# Chess is not an RPG: The Illusion of Game Balance



## Morrus

RPG designer John Wick has written a lengthy article in which he tackles the subject of game balance and the definition of a roleplaying game.  One thing's for sure - he's no fan of games with equipment lists!  

http://johnwickpresents.com/games/game-designs/chess-is-not-an-rpg-the-illusion-of-game-balance/ 

I've always said that balance (or symmetry) for its own sake robs a game of flavour. Some stuff can be better than other stuff; I'm fine with that. Some choices can be better, as long as it doesn't lead to an environment in which some layers dominate a game to the exclusion of other players.  

That said, I find a lot to disagree with in this article, too.  In particular, he seems to be of the opinion that the only thing important in a roleplaying game is the roleplaying; I disagree.  Yes, it has the word "roleplaying" in its name, and I see how that can be confusing, but that's just a label.  

Roleplaying is _part_ of the fun of an RPG, and different RPGs offer different flavours of fun.  In common, yes, they all contain roleplaying to a greater or lesser extent.  Having an intricate combat system does not make a game "not an RPG" it makes it "an RPG with an intricate combat system".  

That's just my take, though. I know there are gamers of wildly varying styles and opinions on this board!


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## Olgar Shiverstone

It's a mix of good points and bad points, I think.

"RPGs are about story" -- yes, good point; I agree with that definition.

"RPGs being games where players are rewarded for making character-consistent choices;" yes, ideally -- but just because someone can take a RPG like D&D and play it with reduced roleplaying does not make D&D any less of a roleplaying game; catering to different play styles is a strength of good RPGs IMO.  RPGs should be tailorable to a group's playstyle by the group -- the author is essentially suggesting that playing an RPG in a way other than he interprets it is badwrongfun.

"In a roleplaying game balance does not matter" -- disagree strongly.  "RPG" includes "game;" games have rules and balance matters in games.  That doesn't mean the game has to be precisely and equally balanced ... but if balance does not matter, you may be roleplaying but you're not playing a roleplaying _game_.

In the end I think the author loses the forest of gaming fun in the trees of gaming rules.  Rules do not an RPG make, nor do they defeat the ability to roleplay -- it's the group's ability to come together to tell a story that makes the game.  Groups that have that dynamic can do it regardless of what set of rules you give them, and groups without it can't regardless of what game they play.

(I acknowledge that depending on the game, rules may be more in the forefront or disappear more, and one should strive to make the rules disappear in play ... but that's a somewhat different discussion.)

However, after all that I'm intrigued by the idea of Chess as a roleplaying game.  What can we do with that? Someone call Lewis Carroll ...


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## Tequila Sunrise

John Wick said:
			
		

> What matters is spotlight. Making sure each player feels their character had a significant role in the story. They had their moment in the spotlight. Or, they helped someone else have their significant moment in the spotlight.



Ah, it's the ol' "The GM's job is to ensure that everyone gets spotlight time, so balance isn't important" fallacy, in extended blog-rant form! With a big helping of implied "You're having badwrongfun" thrown in for good measure!

News at 11.


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## Rune

I don't disagree that rules that don't serve the story get in the way of doing so. I just don't think the author is accounting for _how_ the story is being told. 

Especially, rules intended to balance a game do, indeed, affect how a story plays out. In fact, they make a statement about the setting if that story. 

To use as extreme an example as I can come up with, I think the game I developed for this site's 7-day RPG contest has no rules that do not serve the story, and yet _requires_ a tight balance of the rules since the core mechanic is entirely driven by strategy (and not luck).

_Could_ it be played without roleplaying? I really don't see how?


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## billd91

Tequila Sunrise said:


> Ah, it's the ol' "The GM's job is to ensure that everyone gets spotlight time, so balance isn't important" fallacy, in extended blog-rant form! With a big helping of implied "You're having badwrongfun" thrown in for good measure!




Ah, yes, the "thing I don't like is a fallacy" fallacy. I happen to agree that the *only* form of balance that really matters in the end is spotlight balance. Everything else is just one specific game's flavor compared to another.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots

Everyone calling John Wick "the author" suggests to me that a number of posters don't realize that he's actually an accomplished game designer, albeit definitely closer to the rules-lite, story-game end of the spectrum. (He did not design, say, GURPS or Champions.)

And maybe I misread the piece last night, but I didn't see him telling you that your games that you enjoy are bad, but just that he doesn't believe most of the crunch in game systems has a lot of benefit and challenges the reader to try it his way. Even if you have different tastes, the idea of dumping rules that don't do anything for you is pretty sound advice, with a long history in RPGs. (Weapon speed, weapon type and encumbrance rules were probably skimmed over by 95+ percent of 1E players back in the day, for instance.)


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## fjw70

It's funny he doesn't considet the RPG that started the industry to be an RPG.

I think his definition of RPGs is way too narrow.


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## billd91

It's not for nothing that Wick has a reputation as a titanic ass. And I agree that his declarations of what are and are not RPGs are far too extremist. But I think he has some good points about game balance just the same. What he misses is that some of those choices (like weapon lists) can be used quite well to support role playing and story telling - all it takes is a character as interested in the gun porn as the player. And that's not at all hard to imagine.


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## GMMichael

fjw70 said:


> It's funny he doesn't considet the RPG that started the industry to be an RPG.
> I think his definition of RPGs is way too narrow.




Well, it was an entertaining read.  I'll give him credit for having something to say and trying to do it persuasively.  One of his most interesting points: if you can successfully play the game _without roleplaying_, then it's not a roleplaying game.

I have never played D&D 1, so I don't know from experience.  But, I have a suspicion that _some_ roleplaying is required.

These lines about WoW were great:

"My friend Jessie tells the story of being kicked off a roleplaying server because he was talking in character. Another friend of mine tells the story of how she was wearing “substandard” armor and equipment because “my character liked it.”"

He was definitely talking about roleplaying and games at that point of the blog, but toward the end, I think he was referring more to improvisational acting than roleplaying games.


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## Rune

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> Everyone calling John Wick "the author" suggests to me that a number of posters don't realize that he's actually an accomplished game designer, albeit definitely closer to the rules-lite, story-game end of the spectrum. (He did not design, say, GURPS or Champions.)




I can't speak for others, but _I_ was aware. 

I referred to him as "the author" because none of that was relevant to the points he was making.


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## Tequila Sunrise

billd91 said:


> Ah, yes, the "thing I don't like is a fallacy" fallacy. I happen to agree that the *only* form of balance that really matters in the end is spotlight balance. Everything else is just one specific game's flavor compared to another.



I know that when I get in a car, all that really matters in the end is getting from point A to point B. I don't need to drive super-fast like a race driver does, because racing is a different activity with different goals. I also know that if I'm driving a poorly engineered car, there's a higher chance I won't get to point B.

So yeah, engineering matters for cars and balance matters for games. Unless of course I'm an automotive enthusiast, and I _enjoy_ DYIing in the middle of my trip.


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## Tequila Sunrise

DMMike said:


> These lines about WoW were great:
> 
> "My friend Jessie tells the story of being kicked off a roleplaying server because he was talking in character. Another friend of mine tells the story of how she was wearing “substandard” armor and equipment because “my character liked it.”"



I have to admit that I mentally roll my eyes every time someone refers to WoW or Diablo as a rpg, however much I do love those games. At the very least, rping in a mmorpg is very different from rping in a ttrpg.

But overall, Wick's thoughts don't strike me as very insightful, and I certainly won't be looking for more of them, or his games.


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## fjw70

"How does this rule help me tell stories?”

I would change this to "how does this rule help my group enjoy the game."


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## Celebrim

One thing I've learned over 30 years of playing D&D, is that the famous Zeroth rule - humorously summed up as, "The GM makes all the rules." - is misnamed.   In fact, it's one of only a fairly large number of unstated rules that govern how an RPG is played and it is in fact not the most critical.   The true root and fundamental rule of RPGS, indeed perhaps the entire reason that role playing games have rules at all, is "Thou Shalt Not Be Good at Everything."   This is the rule upon which all other rules hang, and to which all other rules are subject.

This rule goes back to the simple story of RPGs, which is, if you are playing a game of Cops and Robbers, or Cowboys and Indians, or Spacemen and Aliens, or Napoleon and Wellesley, or really any other game you could be playing which has conflict, and someone says, "I shot you." or "My cavalry charge smashes your infantry square", and the other person says, "No it didn't.", how do you resolve this disagreement.   The fundamental law says, "Thou shalt not be good at everything.", and so RPGs must at some level require that each side has moments of failure and disadvantages to exploit.   Or in other words, the story cannot be allowed to be controlled entirely by one person only - not even the game master.   This is why the fundamental law precedes the zeroth law and puts it in check.   The GM can in fact make all the rules, but he must not make the rules such that the GM always wins and his forces are always good at everything.   

Or in other words, balance is the most fundamental aspect of an RPG.   When a person says, "Balance doesn't matter", it suggests to me that they neither know what an RPG is or what balance is.   

Now granted, the balance of an RPG isn't the same as the balance of chess.   RPGs are cooperative endeavors and ensuring competitive balance in an RPG isn't always foremost among your balance goals.   And success in an RPG doesn't always mean victory.   It can be the story goal of a player to not win.   Indeed, for the player who wears the hat of Game Master in traditional RPGs, not winning is very much part of his story goals.  But achieving equal access to the story ought to be among your RPG goals, and if that equal access is thwarted because one person is always good at everything and always achieves his story goals to the exclusion of all other input, then you really don't have an RPG in the first place.  What you have is some sort of writing or improvisational theater script jam session, where you put together a script and act it out but there is not really any sort of game involved.  

When you say something like "RPGs are about the story", you've said something true but not sufficient.  Lots of things are about "the story", but not all of them are RPGs.   Two role players named Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck cooperatively wrote a novel called "Leviathan Wakes" and that novel has many tropes and features that suggest its RPG heritage, and Abraham and Franck negotiated among them how the story would advance and shared that responsibility, but while this process prioritized story and was social and was cooperative and had a social contract and produced a story, the actual process of writing that novel wasn't itself playing a role-playing game.   

My feeling is that some people who with the best of intentions want to elevate RPGs to the level of art forms have got so frustrate with the relatively slow advancement we've seen in that goal, that they are ending up advocating for short cuts that amount to importing so many techniques and ideas from what works for other art forms, that they end up advocating for the destruction of the actual elements that make up an RPG in the first place.


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## Janx

I think this guy's got some valid points, but he's all over the road and he's making some major assumptions that aren't necessarily true.

I think his metric that "if you can play the game successfully with out role-playing, then it's not an RPG" is kind of useful.  It's certainly a valid test, though not absolute.

I suspect he's missing a concept that I figured out a few years back.  There's at least 2 definitions of "role playing" that are both valid in almost any RPG.

1) playing a role as in position on a team, such as Cleric or Healer.
2) playing a character with personality, individual goals etc


D&D and WoW most certainly have #1 present.  Heck, it's got to be the primary reason the Class system was created in D&D.

I don't think you HAVE to have #1 in a story-telling RPG, but I think it happens in just about any RPG.  Even Call of Cthulu has the Scholar, the Brawler, the Mechanic.  They might not have Classes, but people will make a character and fall into positions.

I get that Wick is proposing simplification of game rules.  But ironically, his proposal of abandoning Game Balance is very likely going to cause harm to his proposition of giving equal amounts of Spotlight.

Because in just about every instance of people complaining about Game Balance, it's because they aren't getting enough Spotlight.

I don't know that one drives the other, but one guy having way more power than the rest of the players tends to mean he's dominating the Spotlight.

So Game Balance does matter.  Odds are good we simply have quantified what Game Balance really is.


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## Jacob Marley

On Facebook, Benoist Poire posted a long response to Wick's blog... with Wick replying. It is worth a read. You can read it here.


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## Morrus

Jacob Marley said:


> On Facebook, Benoist Poire posted a long response to Wick's blog... with Wick replying. It is worth a read. You can read it here.




Interesting.  In his reply, John Wick confirms that he did, indeed, mean to say that D&D is not a roleplaying game: "D&D was designed to be a table top tactics simulation game. If you can successfully play the game *without* roleplaying, it can't be a roleplaying game."  But he then later says "D&D is a roleplaying game. It has rules for players choosing roles, exploring an environment with a game master who has the task of playing the antagonist to their goals."  So I'm not clear on his position.


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## Bluenose

I'm not entirely sure he's clear on his position either, given the places where he's contradicting himself.


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## Mishihari Lord

Tequila Sunrise said:


> Ah, it's the ol' "The GM's job is to ensure that everyone gets spotlight time, so balance isn't important" fallacy, in extended blog-rant form! With a big helping of implied "You're having badwrongfun" thrown in for good measure!
> 
> News at 11.




That's not a fallacy, it's simple fact.  I've run many, many games with wide power spreads where the players still all had plenty of fun.  Or look at games like Ars Magica where party power imbalances are built right into the system.  Somehow a lot of people still love and play the game anyway.  I never really heard balance whines until the folks started trying to bring MMO ideas into RPGs.  That's fine for MMO's; balance really is important there -  there's no DM.  But for RPG's it's just not.  I've seen far more fun removed from RPGs in the name of balance then has ever been added.


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## Dausuul

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> Everyone calling John Wick "the author" suggests to me that a number of posters don't realize that he's actually an accomplished game designer...



So what? He's the author of the article under discussion, therefore it is appropriate to refer to him as "the author" in this discussion. Anyone who's read the article knows he's a game designer, since he is at pains to point it out in the very first paragraph. I simply don't see why this is relevant to what I think of his article. And what I think of his article is... as soon as you start saying Dungeons and Dragons (pre-5E) was not a role-playing game, you need to stop and rethink your definition, because something is seriously off here.

It's a bit hard to respond to an article which is, to put it charitably, rambling. But Poire's reply hit the nail on the head: Wick's argument follows the Forge conceit that an RPG should focus intently on a single mode of play. This misses the point of games like D&D. Such games are toolkits that support multiple modes of play, not just between different campaigns but _within the same campaign._ They allow the casual gamer, the hardcore tactician, the thespian roleplayer, and the storyteller to sit at the same table and play together. Considering how hard it can be to find any players at all, this is absolutely essential for an RPG. A game that is "good enough" for everyone in my gaming group is one that I can play. A game which is "perfect" for me but "boring as heck" for the rest of the gang is one that will sit on my shelf. (Furthermore, what I myself want out of D&D varies from day to day and even hour to hour! Sometimes I want in-depth roleplaying. Other times I just want to whack some monsters.)

To the specific concern of numerical balance and details like rate of fire: It is of course easy to overdo this stuff, and many RPGs do. 5E's decision to streamline the rules and avoid getting too caught up in minutiae was wise. But remember that _what the rules punish, players will avoid; what the rules reward, players will do._ If the rules make no distinction between sword damage and teacup damage, one effect is that you may see teacup-wielders adventuring alongside sword-wielders. More importantly, the sword-wielder's behavior also changes. If confronted with a guard who demands she set aside her weapons before having tea with the king and queen, she will do so without a qualm, reasoning that she can simply use her teacup if a fight breaks out.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well, it depends. Do you want PCs to act like they're in a cinematic world where people kick butt with teacups? Or do you want them to act like they're in a grittier world, where a hero with a teacup dies to a guard with a sword? The rules determine which they will do.

The pursuit of balance is simply a recognition of the truth that players do what is rewarded and avoid what is punished. Wick says it should be about time in the spotlight rather than mechanical balance--but mechanical balance is the system's contribution to helping the GM allocate spotlight time! Take 3E's CoDzilla as an example. If you were a naive player in 3E, you might create a fighter, thinking that melee combat would be your time in the spotlight. Then you discover that the cleric can fight better than you _and_ do other stuff too. Your "natural" spotlight time has just been hogged. The GM must go out of her way to compensate. If the fighter and cleric were better balanced, the GM would not have to work as hard to make sure everyone gets spotlight time--it would arise naturally from gameplay. The fighter would shine in combat, the cleric would shine elsewhere.


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## Janx

Jacob Marley said:


> On Facebook, Benoist Poire posted a long response to Wick's blog... with Wick replying. It is worth a read. You can read it here.




i like that guy's counter-arguments.

I like a lot of different aspects of D&D.  So if I had an RPG that was finely tuned for story-telling and it disposed of other parts of D&D, I might not be happy with that game, even though i favor story-telling as an outcome of playing and RPG.

I'd be worried that a game that had no equipment lists, and allowed for teacups and thumbs to commonly be used as weapons would actually detract from setting integrity.  Suddenly, any silly thing could be a weapon.


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## Tequila Sunrise

Mishihari Lord said:


> That's not a fallacy, it's simple fact.  I've run many, many games with wide power spreads where the players still all had plenty of fun.  Or look at games like Ars Magica where party power imbalances are built right into the system.  Somehow a lot of people still love and play the game anyway.  I never really heard balance whines until the folks started trying to bring MMO ideas into RPGs.  That's fine for MMO's; balance really is important there -  there's no DM.  But for RPG's it's just not.  I've seen far more fun removed from RPGs in the name of balance then has ever been added.



Ah yes, because every concern that you don't personally share is a whine. And hey, I love to hear ttrpgers blame perceived problems on other wildly successful game mediums. It's _so_ hipster, and makes me _so_ proud to be a ttrpger.

Anyhow, if you had bothered to glance at the second page, you would have noticed my reply to a reply that could have been a close paraphrase of yours:



Tequila Sunrise said:


> I know that when I get in a car, all that really matters in the end is getting from point A to point B. I don't need to drive super-fast like a race driver does, because racing is a different activity with different goals. I also know that if I'm driving a poorly engineered car, there's a higher chance I won't get to point B.
> 
> So yeah, engineering matters for cars and balance matters for games. Unless of course I'm an automotive enthusiast, and I _enjoy_ DYIing in the middle of my trip.



To expand my analogy a bit, I'm sure that people got around in model-Ts, and I know that gamers manage to have fun with extremely imbalanced games. Doesn't mean that an engineer should aspire to antique automobiles, or that game writers should aspire to...sharpie-smudged rulebooks, or whatever it is that Wick is holding up as the platonic ideal of all that is good and holy in rpg-dom.


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## Celebrim

Mishihari Lord said:


> That's not a fallacy, it's simple fact.




We'll have to disagree about which facts are obvious then.



> I've run many, many games with wide power spreads where the players still all had plenty of fun.  Or look at games like Ars Magica where party power imbalances are built right into the system.




But those two statements don't necessarily support the claim that balance is unimportant because the GM can ensure everyone has fun. 



> Somehow a lot of people still love and play the game anyway.




I would argue that they love and play the game because either the game itself addresses story balance in some fashion (the 'troupe' system) or else because the game master or group addresses the game systems lack of story balance by imposing a lot of unwritten house rules on the system.  When you examine these games in play, you find that characters disadvantaged by power achieve story importance via unwritten character powers that the GM imposes and respects.   For example, you may observe that per the results of play, some seemingly weak character has figuratively written on his character sheet something to the effect of "If it is funny, it works." or "If a favorable coincidence happens, it happens to me."   Or often you have an unwritten rule like, "If a player isn't having fun, the GM throws him a bone."

Being unwritten components of the system, does not make them less important aspects of play at a particular table.  It just makes them more difficult to translate between tables.

In other words, the GM is often desperately creating balance where none otherwise exists.   Even then, that's not always sufficient.  Consider how Ars Magica evolved and fleshed out the notion of a grog as a viable player character to make a player who had took a grog role have more interesting things to do and a greater role in the story.  Or you may have a game triumphing despite its rules, not because of them, only to find that in the long run its depending only on novelty and continual game reboots as people keep trying to have the game they want to have, not the game that they are getting.



> I never really heard balance whines until the folks started trying to bring MMO ideas into RPGs.




Just because you personally don't have the experience, doesn't mean that your experience is indicative of anything on a wider scale.  One of the main reasons I have found all of White Wolf's story teller games utterly dysfunctional in play is that they had no balance.  A player that created his character in an optimal fashion could utterly dominate play, and given the dark themes of the setting and the conflicts implied by it, this amounted to utterly dominating the other players.  This required basically that non-optimal characters built primarily from a story perspective have stories that involved them being abused, dominated, and forced into submission of characters with more raw power.   LARPs in particular had this sort of problem in spades and required extremely tight control by the referees over what sort of characters which though legal could be allowed into play.  People had a lot of fun, but everything was always balanced on the knife edge of destruction and only herculean efforts by story tellers or story telling staff kept everything from going off the rails.  Things only got worse when it became usual for players to want to play characters from different source books.  Even when players were generally cooperative, White Wolf stories tend to get undermined by the lack of balance and the fact that the balance (such as it is) isn't interesting.   For that matter, I had even more extreme problems with Amber diceless gaming for the exact same reasons.  

Honestly, if you never heard of balance problems prior to recent comparison with MMO's, then I can only conclude your primary experience of role playing was with a small group of close friends whose unspoken social contract establishes base rules for how story will be shared regardless of system. 



> But for RPG's it's just not.  I've seen far more fun removed from RPGs in the name of balance then has ever been added.




This vague anecdote doesn't inspire confidence, and in any event, it's just an anecdote.   I would say the exact opposite.  Virtually every time I've seen a session move on the scale from 'meh' to 'unfun', violation of the Fundamental Law has been the core issue.   Rules can be meh.  Stories can be virtually nonexistent and if existent make pulp fiction look classy, coherent, and well framed, but if you have a player who with or without the blessings of the rules violates the fundamental rule "Thou Shalt Not Be Good At Everything", then your game is crap. 

Going a bit further into my assertion, I honestly believe that it's the lack of this precise game component that is responsible for older children and certainly adults eventually giving up on the notion of role playing as a pastime.   All small children naturally role play.  The way small children get away with it is that they aren't actually playing together, but playing beside each other.  Contradictions with each other's story and incoherence and continual changes in the fictional positioning and the fact that the story doesn't really advance doesn't bother small children. Eventually as they get older and their intellects mature, and their social skills and ambitions increase, and their imaginations soar, the frustrations and arguments as players jockey for theme, fictional positioning, story direction, and ultimately rank in the social hierarchy of players drives people away from such pastime.  What's missing is precisely balance.  It's balance that made RPing into a something adults could do together.   And the reasons and ways White Wolf campaigns in my experience tended to break down were precise mirrors of how elementary school age RPGs tended to break down, precisely because the systems actually failed to assist with balance sufficiently.


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## Tequila Sunrise

Jacob Marley said:


> On Facebook, Benoist Poire posted a long response to Wick's blog... with Wick replying. It is worth a read. You can read it here.



Poire is much more coherent than Wick, and makes some good points.



			
				Benoist Poire said:
			
		

> The richness of role-playing games comes from the fact that the concept is hard to pin down. The success of Dungeons & Dragons comes in part from the fact it appeals to different tastes and play styles, that it can be a different thing to different people around a game table. It isn't a “board game” or a “storytelling game” or any of those things. It's a role-playing game, which implies all these different bits and pieces of game design inherited from different types of games, war games, board games, many different games, all mashed together to create a set of tools that inspires people and helps them come up with the worlds of their own imagination.



I like this one in particular. I've been known to say that D&D's success is in part thanks to the same thing that has made the Bible successful: Appeal to a wide and diverse audience. And Poire nails it much more eloquently than I do.


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## Sword of Spirit

I still haven't written my essay(s), but I think the author misses the same thing that virtually everyone does. 

There is a difference between an activity of role-_playing_ and a role-playing_ game._

Many "role-playing games" are not, in fact, "games" at all.


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## DaveMage

The article really seems to be much ado about nothing - in that after reading it, my reaction is...nothing.  I can see how his point would be relevant in one context - if you want to create a story-based RPG, then don't worry about game-balancing mechanics.  Beyond that, I'm not sure it's really worthy of discussion - especially in a D&D context.  It's just advice.


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## Bochi

Wick's assumption that a role-playing game is primarily about story-telling is dubious. One could easily get up a counter-argument that a story-telling game is not a role-playing game. One of the features of RPG's that old schoolers in particular bang on about is that the story emerged out of the play, rather than driving the play: the sandbox imposes an environment, and the story is what the characters did in it.

D&D has strong wargame simulation roots but very rapidly it becomes a simulation of being a thief, mage, adventurer, hero, elf etc. Celebrim's rule "Thou shalt not be good at everything" is written all over early games from D&D to Traveller and Runequest: even things like alignment systems are ways of restricting activity while encouraging role-play: you have to find a reason not to do the optimal thing that is character based (again, it's not about story-telling but about role-playing regardless of the story you might want to tell). And if 1e/2e is being singled out for being not-RPG, I am not sure what the rules in 1e penalizing players who act out of role, or the xp system in 2e for rewarding actions taken in role (casters score for casting, fighters score for fighting, thieves score for thieving) are doing if they are not there to enforce a degree of role-playing.


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## occam

DMMike said:


> I think he was referring more to improvisational acting than roleplaying games.




Agreed. If I'm pretending to be someone I'm not, thinking through imaginary situations under circumstances I will never experience, how am I not playing a role, whether or not I'm speaking in character, or making suboptimal decisions for character reasons, or whatever else encompasses "roleplaying" in the author's view? If you're pretending to be a dwarf barbarian, or an investigator of the supernatural, or an ace star pilot, you're _playing_ a _role_ in a _game_. The author's definition of "roleplaying" is far too narrow, and is at best a subset of what is traditionally meant by the term as used in RPGs. You can talk about what that is, and about how different games promote it or don't, but you can't legitimately claim it as the universal meaning of "roleplaying".


