Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1206349" data-attributes="member: 7240">I'm re-posting the message I sent to my current game's mailing list during our debate on the awarding of bonus experience because I'm curious to hear how other GMs and players react to my theory on the three levels of play in an RPG.I think one of our problems here in this discussion is the eccentricity ofmy GMing style.My games run on three levels: the metatextual, the textual and themechanical. Many GMs, including some authors of D&D 3.x attempt to collapsethese levels into a single level of play. Those who seek to collapse allthree levels into the textual are considered "role players"; those who seekto collapse all three into the mechanical are sometimes pejoratively called"roll players." (For the purposes of this discussion, I am deliberately notusing the term "metagaming" which is problematic and imprecise.)Unlike most GMs, I am not interested in collapsing my games to a singlelevel; to offer an entertaining game to people with various styles of play,I try, instead, to keep these levels all operating independently of oneanother rather than organizing them into some kind of hierarchy of goodplay. Therefore, I expect my players to turn up with all three selves whenthey come to my games.I encourage and appreciate those who as players try to decipher the bigworld puzzle on a metatextual level. Everyone, regardless of theircharacter's intellectual faculties and culture should be able to participatein those process unfettered by textual and mechanical concerns of the game.I encourage and appreciate those who as players conduct their charactersin action in a credible way. Offering credible justifications for characteractions, however, is not the same as having characters act solely based onknowledge in their possession. For instance, a shaman or cleric might rushover to a character who is on the verge of death and heal her in the nick oftime because the character's player informed the caster's player that shehad only 1 hit point left; the fact that this action was decided-upon basedon a mechanical play of the game doesn't matter to me -- what matters isthat a textual justification is provided, ie. "he looked like he was aboutto pass out from blood loss." Similarly, an illiterate character mightchoose to search in a particular spot for an item the player knows is therefrom a close study of manuscripts that the cannot read; I have no problemwith the fact that this action was decided-upon based on a metatextual playof the game, provided that a post-facto justification is offered to explainhow the character decided to do this.I encourage and appreciate those who as players make maximum use of their knowledge of the rules both on their own characters and on other players'characters. Everyone, regardless of their knowledge of the rules, should beable to take advantage of tactical insights gained by those studying them.Now, to the question of experience as described in the DMG: this gets rightto the heart of why I am running a D&D game. I deliberately use the oldest,most primitive D&D experience mechanic because I want to tell a particularkind of story. Over the years, my players have become very cautious and fearengaging in violent confrontations. Essentially, I have chosen to use D&D inthe past two years because I want to tell stories that contain violence.</blockquote>

Verification