pemerton said:
Now I mightn't know much about RPGs, but I know a lot about philosophy of law - and this claim is pretty contentious! On a standard positivist analysis of a legal system, for example (eg HLA Hart, Jules Coleman, Joseph Raz) the judge has to exercise discretion (ie make it up, in a way that is consistent with what's come before) every time the law has a gap. And on at least some positivist theories (eg Raz) the law is very gappy.
It's not contentious to me as a Judge wouldn't be sitting on the bench, if he didn't have the authority to be there. (if he doesn't have legal authority, he's not a judge, right?) Judges exercising their discretion in the application of law just seems like the whole reason we have judges to me. Where the law is clear, folks just seem to follow the rules without need of clarification. And the whole idea that the RPG world in our own case is "gappy" is pretty unsound in my opinion. As the fundamental design basis is upon our own world (and that has no gaps at all as far as I can see) the only real gaps a GM might have are their knowledge of how things actually work in the real world.
So, sometimes he makes a mistake and thinks honey is overly flammable. It happens. We role with it.
It becomes an interesting world quirk and the GM learns more about real life after the fact. And maybe we agree to change this afterward, outside the game, too. No big thing.
And this is the law - something which, unlike the typical RPG gameworld, has 100s of 1000s of pages of text that make it up (at least in a common law system, where the law resides to a large extent in reported cases of superior courts; a further complication of a common law system is that the superior courts are in fact invested with the authority to change the law in many circumstances).
Good thing there are not millions of players in need of judgment calls at my table right? My real world knowledge covers more than requiring 1000s of pages of text just to play a game. And I don't think my notes for the world will ever get that big.
One could also use the analogy of mathematics and mathematicians. Given that some quite serious philosophers of mathematics (Brouwer, Wittgenstein) take the view that mathematics is a human construct - and manifestly the rules of mathematics are richer than those of any RPG gameworld - it is hard to see how it is obvious that the RPG gameworld is not one.
I don't see how this is relevant. We talked earlier about how the game world was agreed upon before play began earlier in this thread. That it exists, like math exists even though Ludwig and Brouwer are dead, is not something I want to get pedantic about here. Middle Earth exists as does my own RPG world. Saying they don't qualify as "being real" because they are conceptual is missing the point of RPG play in my opinion. (we aren't playing in the real world here, but we are playing a world that is real)
But to pursue the legal analogy, the world is so gappy, and the identify of legislators and adjudicators so total, that many (perhaps most) acts of adjudication are also acts of legislation - which is to say (moving from law to RPGs) acts of narration.
No one gets to out and out say how the world functions as I've said before. The GM may create more elements of it for the players to explore during game than the Players do, but neither is narrating during the game. What you're referring to is game prep. Stuff that happens before game so we can have a good time when we actually play.
So here we have a player not acting in character, but acting in efffect as a co-GM. Is this not RPGing? To say that it's not seems odd - if I'm not playing an RPG when I'm building my character and creating his or her background then what am I doing? In one post you yourself suggest it is a natural way for an RPG to be played, but in another you suggest that it is like "a henhouse full of roosters." Both can't be true.
There is no paradox here. A player writing background is prepping for the game. The game (and "game" elements) actually starts when we sit down at the table and begin roleplaying. Why is everyone here so determined to define roleplaying (and thereby RPGs) as something that occurs out of character. Roleplaying is acting in character. That's not my self created jargon definition. That's agreed upon in normal society and in the dictionary.
From WordNet (r) 2.0: said:
roleplaying
n : acting a particular role (as in psychotherapy)
And suppose I make this decision about my PC's background during the middle of a session (whether because I suddenly get the idea, or because the rules of the game permit me to introduce one background fact about my PC per session, or whatever) - am I then suddenly ceasing to play the game?
Are you ceasing to act in character? If so, then yes. This is stopping the game to tell the DM you've created more prepwork for him to incorporate into his or her own. That's kind of a rude thing to do in the middle of a game. Especially if you're using it to your advantage unfairly. "Hey! I'm actually the owner of all these jewels, by the way!" That's bad character play as I brought up in a previous post. Can a good GM roll with it? Sure, but you're putting them on the spot.
(Note also that it makes no sense to say that I make this decision about my background, because I cannot choose my background - life has thrust it upon me!)
That's a good point and I wanted to talk about this. When you "roll up a character" you're not getting to decide entirely what you will play on your own. Not only does the group decide what's appropriate for the game, but dice are used to randomize each character before they are conceptualized. I think in your aside above, you are saying Players don't get to create their own PCs. That isn't true. While they also create them when playing the game, like you and I continually do as we live our own lives, background creation happens outside of game.
Of course any such determination about my PC's background will (usually, at least) have to be consistent with what's gone before. But that is not to say that the world dictates it, only that the world permits it. And permission is a much weaker concept than dictation - for permissions to turn into actualities someone has to act (by exercising the authority conferred by the permission).
If authority permits certain behavior I guess worlds can permit certain character backgrounds. But don't those get added to the world and become the authority one has to follow when the game actually starts? This is all getting needlessly convoluted just so some folks can claim their games are RPGs when they aren't about roleplaying - at least not directly.
This is really a separate issue, but something that I disagree with. For example - I may be playing a PC who is indifferent to the romantic overtures of an NPC, and who therefore ignores them and moves on. For the PC, a non-critical choice. But for the players at the table - including me, quite possibly - it might be a critical choice, because of what it tells us about the personality of the PC and what it means to be that sort of person.
This is funny. I concede that sometimes behaving in character will lead to player insights that are important to the player, but not to the character as the example you cite. The whole "Wow! This is what it feels like to have a girl hit on me and turn her down!" is just hilarious. That's more to do with psychological insights gained through roleplaying though. That can be gained simply by the player playing what they judge is a psychologically interesting character.
I don't think that this is especially true of RM, although it is more true of RM than (for example) Runequest. I'd therefore like to know more about the comparison class. It's certainly not easy to play a Thief in 1st ed AD&D without knowing the rules of the game - you'll keep trying to do stuff that you think a thief might be able to do, like hear noise or hide in shadows or pick pockets, and fail dismally at it. As for playing a Monk, or any sort of spell-user in that game - I don't think one would get very far without the rules.
But again, maybe AD&D isn't the game you have in mind.
Rolemaster has endless system rules and is very much like 3E in that way. Perhaps I didn't see enough of it when I played MERPS to really call it a rule playing game per se. But I can't possibly see it as quick and easy to run. Perhaps it is invisible from the players POV, but that's not as I remember it. It's been some time since I bothered to look at the game.
And character design in many earlier games, like AD&D for example, focused on in character definitions of PCs. The 6 attributes are not rules, but definitions of how tough or strong a person is. To hit scores gave definition to how one ranked as a warrior in comparison to others. Damage ranges defined how hurtful a weapon could be in comparison to other weapons. These were things in the world given definition on the character sheet so players could understand how they stood in relation to others. Just like saying I'm taller or shorter than others with a height score. Size has meaning in the world, but as a player I'm understanding it through the eyes of my character.
By keeping these things in character, players don't need to bother with them most of the time. Simply saying "your tough and good at hitting things" will give a kid enough information to play his character. He's going to come up with other stuff anyways that he wants his character to be. That any of those descriptions might also have mechanics later working unseen with them is really secondary to playing the game.