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## Doctor Futurity

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> Everyone calling John Wick "the author" suggests to me that a number of posters don't realize that he's actually an accomplished game designer, albeit definitely closer to the rules-lite, story-game end of the spectrum. (He did not design, say, GURPS or Champions.)
> 
> And maybe I misread the piece last night, but I didn't see him telling you that your games that you enjoy are bad, but just that he doesn't believe most of the crunch in game systems has a lot of benefit and challenges the reader to try it his way. Even if you have different tastes, the idea of dumping rules that don't do anything for you is pretty sound advice, with a long history in RPGs. (Weapon speed, weapon type and encumbrance rules were probably skimmed over by 95+ percent of 1E players back in the day, for instance.)




Some people are reacting precisely because they know John Wick and what he's written before. The article talks about a lot of stuff in a "this is bad" context and even includes examples that are both counter-intuitive to my sense of fun but also indicative that his style of game is decidedly different than the form I enjoy. Nothing wrong with that; I just take umbrage at the idea that his form/style is superior to mine.


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## Paraxis

I disagree with pretty much all of what he said.

Balance is the most important thing to me in a roleplaying game.

He seems to be very story driven or narrativist when it comes to playing, I am more about the game part.  There are plenty of narratives fantasy games he can play instead of D&D, like Dungeonworld, but he uses the whole article to tell people they are having bad wrong fun.

If this was a forum post instead of a someone blog, I would think they were just trolling.


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## billd91

occam said:


> If you're pretending to be a dwarf barbarian, or an investigator of the supernatural, or an ace star pilot, you're _playing_ a _role_ in a _game_.




Depends. If you're using that dwarf barbarian primarily as a game token obeying game rules rather than making decisions from the character's POV, I'd buy the argument you're not actively engaged in the act of role-playing. It doesn't mean you aren't engaging in one of the activities that is part of playing a role-playing game. Most RPGs encompass more activities than just role-playing.


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## trancejeremy

Come to think of it, hasn't there been an awful lot of fiction and stories written about chess? Not about chess players, but the chess pieces themselves? Through the Looking Glass for instance. And at least a few songs (that one by Yes comes to mind).

If RPGs are only about story involving its characters, then I think Chess could arguably be an RPG.


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## Uder

John Wick is always right. If you don't believe me, just ask him.


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## dd.stevenson

I've found over the years that the probability of me enjoying a given designer's game, has no correlation with the probability of me agreeing with their opinions. Take Gygax: love his game, wish he'd have kept his opinions to himself. Another example: love Heinsoo's insights and thoughts; wish he'd never touched the D&D brand.

Which is good news for John Wick, I suppose.


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## pemerton

I think that Wick's conception of an RPG is too narrow.

He is correct to compare a module like Tomb of Horrors or White Plume Mountain to a boardgame: like a boardgame, the goal of play in those classic adventures is to win, to "beat the dungeon".

But in my view he is wrong to _identify_ that sort of D&D play with boardgaming. Resolution in ToH or WPM is very different from resolution in a game like Talisman. In D&D, unlike in a boardgame, there is a _shared fiction_, and it is relevant to action resolution.

It is relevant to action resolution in two ways: it opens up the possibility of players making novel moves (eg "I stick my 10' pole through the mist"); and the GM is meant to have reference to it in adjudicating those moves (eg the reason the ziggurate room floods in WPM if the walls are shattered is not because the game rules say so, but because the ziggurate tiers are full of water, and when you shatter a container's sides the watter in it will fall down and form a pool).

I think it is this role of shared fiction in action resolution that makes a game an RPG. D&D has this; WoW and similar computer games don't.

Whether or not a group wants to use the shared fiction of an RPG to _tell a story_ is a further issue - that's a subdivision of tastes within the space of RPGing.

The real issue with 4e, that Wick only gets at obliquely, is that for many RPGers it is not clear how the shared fiction matters to action resolution. That is why they see 4e as just an intricate boardgame. (Those of us who love 4e as an RPG, conversely, _do_ see how the shared fiction matters to resolution in that system.)

Also, for those who want to read an essay along similar lines to Wick, but thought out in more detail, and a bit less prescriptive, here is a link to Christopher Kubasik's interactive toolkit.

In the first of the 4 essays he makes a point that relates to Wick's examples of thumbs and tea-cups:

The narrative of most roleplaying games is tactical simulation fiction. This style of story revolves around weapons and split second decisions made during combat. Such stories discourage flamboyant behavior though flamboyant behavior is often a vital part of the fiction that the games try to model - because better combat modifiers are gained with conservative tactics.​
One obvious feature of 4e was its atempt to encourage rather than discourage flamboyant behaviour. In part it did this by substituting "player fiat" mechanics (eg the notorious Come and Get It) for mechanics basesd on simulating the processes taking place within the fiction. Whether 4e's mechanics preserve an important place, in action resolution, for the shared fiction, or whether they replace RPG-style action resolution with boardgame resolution, has been debated in endless threads about prone oozes. While I think that Wick's conception of RPGing is too narrow, and also think that 4e _is_ an RPG, I think that Wick (and Kubasik) touch on matters that are relevant to understanding the reception of 4e in the RPGing community.



occam said:


> Agreed. If I'm pretending to be someone I'm not, thinking through imaginary situations under circumstances I will never experience, how am I not playing a role



Unless the imagined situation matters to resolving your action declarations for your PC (which are your "moves" in the game), then you are not RPGing. When I play Talisman I'm pretending to be someone I'm not, and I think through an imaginary situation, but it's not an RPG because the shared fiction doesn't affect action resolution, which is resolved simpy by reference to the game mechanics.



Tequila Sunrise said:


> Ah, it's the ol' "The GM's job is to ensure that everyone gets spotlight time, so balance isn't important" fallacy, in extended blog-rant form! With a big helping of implied "You're having badwrongfun" thrown in for good measure!



I'm not sure that Wick has in mind, by "balance", exactly what you do.

For instance, should having a blind PC be something that you pay for at character creation? Or something that earns you bonus points? In Burning Wheel if you want to be blind, or have a nemesis, you have to _pay_, because those features of your PC will tend to make you a bigger focus of events at the table.

I think in denigrating game balance Wick is meaning something like "effectiveness when it comes to typical events of action resolution" is not the main thing. In some games, though, where spotlight is determined primarily via effectivenes in action resolution", then mechanical balance might be the best way to manage spotlight sharing. I'm not sure that Wick is meaning to deny that. (Though such games might not fit within his overly-narrow concpeption of what is an RPG.)


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## Celebrim

So, a few more thoughts.

Wick introduces his essay by drawing on two narratives from other media to emphasis his point.

He never considers the irony of this.

The problem with using a movie as an example of role-playing technique is that well, a movie is not a role-playing game.

The two scenes in question are basic Bad Ass Establishing Character Moments.  Tons of movies have them.  We could probably list hundreds.  They are a very lazy form of short hand, and the two he's chosen are just about as lazy as examples of writing as I've ever seen.   The basic idea of the scene in it's most stereotypical form is the character is subjected to disrespect from a mook, which allows the character to display to the mook just how far beneath them they actually are.    Some 2nd level thug decides to pick a fight with a protagonist or main villain, and as a result gets their clock cleaned.  Often the hero will voluntarily choose some handicap - arm tied behind back, blindfolded, refuses to actually punch back, just fights with a tea cup, etc. - and yet the bully ends up destroyed anyway.  In many movies, you see parallel Bad Ass Establishing Character Moments setting up a great clash between two characters down the line.

D&D or any other system that tries to simulate a reality in general handles this fight just fine.  If a 9th level character (or a 20th level character) fights a 1st level character, it doesn't really matter what weapon the 9th level character is wielding.   The high level character just destroys the low level character without really expending much resources.   So a set up scene of this sort plays out the same provided you set up the scenario in the rules according to the assumptions of the scene.  

The bigger question is "Why?"  Why did Riddick use a tea cup?  The answer is more on the meta-level than anything else.   Riddick uses a tea cup to show the audience that Riddick can kill people with a tea cup.   And here we see where the example starts falling apart.  Riddick has no free will.   He's an animaton of the author.   Additionally, Riddick can't actually lose.  The outcome is preordained because the story teller has decided what the outcome is supposed to be.   Riddick is supposed to win easily.   Riddick in fact is risking nothing by using a tea cup.  This is because Riddick, for the purposes of the story, is good at everything.   He doesn't really need to share the story, and since the audience only passively watches the story they share in the story to the same degree that they can share in the story - as passive witnesses of the story teller's magic.  

Anyone who is envious of this situation should get out of game mastering and engage in the story teller's craft in an established medium.   

In a game, a high level character generally would only use a tea cup if no more powerful option presented itself - a situation which could be arranged in a scenario, but which doesn't regularly occur without lots of game master force.  This is because the character in a role playing doesn't know how the scene is going to finish and is risking something.   In this sense, the narratives of a role playing game - even if they are occurring in a high fantasy world - are more grounded in reality than the narratives of an action adventure movie.   It's not that D&D characters can't use tea cups to kill someone.  It's just that, as in the real world, when you are in a situation of mortal danger where there is real risk, you prefer to use a less improvisational weapon.

And note, when you take a protagonist out of these bad ass character establishing scenes and pit them against a real villain, you don't have them fight with just tea cups and one thumb.  Because the whole point of this sort of establishing scene is to establish that if Riddick needs to use a real weapon to face his opponent, then his opponent must also be equally epic and awe inspiring.   Of course, in cinema, using lazy writing like this, you'll often fail to pull that off successfully.   Both the thumb and the tea cup strike me as really lame attempts to achieve a moment of awesome without the requisite character building.

Incidentally, any game system with any sort of martial arts could pull of secret techniques like fighting with just one thumb. 

RPG's don't need this sort of crap.  Anyone that plays an RPG for any length of time gets a very well honed notion of just what exactly is awesome and what is mundane.  In fact, I dare say that having played RPGs is part of what makes a paint by numbers scene attempting to establish bad ass so incredibly unimpressive to me.  You don't show off how cool a character is by having them beat up a zero.

To give you the idea how strongly you can write an actual bad ass establishing scene, two parallel scenes occur in my all time favorite movie and they look nothing at all like what you'd expect.  That movie is Chariots of Fire.   The first is Harold Abraham race against the clock, and then later Eric Liddel's run where he picks himself up answers it fully.    

Those sort of scenes that can occur in RPGs, but they don't occur just because you want them to happen.   You just play, and they do.  Sometimes you achieve greatness.  Sometimes you fail and have to try again.  I'm not sure there is a sentence in the essay I don't want to refute.  But, at a summary level, it's a big problem that Wick thinks you can just copy technique from a non-interactive medium.   But it's probably even more damning to his argument that he picks really weak stories to highlight as the sort you'd want to emulate.   Earlier, I questioned whether Wick understood what a role-playing game actually was.  Now, thinking about it, I wonder if I should have questioned whether Wick knew what a story was, and if not, whether he was really qualified to be throwing out things on the grounds that he believed they didn't support story.

Or to put a finer point on it, if in a system a tea cup does 1d12 damage - just like every other weapon - what story point is actually being made and reinforced by using a tea cup as a weapon?  The whole point of the scene is that the audience knows from experience with the system (in this case something akin to 'the real world) that a tea cup is a substandard weapon.  If the audience knows no weapon is substandard, the audience probably finds the thing even more ridiculous and pretentious than it is.  At least in a system with a weapon table, which the real world definitively has with a degree of fine resolution far exceeding any game system, you'd have an excuse for, "All I have is a tea cup, so that's what I'm using."   In a game without weapon tables, does the lack really make for better stories?   A game without a weapon table makes a tea cup the equal of a bazooka - all the time and not just in those establishing scenes.


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## Jester David

I have a huge love/hate relationship with this article. 

I agree with so much of it. If you're not roleplaying then you're just not playing an RPG. And if the game doesn't encourage roleplaying, then it's also not an RPG. My go-to examples are _Chess_ and _Battletech_, as you can freely roleplay in both. RPing during the battles of _Battletech_ does not mean it's not a tactical miniatures board game. 
And balance is arguably overrated. 

However, I think the author goes a bit too far to the other extreme. Rules and mechanics have a place. If you jettison everything, you're also not playing a roleplaying game, you're just doing some shared storytelling. If _Fiasco_ is crunchy compared to what you're playing, you might also not be playing an RPG.

The part that really stood out was this:


> I don’t want you to think I just get rid of combat mechanics. On the contrary, for Vampire, I usually get rid of that whole Social trait thing entirely. Why? Because this is a roleplaying game, and that means you roleplay. You don’t get to say, “I have a high charisma because I’m not very good at roleplaying.”
> 
> My response to that is, “Then, you should get better at it. And you won’t get any better by just rolling dice. You’ll only get better by roleplaying.”



That passage just irked me. 

See, the mechanics are there to let you play something you're not. You can play the genius and the mechanics will pick up the slack in terms of knowledge. You can play a gun nut and the mechanics will enable you. And you can play a charming smooth talking quick-witted James Bond type character and the mechanics will have your back.

I can roleplay a social character, but only so far. It's not my skill as a roleplayer that's lacking, but my social skills in general. Hey, unsurprisingly, I'm a nerd. I also not entirely neurotypical and have some problems with social cues. I find being around people tiring. Exhausting. I can't always be social, I can't always give my A-game. And it's nice for the mechanics to be able to help me out when I'm just not able. 

I've played with a LOT of people. Years of public play. Weekly games at a local game store. And not everyone is great at being social or quick witted with the verbal responses. It's unfair to just deny them the opportunity to even play that type of character because they're lacking. That's like telling someone they can't play the fighter because they can't swing a sword. 

Half of roleplaying is being something you're not, being someone you can't be. If you can only roleplay to your strengths then that aspect is lost.


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## Jester David

Janx said:


> I'd be worried that a game that had no equipment lists, and allowed for teacups and thumbs to commonly be used as weapons would actually detract from setting integrity.  Suddenly, any silly thing could be a weapon.



I imagine this would be FATE.
Give a character the features/hook of "Everything's a Weapon in my Hands" and watch them Jackie Chan all over their enemies.


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## Mercurius

"endless threads about prone oozes" - a sentence fragment from @_*pemerton*_'s post. 

I just had to laugh, thinking how the vast majority of human beings would have no idea WTF this referred to.

And so it is with Wick's post. While there's some good advice within it, such as cutting out extraneous bits from game mechanics that serve no purpose for _your _game, I was left with the image of a bunch of jazz scholars arguing about where the line between real jazz and fake jazz lies, or wine enthusiasts about what level "fine wine" begins, or watch aficionados about which brands make proper timepieces.

Why not let the people define their own experience? Again, it is not that Mr. Wick doesn't have some good things to say, its that he gets lost in his own mental palate, losing sight of the fact that the point of _all _games is to have fun, and the point of _role-_playing games is to have fun while playing a role. If you're having fun _and _you're playing a role of some kind (playing a role = role-playing) then its a role-playing game. 

Now where Mr. Wick gets confused, I think, is that he has a certain bar about what constitutes "playing a role." For many, it is simply "My fighter swings his sword" - and for that person that is enough. Why can't Mr. Wick accept that? It might not be fine wine, but _that's ok - _it is still playing a role, and presumably fun. Thus, again: playing a role + having fun = role-playing game.

I tend to prefer spectrum models rather than either/or bifurcations. The problem of the latter being that everyone is going to have a different opinion as to where the bifurcation is made. I've openly criticized World of Warcraft and other MMOs for being simulative rather than imaginative, but in a spectrum model they have their place, even if it is "far to the right." It seems clear that Mr. Wick's bifurcation is much narrower than almost anyone who has ever played an RPG, and really more than only a handful of avant garde game designers and Forge devotees. I say, let them have their in-crowd distinctions and definitions, and the rest of us can can continue playing role-playing games in the manner that we most enjoy.


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## Celebrim

Jester Canuck said:


> I imagine this would be FATE.
> Give a character the features/hook of "Everything's a Weapon in my Hands" and watch them Jackie Chan all over their enemies.




It could be a D20 game as well.  You could take a feat with suitable prerequisites called, "Everything's a Weapon in my Hands", which caused you to suffer no penalties for using an improvised weapon and allowed you to attack with any improvised weapon you could lift and hold as if it was an animated object.  Viola, I can kill with tea cups, pencils, step ladders, and towels and pretty much anything else you can grab in the environment while performing cool stunts like 'bind', 'constrict', 'disarm', 'sunder' and whatever else you can think of appropriate to the object.   Then maybe you can take another feat called 'The Riddle of Steel' that turns any weapon you wield into a magic weapon with an enhancement bonus to hit and damage, so now you can smash a tea cup over the head of a gargoyle and kill it.  And so on and so forth.  

The point is that if you want a particular sort of story outcome, you provide resources for it.  In general though, acquiring those resources is balanced against whatever cool things you didn't acquire and everyone gets spotlight within their particular shtick.  The things you can do are awesome precisely because not just any character could do them.


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## Celebrim

Jester Canuck said:


> That passage just irked me.




Just one?  I could write a book length response to all the things that irked me about that essay.  I've seldom seen such a dense field of flame bait.



> I can roleplay a social character, but only so far. It's not my skill as a roleplayer that's lacking, but my social skills in general. Hey, unsurprisingly, I'm a nerd. I also not entirely neurotypical and have some problems with social cues. I find being around people tiring. Exhausting. I can't always be social, I can't always give my A-game. And it's nice for the mechanics to be able to help me out when I'm just not able.




While I don't agree with you that social and physical skills within a game can ever be handled in the same way, because the mind of the player is present in the shared imaginary space in a way his body is not, I otherwise sympathize with what you are saying here.

The compromise that has always worked for me is to insist that the player provide the content of his social propositions in character, but to judge the response to that content based on a combination of the fictional positioning and the social game mechanics.

So, you stutter out whatever you say, and once I get the gist of it and have enough of an idea how the NPC would respond to your content, then I'll judge what sort of social interaction you are making - deception, reasoning, intimidation, etc. - and ask for an appropriate skill check.  The difficulty of the skill check will be slightly modified by the context and suitability of the content.   For example, a man who cares for his children will have the check modified if your content refers to his relationship with his children, and the outcome of the proposition whether success or failure will depend on the combination of your content and the NPC's character.  

If your character tends to have high social skills, however awkward your personal social skills are, in game there will be a tendency for people to like, respect, and perhaps fear your character.  Your stuttering, stammering, blushing, long windedness, shyness, and so forth doesn't get translated into the shared imaginary world unless it is suitable to the character.  Conversely, no matter how charismatic you may be personally, if your character lacks the same traits, then everything you say in character will tend to be seen in the worst possible light in the shared imaginary space.  

And this happens precisely because that's what the rules say will happen.   Now, it still can be that you'll fail repeatedly in social scenarios because you deliver IC all sorts of inappropriate content - japes when its not suited, threats that are ill-advised, lies when the truth would serve you better, and so forth.  But that's the same as choosing to open the wrong doors or failing to adopt the right tactics in a battle.  And, regardless, the rules will tend to mitigate your bad decisions in the same way that a fighter of extraordinary ability doesn't need to be quite as much of a tactician.  

However, I always insist on making a person speak IC, both because it makes for a more enjoyable game, and because I find that its good practice and tends to increase the player's 'skill points'.


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## Emirikol

I prefer a game that is 50/50 roleplaying / boardgame. So sue me.
If I wanted to sit around and tell stories 100%, I'd go hang out at the old folks' home.

John is shortsighted in that he implies that it is badwrongfun to mix the two.  Games and game sessions are more than one thing to each player.  I'd say a percentage of each.

Here's my primary game group from a rough estimation of how much they like to use a game to Roleplay or Boardgame during any given session:
Me:  60 roleplayer/40game-balance-monkey
B: 25 rpg/75 boardgamer
J: 40/60
S: 80/20
R: 35/65

Another thought on this matter:
I remember when I was part of a elitist group of people who thought that people who didn't play my way were P.O.S's.  I still have a twinge of that when I go to a game store and a fellow gamer proceeds to explain to me how to break the pathfinder rules to make some really statistically amazing character..so, I still knee jerk ask, "so what makes him interesting or better outside of his statistics?"  I always get that horrified look like I was not part of the pod-people (reference to Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie).

_ ..then I relax a little and recall that this person standing in front of me has the potential to be a friend and that I don't need to crap all over his fun._ I've learned to say what a neat idea that is that he thought it out like that and ask what kind of world he likes to play in and if he likes any other games.

I've had a lot more fun meeting people when I hear what kind of game they like to play.  I might not invite them to any of my groups, but I don't feel the need to be some kind of elitist a-hole either by telling them they're not a REAL roleplayer b/c they might like to start with the stats first.

I commend the author on his article.  It gets people talking and he admits that he is in the 'in progress' of his definitions. 

Best gaming to the author and to you all!

Jay H



....


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## mouselim

Essentially, I agree that RP definitely doesn't equate balancing the game. In fact, I felt that the designers need to balance the game stems from the need to play the game as a...game (computer, console, MMO, board gaming, etc other than pen-and-paper RP) without the RP.

That's why I'm sad that 4e when into that direction. When I was blasting 4e five years ago, I took a lot (and I meant a lot) of heat and hate...guess what happened five years later? Yet, it is happening again in 5e (to a lesser degree). Again, the designers try to balance, try to give better resources (healing system like Diablo?!) and better hits (even a goblin has a +4 hit?!) and limitless cantrip spells at-will that increases in power with levels?! Sad...they never learn and again, I'm taking heat and hate from my honest viewpoints again. Folks are saying there aren't that much noise in 5e as before but guess what? It's because most who left during 4e episode  haven't return or didn't bother to venture into D&D again.

However, to Mr Wicks, game rules are there for a reason too. A rule that doesn't contribute to RP doesn't mean that it is not required. It's not about balancing or nitpicking on details but it is to create a structure.

Take a classic example of weapon speed.

Riddick takes a cup to attack an opponent wielding a massive axe. Well, firstly he doesn't have a weapon on hand. Secondly, he is a very skilled warrior (assume he has a +10 to hit with a strength bonus of +3) but he doesn't have a proper weapon on hand. Thirdly, he knows that he will not survive one hit from that axe and he needs speed to critically take down his opponent.

The player turns to his DM and said, "Ok, what's the weapon speed of the cup?"

DM replied, "Well, I'll give it a one."

Both DM and player rolls initiative and gets the same result after Dexterity modifiers.

Player smiled happily. "Great! Good choice that Riddick uses the cup and the weapon speed makes the difference. Riddick has two attacks per round. I'm going to smash the cup on his face, targeting his eye so that I partially blind him. What's my to-hit?"

DM thought for a moment before replying. "Ok, interesting situation. Since Riddick is trying to target a specific part of the body and a small target at that, I'll take the rules penalty to attack a tiny creature. Riddick will suffer a -4 to hit." -- I cannot remember what's the penalty but let's assume it.

Player is excited and replied, "Cool. I'll roll with a +8 bonus after taking into consideration the penalty."

Player rolls and scores a hit.

"Aha!" The player proclaims excitedly. "What's the expected damage from the cup? Did the cup cuts his eye? Is he blinded in one eye?"

The DM holds up his hand to stall the onslaught of questions.

"Hold, wait a minute. Ok, cup will deal 1d2 damage with strength bonus. Yes, the giant's eye is cut but he is not blinded but since blood is oozing from his wound, he is partially impaired in his vision till he clears it."

Player takes a D4 and rolls and gets a 2. Adding his strength, he deals 5 damage to the giant.

"Ok, for the second attack, Riddick will hold on to one of the piece and attempt to slash the shrapnel across the giant's throat, hopefully killing it."

DM mused and replied. "Ok, that sharp piece from the ceramic cup will be like a dagger. It will deal 1D4 damage. Apply the same penalty since Riddick is targeting a specific area of the giant's body. I'll add an additional +3 damage if Riddick hits."

The player rolls and scores a hit. He rolls on the D4 and scores a 4 for a total of 10 damage, slaying the giant even before the giant can react. 

In essence, the rules frame the structure, it doesn't defeat role-playing. However, if the rules are used different to create a different experience of play, then it takes role-playing out or diminishes it as players are veered towards playing the game differently.


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## Mishihari Lord

So I just read read the article and the biggest problem with it is that Wick is making two major points and arguing them as if they're the same thing.  Point A is mechanics shouldn't matter in an RPG.  I strongly disagree - system matters.  Point B is that balance is unimportant - and I agree with this one.  While Point A does indeed imply Point B, the converse is not true, and he makes a mess of the arguments by lumping the two together.


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## mouselim

Mishihari Lord said:


> So I just read read the article and the biggest problem with it is that Wick is making two major points and arguing them as if they're the same thing.  Point A is mechanics shouldn't matter in an RPG.  I strongly disagree - system matters.  Point B is that balance is unimportant - and I agree with this one.  While Point A does indeed imply Point B, the converse is not true, and he makes a mess of the arguments by lumping the two together.




Damn! How you manage to say what I want but in much lesser sentences!!!!!


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## Mishihari Lord

mouselim said:


> Damn! How you manage to say what I want but in much lesser sentences!!!!!




I'm just too lazy to use a lot of words if I can get by with just a few.


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## pemerton

Celebrim said:


> Why did Riddick use a tea cup?  The answer is more on the meta-level than anything else.   Riddick uses a tea cup to show the audience that Riddick can kill people with a tea cup.   And here we see where the example starts falling apart.  Riddick has no free will.   He's an animaton of the author.   Additionally, Riddick can't actually lose.  The outcome is preordained because the story teller has decided what the outcome is supposed to be.   Riddick is supposed to win easily.   Riddick in fact is risking nothing by using a tea cup.



An RPG character doesn't have free will either, as one of many consequences of being a purely imaginary being.

