Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7385487" data-attributes="member: 42582">Sure. Those are actual things that a real person does in the real world, involving various physical things (pieces, board) understood to have a certain siginficance as game pieces.The clearest analogue in a RPG is declaring an action for your PC, and rolling dice to see whether or not the action succeeds.The biggest difference between chess and a RPG is that a RPG involves a shared fiction, which provides context for action declaration and action resolution.No. In the context of "GM-driven" RPGing, I mostly wrote about the GM reading things from, or referring to, his/her notes. It is [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] who has insistied that even in GM-driven RPGing most stuff is being made up during the course of play.This is all more-or-less as per Gygaxian dungeoneering. As I said in the OP, I think it breaks down once worlds get remotely verimilitudinous.Eg a PC goes to a baker in a moderately sized city to look for a mince pie. Does the baker have one for sale? What is the probability?At a beach, what is the probability of some driftwood being within reach?In a bar, what is the probability of someone starting a fight if a PC is rude to him/her?And do the players know these probabilities? If not, how are they meant to meaningfully declare actions for their PCs?This is an example of what I describe as "hidden" or unrevealed backstory being used to defeat player action declarations, by being treated as an aspect of the fictional positioning that determines the outcome, although the player didn't know about it.In classic dungeon play, a significant goal of play is for the players to learn this stuff - ie to learn, by means of "exploration", the content of the GM's notes. But in "living, breathing world" play I think that that sort of goal becomes much harder, as the parameters of the "exploration" task become almost completely open-ended.I think there are some non-sequiturs here.As a GM, I work hard to foster a feeling of a "living, breathing world", with a high degree of consitency and verisimilitude. My own view is that I do a reasonable job - the gameworlds of my campaigns seems as rich and evocative as most examples I read about on ENworld, for instance, and moreso than many.There is no general connection between these goals for setting, and having the setting authored by the GM in advance so that a signficant goal of play is the players learning what that is. If players enjoy play oriented around such learning, well, obviously that's their preference and their prerogative. I'm just denying that there is any special connection betwen that particular technique, and a rich and verisimilitudinous setting.</blockquote>

Verification