AC is an illusion that armor, dexterity, and dodging all contribute similarly to protection. Classes themselves are an illusion that all warriors are strong dumb brutes wrapped in steel, all wizards are adept at only butterknives and bathrobes, and all clerics worship gods opposed to bloodshed and have power over the undead. You can frame ANY part of D&D you want as an unnecessary illusion because they are. However, so is every other mechanic, solution, and element of the game.

XP is such a common idea that, illusion or no, I think it deserves to remain. I don't see it going away until some mechanic better than "the DM says so" is devised.

 

[howandwhy99]

Over 12 years and I've never gotten a warning before. Clearly things are progressing beyond heated debate and even being a little chippy. I apologize without being asked to Pemerton for any insults he feels directed his way. As I have been pointing out, this discussion hasn't been heading anywhere instructive for awhile. So I'm done with the thread. Thanks for those who responded and at least presenting different points of view on gaming.

 

[pemerton]

What's the point of gold pieces? They are universally useless beyond the first few levels, when magical items trump any and all mundane gear. Gold pieces are an illusion

<snip>

What's the point of +X items? To give the PCs some feeling of increased power when in fact higher monster math routinely take into account the added bonus

<snip>

What is the point of levels? They are arbitrary measures of power sliced into twenty "bite-sized" chunks that give the player a "gerbil on the treadmill" feeling of improvement.

Although (as best I can tell) you meant this ironically/sarcastically, I think there is a lot of truth in this. Part of what appeals to me about 4e is that it embraces this: gp are primarily there to feed rituals and items, and items are part of PC build/levelling. So the only illusion left is levelling, and its function within the system is to gradually change the underlying fictional situation, from herioc stakes to epic stakes.

D&Dnext is going to be different from 4e in this respect, but I haven't yet worked out quite what gp, items and levels are for in its system. (Because I don't get the sense they're doing the same thing as in classic D&D either, where gp are XP and XP is the measure of skill and success.)

 

[Remathilis]

Although (as best I can tell) you meant this ironically/sarcastically, I think there is a lot of truth in this. Part of what appeals to me about 4e is that it embraces this: gp are primarily there to feed rituals and items, and items are part of PC build/levelling. So the only illusion left is levelling, and its function within the system is to gradually change the underlying fictional situation, from herioc stakes to epic stakes.

D&Dnext is going to be different from 4e in this respect, but I haven't yet worked out quite what gp, items and levels are for in its system. (Because I don't get the sense they're doing the same thing as in classic D&D either, where gp are XP and XP is the measure of skill and success.)

The arguments aren't new. But yes, XP, GP, levels, etc and other systems are there to measure "advancement" in non-story ways. The game shouldn't just measure this in terms of "furthering the story". Story is one thing, but there should continue to be others.