The player of an RPG character has free will, but then so did the author of the Riddick movie.

In an RPG in which the player of "Riddick" fights with a cup, victory may not be pre-ordained. But it's not hard to design and run an RPG such that the player, using his/her free will, has a reason to fight with a cup rather than a sword. In a game session I ran a few week ago (using Burning Wheel, which does have a weapon table including speed and vs armour), there was one combat, between the only warrior PC and a scimitar-armed thug. The warrior, an elf, didn't draw his sword. He used his brawling to grab the NPC by the wrist and throw him to the ground. (In Burning Wheel, that combat can be resolved as a pair of opposed checks, attack dice vs defence dice for the two combatants.)

This was because the elf warrior (and the player playing him) wanted to prove a point about the cutural superiority of elves to thuggish humans. I could easily imagine a Riddick variant of that, in which the warrior wants to prove a point about his abiity to beat of thugs with nothing but a metal cup.



Celebrim said:


> A game without a weapon table makes a tea cup the equal of a bazooka - all the time and not just in those establishing scenes.



This isn't true. Off the top off my head I can think of four RPGs without weapons tables: Marvel Heroic RP, Fate, HeroQuest revised, and Maelstrom Storytelling. In none of them is a tea cup the equal of a bazooka - for instance, a character wieding a tea cup can't make the same action declarations that a character wielding a bazooka because only delivers explosives at range.



mouselim said:


> A rule that doesn't contribute to RP doesn't mean that it is not required. It's not about balancing or nitpicking on details but it is to create a structure.
> 
> <snip example of 2nd ed AD&D-style "called shot">
> 
> In essence, the rules frame the structure, it doesn't defeat role-playing.



The sort of rules structure you describe is 100% not required for an RPG.

For instance, your example assumes that combat in the game involves initiative, affected by weapon speed and DEX scores. Which also assumes that PCs have ability scores such as DEX. You also make assumptions about action economy, consequence generation and imposition, etc.

None of that is true for the 4 RPGs I mentioned above. Characters are defined by descriptors (completey free descriptors for 2 of them, a mix of free and semi-free descriptors for MHRP, a mix of free descriptors and skill ranks for Fate).

Even Burning Wheel, which involves a weapons table with speed and vs armour, can be played without it. If the table doesn't want to bother differentiating in any detail between daggers and polearms, they're not obliged to. Situations where one weapon would be particularly advantageous or disadvantageous can easiy be handled via ad hoc modifiers (eg if the dagger wielder is charging the polearm wielder, the polearm wielder gets a bonus die; if the dagger wield is shaking the hand of the polearm wielder when the fight breaks out, then the dagger wielder gets a bonus die).

Incorporating weapons speed, DEX stats, vs armour, etc into combat resolution is a choice in design. Not a requirement.


----------



## Celebrim

pemerton said:


> An RPG character doesn't have free will either, as one of many consequences of being a purely imaginary being.




I mean that a PC differs from a character in a novel or movie by having a will independent from that of the story teller.   The story teller of a movie can have all his characters do whatever he likes.  But Riddick's counterpart - as the protagonist - in an RPG is a player character controlled by a story collaborator and thus has independent will in a way that the movie version of Riddick does not.



> In an RPG in which the player of "Riddick" fights with a cup, victory may not be pre-ordained. But it's not hard to design and run an RPG such that the player, using his/her free will, has a reason to fight with a cup rather than a sword.




I did not say it wasn't.   



> This was because the elf warrior (and the player playing him) wanted to prove a point about the cutural superiority of elves to thuggish humans. I could easily imagine a Riddick variant of that, in which the warrior wants to prove a point about his abiity to beat of thugs with nothing but a metal cup.




Sure, in which case, the mechanical inferiority of the cup in the setting helps make that point.  



> This isn't true. Off the top off my head I can think of four RPGs without weapons tables: Marvel Heroic RP, Fate, HeroQuest revised, and Maelstrom Storytelling. In none of them is a tea cup the equal of a bazooka - for instance, a character wieding a tea cup can't make the same action declarations that a character wielding a bazooka because only delivers explosives at range.




There are a couple of ways you evade the point in saying this.  I'm not familiar with all of those systems, but in general they depend on a social contract to assign value to weapons only if it is reasonable to agree that they are assets within the setting.   Thus, if you were trying to run a non-comic game, but one with a certain seriousness, you'd not have a die or trait assigned to the possession of an object which lacked utility as a weapon and in general the story teller would rule by fiat that that trait generally didn't apply to declarations of intent to do damage.  Certainly within those systems you could declare things like 'Beware my Rubber Chicken' gave some advantage in combat equivalent to "I love my trusty shotgun ole Bessy." but the point is in practice players know not to do that and game masters don't respect attempts to violate the setting guidelines.   Thus, holding a bazooka in Cortex Plus might generate an extra asset die in a way that holding a rubber chicken would not, or having a sword might create some advantage in a fight that holding a limp wet noodle or a bundle of clover didn't.   

However, in such systems you are highly reliant on the game masters to respect and interpret the mechanics in light of the setting supposedly being emulated as the rules themselves aren't actually doing the job of genera emulation.   

For example, you declare, "Only the bazooka delivers explosives at range."  But this is problematic on several levels.  First, if I can declare I punch and kill someone with my old tin cup, then I can certainly declare that I use my old tin cup as a lethal throwing weapon to crush the target's head or smash a building.   Without mechanics that say, "Bazookas deliver destructive damage better than thrown tin cups", which the rules in fact do not say, you are leaving it up to fiat for the GM to say, "No."   Secondly, Bazooka's are not anti-personal weapons.  They in fact deliver explosives in the form of a shaped charge, which is just about basically harmless to anything it doesn't actually directly hit.  The blast radius of a 3.5 inch bazooka in most game terms and certainly in abstract systems is negligible enough to be nonexistent.   So now, without a weapons list, you are requiring the GM to not only know the properties of bazookas, but for the players to foreknow how the DM will rule on those properties.  Will the bazooka behave realistically, or will it behave like a Hollywood special effects explosion with about 80 gallons of gasoline poured down to create a huge fireball around the point of the blast?   And in any event, if it behaves realistically and is effectively a single target weapon, what makes such an item particularly more effective than a thrown tin cup except GM fiat?  After all, in a system that depends on descriptors and makes the effectiveness of attacks depend according to the rules solely on the descriptors of the person making the attack, thrown tin cups are pretty much the same as shaped charge bazookas until the GM throws his hands up and says, "Look.  You are breaking the social contract here.   We are supposed to be making a certain sort of story, and you are abusing the game mechanics."

Which again shows that such systems are far more than the rules written on the paper once they go into play, but instead contain a vast number of unknown, unwritten, and at times unknowable house rules such as, "Bazookas have a blast radius and so you can propose effecting multiple targets in the blast.", or "Attacks do damage only if they use a weapon the GM deems can reasonably do lethal damage to the target." - which means that thumbs and tin cups might be out depending on the GM, effectively having been granted a damage modifier of 0.

Ad hoc rules are still rules and they are for being ad hoc no less complicated than formally stated ones.  If your answer is, "Well yes, but in those systems you are expected to make up ad hoc rules to handle weapons.", then you've conceded the point that the particular characteristics of a weapon can and often do enhance your goal of creating a good story.  Writing them down so that everyone is in agreement about what they are and has reasonable expectations about game physics isn't bad for a game, particularly one in which combat and weapon play will occur regularly in the story.



> Incorporating weapons speed, DEX stats, vs armour, etc into combat resolution is a choice in design. Not a requirement.




Sure.  I absolutely agree with that.   But that comes a long way from Wicks point.  Wick argues that incorporating such things into a design is a choice to create a game that isn't a role playing game, but a complicated board game.


----------



## Umbran

Morrus said:


> Interesting.  In his reply, John Wick confirms that he did, indeed, mean to say that D&D is not a roleplaying game: "D&D was designed to be a table top tactics simulation game. If you can successfully play the game *without* roleplaying, it can't be a roleplaying game."  But he then later says "D&D is a roleplaying game. It has rules for players choosing roles, exploring an environment with a game master who has the task of playing the antagonist to their goals."  So I'm not clear on his position.




As others have noted, in being self-contradictory, he kind of suggests that he is not sure of his own position.

Some of his point, I can understand - to a significant degree, spotlight is what often matters most.  However, he fails to note that, for some, the real path to spotlight is through mechanical challenge, such that balance matters a great deal to them.

All in all, his basic error is in an attempt to be proscriptive.  Whatever attempt he's making to help players find fun is sullied by his attempt to draw lines between Us and Them, between Roleplayers and not-Roleplayers.  In so doing, he will, of course, cut some people into the Them category, and cheese them off.   He will do little to help them find fun.  So, bad job, there.

You know what matters less than balance in a roleplaying game?  RPG design theory.  Theory is a means to a practical end.  It does not have meaning except in terms of its power to bring about a practical end my players and I enjoy.  Calling D&D an RPG, or not, has *NO RELEVANCE* to that end.  So stop worrying about it.


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## DMZ2112

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> Everyone calling John Wick "the author" suggests to me that a number of posters don't realize that he's actually an accomplished game designer, albeit definitely closer to the rules-lite, story-game end of the spectrum.




Oh, you mean the end of the spectrum that isn't roleplaying games!

Well, that explains everything.


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## Bluenose

Celebrim said:


> There are a couple of ways you evade the point in saying this.  I'm not familiar with all of those systems, but in general they depend on a social contract to assign value to weapons only if it is reasonable to agree that they are assets within the setting.   Thus, if you were trying to run a non-comic game, but one with a certain seriousness, you'd not have a die or trait assigned to the possession of an object which lacked utility as a weapon and in general the story teller would rule by fiat that that trait generally didn't apply to declarations of intent to do damage.  Certainly within those systems you could declare things like 'Beware my Rubber Chicken' gave some advantage in combat equivalent to "I love my trusty shotgun ole Bessy." but the point is in practice players know not to do that and game masters don't respect attempts to violate the setting guidelines.   Thus, holding a bazooka in Cortex Plus might generate an extra asset die in a way that holding a rubber chicken would not, or having a sword might create some advantage in a fight that holding a limp wet noodle or a bundle of clover didn't.
> 
> However, in such systems you are highly reliant on the game masters to respect and interpret the mechanics in light of the setting supposedly being emulated as the rules themselves aren't actually doing the job of genera emulation.




Well, the only one of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s four suggested systems that I play a lot is Heroquest, and that is pretty specific about abilities, and defines what happens for ones where you're using a broad ability, a defined ability for it's intended purpose, or an ability that it's a stretch to explain how it interacts with the situation. Does that require that the GM and players accept and understand the constraints of the setting? Yes. I'd suggest that if you don't trust the "social contract" in that sort of game, then you can't really trust it to control the excesses possible for spell-casters in D&D and that has implications for the importance of balance too. Perhaps the biggest being not to play with <people of manner undesirable>.


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## mouselim

Pemerton, I agree and structure is merely there as either a guideline or to conform play into a certain manner. Yet, without these rules, consistency goes for a toss. I happen to play three of the four RPGs you mentioned above and the nature of these games (three of the four that I know) provides a different sort of structure. Another purist will have argued that they are essentially not required too. In Marvel RP, there's team, solo, buddy, weapon, etc stats. In Fate, there are skills scores, ladder results, etc.


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## pemerton

Celebrim said:


> I mean that a PC differs from a character in a novel or movie by having a will independent from that of the story teller.



I don't see how. The story tellers in an RPG are the game participants, including the player of the PC. The PC has not will, indeed no existence, independent of those game participants. 



Celebrim said:


> There are a couple of ways you evade the point in saying this.  I'm not familiar with all of those systems, but in general they depend on a social contract to assign value to weapons only if it is reasonable to agree that they are assets within the setting.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Thus, holding a bazooka in Cortex Plus might generate an extra asset die in a way that holding a rubber chicken would not, or having a sword might create some advantage in a fight that holding a limp wet noodle or a bundle of clover didn't.



Not really. The games rely on framing action declarations, but so does D&D. Can I declare a Perception check when I'm blindfolded and have wax in my ears? Can I declare a sword swing against the orc on the other side of the room, without spending an action to move?

All action declarations depend on fictional positioning. (Incuding the action declaration required to generate an asset in Cortex Plus.)



Celebrim said:


> you are requiring the GM to not only know the properties of bazookas, but for the players to foreknow how the DM will rule on those properties.



No. You just require the GM and players to have similar conceptions of what is genre-permitted, and to be able to reach mutual accommodation in the event that expectations diverge. That's really no different from playing Tomb of Horrors and having to decide whether a STR 10 wizard is strong enough to pound iron spikes into the side of a pit; or whether Transmute Rock to Mud cast on the roof of the cavern will defeat the orcs beneath that roof.

It's inherent in an RPG that fictional positioning will matter to resolution, and hence that consensus will have to be reached. Having a weapon list doesn't change that fact.

(It's also not a coincidence that, of the games I mentioned, MHRP, HeroQuest revised and Fate all have extensive discussions of how genre expectations feed into action resolution.)


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## Hussar

The bigger issue IMO, that gets lost in these discussions is no one really agrees what balance actually means.  Does balance only mean that everything must be identical?  In that case, how can one claim that Chess is balanced?  After all, there are six different types of pieces, all with different rules.  A pawn isn't balanced against a queen after all.  Overall, sure, the game is balanced because both sides have the same resources.  But, now we have to accept that balance really depends on where you are standing.  At the individual unit level Chess is totally imbalanced.  On the whole it is balanced.

For me, I always define balance thusly:

Balance in a role playing game means that no option is qualitatively always better than all other options.​
So, in a game like Ars Magica, while there is serious imbalance between the characters, that balance is maintained at a higher level since Troupe Play means that no one always gets to play the finger wiggler.  Remove that balancing mechanic and Ars Magica has some serious issues.  Would you want to play a long term Ars Magica game where you can only play a mook and never the wizard?  Heck, would you always want to play the wizard?  I sure wouldn't.

When you have imbalanced systems, roleplaying is hurt because the most logical choice is to always choose the better option.  It doesn't make rational sense, really, to deliberately choose the weaker option.  If a longsword is flat out better than a broadsword (because the weapon vs armor table, and the fact that the majority of magical swords will be longswords) the game really pushes players to choose longsword over broadsword.  I know one of the biggest changes I saw in fighter types in 3e was a sudden spike in fighter types not using swords.  In fact, I'd say that swords became something of a large minority of weapon choice.  Lots and lots of axes, spear and pole arms suddenly got use at my table.  After almost twenty years, I actually saw a fighter choose a halberd as his primary weapon.  All because of game balance.

Balance matters.  It always matters.  Games without balance lead to cookie cutter characters because if you have an option that is clearly better than other options, why handicap yourself?


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## prosfilaes

Celebrim said:


> Or to put a finer point on it, if in a system a tea cup does 1d12 damage - just like every other weapon - what story point is actually being made and reinforced by using a tea cup as a weapon?  The whole point of the scene is that the audience knows from experience with the system (in this case something akin to 'the real world) that a tea cup is a substandard weapon.  If the audience knows no weapon is substandard, the audience probably finds the thing even more ridiculous and pretentious than it is.  At least in a system with a weapon table, which the real world definitively has with a degree of fine resolution far exceeding any game system, you'd have an excuse for, "All I have is a tea cup, so that's what I'm using."   In a game without weapon tables, does the lack really make for better stories?   A game without a weapon table makes a tea cup the equal of a bazooka - all the time and not just in those establishing scenes.




James Maliszewski discusses running OD&D (which apparently makes all weapons 1d6) with a couple different groups, one of which didn't like it at all and started writing rules to differentiate weapons, and the other loved it and one player ended up running around just throwing coins at enemies. It's always sort of enticed me, in the sense that I could play a club-bearing ogre or dagger-wielding halfling because those are the characters I want to play, without worrying about optimizing weapons.


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## Mishihari Lord

Umbran said:


> You know what matters less than balance in a roleplaying game?  RPG design theory.  Theory is a means to a practical end.  It does not have meaning except in terms of its power to bring about a practical end my players and I enjoy.  Calling D&D an RPG, or not, has *NO RELEVANCE* to that end.  So stop worrying about it.




I have to disagree with this bit.  RPG theory is just people's ideas about how to make RPGs more fun.  If we don't think that's worthwhile, then what are we doing on these forums?  And having common definitions of words is important.  How else are we going to talk about things?  It is silly to get bent out of shape about someone's theories though.  The stuff Wick put up is obviously in development and should be taken as such.  The blog looks like something that was posted so the author could use others' criticism to improve his own ideas.


----------



## Mishihari Lord

Hussar said:


> The bigger issue IMO, that gets lost in these discussions is no one really agrees what balance actually means.  Does balance only mean that everything must be identical?  In that case, how can one claim that Chess is balanced?  After all, there are six different types of pieces, all with different rules.  A pawn isn't balanced against a queen after all.  Overall, sure, the game is balanced because both sides have the same resources.  But, now we have to accept that balance really depends on where you are standing.  At the individual unit level Chess is totally imbalanced.  On the whole it is balanced.
> 
> For me, I always define balance thusly:
> 
> Balance in a role playing game means that no option is qualitatively always better than all other options.​
> So, in a game like Ars Magica, while there is serious imbalance between the characters, that balance is maintained at a higher level since Troupe Play means that no one always gets to play the finger wiggler.  Remove that balancing mechanic and Ars Magica has some serious issues.  Would you want to play a long term Ars Magica game where you can only play a mook and never the wizard?  Heck, would you always want to play the wizard?  I sure wouldn't.
> 
> When you have imbalanced systems, roleplaying is hurt because the most logical choice is to always choose the better option.  It doesn't make rational sense, really, to deliberately choose the weaker option.  If a longsword is flat out better than a broadsword (because the weapon vs armor table, and the fact that the majority of magical swords will be longswords) the game really pushes players to choose longsword over broadsword.  I know one of the biggest changes I saw in fighter types in 3e was a sudden spike in fighter types not using swords.  In fact, I'd say that swords became something of a large minority of weapon choice.  Lots and lots of axes, spear and pole arms suddenly got use at my table.  After almost twenty years, I actually saw a fighter choose a halberd as his primary weapon.  All because of game balance.
> 
> Balance matters.  It always matters.  Games without balance lead to cookie cutter characters because if you have an option that is clearly better than other options, why handicap yourself?




I totally agree that an RPG needs to offer interesting choices, but that isn't what WIck is talking about in his article.  Here it is:


> “Game balance” is important in board games. It means one player does not have an advantage over another.



He's using "game balance" in its most common meaning, giving player characters equal mechanical power in combat.


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## Hussar

Mishihari Lord said:


> I totally agree that an RPG needs to offer interesting choices, but that isn't what WIck is talking about in his article.  Here it is:
> 
> He's using "game balance" in its most common meaning, giving player characters equal mechanical power in combat.




But, isn't that essentially what I'm saying?  That no given option is better than any other option?  Even sticking to the combat aspect, since that's where balance is most often seen, if we choose to completely ignore balance and claim that balance is completely not important, then we wind up with cookie cutter characters - everyone chooses the best option because that's the most rational decision to make.  

In an unbalanced system, why would you choose an option you know is less effective?  Or, rather, why would you consistently choose less effective options?  It's not rational.


----------



## Campbell

I'm not a big fan of all this talk about what is and isn't a role playing game? Does it particularly matter if a game fits into a neat little box or not? I don't sit down to play a role playing game with my friends. I sit down to play Fiasco, Apocalypse World, Demon - The Descent, L5R, Marvel Heroic Roleplay, etc. The techniques and priorities used in design should differ based on what play experience the designer is after. I don't want games designed to some platonic ideal. I say design great games and worry about what to call them afterward. Actually that last step isn't even needed. Orthodoxy in game design does us a disservice.

I also disagree that spotlight balance should take precedence at all times. That wildly depends on the play experience a player is seeking. What I'm after when I sit down to play any game I'm looking to have the decisions I make during play have a significant impact on the flow of the game. Specifically in games where the fiction matters, I want to make decisions that are going to have a real and visceral effect on the fiction. You can give me all the attention in the world, but if my decisions don't matter I'm not having fun.

For me personally, the same thing generally applies to mechanical balance. It's not about power.  I will choose meaningful choices over mechanical impact every time.


----------



## Celebrim

prosfilaes said:


> James Maliszewski discusses running OD&D (which apparently makes all weapons 1d6) with a couple different groups, one of which didn't like it at all and started writing rules to differentiate weapons, and the other loved it and one player ended up running around just throwing coins at enemies. It's always sort of enticed me, in the sense that I could play a club-bearing ogre or dagger-wielding halfling because those are the characters I want to play, without worrying about optimizing weapons.




I can totally sympathize with this sort of thing because really, so much of my tweaking and balancing often amounts to making it mechanically reasonable to be either that smash smash club wielding brute or else a psychotic 3' tall dagger wielding killer and you could save so much time by just offering no mechanical choices and making who you were entirely a matter of flavor.

But on the other hand, there are points where it breaks down - and that guy running around giggling insanely while throwing handfuls of change at his enemies is one example.  In the right kind of story, that's ok, but do we really want a guy armed with a rubber chicken and tossing peonies at the monsters and is that story necessarily welcoming to the rest of the groups goals?  On the other end, if we do take being the club wielding brute or the dagger wielding 30lbs of death concepts seriously, then we expect at some level that there is some differences in when we are most advantaged and useful.  And at some level, taking care of all of that solely in the fiction with no mechanical back up just doesn't work.  

The guy up there who said, "Make sure your system matches your setting, because in the long run your setting will match your system" (or something of the sort) gets it exactly right.   

And that also explains why I think rules lite systems can make great short games, but rarely long campaigns.


----------



## Aura

This is the first time I've read something from John Wick, and I'm rather unimpressed. He's seems to hold some rather strong opinions (basically making claims) with rather weak rationale or evidence to match. Two examples:

(1) In World of Warcraft*, he notes a friend kicked off a roleplaying server for talking in character. This isn't reflected in any of the WoW community guidelines I've seen, and nothing is given to back up this remarkable claim. And yet, he uses it as and example in support of his argument. (He also seems rather ignorant of WoW, in general, when he talks about leveling being the point of the game.)

(2) It's already been noted how narrow his opinion of what a roleplaying game is seems to be. One aspect of his position that stands out to me is a character must be rewarded when he/she does something consistent with the character's motivations as part of the very definition of a RPG. While I can understand a reasonable argument can be made against penalizing such activity (and he seems to speak on that), no clear argument is made for an essential nature of roleplaying rewards.

In short, I feel the quality of his arguments don't rise to the boldness of his claims.

PS: I'm a personal fan of the adage, "Roleplaying is its own reward." As such, I'm usually happy so long as roleplaying is not actively penalized by the game.

*Note: I'm not supporting that WoW is a RPG in this section, but merely that his argument concerning it is ill-conceived.


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## pemerton

Hussar said:


> When you have imbalanced systems, roleplaying is hurt because the most logical choice is to always choose the better option.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Games without balance lead to cookie cutter characters because if you have an option that is clearly better than other options, why handicap yourself?





Hussar said:


> In an unbalanced system, why would you choose an option you know is less effective?  Or, rather, why would you consistently choose less effective options?  It's not rational.



The issue, though, is the measure of "effectiveness".

It's not rational to choose options that are less effective for getting what you want out of the game. But, depending on the game and what you want out of it, that doesn't mean that it's not rational to choose options that don't maximise your PC's chances of success in action resolution, nor that it's not rational to choose options that don't maximise your PC's chances of earning additional PC build resources.

For instance, by choosing to play a character who has strong wants, and by roleplaying my character as acting on those wants, I don't necessarily maximise my chances of success in action resolution. But if the GM is adjudicating failure in a "fail forward" fashion, then I might get more of what I want out of the game - namely, dramatically engaging play - than if I played a character who was more cautious, took fewer risks, and hence was less likely to fail attempted actions.

Christopher Kubasik discusses this in the essays I linked to upthread:

The narrative of most roleplaying games is tactical simulation fiction. This style of story revolves around weapons and split second decisions made during combat. Such stories discourage flamboyant behavior though flamboyant behavior is often a vital part of the fiction that the games try to model - because better combat modifiers are gained with conservative tactics. Characters in these simulation stories are clever, resilient and skilled. They're ready for combat and often not much else. Their goals usually boil down to the acquisition of power of one kind or another. Indeed, their goals, desires and even identities seldom have much to do with the story struggling to be told. Typically, characters of modern roleplaying stories are indifferent mercenaries hired in a bar or heroes who run to the rescue only after a threat arises. . . .

The rules and wargaming baggage of most roleplaying games lead to a certain kind of story: stories filled with ambitionless mercenaries who wait around in bars for employment; heroes who have no reason to get out of bed in the morning but for the vile plans of a someone they've never met; and stories that stop in mid-narrative for lengthy, tactical tactical-laden fights. . . .

[M]any people mistake _character _for _characterization_. 

Characterization is the look of a character, the description of his voice, the quirks of habit. Characterization creates the concrete detail of a character through the use of sensory detail and exposition. . . .

But a person thus described is not a character. . . .

Character is action. . . .

Goals are an integral part of the character; _they define who the character is_. Without a goal a character has no reason to get out of bed in the morning. Or, should he stumble out of bed in order to get to his job at the toy factory, he still is not worth following. He is not a character. He is living out his life as person, but not the driving force of a story. . . .

Because this Goal is so vital your character can indulge in all sorts of ridiculous, extraordinary, and even dangerous behavior in pursuit of this goal. We're not looking for the characters who want what is safe and steady, who can rationalize their Goals out of existence because it might mean trouble. We want characters who throw themselves with wild abandon into their desires, dreams and passions! 

Be surprising! Let your character's passions and Goals drive him to actions that calmer men would not commit. . . .

Look for problems! . . .

Why should problems built into a character be balanced against a proportional advantage? The implication is that you only take bad stuff to be more powerful. . . . [Y]ou build problems into your character's background and decisions because they're entertaining.​
If the GM is going to have NPCs or the other forces of the campaign world destroy your character for pursuing his/her goal, then that is a reason to focus only on characters optimised for mechanical effectiveness. But if the GM adjudicates in a way that accommodates your play of your PC in pursuit of his/her goal, other options open up.

I think one of the earliest examples of this, although not always recognised as such, was the all-thief campaign in AD&D. The AD&D thief is not really mechanically optimal from any point of view, but in the classic all-thief campaign this doesn't matter, because the GM frames challenges and adjudicates resolution in a way that fits with the idea of the campaign and keeps things moving along. It's quite feasible to generalise this approach beyond the all-thief campaign.

None of the above is an argument _against_ balance of mechanical effectiveness. It's an argument that its absence doesn't have to lead to cookie-cutter characters, provided that the appropriate techniques are adopted by the GM in framing and adjudicating action resolution.


----------



## Umbran

Mishihari Lord said:


> I have to disagree with this bit.  RPG theory is just people's ideas about how to make RPGs more fun.




If your theory leads you to say things like, "D&D is not an rpg," then I say, no, your theory is not just ideas about how to make rpgs more fun.  



> If we don't think that's worthwhile, then what are we doing on these forums?




Well, a great deal of our discussion is not theoretical, but is about people and practical application.



> And having common definitions of words is important.  How else are we going to talk about things?  It is silly to get bent out of shape about someone's theories though.  The stuff Wick put up is obviously in development and should be taken as such.  The blog looks like something that was posted so the author could use others' criticism to improve his own ideas.




The author spends a bit of effort identifying and establishing himself as an authority.  That's a *disincentive* to comment, a rhetorical setting of a bar one must reach before input will be considered valid, setting up defenses for his position beforehand.  That does not at all read like something intended to invite criticism (except from maybe his designer buddies, but he didn't need to post it publicly to get that).


----------



## Janx

Umbran said:


> The author spends a bit of effort identifying and establishing himself as an authority.  That's a *disincentive* to comment, a rhetorical setting of a bar one must reach before input will be considered valid, setting up defenses for his position beforehand.  That does not at all read like something intended to invite criticism (except from maybe his designer buddies, but he didn't need to post it publicly to get that).




I think credentializing is a tricky thing.  Like you say, it certainly sets a bar of "if you don't work in this industry, you aren't my peer"

But half the time, it's also saying "I'm not just some guy in a basement, I actually have experience and knowledge in this space"

Putting it up at the top, probably hurt his paper.  If he'd had a blurb at the bottom (like most tech news articles do) that says "John Wick has worked in the RPG design industry for 20 years.  He is best known for his games XYZ and ABC"

At that point, it's less posturing, and more just making his bonafides known if somebody reads the whole thing.


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## Umbran

Janx said:


> Putting it up at the top, probably hurt his paper.  If he'd had a blurb at the bottom (like most tech news articles do) that says "John Wick has worked in the RPG design industry for 20 years.  He is best known for his games XYZ and ABC"




It was on his personal blog, where he has an entire "About" page on which he gives his credentials, so he already has a big honkin' footnote on the whole thing.  The point is entirely unnecessary in the original context, and would only serve a purpose if he actively thought folks would be quoting it wholesale out of context, which isnt' all that common a practice.  That makes it difficult to read as something as other than (perhaps unconscious) posture choice.

Whether it hurt the work depends on who his basic intended audience is.  For some, the Appeal to Authority right at the start is a sign of rhetorical weakness.  If anything, it makes us scrutinize the other points more closely, as the basic function of the appeal is to get you to gloss over weaknesses.  But appeal to authority does work on many.


----------



## Mishihari Lord

Umbran said:


> If your theory leads you to say things like, "D&D is not an rpg," then I say, no, your theory is not just ideas about how to make rpgs more fun.
> 
> Well, a great deal of our discussion is not theoretical, but is about people and practical application.




So you don't like his theories.  That's legit.  That's different than entirely rejecting the idea of having theories about RPGs, which is what it sounded like you were saying before.  And practical application is always practical application of our personal ideas of how to make an RPG fun.  And that's all theories are, our ideas of what works.


----------



## Janx

Mishihari Lord said:


> So you don't like his theories.  That's legit.  That's different than entirely rejecting the idea of having theories about RPGs, which is what it sounded like you were saying before.  And practical application is always practical application of our personal ideas of how to make an RPG fun.  And that's all theories are, our ideas of what works.




I think Wick's problem is his stated theories led him to state stupid things like "D&D is not an RPG"

Disputes about how D&D has evolved asside (ex 4e being more like WoW allegedly), D&D was the first RPG, and therefore any definition that rules out D&D is most likely flawed.

I think theories that don't lead to practical fun for players/GMs are likely just extremist dogma.

Because D&D itself is many things to many people (as in its varied aspects appeal to different kinds of gamers), I'm wary of theories that utterly destroy D&D by sculpting it into a focussed emphasis on one kind of play.

But that's my beef with the article, even though there's some nuggets in Wick's ideas that I agree with.


----------



## Janx

Umbran said:


> It was on his personal blog, where he has an entire "About" page on which he gives his credentials, so he already has a big honkin' footnote on the whole thing.  The point is entirely unnecessary in the original context, and would only serve a purpose if he actively thought folks would be quoting it wholesale out of context, which isnt' all that common a practice.  That makes it difficult to read as something as other than (perhaps unconscious) posture choice.
> 
> Whether it hurt the work depends on who his basic intended audience is.  For some, the Appeal to Authority right at the start is a sign of rhetorical weakness.  If anything, it makes us scrutinize the other points more closely, as the basic function of the appeal is to get you to gloss over weaknesses.  But appeal to authority does work on many.




Perhaps part of the problem with the article is PR.  Wick has not diplomatically represented the idea he'd like to gain support for.  He has failed some "how to make your point" aspects.  He's detracted from his own work with his appeal to authority for example.  He's made extreme statements like "D&D is not an RPG" which puts the listener on the defensive.

So at this point, Wick's writing is useless.  The only value to be gained is if there's any nuggets of ideas to be recycled.  Spotlight Balance is certainly valid consideration for game design.  It may or may not depend on Game Balance, but at this point Wick isn't a credible source of insight on that.


----------



## occam

A big part of the problem with Wick's article is his (re-)definition of the term "roleplaying". If a game has some method in its rules whereby one can create a customized in-game character, a role, to play, then it's a roleplaying game. (Cue several examples of RPGs where creating customized characters isn't possible.) That's the meaning of the terminology as it was first defined. Calling the game that engendered that definition "not a roleplaying game" is ridiculous twisting of words. Unless your intent is to generate a lot of useless arguing over semantics, you don't get to redefine a term in use for 40 years. Use different words.


----------



## Umbran

Mishihari Lord said:


> So you don't like his theories.  That's legit.  That's different than entirely rejecting the idea of having theories about RPGs, which is what it sounded like you were saying before.




What I said was that theory means less than balance.  I also said that balance is sometimes important.  So, I don't see how I am rejecting having theories.

I'm rejecting pushing ahead on the basis of theory without due consideration of the result in practice. 

And I return to the theory leading to calling D&D not an rpg.  How, pray tell, is that resulting in practical improvement of anyone's game?  You saw, did you not, what happens when people who just play different editions of the game call what the others do "not D&D", right?  Same thing here, but he's doing it to tens or hundreds of thousands of people at once.  



> And practical application is always practical application of our personal ideas of how to make an RPG fun.  And that's all theories are, our ideas of what works.




How to put this...

In the physical world, there is theoretical science, and there is Engineering.  Physics, chemistry, biology... even computers have the distinction, as a computer scientist does much different things than a software engineer.  They're really different skillsets - generating theory is a different activity than applying theory into real-world application in useful form.  While one person can do both, it is important to remember the difference, and not mistake the theoretical construct for something that should be put directly to real-world application.

Most important is to remember that the theoretical construct is a *theoretical* construct.  A model.  It is not reality in and of itself.  Your model can be incorrect, or have some corr3ect bits, but some notable flaws that don't represent reality.  Many theoretical constructs may be beautiful and elegant, and completely fail when the rubber meets the road.  This goes especially when you're talking about theory that intersects human psychology and social factors, like out own group leisure activities.

A theory that makes the claim that D&D is not an RPG tumbles into such a pitfall - completely failing to realize that it has gotten into an area where psychology and social factors far outweigh whatever useful value there is in the purely theoretical distinction the author wants to try to make.


----------



## Janx

occam said:


> A big part of the problem with Wick's article is his (re-)definition of the term "roleplaying". If a game has some method in its rules whereby one can create a customized in-game character, a role, to play, then it's a roleplaying game. (Cue several examples of RPGs where creating customized characters isn't possible.) That's the meaning of the terminology as it was first defined. Calling the game that engendered that definition "not a roleplaying game" is ridiculous twisting of words. Unless your intent is to generate a lot of useless arguing over semantics, you don't get to redefine a term in use for 40 years. Use different words.




Yup.

Games called RPGs tend to have one or more (but most times not all) of these traits:
player controls just one character
the character performs a role on a team (Fighter, Tank, Wizard) with a specific skill set
the character advances is proficiency and the player makes choices about what skill areas to improve, at the expense of others
the character may be portrayed by the player as having a specific personality and behavior pattern (aka Role Playing)

I doubt my list is definitive nor entirely correct, but those are the most obvious things I see in most things called an RPG, be it table top or computer.  Some games let you control multiple characters.  Some games don't have any kind of advancement for the character, but I suspect that is more rare in the category.

One thing I left out is Story.  I suspect just about every CRPG tells a Story (ex. Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls, etc).  Straight sandbox dungeon crawling might not tell a Story, except in the crudest sense of linearly describing what happened to the PCs.

Since Wick's article was really getting down to "RPGs must tell a story" is that part of the conflict?  Given that I see valid point to not require "Story" as part of the traits of an RPG.


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## delericho

Umbran said:


> Most important is to remember that the theoretical construct is a *theoretical* construct.  A model.  It is not reality in and of itself.  Your model can be incorrect, or have some corr3ect bits, but some notable flaws that don't represent reality.  Many theoretical constructs may be beautiful and elegant, and completely fail when the rubber meets the road.




The difference between theory and practice: in theory there is no difference; in practice, there is.


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## Jhaelen

Well, I haven't read this thread, so I may be just repeating what someone else has already said, but anyway, this is what I think:

The author of this article is quite opinionated and decidedly wrong about some fairly basic things. For one thing, the genre is called Roleplaying _Game_.
It's called that because it's about roleplaying, yes, but it's also a GAME.

Saying that D&D is not an RPG because you can be successful without roleplaying is just as wrong as saying that in Vampire you cannot be successful without roleplaying.
I really wonder if the guy has ever actually played D&D or watched a game of Vampire?

If he was a player in my D&D campaign, he wouldn't have a chance of being 'successful' without roleplaying at all. In fact, players who fail to roleplay tend to leave the group after mutually agreeing that it just won't work. On the other hand I've seen a Vampire group play the game without any regard to the story - it was just a high-powered hack&slay affair involving the villain of the week.

What does this tell us? It's all in what you make of it.

I also had to laugh out loud reading that in Vampire he'd not use the Initiative rules, but he'd use the Humanity rules. Well, guess what: A different storyteller may choose to do the opposite! And, yes, that might mean he's turned the game from a roleplaying game into 'just a game'.

I also like how he mentions Pendragon as an example of a 'good' roleplaying game. As it happens, the weapon tables are quite important for that game. Each weapon (and armor) comes with a set of very specific advantages and disadvantages, resulting in a particular choice to be optimal in a very specific situation. This in turn leads to a character trying have a wide choice of weapons available - just in case. And in Pendragon this isn't a problem, because your squire will serve as a kind of caddy, handing you the weapon of choice when you need it.
You just don't go hunting a boar with your two-handed sword, there's a boar spear that has been designed for that purpose. Trying to use the sword will probably just get you killed.

He's not completely incorrect, though. It clearly doesn't hurt to think about your game (system) and ask yourself "What does x add to the story?" In fact that's the most important question I'm asking myself when designing encounters. When choosing an rpg system for my campaigns I similarly ask myself: "Is this the right system for the kind of stories I'd like us to tell?" And if the kind of stories I'd like to tell involve a lot of skirmish style combats, then D&D might just be the best choice!

He's completely correct, though, to dismiss most (if not all) computer rpgs as not being true rpgs. But it's a sad player who finds that WoW is a sufficient replacement for playing D&D. It's not even close.


----------



## Umbran

Janx said:


> So at this point, Wick's writing is useless.  The only value to be gained is if there's any nuggets of ideas to be recycled.  Spotlight Balance is certainly valid consideration for game design.  It may or may not depend on Game Balance, but at this point Wick isn't a credible source of insight on that.




Agreed.  Wick basically went awry with a One True Way position.  That doesn't mean he's completely bereft of insight, just that he tosses a goodly sized baby out with the bathwater.


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## mattcolville

John GM'ed my first game of CHILL. I had a blast, I told him so, and I looked forward to playing again next week.

"Well, I don't know how long this will last," he said with some chagrin.

"Oh, how come?"

He shrugged. "Because eventually you'll learn the rules."

That was over 10 years ago, lots changes. But it was a revealing moment into the way John thought then. For him, the game is those moments when the players are planning, telling the GM what they want to do, and the GM tells them "yes and," or "no, but. . ." and no one's had to roll any dice yet. Once people start rolling dice and using the rules, he cools on the whole thing.


----------



## Janx

mattcolville said:


> John GM'ed my first game of CHILL. I had a blast, I told him so, and I looked forward to playing again next week.
> 
> "Well, I don't know how long this will last," he said with some chagrin.
> 
> "Oh, how come?"
> 
> He shrugged. "Because eventually you'll learn the rules."
> 
> That was over 10 years ago, lots changes. But it was a revealing moment into the way John thought then. For him, the game is those moments when the players are planning, telling the GM what they want to do, and the GM tells them "yes and," or "no, but. . ." and no one's had to roll any dice yet. Once people start rolling dice and using the rules, he cools on the whole thing.




That's an interesting insight.

I don't know if his attitude is indicative of a GM who likes the players not being burdened by the rules or not min-maxing the rules.  Or if he's happy because he controls all the variables (rather than the rules) when the players don't know it.

Some GMs like keeping players ignorant of the rules and they handle everything.  D&D 3E shifted a lot of that to the players knowing how things worked and resolving it themselves.


----------



## Janx

Janx said:


> Yup.
> 
> Games called RPGs tend to have one or more (but most times not all) of these traits:
> player controls just one character
> the character performs a role on a team (Fighter, Tank, Wizard) with a specific skill set
> the character advances in proficiency and the player makes choices about what skill areas to improve, at the expense of others
> the character may be portrayed by the player as having a specific personality and behavior pattern (aka Role Playing)
> ...snip...





I just thought of another key criteria in relation to the opening title "Chess is not an RPG"
the player controls named individuals, presumably representing that individual

In Chess, the pieces are unnamed, known only by their function, not as individuals.  In RPGs, you are usually playing as a specific person.  Bob the Fighter.  Not The Fighter.

So Super Mario Bros is more of an RPG than Chess is, given that you at least are playing as Mario.
However, since Mario does not advance or change, I'm not sure he matches any other criteria to qualify as an RPG.

But Legend of Zelda probably does qualify since Link is an individual, and I think he gets better (gear usually) over time, so when he reaches the end of the game, he is more powerful than he was at the start.


----------



## Hussar

I'd say there are certainly role playing elements in a CRPG.  I played Baldur's Gate ages ago and the choices I made in game were based on the character I was playing - a paladin as it happens.  And the game does change depending on those choices.  Sure, it's limited role playing and nowhere near as broad as what you get in a TTRPG, but, I'm not sure you can simply dismiss CRPG's as no having any roleplaying.  And, as CRPG's have advanced, that's a line that's become more and more blurred as time goes on.  Mass Effect, Fallout or even Oregon Trail - you can role-play in a lot of CRPG's and have that role that you are playing affect the outcome of the game.  Roleplaying can be important in a CRPG.  Heck, swing left a bit from WOW to Eve Online and role-play can have a very large impact.

As far as the "balance doesn't matter" argument goes, I think the danger in that idea is that it glosses over a lot of poor game design.  "Oh well, the DM can make this work" is never a good justification for pushing mechanics out the door that don't really work or, at the very least, could work better if better written.


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## pemerton

Hussar said:


> As far as the "balance doesn't matter" argument goes, I think the danger in that idea is that it glosses over a lot of poor game design.  "Oh well, the DM can make this work" is never a good justification for pushing mechanics out the door that don't really work or, at the very least, could work better if better written.



I've got no disagreement with any of this!


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## Umbran

Jhaelen said:


> It's called that because it's about roleplaying, yes, but it's also a GAME.




Yes, but that's not very helpful, as "game" is broadly defined.

It includes things with well defined rules and set win conditions. (Chess)

It includes thins with well defined rules, but no clearly defined win conditions. (D&D, though sometimes the rules get a little fuzzy)

It includes running around like a maniac in a yard with your friends.  (Yes, Calvinball is still a game)


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## Hussar

Umbran said:


> Yes, but that's not very helpful, as "game" is broadly defined.
> 
> It includes things with well defined rules and set win conditions. (Chess)
> 
> It includes thins with well defined rules, but no clearly defined win conditions. (D&D, though sometimes the rules get a little fuzzy)
> 
> It includes running around like a maniac in a yard with your friends.  (Yes, Calvinball is still a game)




True, but, even within those three things, you still have commonalities - an agreed upon structure for determining valid and invalid actions.  Even Calvinball has this, to some degree, since you simply come up with new structures each time.  

And those structures are important.  Without those structures, you cannot progress any further.  Even in things that aren't games, like, conversation for example, you still have agreed upon structures for carrying out that activity - I stop talking when you start, I listen to you when you talk, I don't scream in your face or various other unacceptable things.  In an RPG, you have an agreed upon framework for determining the results of actions that are important.  Imbalanced rules obviously affect that framework and make progressing in the activity more difficult.  Talking to someone who has no idea of how conversation should work is pretty difficult (and anyone who's tried to talk to a two year old can attest to that).  Trying to play an RPG with imbalanced mechanics biases results.  The more imbalance, the more biased the result.

Take conversation as an example.  Let's add an imbalanced mechanic to conversation.  Any time I touch my ear, you have to agree with what I am saying.  Can we carry out an enjoyable conversation?  Well, perhaps, if I only touch my ear after I know that you already agree with my point, but, more often than not, that's going to lead to a pretty frustrating conversation.

RPG's are no different.


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## Campbell

Umbran said:


> Yes, but that's not very helpful, as "game" is broadly defined.
> 
> It includes things with well defined rules and set win conditions. (Chess)
> 
> It includes thins with well defined rules, but no clearly defined win conditions. (D&D, though sometimes the rules get a little fuzzy)
> 
> It includes running around like a maniac in a yard with your friends.  (Yes, Calvinball is still a game)




Is there anything in particular that we gain as a community or from a design standpoint by coming up with a particular concrete definition of what is and is not a role playing game? When I sit down to play Apocalypse World, Demon - The Descent, Munchkin, Fiasco, Diplomacy, Magic, Don't Rest Your Head, or any given version of  Dungeons and Dragons does it really matter to the play experience if what particular category other people consider the game to fall under? Should designers sit down to create role playing games or should they just design games with a particular play experience in mind?

Honestly, I'm of the opinion that we should stop putting our particular conception of role playing games on a pedestal. Enjoy the games you like. don't play the games you don't. There is nothing particularly special about role playing games, board games, card games, story games, etc. Honestly with the amount of conceptual bleed between categories are the categories particularly helpful?


----------



## prosfilaes

Campbell said:


> Honestly, I'm of the opinion that we should stop putting our particular conception of role playing games on a pedestal. Enjoy the games you like. don't play the games you don't. There is nothing particularly special about role playing games, board games, card games, story games, etc. Honestly with the amount of conceptual bleed between categories are the categories particularly helpful?




Certainly the line between roleplaying games and board games seems quite useful to some people; when people come to a board game meetup, they expect different things then if they came to a roleplaying meetup. In those terms, one of the major differences between RPGs and board games is that RPGs take at least 4 hours a night and extend over multiple nights and even the longest board games top out at 4-6 hours.* One of my friends specifically likes the concrete nature of board games over the more flexible nature of roleplaying games. And there's not that much bleed between the two in practice; the board games I see played would never be mistaken for RPGs anymore then chess would. Maybe Resistance, but that lacks defined characters--you can't even describe what you look like! (It's less weird in context, since your picture also reveals whether you're a spy or not, but it's quite a hindrance to roleplaying.)

If I were asked whether Dominion is a card game, my response would depend on the context; board gamers might get a flat yes, whereas for Magic or Bridge players I might say that it's more like a board game, because the essential difference between a card game and board game in a lot of cases is deeper then cards versus board.

* Stuff like D&D Encounters take some of the parts of "extend over multiple nights" away, for better or worse; one shots take away all of the "extend over multiple nights", but seem limited to conventions--they're not marketed to consumers much. There's exceptions on the board game front--old-school war games could take weeks to play, with the Campaign for North Africa notoriously claiming 1200 hours for a complete play, and the 12-hour 18OE was successfully Kickstarted last year, but they're currently even more esoteric then single-night RPGs.


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## Mishihari Lord

Campbell said:


> Is there anything in particular that we gain as a community or from a design standpoint by coming up with a particular concrete definition of what is and is not a role playing game? When I sit down to play Apocalypse World, Demon - The Descent, Munchkin, Fiasco, Diplomacy, Magic, Don't Rest Your Head, or any given version of  Dungeons and Dragons does it really matter to the play experience if what particular category other people consider the game to fall under? Should designers sit down to create role playing games or should they just design games with a particular play experience in mind?
> 
> Honestly, I'm of the opinion that we should stop putting our particular conception of role playing games on a pedestal. Enjoy the games you like. don't play the games you don't. There is nothing particularly special about role playing games, board games, card games, story games, etc. Honestly with the amount of conceptual bleed between categories are the categories particularly helpful?




Different types of games are different.  Design elements that make a roleplaying game fun, frex, are going to be different than the ones that make storytelling games fun.  Conversation will get pretty cumbersome if you always have to list the 83 particular games you're talking about when you're saying "this element is good for this type of game."  The downside of course is that people get tetchy when their favorite game is not categorized the way they want.


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## Bedrockgames

I thought the article started out making some perfectly fine points. If Wick is interested in playing or designing a game where genre physics matter the most and telling a good story is the result he is after, then sure, worrying less about balance and more about stuff like making sure Riddick smashes skulls with cups, is feasible way to go. He knows what he likes and how he wants to achieve it. That is all good. Where it goes off the rails for me is he then leaps to basically saying that is how all RPGs should be designed and takes it even further by claiming any that don't are not actual RPGs. This takes him to the outrageous conclusions that D&D itself isn't an RPG. I think part of the problem is how he defines roleplaying (where is he is too focused on what is unique to roleplaying games rather than just attempting to describe what RPG means to most people in the hobby itself). Any definition of RPG that excludes D&D is kind of strange because I suppose it means that RPGs were not invented until well after the hobby began. I feel like he starts with a statement that people intuitively will agree with "chess is not an RPG" to get to a conclusion people will intuitively disagree with. Part of the problem may be his line of reasoning where he talks about how no matter what you add to chess, it still remains a board game. I think at a certain point though, if enough people were using chess to RP and it developed in the same way D&D did, then, in an alternative historical timeline, you could see chess BECOMING an RPG in the same way that D&D BECAME an RPG out of its wargaming roots. By the time D&D comes along, it and its enthusiasts are clearly doing something much different than war games.


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## Manbearcat

Balance is a paramount concern in any game where the players (GM included) expect for there to be relative parity between participants' ability to affect the outcome of micro-conflicts and impose their will on the trajectory of the game's evolving plot. 

Balance can be expressed solely at the outset of the game (the PC build stage for TTRPGs) with power level disparity evolving organically as the game progresses.  The system can be organized such that it (intentionally) tightly constrains balance throughout the entirety of the play experience.  The system can be organized such that the PC archetypes are unmistakably unbalanced within the shared fiction, but the players of the lower tier characters possess metagame assets which level the playing field.  The system might promote, or the GM may him/herself possess, principles which work toward (primarily if not exclusively) framing the PC(s) into archetypal conflicts that they can handle (this becomes more difficult in cooperative group games where noticable PC asset - especially breadth  [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] 's primary point - imbalance exists).

If you don't care about these things so much, or you feel the GM has mandate to "impose spotlight sharing" by circumventing the action resolution mechanics thereby dictating outcomes, and/or you have concerns that supersede the priority in the first paragraph, then there are plenty of systems and groups that cater to those interests.


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## Janx

Umbran said:


> Yes, but that's not very helpful, as "game" is broadly defined.
> 
> It includes things with well defined rules and set win conditions. (Chess)
> 
> It includes thins with well defined rules, but no clearly defined win conditions. (D&D, though sometimes the rules get a little fuzzy)
> 
> It includes running around like a maniac in a yard with your friends.  (Yes, Calvinball is still a game)




I remember losing that debate.  There's a thread in here about the definition of Game.

and as Umbran proved back then, it does not have to have rules per the dictionary definition and example of "childhood games" referring to just playing with blocks.

I think for adults, Game does get re-defined as structured activity for recreation.  Pool is a Game. D&D is a game.  Hockey is a game.  Halo is a game.  Games come in boxes or have rules to an adult.

But by the book, darn near anything "for fun" is a game.


----------



## Umbran

Hussar said:


> Take conversation as an example.  Let's add an imbalanced mechanic to conversation.  Any time I touch my ear, you have to agree with what I am saying.  Can we carry out an enjoyable conversation?  Well, perhaps, if I only touch my ear after I know that you already agree with my point, but, more often than not, that's going to lead to a pretty frustrating conversation.




Note, as I say this, that I have already stated that balance can be important to a game, at least for some players.  I'm on record as being okay with balance.  I am not against balance.

Let's add a balanced mechanic to conversation.  Any time anyone touches their ear, everyone else in the conversation has to agree with what is being said.

I submit this won't lead to any better result than the imbalanced mechanic.  So, it isn't the *balance* that was the issue with the mechanic in question.  In fact, this is not an example of how imbalance is bad, but more an example of how having mechanics for the sake of having mechanics is bad - adding well-defined rules does not a good game make.


----------



## Umbran

Janx said:


> I think for adults, Game does get re-defined as structured activity for recreation.  Pool is a Game. D&D is a game.  Hockey is a game.  Halo is a game.  Games come in boxes or have rules to an adult.




True.  And how many adults playing non-professionally toss out rules in an ad hoc manner when they become unfun? I suspect the answer is "lots".  This feeds into the next point....



> But by the book, darn near anything "for fun" is a game.




And there is a point to mentioning this, beyond being picayune.  Consider the two statements:

1) These extra rules and fiddly bits (like equipment lists and weapons tables) shouldn't be there because it is a ROLE PLAYING game, and those aren't roleplaying.

2) These extra rules and fiddly bits must be there because it is a role playing GAME, and without them it isn't a game.

I submit both are equally false.  

Role playing is not an end, in and of itself.  Neither are structured rules.  Fun, enjoyment of leisure time, is the desired goal, no?  And it isn't like one thing is fun for all people.  Thus, attempts to theoretically proscribe what is or isn't a game, or role playing, must be done carefully, if at all, because doing so may tromp on fun, which is the real practical goal.

Which is to say, don't worry so much about whether it is role playing, or game - worry about whether it will be fun, and for whom it will be fun.


----------



## Celebrim

Umbran said:


> Let's add a balanced mechanic to conversation.  Any time anyone touches their ear, everyone else in the conversation has to agree with what is being said.




I largely agree with the direction you've been taking your argument in the last few posts, but you accidentally weaken it here with a strawman response to Hussar's strawman example, because your example of a balanced mechanic isn't actually balanced either.   

Balance requires both sharing and limits on the utilization of narrative resources, and your mechanic though more about sharing than Hussar's still leads to the opposite of sharing and has no limits.  RPGs over the years have developed a lot of ways to balance their mechanics.  None ever tried, "Any time anyone preforms some trivial out of game activity they get infinite in game resources.", because it's trivial obvious this wouldn't be balanced.  A moments thought about the game you just created would cause you to realize that it would drive a game toward a situation were everyone was holding their ear and arguing about whose statements had priority.   This is occurring because there is still a lack of balance.  We still haven't arrived a 'fair' game, which I would argue is a pretty good synonym for what is meant by 'balance'.  

A closer approximation to balanced control of the narrative might be, "During play, one player is randomly chosen to hold the golden ticket.   During any one proposition, the holder of the golden ticket can declare the outcome of the fortune mechanic bypassing normal resolution rules (or set the stakes, or narrate the outcome, depending on the mechanics of the game), but if they do so, they must hand the golden ticket to the player on their left."  

Similar mechanics evolve naturally in games if you watch 6 year olds play.  They'll naturally develop on their own the notion of taking turns to share the narrative in the hopes that this will lead to balance.  Of course, that breaks down because even though it might involve equal sharing, it imposes no limit on how the narrative may be shaped which tends to not be balanced.

Since your straw man mechanic is also imbalanced, you can't really draw any conclusions from the fact that it produces no better result than an imbalanced mechanic.   Balance is still the problem with both examples.


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## Janx

let's talk about Spotlight Balance, in which I do see reflections of Game Balance.

In an RPG with me and Bob, and we're both the same level, but different classes:

1) If Bob gets 20 minutes of solo talking time with NPCs, I want 20 minutes of the same or equivalent "fun"
2) If Bob's PC is handily killing a dragon in the big show case encounter, I don't want to be struggling to kill one of the weak minions during the same fight.
3) If my PC really isn't meant to be good at combat, after Bob gets all the glory for that combat encounter, I want the next encounter to be where my PC's specialty is important and Bob has to rely on me.
4) When it comes to splitting treasure, I want a fair share, and not to be bullied into less because Bob's PC can kill mine

Now my list may not be applicable to every player, but I bet there's a decent amount of resonance with most players.

On #1, an Extrovert is easily stealing spotlight with NPCs from an Introvert

On #2, some might claim 4E tried to truly balance actual combat output across players.  I don't think that's the only valid interpretation to solve the core concern that Bob doesn't need my PC, but I need his.

On #3, I try to address the "combat's not for every PC" kind of campaign, but the reality is, a combat heavy game/campaign screws characters with different focus.  It's an imbalance.

On #4, this may sound like a problem kids, have, but you know what, many of us were kids when we started and it was a real problem.  And some of us may still be experiencing some party bullying because one PC really is better.  Kind of a stupid design problem for an audience that was typically victims of bullying.

My guess is that the game system SHOULD try to solve these problems, and not rely on the GM to do so.  Or at the least, it should not contribute to making them worse.  I think these things as I describe sound like "Spotlight Balance" but they easily translate to Game Balance.  It's the same thing in practical terms.


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## Umbran

Celebrim said:


> I largely agree with the direction you've been taking your argument in the last few posts, but you accidentally weaken it here with a strawman response to Hussar's strawman example, because your example of a balanced mechanic isn't actually balanced either.
> 
> Balance requires both sharing and limits on the utilization of narrative resources...




I see it a tad differently, and perhaps didn't make the point I was hoping to.  The point was to demonstrate that we can have issues with mechanics that we may incorrectly blame on balance. 

Balanced design and good design are not equivalent.  My strawman was perfectly (a mathematician might even say trivially) balanced - but a really crappy design.  Take a crappy design, balance it, and you may still have a crappy design.  Ergo, the issue is not with the lack of balance itself.

What you're talking about is a way to achieve *good* balanced design.


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## Celebrim

Umbran said:


> The point was to demonstrate that we can have issues with mechanics that we may incorrectly blame on balance.




I suppose that is possible, and I certainly agree that a game might have problems with mechanics that aren't related to balance - slow play, repetition, vagueness, internal contradiction, and so forth.   And I likewise agree that there are degrees to which we could say a balancing mechanic was well designed.

But none of that agreement suggests to me that if everyone had equal access to the ear mechanic, it would be mean the ear mechanic is balanced.   I argued earlier that balance in a game was a close synonym to fair.   I'd argue that the close synonym of imbalanced is degenerate.   I think balance implies a certain amount of interplay. 

Consider the case of Magic the Gathering.  Suppose we print the card "Chuck Norris", and the card says something like, "If Chuck Norris is in your hand, immediately put Chuck Norris into play.  Chuck Norris cannot be countered.  If Chuck Norris is in play, the controller of Chuck Norris just wins, immediately.  Chuck Norris is legal in all formats.  Chuck Norris cannot be banned.  Chuck Norris cannot be restricted.  You may put as many copies of Chuck Norris in your deck as you like.  Judges may not object to Chuck Norris."   The fact that every player had equal access to Chuck Norris would not make the game, post Chuck Norris, balanced.   Everyone would immediately say, "Chuck Norris is not balanced.", and they'd be right.   It does things no balanced mechanic can do.   Any easily accessible "I win" buttons is not balanced.  The create a degenerate situation where everyone must play the same strategy, make the same moves, and the only remaining argument is about priority.   The "grab your ear" mechanic is a "I win" button with no restrictions on its access.

An example of a game that is balanced, but lacks good design would be Tic Tac Toe.  However, the game would be even worse if the first person to play also had a winning strategy.  

No game that lacks balance in my opinion also has good design.   Balance is a necessary though not sufficient condition of good design.   I'm not even sure equal access is actually a necessary condition of being balanced, and it is certainly not a sufficient one so I disagree with your claim that the ear mechanic was either perfectly or trivially balanced.


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## Umbran

Janx said:


> My guess is that the game system SHOULD try to solve these problems, and not rely on the GM to do so.  Or at the least, it should not contribute to making them worse.  I think these things as I describe sound like "Spotlight Balance" but they easily translate to Game Balance.  It's the same thing in practical terms.




Some measure of mechanical balance would serve to alleviate many of those issues, yes.  There are some other ways to attack others.

For example, #2 - this can be okay *if* your struggle with that minion is as crucial to events as the struggle with the Big Bad.  Superman is off slugging it out with General Zod, while Jimmy Olsen struggles with a minion - if Jimmy wins, he gets to turn off the Device of Doom!  Balancing really hefty mechanical differences like superman/Jimmy Olsen can be met with adventure design.

#3 is similar - a broadly varied adventure environment will usually result in everyone getting to shine when their respective challenges come up.

Admittedly, dealing with #2 and #3 in adventure design regularly can lead to a certain predictable and repetitive structures, if the designers are not careful.

This leads, however, to the point that mechanical balance doesn't need to be complete, the silver bullet.  Having to always structure adventures for Superman and Jimmy Olsen is a chore - we might make it so that everyone is Superman, or everyone is Jimmy, but it might be better if at least we are dealing with Superman and The Flash, and then deal with the rest of the discrepancy in adventure design.


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## Umbran

Celebrim said:


> But none of that agreement suggests to me that if everyone had equal access to the ear mechanic, it would be mean the ear mechanic is balanced.   I argued earlier that balance in a game was a close synonym to fair.




I have seen the term too often used otherwise to accept that as our working definition.  Thus my distinction - my strawman was balanced.  You're going a step further, and talking about good, constructive balance.  See my previous distinction between theory and practice to see why I want to keep my distinction.



> No game that lacks balance in my opinion also has good design.   Balance is a necessary though not sufficient condition of good design.




That seems to be begging the question, in the classic sense of "assuming the conclusion".  If we take balance as part of the definition of good design, this is trivial, tautological.  

It is a somewhat more daunting prospect to not assume it, not bake it into our definition, and show that we always end up with a lousy game if we don't have it.


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## Celebrim

Umbran said:


> I have seen the term too often used otherwise to accept that as our working definition.




Well, I can't say how you've seen the term used, but my magic card example is indicative of how I've seen the term used.  "Chuck Norris" isn't balanced, even if all participants have equal access to "Chuck Norris".   By the common usage of the word "balance" as it is applied to games, I consider that pretty straight forward.



> You're going a step further, and talking about good, constructive balance.




I'm fine with accepting that as a working definition for the purposes of getting on the same page, but "constructive balance" is hardly a common term of art.   I think what you are calling "constructive balance" is normally baked into the term, and what you would call non-constructive balance most people would agree is not balanced because it trivially leads to a degenerate game state.   With "Chuck Norris" for example, it leads to "zeroth turn wins".  With the "ear rule", it renders all of rhetoric and debate tugging on ones ear and claiming you did so first.  In Magic Cards one will often here it said that a particular mechanic is "inherently unbalanced", meaning that it can't be incorporated into the game without destroying the games integrity.  In a game like WoW, it's not enough to say that Discipline Priest are available to everyone and so they are balanced.  Their presence also cannot render all other choices invalid and unnecessary.  In your terms, if they are not balanced well, then they are inherently destructive and so can't be constructive.   But I don't think in common usage many persons would agree that something that is imbalanced is "balanced, it's just not balanced well", especially in the case of something like "Chuck Norris" or the "Ear Rule".



> That seems to be begging the question, in the classic sense of "assuming the conclusion".  If we take balance as part of the definition of good design, this is trivial, tautological.
> 
> It is a somewhat more daunting prospect to not assume it, not bake it into our definition, and show that we always end up with a lousy game if we don't have it.




In my defense, in my first post in this thread I began to establish an argument for why I thought you couldn't have anything but a lousy game without balance.  Of course, since we don't seem to mean the same thing by 'balance' when we use the word, I'm not sure that means much to you.


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## Mishihari Lord

Celebrim said:


> I suppose that is possible, and I certainly agree that a game might have problems with mechanics that aren't related to balance - slow play, repetition, vagueness, internal contradiction, and so forth.   And I likewise agree that there are degrees to which we could say a balancing mechanic was well designed.
> 
> But none of that agreement suggests to me that if everyone had equal access to the ear mechanic, it would be mean the ear mechanic is balanced.   I argued earlier that balance in a game was a close synonym to fair.   I'd argue that the close antonym of imbalanced is degenerate.   I think balance implies a certain amount of interplay.
> 
> Consider the case of Magic the Gathering.  Suppose we print the card "Chuck Norris", and the card says something like, "If Chuck Norris is in your hand, immediately put Chuck Norris into play.  Chuck Norris cannot be countered.  If Chuck Norris is in play, the controller of Chuck Norris just wins, immediately.  Chuck Norris is legal in all formats.  Chuck Norris cannot be banned.  Chuck Norris cannot be restricted.  You may put as many copies of Chuck Norris in your deck as you like.  Judges may not object to Chuck Norris."   The fact that every player had equal access to Chuck Norris would not make the game, post Chuck Norris, balanced.   Everyone would immediately say, "Chuck Norris is not balanced.", and they'd be right.   It does things no balanced mechanic can do.   Any easily accessible "I win" buttons is not balanced.  The create a degenerate situation where everyone must play the same strategy, make the same moves, and the only remaining argument is about priority.   The "grab your ear" mechanic is a "I win" button with no restrictions on its access.
> 
> An example of a game that is balanced, but lacks good design would be Tic Tac Toe.  However, the game would be even worse if the first person to play also had a winning strategy.
> 
> No game that lacks balance in my opinion also has good design.   Balance is a necessary though not sufficient condition of good design.   I'm not even sure equal access is actually a necessary condition of being balanced, and it is certainly not a sufficient one so I disagree with your claim that the ear mechanic was either perfectly or trivially balanced.




I don't think Chuck Norris is a good example.  If everyone has an equal chance to get the card then the game is balanced in any meaning I have ever seen used.  It sounds like your equating "balanced" with "well designed" which isn't a good idea.  There are a lot of other important factors to good game design besides balance.


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## Bedrockgames

The whole is balance necessary argument is just as impossible and divisive as the whole role-play means X argument. This is a diverse hobby with some people liking different styles of play or different aspects of the game, some want more balance, some less and some are not at all concerned about it....to talk about design in one size fits all terms like that fails to acknowledge this simple truth. I think what is important in design is to know what you are trying to achieve and to build tools in the game that help meet that goal. But that leaves a lot of room for different approaches. If Wick had simply said the things in his article were what he'd like to see in a game, I'd have zero objection and anyone making such a game for player's like Wick would be engaged in good design in my opinion if they succeeded in meeting the requirements he laid out. But where it goes wrong is trying to define the hobby around those preferences. I understand this. I've been guilty of myself at times. But I think it is not at all useful for us to try to impose what we like on the rest of the hobby and say it is the only way to do things or the best way. It is just too diverse with too many people wanting different things.


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## Hussar

Mishihari Lord said:
			
		

> I don't think Chuck Norris is a good example. If everyone has an equal chance to get the card then the game is balanced in any meaning I have ever seen used. It sounds like your equating "balanced" with "well designed" which isn't a good idea. There are a lot of other important factors to good game design besides balance.
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Illusion-of-Game-Balance/page10#ixzz3FhPSZcbg




Oh, for sure.  I think that probably goes without saying.  As Celebrim says, Tic-Tac-Toe is perfectly balanced but isn't a very good game.  Snakes and Ladders is also perfectly balanced, but, at the end of the day, not really a very repayable game.  

But, while there are other important factors, that doesn't change the fact that balance is an important factor too.  Ignore any of the important factors and the game won't be very good.


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## I'm A Banana

Hussar said:


> Oh, for sure.  I think that probably goes without saying.  As Celebrim says, Tic-Tac-Toe is perfectly balanced but isn't a very good game.  Snakes and Ladders is also perfectly balanced, but, at the end of the day, not really a very repayable game.
> 
> But, while there are other important factors, that doesn't change the fact that balance is an important factor too.  Ignore any of the important factors and the game won't be very good.




Snakes n' Ladders is a well-balanced game. But it's also not a game that involves any choice or strategy on the part of the player. It's pretty much a game of luck. You could flip a coin and get the same basic play dynamic. But it is a phenomenally well-designed game for the purposes it sets out to achieve -- it is a game for kids that focuses on sense pleasure. It's "fun" when you land on a snake or a ladder and get to skip a bunch of squares. And failure is as fun as success! Playing that game is an excuse to have the fun of sliding little pieces around on a board. 

Tic-Tac-Toe is a well-balanced game. It also doesn't involve much choice or strategy. Like a much-less-complex version of chess, it is a "solved" game. Playing a game of tic-tac-toe is playing a game that tests  your knowledge vs. the knowledge of some other player, so there's a bit of rivalry. It's not very deep, but it's competitive, quick, and flexible. Until you've "solved" it, it's fun to play to see how much the other person knows. 

Tabletop RPGs are not balanced in this competitive sense at all, because they're not really competitive. They also can't be balanced as tightly as chess or Tic-Tac-Toe because they can't ever be "solved" (there's always more variables you can introduce) -- its hard to truly make it a game of system mastery. 

The flaws in Tic-Tac-Toe and Snakes n' Ladders are actually very well dodged in many tabletop RPG's -- they have _endless_ choice and variety. 

Balance there, if there is balance there, has to mean something other than competitive equality of choice.


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## Celebrim

Mishihari Lord said:


> I don't think Chuck Norris is a good example.  If everyone has an equal chance to get the card then the game is balanced in any meaning I have ever seen used.




You are underestimating the impact of Chuck Norris on the game.  MtG is a CCG with constructed decks, meaning both players get to choose what cards they put in their deck.   If Chuck Norris is printed, then the chance of a player winning (influencing the outcome of the game) is maximized by constructing a deck so that Chuck Norris is the only card in the deck.  This is permitted by the special rules of the Chuck Norris card.  Further, the way that Chuck Norris is written suggests that you can win with Chuck Norris before the game actually begins.   As soon as you draw your cards to begin play, both players are free to play Chuck Norris and win the game regardless of whose turn it is or anything else.  

Chuck Norris is not balanced.  The presence of the card in the game exerts so much force on the rest of the game that it simply destroys the game.  Everyone that wishes to participate in the game is forced to play Chuck Norris or lose.   I choose Chuck Norris to be an extreme example because some real examples of cards that are inherently unbalanced are much more subtle and require a lot of experience to understand why they ruin the game in context.   



> It sounds like your equating "balanced" with "well designed" which isn't a good idea.  There are a lot of other important factors to good game design besides balance.




I agree.  I don't claim that being balanced is sufficient.   However, balanced covers a lot of ground.   It means that not only do both players have a chance to play, but that the legitimate play that is available is sufficiently varied in scope.

I'll give you another example.  There was a game in the 1980's called Karateka.   Initial play of the game made it seem that it was a difficult game requiring mastery of complex timing and combos.  However, after the initial bit of shock involved in learning to control the character's slow response to your commands, you quickly discovered that basically every opponent could be defeated by just spamming side kicks continually.  The side kick was your longest attack.  It took the same amount of time to execute as your other kicks.  No opponent had an attack of longer range.  If the opponent attempted to side kick you, at worst it would double block.   At that point, the otherwise engrossing game resolved down to: side kick, side kick, side kick, side kick, for like 40 minutes.  You'd occasionally pull other attacks just because you got bored, but the point is you never needed to pull any other attack ever.  All your attempted skill mastery was pointless.   This was a single player game.  You had nothing to compete with except yourself.

That is bad balance, and not some other sort of bad design.


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## Jhaelen

I think you are talking about two different kinds of balancing:
1) There's balancing the different cards against each other, and
2) there's trying to create a balanced game for two players by giving them equal access to the same options.

Adding Chuck Norris clearly breaks 1), since no existing card can compete with Chuck Norris. You'd be a fool to play anything but Chuck Norris.
2) Would only be broken if playing Chuck Norris (or only Chuck Norris) wasn't an option for all players. Since this is MtG, this could be broken by turning it into a super-ultra-mega-rare card, or simply just selling it 1 million dollars per card. Only players with a sufficient budget would be able to play the optimal deck, i.e. nothing but Chuck Norris.

MtG is an interesting case, since card rarity is actually used as a balancing mechanism. I.e. type 1) balance could actually be achieved by breaking type 2) balance.

Actually, there's similar balancing mechanisms at work in rpgs:
- In Runequest, when creating a character you have to roll on a table to determine your vocation/background. So, to start play with some of the stronger options, like soldier or shaman, you have to be really lucky with your dice roll. With time every character can become whatever they want, but characters are not created equal.
In other words: the available vocations/backgrounds are not balanced against each other (type 1) balance). Some are clearly better than others. But since you cannot freely choose your vocation/background, there's a kind of overall balance (type 2)), if each player created a hundred characters, it would be likely that everyone would have created a similar mix of weak and strong characters.

Earlier editions of D&D have tried several different methods of balancing character classes:
- requiring high base stats (which were determined by rolling dice)
- requiring different amounts of xp to advance
- weaker classes having an easier time to gain xp than stronger classes
- having a high mortality at the start of their career to balance overpoweredness at high levels

I think 4e is the only edition of D&D that achieved a kind of perfect balance of type 1) while all editions are balanced in the sense of type 2).


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## Hussar

But Jhaelen, aren't you just proving the point?  That balance is very important?


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## Bedrockgames

Jhaelen said:


> Actually, there's similar balancing mechanisms at work in rpgs:
> - In Runequest, when creating a character you have to roll on a table to determine your vocation/background. So, to start play with some of the stronger options, like soldier or shaman, you have to be really lucky with your dice roll. With time every character can become whatever they want, but characters are not created equal.
> In other words: the available vocations/backgrounds are not balanced against each other (type 1) balance). Some are clearly better than others. But since you cannot freely choose your vocation/background, there's a kind of overall balance (type 2)), if each player created a hundred characters, it would be likely that everyone would have created a similar mix of weak and strong characters.
> .




I am actually a big fan of this kind of balance, though I know a lot of people don't like it. What I enjoy about this is it allows the game to have stronger and weaker elements, but it doesn't become this broken choice that everyone takes because of the random method of acquiring it in the first place. I've done random and non-random spell acquisition methods. My experience is the majority of players (at least the majority I have play tested with) do prefer non-random, but I have to say I personally really enjoy how the random method lets you have more interesting and varied spells without worrying so much about keeping them in check with one another.


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## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> But Jhaelen, aren't you just proving the point?  That balance is very important?




I think he is just arguing against a reductionist view of balance. I think most of us can agree, if a game wants to appeal to a broad range of players, it obviously needs some amount of balance. While I don't think every game needs it (because there are groups out there who legitimately don't care about it or who prefer to have the GM manage it and just kind of let the designers build an interesting system without an eye toward it), most games do, because most players want it. 

But even then, there is a vast spectrum of what balance means and how much you ought to have. As some have pointed out this can be about spotlight for example, but at the same time, a player like me can't stand when games artificially make sure everybody gets their 25% spotlight time. Then there are folks who simply don't want better or worse choices in character creation with a particular emphasis on combat parity. Then there are folks who simply want the game to eliminate the "win buttons". But there are also people fine with disparity provided it is a luck of the draw kind of thing. And I think within all those camps there are folks who are fine with more or less rough edges. I think that last bit is important because balance doesn't come free. With anything like that in a game there is going to be a trade off. At the extreme end of balance, everything can start to feel the same and choice starts to have less impact. I think this is particularly true with things like spells and special abilities. 

I am curious where 5E comes down on balance. Clearly balance has been a huge topic of discussion since the transition from 3rd to 4th, and I would imagine they paid close attention to feedback related to balance during the public playtest. I haven't really had any time to dig deeply into 5E beyond skimming through the PHB. Does anybody have a sense of where the new edition comes down on balance. At first glance it looks like they had an eye toward it but didn't go crazy. But I realize with a game like this, it really requires some deeper reading and play to get a handle on the balance.


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## Hussar

Well, given the rigorous math of 5e and the whole tightly controlled numbers thing, I'd say balance is a HUGE concern in 5e.  Just like in every edition of D&D.

Rolling back a bit though BRG, my personal problem with random balance is that it only becomes balanced when you take the long view.  If my character is better in every way than your character, that's not balanced, regardless of how we got there - random chance or choices made.  And if the situation reverses the next time we make characters, that's still not balanced.  It's simply two points of imbalance.  This is largely my concern in AD&D balance.  It's rarely a well balanced system, but rather, a series of imbalances that add up to an even game.  The only problem is, there are so many presumptions that you have to make to achieve that balance (players will play multiple characters, the campaign will last long enough to advance to balance changing points, etc) that unless you play exactly the same campaign every time, you don't actually ever achieve balance.

But, sure, it's a range.  There's very balanced and there's kinda balanced and lots of wiggle room in between.  But, even at the, "kinda sorta balanced" end of the spectrum, balance is still considered an issue.  Whether balance is achieved through the mechanics or through the agreements at the table, you're still going to reach that balance point, regardless.

Personally, and this is only my own preference and not meant in any way to go beyond my personal preference, I'd rather that the system was balanced up front.  It just saves me so much work.

But for those that consider balance to be unimportant, try this in your next D&D game - refuse to advance your character for the entire campaign.  You start with a first level character, same as everyone else, but, you will not level up that character.  After all, balance doesn't matter, so, this shouldn't be a problem right?  Now, play the campaign for, say, ten levels, and then come back and tell us how much fun you had in that campaign.


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## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> Well, given the rigorous math of 5e and the whole tightly controlled numbers thing, I'd say balance is a HUGE concern in 5e.  Just like in every edition of D&D.
> 
> Rolling back a bit though BRG, my personal problem with random balance is that it only becomes balanced when you take the long view.  If my character is better in every way than your character, that's not balanced, regardless of how we got there - random chance or choices made.  And if the situation reverses the next time we make characters, that's still not balanced.  It's simply two points of imbalance.  This is largely my concern in AD&D balance.  It's rarely a well balanced system, but rather, a series of imbalances that add up to an even game.  The only problem is, there are so many presumptions that you have to make to achieve that balance (players will play multiple characters, the campaign will last long enough to advance to balance changing points, etc) that unless you play exactly the same campaign every time, you don't actually ever achieve balance.




I certainly do agree, it is only balanced over the long view. I also agree, most people don't like. I therefore think it is a bad idea for current editions of D&D because that's a game that appeals to a very broad audience. But I do think balance over the long term is a perfectly fine approach if that is what you or your audience like. As I said, to me it is perfectly balanced. I don't mind being weaker in this instance if my chance of being strong was equal to your's but I rolled poorly (in fact it kind of makes character creation exciting for me). That is also why stuff like mages starting super weak but becoming really powerful in the end is something I am fine with. It is balance, it just isn't parity at every step. And it does require one put it in the perspective of gaming over the long haul. 





> But, sure, it's a range.  There's very balanced and there's kinda balanced and lots of wiggle room in between.  But, even at the, "kinda sorta balanced" end of the spectrum, balance is still considered an issue.  Whether balance is achieved through the mechanics or through the agreements at the table, you're still going to reach that balance point, regardless.




But I think there are people who don't even care about balance at all. They're rare but I've seen them first hand. Particularly in more competitive games. There is a whole market for players who are into uber builds for example. For players taking that approach, lack of balance in key areas is a feature not a bug. I get that this isn't the mainstream attitude. And I acknowledge it isn't the best way for D&D to be designed because it needs to get the biggest possible audience (and frankly it isn't what I am into either). But I think we really need to stop talking about games in terms of one way being the best way, like it is objectively true (this isn't a direct response to your post, but just something that has been on my mind since this article came out). Certainly there is a best choice for a particular game, given its audience. But too often I see folks, myself certainly included, trying to position their set of preferences as the most ideal way to approach RPGS, and they use all manner of logic and evidence to prove that point. I find it odd that "logic" and "reason" so often lead people back to their own set of preferences (just like the Wick article, he makes a good argument for his position, but you can tell he started with his conclusion and worked his way toward it, rather than the other way around). But then when you go out and play with folks, you just see this vast range of diversity of preferences, styles, etc that suggest a one size fits all measure of balance isn't going to work. people want too many different things. So I see it more as gauging what the audience is and wants, and knowing what kind of game you are trying to make, then working toward that. Very likely balance will be an important factor of course.


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## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> Well, given the rigorous math of 5e and the whole tightly controlled numbers thing, I'd say balance is a HUGE concern in 5e.  Just like in every edition of D&D.
> 
> .




I am inclined to agree. What interests me is they seem to have taken a very different approach from the last time around, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is (I have to admit I've only been looking at 5E with one eye----not for lack of interest but because I've been so busy with other things). What they are doing in 5E feels more comfortable to me in terms of the balance approach. The only thing I wasn't crazy about in the edition was the fast healing rates, but I understand why they did it and it isn't going to stop me from playing. Math definitely seems more contained (I think the whole advantage mechanic arose out of a need to keep the numbers from exploding like they did in d20).


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## Janx

Bedrockgames said:


> There is a whole market for players who are into uber builds for example. For players taking that approach, lack of balance in key areas is a feature not a bug. I get that this isn't the mainstream attitude.
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Illusion-of-Game-Balance/page11#ixzz3FkU2dJcc




As these players are called MinMaxers and usually viewed as problems for other players/GMs, I'm inclined to think that a game design that serves them well is a game that fails the remaining majority.

James Ernest of CheapAss Games espoused his design philosophy for game play to be mostly random, but if the player used his brain, he'd get a slight edge over the other players.

I'd suggest that a similar level of balancing would work for satisfying MinMaxers.  Make the classes mostly balanced, but the MinMaxers will still find a optimizations that give them a slight edge over the other players, but not an overwhelming one.


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## Bedrockgames

Janx said:


> As these players are called MinMaxers and usually viewed as problems for other players/GMs, I'm inclined to think that a game design that serves them well is a game that fails the remaining majority.




While I discourage min/maxing in my own campaigns (because it is outside the preferences of me and the majority of my players) I think it is unfair to say these people are a problem. They are a problem when there is a mismatch of expectations at the table just like people who focus on being in character all the time can be a problem if not everyone is on the same page. But there is nothing wrong with getting pleasure from RPGs by making a powerful character and figuring out ways to make the system work for that. Some folks really enjoy the build process and the competitive aspect of play it can create. Should D&D, the most mainstream RPG, be built soley for them? Probably not. But I think designing a game with them in mind, is absolutely okay. Especially if you know that is what you are doing and they know it as well.

I ran a game of 3E for optimizers once (and I am the opposite of an optimizer). It was a blast. They had fun. I had fun. It was clearly a perfectly fine way to play the game. And it caused me to interact with the system in a new way. I can see the draw and understand why some folks like it. I think telling people they are bad or a problem because that aspect of gaming appeals to them, is just "Role Playing NOT roll playing" all over again (and I say that as someone who used to constantly harp about how it is all about the ROLEplay).


----------



## Bedrockgames

Janx said:


> I'd suggest that a similar level of balancing would work for satisfying MinMaxers.  Make the classes mostly balanced, but the MinMaxers will still find a optimizations that give them a slight edge over the other players, but not an overwhelming one.




I think for D&D that would work fine. It is the overwhelming edge that usually creates disrupting when you have group where not everyone is an optimizer.


----------



## Celebrim

Jhaelen said:


> I think you are talking about two different kinds of balancing:
> 1) There's balancing the different cards against each other, and
> 2) there's trying to create a balanced game for two players by giving them equal access to the same options.




Sure, but the two sorts of balance turn out to be inextricable.  The pieces of the game have to be balanced against each other, and the access to gameplay provided to all the players has to be balanced.   If the pieces of the game aren't balanced, then it tends to reduce access to the gameplay for one or both players.  



> Adding Chuck Norris clearly breaks 1), since no existing card can compete with Chuck Norris. You'd be a fool to play anything but Chuck Norris.  2) Would only be broken if playing Chuck Norris (or only Chuck Norris) wasn't an option for all players.




No, #2 gets broken because only the first person to draw Chuck Norris is able to influence the game - breaking the rule that everyone has equal opportunity to play.  The other player loses all access to the gameplay.  Additionally, because Chuck Norris breaks #1 and trivializes the game, even for the player who can influence the game the game is rendered unfun.   His actual access to a game is also minimized.   The situation is therefore bad for everyone.



> Since this is MtG, this could be broken by turning it into a super-ultra-mega-rare card, or simply just selling it 1 million dollars per card. Only players with a sufficient budget would be able to play the optimal deck, i.e. nothing but Chuck Norris.




This still doesn't work.  Whenever evaluating whether or not something is balanced, it pays to ask yourself the question, "Is this the sort of thing that is going to cause players to decry the situation or mechanic or game as 'unfair'?"   The more reasonable the claim that the mechanic is unfair, the more likely it is that it is unfair because it is unbalanced.   Remember, the whole point of balance is to provide weakness and advantage that can be situationally exploited so that there is a lot of interplay between players and between a player and the game mechanics. Even if Chuck Norris is a rare card for all players, he's still unbalanced.   The notion that the game could be balanced by making powerful cards rare was destroyed by the very first MtG national tournament, where multiple players managed to put together "Chuck Norris" decks that always won on the first play - rendering the coin flip of who went first the entire game.   But even as a rare win button that might or might not show up in a particular game, "Chuck Norris" is still not balanced.  

Your RuneQuest example is an attempt to make a mechanic that is unbalanced, balanced - by resetting the game often.   I've mentioned this before, and there are lots and lots of variations on it.  One of the better attempts is to make a 'Troup' style game where players take turns being in the more important roles.  Eventually, each person gets a chance to have spotlight, even though in any particular session, the whole session might be focused laser like on someone else.   RuneQuest and early editions of D&D try to force players to play unusual heroes with unexpected, non-stereotypical abilities through randomization.   I think balance is being deprioritized compared to naturalism, novelty, and other valued aspects of gameplay.  

In my experience, it doesn't really work, or to the extent that it works it only works for a very narrow sort of playing style.  First of all, there is no guarantee that in fact players will actually play several hundred characters.  In fact, I'd guess in most cases that this doesn't happen.  For one reason or the other the game is not actually reset as often as would be needed to ensure balance.   This is either because people don't continue playing that long, or else because character rates of turnover end up being not that high.  The result is in practice that you can have wide disparity between players in ability to share the game that ends up requiring some sort of ad hoc solutions by the GM or else a group of players that are ok with playing second fiddle, sidekicks, comic relief, and non-protagonized roles and who won't actually compete for spotlight.  In the long run though, I find even this tends to break down.  You tend to have players who willingly take those secondary roles in a story on the expectation that at game reset, they'll end up with a different perhaps larger role.   But this is gambler's fallacy.   In fact, there is a high expectation that someone who was unlucky the first time will be unlucky the second, third, and fourth time and it won't all actually come out in the wash.  Someone at the table will tend to have the better sort of characters and someone at the table will tend to have the weaker sorts of characters.  Eventually this will strain the patience of even the most accepting easy going RPer.   Beyond that, there is an issue that once the novelty of these sorts of games wears off, players tend to acquire preferences about the sort of character that they wish they were playing and the fact that the game is actively thwarting their desires tends to create problems.   Eventually, you find the players trying to work around the limitations of the game, either honestly by proposing rule changes, or dishonestly by simply cheating to get the character they want.



> MtG is an interesting case, since card rarity is actually used as a balancing mechanism. I.e. type 1) balance could actually be achieved by breaking type 2) balance.




No, it isn't.  Or at least, it hasn't been since the days of Alpha/Beta.  Rarity is used as marketing device, to give impetus to players to buy more cards than they otherwise would want or need.  But the assumption since basically the first one or two years the game was in existence is that rarity itself cannot be used to balance cards, and that in constructed all players playing at a high level will have access to all available cards.  Even in draft, there has been a lot of design effort in every set over the last 15 years or so to ensure that there is reasonably good balance between rares so that draft formats are reasonably balanced and depend on skill and not just lucky draws.   Compare a modern list of rares to something like the list of rares in Revised era sets, where often cards were slotted into rare if they had highly narrow utility.   You'd almost never see that in a modern set.


----------



## Umbran

Bedrockgames said:


> I am actually a big fan of this kind of balance, though I know a lot of people don't like it. What I enjoy about this is it allows the game to have stronger and weaker elements, but it doesn't become this broken choice that everyone takes because of the random method of acquiring it in the first place.




It is a broken possibility that some players can get by chance?  

"I am more powerful purely by luck, and the rest of you just have to lump it," doesn't sound "fair" as Celebrim might like to say.  It is fair in that there' an equal chance for all players to get it, but once the die is cast, it isn't really balanced in his sense, now is it?  Note how many D&D players have abandoned random stat generation, in favor of point buy?  It is the same basic thing - random assignment of power is often not satisfying.


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## Bedrockgames

Umbran said:


> It is a broken possibility that some players can get by chance?
> 
> "I am more powerful purely by luck, and the rest of you just have to lump it," doesn't sound "fair" as Celebrim might like to say.  It is fair in that there' an equal chance for all players to get it, but once the die is cast, it isn't really balanced in his sense, now is it?  Note how many D&D players have abandoned random stat generation, in favor of point buy?  It is the same basic thing - random assignment of power is often not satisfying.




I think there is a difference though between parity and balance. Balance includes a very broad range of tools to counter weigh something in the game considered too valuable. One approach is to make things the same using parity (i.e. no first level character can get more than a +1 bonus to damage), another way is to make it hurt (some characters can get up to a +10 bonus it is balanced out by this or that negative side effect), and another way is to randomize access so it isn't a "broken choice". Again I am not denying that there is a potential imbalance of power once play starts, but I think it is fair in that everyone has an equal chance of rolling good during character creation. This is balance over the long haul. I would agree with people who think it appeals to a narrow segment of gamers, but if these people find it fair, and enjoy it, what is the harm in a game giving them a random system that produces disparity once play starts? The randomizing at character creation is a counter weight. It makes sure that you can't just automatically start with this great ability. Now it isn't the kind of counter weight that appeals to everyone. Personally, for me, it has great appeal.

Also, I don't think this is me saying "I'm more powerful so everyone has to lump it." This is about expectations. Obviously if the group isn't cool with that, we can take another approach. But if I am with a group of players who share my interest in this kind of system, I'm fine with it. And it isn't like I am ending up the most powerful character every time. I am ending up with the short end of the stick as much as anyone else.


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## Umbran

Hussar said:


> Well, given the rigorous math of 5e and the whole tightly controlled numbers thing, I'd say balance is a HUGE concern in 5e.  Just like in every edition of D&D.




_Every_ edition?  I don't think so.  1e and 2e rather fail on the whole "balance" thing. The Gygaxian-style balance over the course of a whole campaign (wizards being weak to start, but dominating later, for example) is a mathematical, long-average balance, yes, but not effective in most sessions of actual game play, in which someone at the table gets the short end of the stick.

So, balanced, but not really a good balance in play.  Thus my distinction arises again from the muck to perturb the conversation!  



> But for those that consider balance to be unimportant




Can you identify anyone in this discussion who has actually said that?


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## Umbran

Bedrockgames said:


> and another way is to randomize access so it isn't a "broken choice".




So, just because I cannot choose it, we don't care that it is broken?



> Again I am not denying that there is a potential imbalance of power once play starts, but I think it is fair in that everyone has an equal chance of rolling good during character creation.




There's fair, in the probabilistic sense, and there's fair, in the sense of justice.  Johnny rolled well *one* time.  So, Jane has to lump it for the rest of an entire campaign?  Probabilistically fair, but  it hardly seems like justice to Jane, now does it?


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## Bedrockgames

Umbran said:


> It is the same basic thing - random assignment of power is often not satisfying.




This I would agree with. It is not satisfying for those who consider it unfair or just don't like having things random. I get that. But it is satisfying to certain gamers. Like I said before, I think D&D is way too mainstream for this to be part of the system anymore. However I can see it working in a number of other games, and I think works well in something like RuneQuest (or Traveller). There are always trade offs. Games that use this method, can do some interesting things as result. They can include powerful and interesting abilities without worrying about parity, because access is randomized. Now if that isn't important to you, then this method is undesirable. To me that sort of thing is important. It creates a more textured and natural feeling experience that I enjoy.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Umbran said:


> So, just because I cannot choose it, we don't care that it is broken?




Yes. Because for a lot of people the issue that broken options create is that you choose them, that they become the uber move in the game that you basically have to pick to win. When it is relegated to randomness, this isn't a problem (randomness may still be a problem for people for other reasons, which is why I say in a game like D&D it isn't a good fit but this has a place in design and for certain games). 



> There's fair, in the probabilistic sense, and there's fair, in the sense of justice.  Johnny rolled well *one* time.  So, Jane has to lump it for the rest of an entire campaign?  Probabilistically fair, but  it hardly seems like justice to Jan, now does it?




I am concerned about having fun at the table. And I am concerned that everyone has fun. So if Jane doesn't like this method, I am happy to employ another system or use an option that eliminates it from play. But if me, Jane, and Robert are playing and we all agree we like this method, it enhances play, and produces results we regard as fair....what is the issue? Why bring justice into it? I want fun and excitement at the table and I don't want "win buttons" but sometimes I want interesting and unexpected results. If Jane gets an Uber power because she rolled well, my attitude is I am happy for Jane and see it as a boon to the party. It makes the experience interesting and will often lead down unexpected roads. So I am just failing to see the issue given that I acknowledge you wouldn't implement this system unless everyone is onboard.


----------



## Umbran

Bedrockgames said:


> However I can see it working in a number of other games, and I think works well in something like RuneQuest (or Traveller).




I actually think it would work better in games and genres that have better inherent ways of dealing with power disparity.   RuneQuest and Traveller, in my experience, handle it less well than, say, the FASERIP Marvel Superheroes game (which was _horrendously_ unbalanced in character generation, but the genre gives you natural ways to construct adventures to handle that issue).


----------



## Bedrockgames

Umbran said:


> I actually think it would work better in games and genres that have better inherent ways of dealing with power disparity.   RuneQuest and Traveller, in my experience, handle it less well than, say, the FASERIP Marvel Superheroes game (which was _horrendously_ unbalanced in character generation, but the genre gives you natural ways to construct adventures to handle that issue).




That is a fair preference but understand that is what it is: a preference. Parity in play matters to you. And so this solution makes sense when that is the case. For those of is who like the random method in traveller and rune quest it is often because we want disparity in play but we want it controlled and distributed fairly. For us the method is great in a game like Runequest.


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## Celebrim

Umbran said:


> _Every_ edition?  I don't think so.  1e and 2e rather fail on the whole "balance" thing.




Agreed.  And to a large extent, while there is lots of evidence that balance was important to the 3e team, they failed pretty hard due to lack of adequate testing of high level play.  And as the game progressed, power creep became an important marketing tool, undermine the already problematic balance further.   To a large extent, I feel balance was the most significant failing of an otherwise very robust, accommodating, and broad system.  To deal with the huge balance problems of 3e, pretty much every table had to develop its own elaborate social contracts around how they would play the game.   Some embraced to a large extent, "If everything is broken, then nothing is."  Others had elaborate social norms regarding what was uncheesy and acceptable to play and pressured their peers to conform.  Others, like me, house ruled like mad to try to make a set of rules where the valid character creation options were approved of by default.



> The Gygaxian-style balance over the course of a whole campaign (wizards being weak to start, but dominating later, for example) is a mathematical, long-average balance, yes, but not effective in most sessions of actual game play, in which someone at the table gets the short end of the stick.




Agreed.  Most attempts to deal with balance as a problem that can be resolved in the long term fail in actual play.


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## Hussar

Oh, I agree that 1e and 2e largely failed at achieving balance.  No argument from me.  But, it was at least a consideration and a pretty important one as well.  

Just because they didn't succeed doesn't mean they never tried.


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## Celebrim

Bedrockgames said:


> That is a fair preference but understand that is what it is: a preference.




Let me just go ahead and provoke the firestorm.  I have no idea what your experience is, so I can only take it at your word that you have enjoyed random character generation in the instances you've experienced it.  Great.

But in 30 years of gaming I've met tons of players that claimed that they actually like randomness.  In that same period I've met zero players that actually did.   Every single one has in fact been the sort of person that likes randomness because the believe at some level that they'll never be on the short end of the stick, and when they are they howl and have invariably developed techniques for mitigating the randomness - did I mention howling?  

The situation is so bad that I would consider turning down any player that wanted to join my table who claimed to prefer random character generation on those grounds alone.  It would be a huge red flag.  What I've actually seen in play:

a) Player prefers random character generation.... This is because the player is a habitual cheater, and by using 'random' character generation as a pretense, he can play characters which would otherwise never be approved - there by drawing disproportionate spot light to themselves.

b) Player prefers random character generation... This is because the player primarily role plays in order to impose his will on his fellow players.  This is the kick that he gets out of playing, and by having disproportionate resources during character gen, he has more opportunities to bully the other PCs.

c) Player claims to prefer random character generation... But in practice this is only true if the results produce something he considers acceptable, usually an above average character with perhaps at most one minor flaw.   If the random results produce something truly below average, he'll find a way to keep repeating character generation until he gets the results he actually wants.   These techniques will include whining to the DM about the unfairness of what he claimed to enjoy until the DM relents and lets him make another character or reroll select results.  Alternately, the DM holds his ground, he starts having his PC's commit suicide until he eventually gets a player he's more into.  This can be literally, "I fall on my sword.", six times in a row until he has an above average character.  This sort of thing led to the observation that although you can have random character generation, what you can't do is make the player play a character he ultimately doesn't want to play.  And note, it only takes ONE player like this in the group, before everyone else in the group starts reflecting on their own character and how functional in game terms the players social behavior actually is.   Why should that player get a better character than me solely because he was being rude?   It's a nightmare situation as a GM.

d) Player claims to prefer random character generation... But only if rules are adopted that mitigate randomness to such a high degree that the results are predictable.  For example, for D&D using the Unearthed Arcana table meant to generate high level NPCs or straight up, "Roll 7d6 take the best three, rearrange stats to taste."  

e) Player claims to prefer random character generation... But it turns out that the player has only played with GMs that use kid gloves and continually fudge on the player's behalf so that regardless of what is on their sheet, they are likely to succeed in virtually every endeavor anyway.  

f) Player claims to prefer random character generation... But player is almost always exclusively the GM, and as such, really has no personal concerns with PC balance.  In fact, often the player likes weak PC's because that means his share of the story is correspondingly greater.

g) Player claims to prefer random character generation... But this is because player in fact doesn't play his character.  Instead, the player is accustomed to playing a highly metagame where the fun is being disruptive, goofing off, subverting play, telling jokes, causing trouble, and generally enjoying himself by being the joker or jester.  He has adopted methods of drawing spotlight to himself that don't at all depend on the rules.  As such, he doesn't really care what is on his sheet, and if what is on his sheet is below average in ability then even better because it gives him an excuse for acting out the way that he wants to.   Usually this player has learned that the GM will run the game in such a way that he never has to accept consequences from his actions and his protagonist status (and the other PCs) protects him from being removed from play.  So who cares what the mechanics are, right?



> For us the method is great in a game like Runequest.




Glad to hear it.  Don't actually believe it; but if it is true, well it's good that someone is getting something valuable out of it.   Frankly though, when I hear a statement like, "we want disparity in play but we want it controlled and distributed fairly", my thought is, "How in the heck does that work?"   That's such a blatantly contradictory statement that I find it impossible to believe its made in full self-awareness.  How in the heck is arbitrary and capricious somehow morphed into "controlled" and "fair" in your vocabulary?   Logically, if it ways more than a duck, "it's a fair cop?"

I don't deny that it would be possible to create a random chargen system that did distribute spotlight equally, but I've never seen it in practice.  Runequest in particular clearly belongs to the fantasy heartbreaker genera, and pretty clearly doesn't distribute spotlight equally.  (Although in practice, the distribution range is probably smaller than it is in some games like WFRP.) If you enjoyed it, it's probably because that never became a problem in actual play.   One nice thing about PnP RPGs is that they have plenty of ways to mitigate the problems with balance through direct GM management of the situation, player settable goals of play, and social contract.  It's also important to note that in shorter periods of play, balance disparities tend to be less important.   So yeah, it's possible to enjoy a highly unbalanced PnP RPG, but I would be highly mindful and reflective about why.


----------



## Janx

We always use 4d6, keep the best 3.  Its worked for us.  haven't seen too many suicides.  Though there is that one guy who always rolls bad, though he's more of a goof off than suicider.

One idea I had for D&D was roll and generate 2 attributes from one result.  Something like 3d6, and the second attribute was equal to 21 - the roll result.  Thus, if you rolled an 18, you'd end up with an 18 and a 3 for stats.

Or some variant math of that idea.  It would end up that a guy who rolled well would end up with built-in counter-balances.

What I liked out of random generation was that your next PC was inherently different from the last.  In point-buy, it was too easy to just sling out Bob 3 when Bob 2 died who had the exact same build-out as Bob 1, just reset back to the beginning.


----------



## Umbran

Bedrockgames said:


> But if me, Jane, and Robert are playing and we all agree we like this method, it enhances play, and produces results we regard as fair....what is the issue? Why bring justice into it?




The issue is that humans are usually *bad* at judging longer term risks and issues, and we should acknowledge that.  What seems reasonable intellectually at the time the campaign started may not seem all that great a year later, when you realize that it isn't really all that fun.  Social contract says she agreed, but she's not satisfied.  Now she has to have the uncomfortable discussions, and might possibly screw up the game for everyone.  

Remember that we are talking about design, not table-execution.  What you choose to do at your table is your own business, of course.  But if you are writing a game, don't you want to eliminate obvious ways for folks to shoot themselves in the foot?  I know you say you like this, but how often is it really a bug, not a feature?



> I want fun and excitement at the table and I don't want "win buttons" but sometimes I want interesting and unexpected results.




There are results and results - the timescale and level of commitment required by the player matter.  An unexpected result in a combat here or there is one thing, and an unexpected result that you may have to live with for years of gameplay is another.



> If Jane gets an Uber power because she rolled well, my attitude is I am happy for Jane and see it as a boon to the party.




Yeah, well, that attitude doesn't seem all that prevalent.  And I've seen folks espouse it in theory, but in practice they still gripe about how they dont' get to do the cool stuff, 'cause the uber-character does it all....




Bedrockgames said:


> That is a fair preference but understand that is what it is: a preference. Parity in play matters to you.




Not as much as you might think.  I *loved* the FASERIP Marvel Superheroes game, though it often didn't have parity in play.  This isn't about what I, personally, like or don't like. 

I'm thinking of this in terms of best practices in design, stepping beyond personal preferences, and thinking about what's better, broadly speaking, for games.


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## Umbran

Celebrim said:


> I don't deny that it would be possible to create a random chargen system that did distribute spotlight equally, but I've never seen it in practice.




Well, context matters.  Take, for example, Something like D&D "basic" play.  You have the classic four characters - fighter, wizard, thief, cleric.  

To a significant extent, random stat rolling isn't as big an issue, because spotlight is managed through class/role as much or more than by the stats.  It doesn't matter as much if the thief has weak stats - he's still the only one who can accomplish some tasks, or make use of some tactics, that will manage much of the spotlight distribution just so long as the GM gives a varied adventure environment.  

In games where you don't have niche protection, or you have a party that is overlapping niches or roles, you don't get this benefit, obviously.


----------



## Umbran

Janx said:


> We always use 4d6, keep the best 3.  Its worked for us.





Well, 4d6, drop lowest, is intentionally skewed so that you are apt to make a character that is nominally effective.  The other character may be better in many ways, but you are apt to at least be competent, and there's still an upper cap on how good the other character will be (assuming no min-maxers, who can often make killers even with mediocre stats).  From random stats alone, you're probably not looking at Superman vs Jimmy Olsen, here.


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## Janx

Umbran said:


> Well, 4d6, drop lowest, is intentionally skewed so that you are apt to make a character that is nominally effective.  The other character may be better in many ways, but you are apt to at least be competent, and there's still an upper cap on how good the other character will be (assuming no min-maxers, who can often make killers even with mediocre stats).  From random stats alone, you're probably not looking at Superman vs Jimmy Olsen, here.




I did the math a long time ago and it moves the average from 3d6's 10.5 to about 12.something.  I wrote a program to compute it on a Compaq hand held running Windows CE 2.0.  good times.

It was my impression that few people played D&D with straight 3d6, as it was just too swingy.  Except for really die-hard old-timers.


My point was really to Celebrim's that nobody actually likes random generation.  It's been working for us for over 20 years.  I don't hear that much complaining really.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Celebrim said:


> Let me just go ahead and provoke the firestorm.  I have no idea what your experience is, so I can only take it at your word that you have enjoyed random character generation in the instances you've experienced it.  Great.




I appreciate we have different experience here. All I can say is I honestly prefer random generation like this and I know others who do. 




> Glad to hear it.  Don't actually believe it; but if it is true, well it's good that someone is getting something valuable out of it.   Frankly though, when I hear a statement like, "we want disparity in play but we want it controlled and distributed fairly", my thought is, "How in the heck does that work?"   That's such a blatantly contradictory statement that I find it impossible to believe its made in full self-awareness.  How in the heck is arbitrary and capricious somehow morphed into "controlled" and "fair" in your vocabulary?   Logically, if it ways more than a duck, "it's a fair cop?"




I don't see why this is so difficult to believe. These methods have been around for along time and there are folks who prefer games like Runequest, Traveller and versions of HARN, which employ this sort of built in randomness to keep acquisition of disparate abilities either fair or measured in some way (say against the increasing risk of bad things occurring). I don't see this as contradictory at all. I do like some disparity in play because it creates a more textured experience for me. But I want some amount of fairness there. I don't want it to be the guy who knows how to put a build together always makes the best character. By randomizing it, you always have a shot at getting these exceptional abilities. 

And because you brought it up, I don't whine or complain when I get a bad result. I am obviously hoping for a better result. That is part of the excitement of it, but I know the probabilities at work. I find that fun and enjoyable. If others don't that is entirely fine. I've already said this isn't an approach suited to a game like D&D anymore given its mass appeal. I recognize this is minority viewpoint. But surely there can be a place for it in the hobby?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Umbran said:


> The issue is that humans are usually *bad* at judging longer term risks and issues, and we should acknowledge that.  What seems reasonable intellectually at the time the campaign started may not seem all that great a year later, when you realize that it isn't really all that fun.  Social contract says she agreed, but she's not satisfied.  Now she has to have the uncomfortable discussions, and might possibly screw up the game for everyone.




Obviously people shouldn't be forced to do anything they are not comfortable with. I may agree to play ten games of Hungry Hungry Hippo, then realize I HATE it by the second game and ask to stop. That doesn't mean the creators of HHH are wrong to make that game, because it might come up that someone suddenly decides midway through that they hate it. It is the same with this. If I get a group together to play Traveller, we all understand going in what that entails. Now if someone really has a problem with that once we start, of course we are not going to be jerks and we are going to work out a solution to keep everybody happy. But that is a social issue for the group to negotiate. I don't think designers have an obligation to make sure people work out their expectations and get along. 



> Remember that we are talking about design, not table-execution.  What you choose to do at your table is your own business, of course.  But if you are writing a game, don't you want to eliminate obvious ways for folks to shoot themselves in the foot?  I know you say you like this, but how often is it really a bug, not a feature?




It depends entirely on the game and my audience. If I am making a game and I know my audience is largely folks who are okay with the possibility of shooting yourself in the foot through character creation, I don't think I have an obligation to build in protections for people who are against that. I am not saying every game, or the most played game like D&D, should do things like this. I am saying there are people who enjoy this and saying we can't ever design games this way for them is misguided. There is nothing wrong with knowing your audience is okay with a particular method of balance and designing toward that. By the same token there is nothing wrong with knowing what you like personally and making a game that meets that. Now this does mean your audience might be more limited. If we are doing the random thing, that doesn't have super broad appeal.


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## Bedrockgames

Janx said:


> I did the math a long time ago and it moves the average from 3d6's 10.5 to about 12.something.  I wrote a program to compute it on a Compaq hand held running Windows CE 2.0.  good times.
> 
> It was my impression that few people played D&D with straight 3d6, as it was just too swingy.  Except for really die-hard old-timers.
> 
> 
> My point was really to Celebrim's that nobody actually likes random generation.  It's been working for us for over 20 years.  I don't hear that much complaining really.




Keep in mind 3d6 is the method used in 2E, but in 1E the default was 4d6 drop the lowest.


----------



## Celebrim

Janx said:


> We always use 4d6, keep the best 3.  Its worked for us.




I played that way for a long time myself.  But, I should point out that even choosing to play that way is itself the beginning of creeping away from random and toward 'above average'.  Why are you choosing 4d6 keep the best three (probably rearranging to taste)?  Why not if you really like randomness and diversity go straight up 3d6 in order?

If IIRC, the average on 4d6 keep three goes up from like 10.5 to 12.7, but the really big thing is just how much less common it makes truly crippling scores of 7 or less and how much more common it makes truly useful scores of 16 or higher.   This means that you probably don't end up with a character that has significant flaws in 1e terms and are more likely to have a character with a real advantage.   And in my experience, it was characters like that that got played with.  I never actually saw a lot of people trying to play characters with sub par stats. 



> Though there is that one guy who always rolls bad, though he's more of a goof off than suicider.




Goofs are mentioned in my rant.  I'm not entirely opposed to goofs, but well... they aren't really involved with the rules primarily.



> Or some variant math of that idea.  It would end up that a guy who rolled well would end up with built-in counter-balances.




Again, this is all randomness mitigation.  You can't truly claim you like random if you are doing more and more to make sure the results are decidedly non-random and that everyone at the least gets a functional character.   Eventually, down that route you are just deceiving yourself.  Once I realized that, I gave up on random stat generation.



> What I liked out of random generation was that your next PC was inherently different from the last.  In point-buy, it was too easy to just sling out Bob 3 when Bob 2 died who had the exact same build-out as Bob 1, just reset back to the beginning.




This is a good example of what I mean.   You claim to like random because it gives you diversity.  But if you really like diversity, why are you making Bob #3 when Bob #2 dies?   Point buy doesn't prevent diversity.  It just highlights for you what you really want.   And if you are making Bob #3 to replace Bob #2 whenever the rules allow you to.... diversity isn't really your highest priority.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Umbran said:


> I'm thinking of this in terms of best practices in design, stepping beyond personal preferences, and thinking about what's better, broadly speaking, for games.




I think the issue is we have a fundamental disagreement about how broad the scope is here. I am saying, yes, if you want to design a game like D&D meant for a broad audience, you are absolutely correct: random disparity is not a good choice. But I am also saying in terms of good design what matters is what you are trying to achieve. If your goal is game played by the vast majority of people in the hobby that has broad appeal, by all means, avoid this. But what if you want to make a game specifically for people like me (and people like me do exist, I know a number of gamers who like the random disparity thing, not many but enough to form a group around). There are also players out there, and again I know because I've met them, who might not normally go for random disparity, but once in a while for a certain kind of game, will enjoy it. I really do not see the harm in these instances, in employing random disparity. Why would it be bad design practice if you know the people you are designing for both like it and want it?


----------



## Jacob Marley

Celebrim said:


> If IIRC, the average on 4d6 keep three goes up from like 10.5 to 12.7, but the really big thing is just how much less common it makes truly crippling scores of 7 or less and how much more common it makes truly useful scores of 16 or higher.   This means that you probably don't end up with a character that has significant flaws in 1e terms and are more likely to have a character with a real advantage.   And in my experience, it was characters like that that got played with.  I never actually saw a lot of people trying to play characters with sub par stats.




Average (4d6 drop the lowest): 12.24
Distribution (4d6 drop the lowest): 3 - 0.08%, 4 - 0.31%, 5 - 0.77%, 6 - 1.62%, 7 - 2.93%, 8 - 4.78%, 9 - 7.02%, 10 - 9.41%, 11 - 11.42%, 12 - 12.89%, 13 - 13.27%, 14 - 12.35%, 15 - 10.11%, 16 - 7.25%, 17 - 4.17%, 18 - 1.62%.


----------



## prosfilaes

Jacob Marley said:


> Average (4d6 drop the lowest): 12.24
> Distribution (4d6 drop the lowest): 3 - 0.08%, 4 - 0.31%, 5 - 0.77%, 6 - 1.62%, 7 - 2.93%, 8 - 4.78%, 9 - 7.02%, 10 - 9.41%, 11 - 11.42%, 12 - 12.89%, 13 - 13.27%, 14 - 12.35%, 15 - 10.11%, 16 - 7.25%, 17 - 4.17%, 18 - 1.62%.




Or http://anydice.com/ with "output [highest 3 of 4d6]"


----------



## Umbran

Celebrim said:


> Why are you choosing 4d6 keep the best three (probably rearranging to taste)?  Why not if you really like randomness and diversity go straight up 3d6 in order?




Answer this:

So, assume you want some pie.  Why not eat the whole pie in one sitting?  Why not go and buy all the pies of all flavors the grocery has in stock right now?  If you aren't going to do that, why have any pie at all? The answer is very similar - it isn't an all-or-nothing thing. 

 It is not nonsensical to want *some* randomness, and to have that randomness somewhat tailored so that we can have it without some of the more egregious failure cases cropping up often enough to be an issue.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Celebrim said:


> I played that way for a long time myself.  But, I should point out that even choosing to play that way is itself the beginning of creeping away from random and toward 'above average'.  Why are you choosing 4d6 keep the best three (probably rearranging to taste)?  Why not if you really like randomness and diversity go straight up 3d6 in order?
> .




I think here it is simply a matter of where on the spectrum of randomness one is. 4d6 drop is more about creating some randomness but generally rigging it so things tend to fall within a higher range. It worked pretty well in my experience in AD&D. And groups varied this a lot. I think the fact that they had like five different stat generation methods shows there is incredible diversity of taste here and I think we can accommodate everyone by having that many options for stats in a game. 

When 3d6 became the default in 2E, that was when I was doing most of my gaming (I started younger, but really began playing regularly when the 2E PHB came out). It might simply be because I grew up playing this way, but I rather enjoyed 3d6. In fact as a player I preferred 3d6 straight down the line, no assigning stats. There were a few reasons for this: 

1) It is exciting. It brings a certain thrill to character creation to have each roll have so much weight and significance. So I enjoy bracing for each result, and yes when you do happen to get three sixes, it is glorious and feels great but...

2) I learned to really like some of those lower numbers. It got me to think outside the box in terms of character and in unexpected ways. Suddenly I am trying to figure out what a character with a 14 Intelligence but 7 Wisdom is like in terms of personality. For me that was a good deal of fun. We also were a role-play heavy group, so this worked for us. I quite like the rolls leading to the character concept rather than the other way around. 

3) When you do get an 18, or if you are super lucky and get an 18/00 it is all that much more significant. The few times that actually happens, it is a nice feeling. Somehow I like that I can't just say I want to make a character who is the strongest guy in town, I actually have to roll and get it. 

All that said, I think 4d6 drop the lowest is the best fit for how the vast majority of players approach D&D. Making it the default makes sense. Including an option for 3d6, also makes sense as does including optional point buy or stat arrays.


----------



## prosfilaes

Bedrockgames said:


> I think the fact that they had like five different stat generation methods shows there is incredible diversity of taste here and I think we can accommodate everyone by having that many options for stats in a game.




Or the fact that people were fundamentally unhappy with the dice rolling system, and were trying variations on it. As the history of RPGs shows, there was a lot of tweaking of what D&D gave us before people really managed to break out of the box.


----------



## Bedrockgames

prosfilaes said:


> Or the fact that people were fundamentally unhappy with the dice rolling system, and were trying variations on it. As the history of RPGs shows, there was a lot of tweaking of what D&D gave us before people really managed to break out of the box.




But they keep going back to 4d6 drop the lowest. AD&D started out with 4d6 drop the lowest and that is the now the default for 5E. I don't think the options reflected an unhappiness with dice rolling, it just reflected that some people wanted other approaches. But if there was something fundamentally flawed with the old 4d6 drop the lowest method, you'd expect it wouldn't keep coming back like this.


----------



## Janx

Umbran said:


> Answer this:
> 
> So, assume you want some pie.  Why not eat the whole pie in one sitting?  Why not go and buy all the pies of all flavors the grocery has in stock right now?  If you aren't going to do that, why have any pie at all? The answer is very similar - it isn't an all-or-nothing thing.
> 
> It is not nonsensical to want *some* randomness, and to have that randomness somewhat tailored so that we can have it without some of the more egregious failure cases cropping up often enough to be an issue.




Umbran nailed it.

We don't want suck characters with all stats less than 7.  We don't want to be forced to play a fighter because we didn't roll even a 10 for INT.

But we also don't want cookie-cutter PCs that were just using the exact same point buy as the last PC.

Celebrim's misinterpretation was that I wanted wildly random results with low numbers.  I want random results in a certain desirable range.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Janx said:


> Umbran nailed it.
> 
> We don't want suck characters with all stats less than 7.  We don't want to be forced to play a fighter because we didn't roll even a 10 for INT.
> 
> But we also don't want cookie-cutter PCs that were just using the exact same point buy as the last PC.
> 
> Celebrim's misinterpretation was that I wanted wildly random results with low numbers.  I want random results in a certain desirable range.




And I think these preferences you express are largely the norm in D&D these days. I'm the one arguing for random results, but I acknowledge that isn't the norm.Most D&D players I have met share your sense of wanting some amount of randomness but also want things to fall inside a range they consider reasonable and workable. This is why many people who use 4d6 drop the lowest, do two sets. They want characters that have a certain level of competence but they do not desire that character creation be fully predictable or controllable. Basically they want some surprises but would nothing too game breaking. That is pretty reasonable in my mind.


----------



## Celebrim

Janx said:


> We don't want suck characters with all stats less than 7.  We don't want to be forced to play a fighter because we didn't roll even a 10 for INT.




Keep that in mind.  It's worth coming back to.



> But we also don't want cookie-cutter PCs that were just using the exact same point buy as the last PC.




Why?  Why in the world would this be an outcome?  What's forcing you to arrange your points in the same manner each time?   Of the 15 different PC's the players have created so far in this latest campaign, I doubt any two shared the same stats.  I'm fairly sure none have shared the same class or combination of classes.  If you don't want cookie cutter builds, why make them?



> Celebrim's misinterpretation was that I wanted wildly random results with low numbers.  I want random results in a certain desirable range.




Except 4d6 doesn't give you that.  It gives you wildly random results.  You can still get 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7.   It doesn't guarantee results fall in a certain range.   It makes sucking less likely sure, but it doesn't prevent it.  It just makes you think, "Well, it won't really happen to me."  The problem with 4d6 take best three is sooner or later you get it producing results that look like 3d6 and then your desired results fail.  I've seen it happen.  I've DM'd enough players to know that look on their face when they roll up the character and they got the equivalent of 18 point buy (or worse) - which is going to happen if you've got 8 players at the table and you make them all stick to their rolls.   Sure, I've played with 7's.  I played Ogden Mudstump, the dwarf thief with 5 charisma.   

I just rolled up 4d6 take 3 in order, it was: 10, 5, 10, 11, 6, 8.  Second was 15, 12, 17, 6, 10, 7.   Third was 7, 8, 13, 5, 15, 11.  Fifth was 12, 13, 15, 4, 13, 13.   Sixth was 15, 9, 12, 10, 13, 13.   That's what 4d6 really looks like.  Random.   Actually freaking random.   You take some random samples, and you'll get anything from like 9 to 40 point buy.  

What if I told you that we were going to use point buy, but we were going to use 5d10 to determine how many points you got to spend?

Tthat guy with the 10, 5, 10, 11, 6, 8 is not going to play it.   The dice didn't 'do their job' - though in 30 or 40 rolls, probably 4 or 5 will be that bad.   Sooner or latter they are going to end up playing the seventh set of dice I rolled while writing this: 15, 15, 17, 13, 15, 13.   That's the thrilling sort of results they were gambling on all along.  If you have them roll away from the DM, you can bet on them forgetting those first few sets.  If they roll in front of the DM, you can bet they'll beg or kill the character off.   Random means: "Either I win the jackpot, or I'm going to enter into a complex negotiation that makes a mockery of the so called rules of character creation."

If what you really want was no numbers less than 7, why don't you do 2d6+6 straight up in order?   If what you really wanted was results in a certain desirable range, why don't you use point by with 22+2d4 points?  

I would argue that the things you prioritize aren't in the these alternatives, and they aren't 'don't get low numbers' or 'don't have no stat higher than a 10'.   I played that way about 15 years, both as a DM and a PC.   I know some of the attractions.   Rolling your stats seems more real, more hard core, especially if you are used to rolling your stats.  Point buy brings that gambler's thrill - maybe this time I'll get lucky.   Point buy brings truly odd results - two 17's and 3 9's, an 18 and 3 8's, 2 18's and a 4, etc. - that you might never otherwise consider playing.   And then there is always the interest of having a pretty decent roll in a stat you'd never otherwise place it in, which arguably is my favorite part.  That randomness has some benefits, but... it just isn't worth it not the least of which is because in practice its more like character generation in Baldur's Gate (the video game).  People roll until they have the numbers that they can live with.   

If what you really want is inspiration to play something you wouldn't consider otherwise, go ahead and roll that 4d6 keep 3 six times - then use point buy to match the result as closely as possible.  I'm done with using fortune rolls to determine the outcome of character generation.  Save the fortune rolls for the game.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Celebrim said:


> Keep that in mind.  It's worth coming back to.
> 
> 
> 
> Why?  Why in the world would this be an outcome?  What's forcing you to arrange your points in the same manner each time?   Of the 15 different PC's the players have created so far in this latest campaign, I doubt any two shared the same stats.  I'm fairly sure none have shared the same class or combination of classes.  If you don't want cookie cutter builds, why make them?
> 
> 
> 
> Except 4d6 doesn't give you that.  It gives you wildly random results.  You can still get 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7.   It doesn't guarantee results fall in a certain range.   It makes sucking less likely sure, but it doesn't prevent it.  It just makes you think, "Well, it won't really happen to me."  The problem with 4d6 take best three is sooner or later you get it producing results that look like 3d6 and then your desired results fail.  I've seen it happen.  I've DM'd enough players to know that look on their face when they roll up the character and they got the equivalent of 18 point buy (or worse) - which is going to happen if you've got 8 players at the table and you make them all stick to their rolls.   Sure, I've played with 7's.  I played Ogden Mudstump, the dwarf thief with 5 charisma.
> 
> I just rolled up 4d6 take 3 in order, it was: 10, 5, 10, 11, 6, 8.  Second was 15, 12, 17, 6, 10, 7.   Third was 7, 8, 13, 5, 15, 11.  Fifth was 12, 13, 15, 4, 13, 13.   Sixth was 15, 9, 12, 10, 13, 13.   That's what 4d6 really looks like.  Random.   Actually freaking random.   You take some random samples, and you'll get anything from like 9 to 40 point buy.
> 
> What if I told you that we were going to use point buy, but we were going to use 5d10 to determine how many points you got to spend?
> 
> Tthat guy with the 10, 5, 10, 11, 6, 8 is not going to play it.   The dice didn't 'do their job' - though in 30 or 40 rolls, probably 4 or 5 will be that bad.   Sooner or latter they are going to end up playing the seventh set of dice I rolled while writing this: 15, 15, 17, 13, 15, 13.   That's the thrilling sort of results they were gambling on all along.  If you have them roll away from the DM, you can bet on them forgetting those first few sets.  If they roll in front of the DM, you can bet they'll beg or kill the character off.   Random means: "Either I win the jackpot, or I'm going to enter into a complex negotiation that makes a mockery of the so called rules of character creation."
> 
> If what you really want was no numbers less than 7, why don't you do 2d6+6 straight up in order?   If what you really wanted was results in a certain desirable range, why don't you use point by with 22+2d4 points?
> 
> I would argue that the things you prioritize aren't in the these alternatives, and they aren't 'don't get low numbers' or 'don't have no stat higher than a 10'.   I played that way about 15 years, both as a DM and a PC.   I know some of the attractions.   Rolling your stats seems more real, more hard core, especially if you are used to rolling your stats.  Point buy brings that gambler's thrill - maybe this time I'll get lucky.   Point buy brings truly odd results - two 17's and 3 9's, an 18 and 3 8's, 2 18's and a 4, etc. - that you might never otherwise consider playing.   And then there is always the interest of having a pretty decent roll in a stat you'd never otherwise place it in, which arguably is my favorite part.  That randomness has some benefits, but... it just isn't worth it not the least of which is because in practice its more like character generation in Baldur's Gate (the video game).  People roll until they have the numbers that they can live with.
> 
> If what you really want is inspiration to play something you wouldn't consider otherwise, go ahead and roll that 4d6 keep 3 six times - then use point buy to match the result as closely as possible.  I'm done with using fortune rolls to determine the outcome of character generation.  Save the fortune rolls for the game.




Janx said he didn't want all stats less than 7, he never objected to one or two stats in that range. You show us your individual rolls all you like but there is a difference between rolling 3d6 and rolling 4d6 drop the lowest. Obviously, you will still have the possibility of a terrible roll. It is still random. That is why many folks who play this way have a "hopeless" character rule where if the character is absolutely hopeless (and definitions on that can vary) you re-roll. But I don't get why it is a problem to understand why someone might want that safety valve but still dislike doing a point buy. With a point buy you get what numbers you wish. You have more control over individual stats. Some people like that. But lots of people don't. They want the random element. There is always a matter of degree. Janx wants less extremes than I do in my random rolls, but clearly still wants some amount of that kind of variation and unpredictability.


----------



## Aura

Bedrockgames said:


> But too often I see folks, myself certainly included, trying to position their set of preferences as the most ideal way to approach RPGS, and they use all manner of logic and evidence to prove that point. I find it odd that "logic" and "reason" so often lead people back to their own set of preferences (just like the Wick article, he makes a good argument for his position, but you can tell he started with his conclusion and worked his way toward it, rather than the other way around).




I agree on the issue of people often starting with the conclusion in their argument. For example, you note Wick made a good argument for his position, but you could tell he started with his conclusion. This left me wondering why you said that.

Reflecting on the article, I felt he was working from the conclusion is because his arguments didn't support the conclusions. For example, he concludes balance _does not matter_, but seems to argue, in the context of the RPG as he sees it, that balance _does not exist._ Similarly, he defines a RPG as a game that _rewards_ players for acting in character, but argues on the subject of _not penalizing_ said activity.

In both cases, he didn't really seem to get to his conclusion, which led me to suspect he was working from the conclusion. If I may ask, what led you to also suspect as I did?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aura said:


> I agree on the issue of people often starting with the conclusion in their argument. For example, you note Wick made a good argument for his position, but you could tell he started with his conclusion. This left me wondering why you said that.
> 
> Reflecting on the article, I felt he was working from the conclusion is because his arguments didn't support the conclusions. For example, he concludes balance _does not matter_, but seems to argue, in the context of the RPG as he sees it, that balance _does not exist._ Similarly, he defines a RPG as a game that _rewards_ players for acting in character, but argues on the subject of _not penalizing_ said activity.
> 
> In both cases, he didn't really seem to get to his conclusion, which led me to suspect he was working from the conclusion. If I may ask, what led you to also suspect as I did?




I think said the argument was good because I have seen people meet with a lot of difficulty refuting his points. That doesn't mean his conclusion is supported by his argument. I definitely think there are serious issues with his conclusion and I feel like there is a bit of sophistry at work in how he gets there. I suspect if we drill down we will find serious flaws in his reasoning (for example much of it rests on his definition of RPG and I don't think that definition is an accurate one that reflects how people in the hobby use the word). I also think he starts with something everyone just kind of intuitively recognizes: chess isn't an RPG. His argument seems to be, anything you add to chess doesn't suddenly make it an RPG. He then draws a comparison saying D&D actually meets the requirements of a board game just like chess and anything we add to it, doesn't make it an RPG. I think his argument fails to acknowledge from the very beginning that D&D has a much different set of assumptions than chess. Importantly, in D&D you are given permission to try anything you want and the GM is supposed to rule on whether it works or not. Plus you have all kinds of mechanics for social things (even in the white box with attributes like Wisdom and Charisma and talks about the parameters of play...which chess doesn't do). The history isn't even really important here though, what matters is no matter how far back one wants to go and peal away at D&D to 'prove' it isn't an RPG, clearly it is one now. That is how it is used and that is what it is designed to do.  Either way though, I think everyone intuitively understands D&D is an RPG in the same way they understand Chess is not. But in my mind saying D&D isn't a roleplaying game is like saying the Model T isn't a car. I am sure you can build an argument for that case, but I don't think many people would take it seriously.


----------



## Celebrim

Bedrockgames said:


> That is why many folks who play this way have a "hopeless" character rule where if the character is absolutely hopeless (and definitions on that can vary) you re-roll.




I think that my posts have indicated lots of experience with people declaring that their character is hopeless and can they please have a do over.



> But I don't get why it is a problem to understand why someone might want that safety valve but still dislike doing a point buy.




Because, once again, what that safety valve indicates is that what they really want is not random, but (at least the chance) to be above average.   No one ever suggests they need do overs when they randomly generate 4 16's or higher.   They are like gamblers who get do overs whenever they lose.  They get the thrill of thinking that they legitimately won the lottery, but none of the downside of losing it.   It ends up being a form of self-delusion.



> But lots of people don't. They want the random element. There is always a matter of degree. Janx wants less extremes than I do in my random rolls, but clearly still wants some amount of that kind of variation and unpredictability.




I think that Gygax's discussion of this in the 1e DMG is spot on and indicates he understood what people really wanted:  "White it is possible to generate some fairly playable characters by rolling 3d6, there is often an extend period of attempts at finding one due to quirks of the dice.  Furthermore, these rather marginal characters tend to have short life expectancy - which tends to discourage new players, as does having to make do with some character of a race or class which he or she really can't or won't identify with."

So Gygax's experience isn't that players are hard core and roll 3d6 straight up and play such characters successfully - as I've often heard bragged on the boards as being 'old school'.  His experience is fairly similar to mine.  Players find a way to keep rolling dice until they get what they want.   Moreover, Gygax doesn't assert that it is true that stats don't matter and anything can be played successfully.   He asserts that players probably neither want to nor should be playing marginal characters.   So he provides not one but 4 methods to players which mitigate randomness in various fashions, and contrary to some assertions he doesn't set out one as default or even that only one method should be used.  In fact, the clearest reading of the sentence, "Four alternatives are offered for player characters.", is go ahead and allow the player to choose what sort of randomness mitigation he's most comfortable with.  

But what isn't said about those methods that perhaps should have been said, is that it tends to have the very same problem as 3d6 straight up.   The first time through a method still might generate a "hopeless" character, or a character that the player can't or won't relate to, and then you'll be right back to an "extended period of attempts at finding one due to quirks of the dice".  Eventually I learned that players will just keep rolling till they get what they want, promptly forget that whole extended period, and then declare how much they like randomness with a perfectly straight face.   

And because what players really want that declare they like is randomness is to be above average, in the long run 'random' character generation tended to closely match starting out with one point buy and steadily increasing it.  Often in my experience this was accompanied by all the sorts of drama I indicated earlier.   I even played with one group where this had been taken to its logical conclusion.  The DM had simply allowed everyone to basically have 17's and 18's in practically all stats, and then responded to this by having all NPCs have 18's in all stats.  For that DM, that had ended the drama and the hypocrisy - the players had finally gotten what they emotionally if not logically had wanted.  They could feel good about their above average characters, even though had they thought about it logically rather than emotionally, there never was a world where the PCs stats were so average.  

You basically admit it yourself.  You say you want random, but you want no possibility of a terrible result.  If you really wanted that, you should have used method 3, rather than method 1.  Method 3 gives very good odds that your scores will be at least average.   However, what it doesn't do that pretending to like 4d6 take 3 does, is make it easy to perform and justify getting a do over, nor does it give you what you want instead of just something you could play.   Again, if your goals were what you say they are, and if you'd reflected on it at all, you'd do something different than what you do.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Celebrim said:


> You basically admit it yourself.  You say you want random, but you want no possibility of a terrible result.  If you really wanted that, you should have used method 3, rather than method 1.  Method 3 gives very good odds that your scores will be at least average.   However, what it doesn't do that pretending to like 4d6 take 3 does, is make it easy to perform and justify getting a do over, nor does it give you what you want instead of just something you could play.   Again, if your goals were what you say they are, and if you'd reflected on it at all, you'd do something different than what you do.




I never said I want no possibility of terrible result. I said I do. I like 3d6 down the line. I just recognize most people don't want that and said 4d6 drop the lowest is the norm for that reason. But I'm absolutely fine with terrible results or I wouldn't enjoy rolling 3d6 or having things like random powers and flaws in character creation. 

You make a very long post and I really don't have time or interest in addressing it at length. All I can say is my interests are different than your interests. I like random in the game and during character creation. I am fine with a bad result. That isn't a brag, I don't think it makes me better than anyone else, I just think it makes the game fun for me. You can either believe what I am telling you or not. That is up to you and it isn't going to change how I look at games or how I play them. You obviously prefer something more like a point buy and that clearly gives you what you want. That is great. Keep doing it. I am glad you and your group have a method that works for. Don't understand why you have trouble believing that the method I like works for me (especially when I fully acknowledge most people don't like it).

Also I think there is something of a false choice at work in your reasoning. You keep trying to make it about choosing between all stats in an average range or the possibility of all stats being terrible. I think guys like Janx are totally fine with one or two really bad scores on occasion, they just don't want the hopeless character (one that isn't good at anything). I can't speak for him of course, but that is my experience with may folks who like the 4d6 method. Their okay having 6s and 7s once in a while, they just don't want a character they can't work with.


----------



## Celebrim

> Also I think there is something of a false choice at work in your reasoning. You keep trying to make it about choosing between all stats in an average range or the possibility of all stats being terrible. I think guys like Janx are totally fine with one or two really bad scores on occasion, they just don't want the hopeless character (one that isn't good at anything). I can't speak for him of course, but that is my experience with may folks who like the 4d6 method. Their okay having 6s and 7s once in a while, they just don't want a character they can't work with.




I quite understand that.  I also am fine with having 6's and 7's on occasion.  I'd even say its one of the things I tend to miss about random generation is you tended to see and play more weird characters.  But again, if you aren't fine with a hopeless character, if you think that there are characters you can't work with then you need to admit that you don't like randomness.  What you really want is a character generation system that delivers to you a character you can work with, something random generation is never guaranteed to do.  Even if you do 9d6 take best 3, there is a good chance that the score will be below 16 - which defeats the whole intention of the method which is to ensure that you get a 16+ in your prime requisite.   If that is what the real intention is, stop pretending to like random.

I think you actually understand how central all that is to my argument, because you do actually say what you must say if you honestly like random:



> I never said I want no possibility of terrible result. I said I do. I like 3d6 down the line...I like random in the game and during character creation. I am fine with a bad result.




Ok.  If you like bad results, then I suggest that you do 3d4 straight up down the line, while the rest of the table do method III (36 3d6, in groups of 6, take best result from each group straight up).  And you can use your 3d4 straight up for every new character as well.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Celebrim said:


> Ok.  If you like bad results, then I suggest that you do 3d4 straight up down the line, while the rest of the table do method III (36 3d6, in groups of 6, take best result from each group straight up).  And you can use your 3d4 straight up for every new character as well.




That is a pretty extreme conclusion to take this to. I do like everyone using the same method so that there is fairness and equal possibility of good and bad outcomes. I also don't want every stat to be low. I want a range of stats possible. For me half the fun is hoping for an 18 but knowing it could be any result between 3-18. So 3d4 straight down fails to achieve what i am after. Mixing it up so I am using one method and everyone else another also doesn't quite achieve what I want. I guess I just don't know why it is so hard to accept someone might like this and they are not trying to pull a fast one over you.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Celebrim said:


> I quite understand that.  I also am fine with having 6's and 7's on occasion.  I'd even say its one of the things I tend to miss about random generation is you tended to see and play more weird characters.  But again, if you aren't fine with a hopeless character, if you think that there are characters you can't work with then you need to admit that you don't like randomness.  What you really want is a character generation system that delivers to you a character you can work with, something random generation is never guaranteed to do.  Even if you do 9d6 take best 3, there is a good chance that the score will be below 16 - which defeats the whole intention of the method which is to ensure that you get a 16+ in your prime requisite.   If that is what the real intention is, stop pretending to like random.
> .




They are not pretending to like random. They want enough randomness to make it unpredictable and exciting, but not so random they get lots of bad characters. Again I can't speak for others, but based on what they are saying, it seems they are actually telling you the truth when they say they like random results and find 4d6 drop the lowest gives them the kind of ranges they prefer. Then you take it to rhetorical extremes saying they don't want any bad results at all, or because they chuck characters that are completely hopeless they can't enjoy randomness at all.


----------



## prosfilaes

Bedrockgames said:


> because they chuck characters that are completely hopeless they can't enjoy randomness at all.




I see the point about liking a little randomness, but I think there's a point here about the net effect of chucking characters that are "completely hopeless". For many of these groups, running in systems with standard point buy, I think it would be instructive to ask the DM what point buy they would use if they were to use point buy. If the random characters are higher, especially significantly higher, then that, it feels like one of the reasons may be because they couldn't get the DM to sign off on 40 point buy, or even that the DM would use 15 or 20 point buy, thinking himself running a gritty campaign, when actually the characters are the equivalent of 25 or 30 point buy. 

I think for some groups, random stats is a way of feeling hardcore without actually having to have low stats. The check would at least be interesting.


----------



## Celebrim

Bedrockgames said:


> That is a pretty extreme conclusion to take this to.




Not really.  You said you were fine with bad results.  I just wanted to see how highly you valued bad results.  Turns out you value fairness and good results more highly.  You don't actually want the short end of the stick.



> I do like everyone using the same method so that there is fairness




You keep using that word, and it doesn't mean what you think it does.   Random results will produce results that are inherently unfair.  Yes, there is equal possibility of good and bad outcomes, but once those outcomes are actually realized, once they cease to be mere potentialities, they will be distributed unequally.  One person will have a result that is bad and another will have a result that is good, and for no good reason.   They didn't deserve to have a weaker character than everyone else.  Dice aren't fair.   Randomness isn't fair.   Randomness is capricious.   It distributes outcomes unevenly.   It doesn't work out in the long run.   If you got a bad character this time, it doesn't mean you'll get a good one next time or the next time or the next time.  When I offer you a situation where there is a strong possibility you'll be the loser at the table saddled with bad stats, you don't like it.  You don't think it is fair.  So why should anyone at the table settle for that outcome?  

You said you were fine with bad results.  But you aren't fine with bad results.  You are fine with bad results until your realize they are actually going to happen.



> I also don't want every stat to be low.




So don't use random.  Because when you accept that random is the method, you are accepting that you actually want as a possible outcome every stat being low.   If you don't want that possibility, use a method the precludes it not from happening only rarely, but entirely.  Of course in point of actual fact, even those that do say they like random do preclude it.  The real method they use is not 'random', but 'random, and if results < expectation, proceed to complex metagame negotiations and rules evasion'

This is the fundamental reason I don't give players the option of either using 4d6 take the best 3 or point buy.  Some gamblers will take the chance on that thrill of an 18, but it never ends there if they don't get it.   I know that what I'm really doing is giving players the option to play with more points than they could get with point buy.  They'll just keep rolling until they get what they actually want.   



> I guess I just don't know why it is so hard to accept someone might like this and they are not trying to pull a fast one over you.




I don't believe you can pull anything over on me.  And the answer is, "Lots of experience with players."


----------



## Celebrim

prosfilaes said:


> I see the point about liking a little randomness, but I think there's a point here about the net effect of chucking characters that are "completely hopeless". For many of these groups, running in systems with standard point buy, I think it would be instructive to ask the DM what point buy they would use if they were to use point buy. If the random characters are higher, especially significantly higher, then that, it feels like one of the reasons may be because they couldn't get the DM to sign off on 40 point buy, or even that the DM would use 15 or 20 point buy, thinking himself running a gritty campaign, when actually the characters are the equivalent of 25 or 30 point buy.
> 
> I think for some groups, random stats is a way of feeling hardcore without actually having to have low stats. The check would at least be interesting.




This is pretty much exactly my experience with offering both point buy and random - which I did for about the first three sessions the summer I was running open dungeon crawls for all  comers at the local gaming store.   Randomly generated characters that came in above the point buy were keepers.  Randomly generated characters below the point buy were sacrifices or one shots.  No one ever said, "Yippee, I got interesting unexpected results that are much less than what I could have gotten from point buy!"  In fact, I'll go so far as to say, no one ever says that.  

I now run 32 point buy standard.  That proves to be about the level where players feel like they are getting what they want, and opens up a wide range of possible stat arrays - from 18, 18, 8, 8, 8, 8 to 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 10 and everything in between.   If a player really wanted to have a 6 or 7 or even a 4 or 5 and they had a good reason, I'd let them buy down to that as well.  There is no result that you could get from 4d6 keep the best three that you couldn't get from 32 point buy, except for very bad and very good results.   So, if a player said, "I like not knowing what I'm going to get.", I see no reason why they should not roll 4d6 keep the best 3 and then build that character with point buy, boosting their best stat with the left over points or buying slightly less in their best stat in the event of great luck.   In most cases, it's practically the same outcome, just one stat shifted up or down a bit to make the outcome actually fair.   

But I never see anyone actually do that.  As I said, the attraction here is the thrill of gambling on the above average outcome.   About 5-6 times in 40 rolls, you'd get 35 or even 40 point buy with 4d6 take three.   They'll keep rolling until they get that.   They'll never go, "Oh look, I got a 9 point buy character!  Yippee!", and stop there.

As I said, those people who claim that they like randomness, have very short term memories regarding all the stats they manage to discard.  But they are very proud of being hardcore.


----------



## JamesonCourage

Celebrim said:


> I just rolled up 4d6 take 3 in order, it was: 10, 5, 10, 11, 6, 8.  Second was 15, 12, 17, 6, 10, 7.   Third was 7, 8, 13, 5, 15, 11.  Fifth was 12, 13, 15, 4, 13, 13.   Sixth was 15, 9, 12, 10, 13, 13.   That's what 4d6 really looks like.  Random.   Actually freaking random.   You take some random samples, and you'll get anything from like 9 to 40 point buy.



I think the only thing I feel I can add to this thread is more random (4d6) rolls. Because rolling is fun!



15, 10, 10, 11, 13, 7
7, 13, 12, 9, 8, 7
17, 10, 11, 10, 15, 11
11, 12, 15, 16, 16, 11
15, 11, 12, 16, 11, 11
12, 11, 13, 15, 16, 10
12, 13, 7, 14, 10, 6
11, 15, 10, 8, 11, 13
12, 13, 9, 8, 12, 9
16, 10, 17, 13, 14, 14
16, 14, 13, 10, 13, 14
13, 11, 13, 11, 14, 13
14, 13, 9, 14, 6, 7
15, 10, 13, 16, 9, 14
10, 13, 17, 15, 15, 11
9, 10, 12, 12, 15, 11
13, 10, 16, 11, 11, 12
15, 14, 9, 14, 17, 12
12, 14, 13, 14, 14, 14
6, 10, 15, 15, 16, 14

I'd suggest that anyone that wants random stats use mine, but add more randomness! Roll 1d20 and 1d6 six times in order, taking your stats as you roll them. For example, rolling a 14 and a 3 for Strength would give you a 13 Strength! Even more randomness! Yay!


----------



## Celebrim

JamesonCourage said:


> I think the only thing I feel I can add to this thread is more random (4d6) rolls. Because rolling is fun!




Yes. Yes it is.  It just happens to be unfair, and since it is unfair the actual results get evaded because players don't like unfair results - unless they are to their advantage.


15, 10, 10, 11, 13, 7 = 21 point buy
7, 13, 12, 9, 8, 7 = 8 point buy
17, 10, 11, 10, 15, 11 = 31 point buy
11, 12, 15, 16, 16, 11 = 38 point buy
15, 11, 12, 16, 11, 11 = 31 point buy
12, 11, 13, 15, 16, 10 = 32 point buy
12, 13, 7, 14, 10, 6 = 14 point buy
11, 15, 10, 8, 11, 13 = 21 point buy
12, 13, 9, 8, 12, 9 = 15 point buy
16, 10, 17, 13, 14, 14 = 42 point buy
16, 14, 13, 10, 13, 14 = 34 point buy
13, 11, 13, 11, 14, 13 = 27 point buy
14, 13, 9, 14, 6, 7 = 15 point buy
15, 10, 13, 16, 9, 14 = 32 point buy
10, 13, 17, 15, 15, 11 = 39 point buy
9, 10, 12, 12, 15, 11 = 22 point buy
13, 10, 16, 11, 11, 12 = 27 point buy
15, 14, 9, 14, 17, 12 = 38 point buy
12, 14, 13, 14, 14, 14 = 33 point buy
6, 10, 15, 15, 16, 14 = 32 point buy

My point exactly.  When you say you are happy with 4d6 take the best three, you are really saying you are happy with your DM assigning you 8 point buy and your neighbor at the table 42 point buy just because.   That is the reality of random results.   You can romanticize it however you like.   But that is what you are actually saying you prefer.

Of course, the reality is that the people 'happy' with 4d6 take the best three or other randomness are really saying, "I want 42 point buy, and the only way I can pull that off without letting my DM or myself know that is what I really want is to roll dice until I get that result, and then say, "Luck!".

Try grouping the above into parties of 4 or 6 and thinking about the idea that that is 'fair'

Party #1 contains a guy with 8 point buy playing with a guy with 38.  Party #3 contains a guy with 15 point buy playing with a guy with 42.  You think those are fair results?  You think those make for happy parties?  What happens when that poor guy with 8 point buy takes his lumps, and then the next time he's on the short end of the stick again.  I'll tell you what happens.  He starts finding ways to evade the basic unfairness of the rules being used at the table - asking for do overs, cheating, killing off his character, etc.   And back when I was younger, I used to think that was his problem.  Now I realize its just an expected and perhaps rational result to being mistreated by a DM that thinks random is 'fair'.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Celebrim said:


> I don't believe you can pull anything over on me.  And the answer is, "Lots of experience with players."




And I too have lots of experience with players. Your experience doesn't prove anything. I've met plenty of people who like what I like here. We are certainly not a majority in the hobby but we do exist. If you can't even believe that I like what I am telling you I enjoy, I don't know what to say honestly.


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## Bedrockgames

Celebrim said:


> So don't use random.  Because when you accept that random is the method, you are accepting that you actually want as a possible outcome every stat being low.   If you don't want that possibility, use a method the precludes it not from happening only rarely, but entirely.  Of course in point of actual fact, even those that do say they like random do preclude it.  The real method they use is not 'random', but 'random, and if results < expectation, proceed to complex metagame negotiations and rules evasion'
> 
> This is the fundamental reason I don't give players the option of either using 4d6 take the best 3 or point buy.  Some gamblers will take the chance on that thrill of an 18, but it never ends there if they don't get it.   I know that what I'm really doing is giving players the option to play with more points than they could get with point buy.  They'll just keep rolling until they get what they actually want.
> "




Okay. When I said "I don't want every stat to be low" I was responding to your claim that I because I can accept low stats I should therefore use 3d4 instead of 3d6. I wasn't saying I can't accept it if all my stats are low. I was not saying my goal, my desire, is to have a character with stats all under 12. I was saying my goal is to have the range of 3-18 be possible for all stats and not know what I am going to get: hope for an 18 but accept that a 3 could be the result. I enjoy that. I find that exciting, and interesting. I am fine with you not liking it. i have acknowledged many, many times that lots of people don't like it. But i do genuinely like this method and nothing you can say here, changes how I enjoy the game.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Celebrim said:


> You keep using that word, and it doesn't mean what you think it does.   Random results will produce results that are inherently unfair.  Yes, there is equal possibility of good and bad outcomes, but once those outcomes are actually realized, once they cease to be mere potentialities, they will be distributed unequally.  One person will have a result that is bad and another will have a result that is good, and for no good reason.   They didn't deserve to have a weaker character than everyone else.  Dice aren't fair.   Randomness isn't fair.   Randomness is capricious.   It distributes outcomes unevenly.   It doesn't work out in the long run.   If you got a bad character this time, it doesn't mean you'll get a good one next time or the next time or the next time.  When I offer you a situation where there is a strong possibility you'll be the loser at the table saddled with bad stats, you don't like it.  You don't think it is fair.  So why should anyone at the table settle for that outcome?




Fair can be applied to a lot of different points in a system. But I don't think fair has to mean equal outcomes for all. if it did, then a fair system would make sure no character ever dies and all characters hit when they attack. I am applying fairness to the method of rolling, because to me it is fair if we are all using the same method with the same chances of getting good and bad results. Now I agree, that can lead to disparity in play, but going in we all had the same chances of success and failure, which is fairness. 



> You said you were fine with bad results.  But you aren't fine with bad results.  You are fine with bad results until your realize they are actually going to happen.




I don't know why you keep insisting on this. I am fine with bad results. Of course I prefer high results. That is part of the fun, hoping you get an 18. But I can accept it when I don't. You seem to be projecting things onto me that just are not there. When I roll a 7 I keep it, when I roll a 5, I keep it and I continue making my character. How is this being "fine with bad results until _ realize they are actually going to happen"?_


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## Bedrockgames

prosfilaes said:


> I see the point about liking a little randomness, but I think there's a point here about the net effect of chucking characters that are "completely hopeless". For many of these groups, running in systems with standard point buy, I think it would be instructive to ask the DM what point buy they would use if they were to use point buy. If the random characters are higher, especially significantly higher, then that, it feels like one of the reasons may be because they couldn't get the DM to sign off on 40 point buy, or even that the DM would use 15 or 20 point buy, thinking himself running a gritty campaign, when actually the characters are the equivalent of 25 or 30 point buy.
> 
> I think for some groups, random stats is a way of feeling hardcore without actually having to have low stats. The check would at least be interesting.





There is a big difference between chucking completely hopeless characters and rolling sets of 4d6 until you get overall higher stats. In the former case you are rolling and accepting what you get, but you might roll a new set if you got like three 6s and nothing over 12 (definitions of hopeless vary though). That doesnt ean your using 4d6 to somehow game a point buy you were never employing in the first place. 

Again, i understand that you might prefer point buy. That is cool. Why insist people who don't prefer point buy misunderstand their true motives. Isn't the more likely explanation that they simply like something different than you?


----------



## Aura

Bedrockgames said:


> I think said the argument was good because I have seen people meet with a lot of difficulty refuting his points. That doesn't mean his conclusion is supported by his argument. I definitely think there are serious issues with his conclusion and I feel like there is a bit of sophistry at work in how he gets there. I suspect if we drill down we will find serious flaws in his reasoning (for example much of it rests on his definition of RPG and I don't think that definition is an accurate one that reflects how people in the hobby use the word).




OK, this both clarifies the issue and lines up a bit closer to what I feel on the subject as well. We are just a little different on opinions concerning what constitutes a 'good' argument, but end up in agreement on the issue of judging whether the argument supports the conclusion.

I pretty much agree with the rest of your post. I'd add it seems as if the only thing he is accomplishing with his declared position is to argue himself into an opinion-based niche.


----------



## Hussar

It is so rare that I read Celebrim's points and keep nodding in agreement.

BedRockGames, I'm going to make an assumption here that you play using die rolled characters.  I want you to audit the current characters that are being played.  In 3e (and I assume Pathfinder) the standard point buy is 25.  In 5e I forget what the value is off the top of my head.  In any case, what I want you to do is audit the currently played characters in your campaign and tell us how many come in under the standard point buy value and how many come in over the standard point buy value.

Because I'll bet you dollars to donuts that not only will the majority of characters be over the standard point buy value, but, if you were to audit the PC's in every single die rolled campaign you've played in in the last ten years, the overwhelming majority would still come in over the baseline point buy value.

Now, if randomness was truly valued, that should not be true.  We should see the majority of characters right in or around the point buy value.  The mean should line up pretty close to the same value.  But, most likely, it won't.  The mean and the average will both be well above the standard point buy value.

Which pretty much demonstrates Celembrim's point that player's don't actually value randomness, they just want to have higher point buy values and still be able to say that they "earned" them.


----------



## prosfilaes

Bedrockgames said:


> That doesnt ean your using 4d6 to somehow game a point buy you were never employing in the first place.




You said "This is why many people who use 4d6 drop the lowest, do two sets. They  want characters that have a certain level of competence but they do not  desire that character creation be fully predictable or controllable.  Basically they want some surprises but would nothing too game breaking." Using the stats rolled up by JamesonCourage, judging by Celebrim's 32 point standard, 6 are above 32 points, 2 are at 32 points, and only 2 pairs are both below 32 points. That's not a certain level of competence; that is reliably superpowered and potentially game breaking.

If I were convinced that everyone understood that, I'd be a lot more fine with this, but I get the impression that few really do understand how ridiculously powerful 4d6 drop lowest, two sets, really is. Pointing to that guy who got stuck with the 21 point buy doesn't really solve the problem that half the players have above 32 point attributes.

(I don't know what point buy system Celebrim used to get those numbers, but under Pathfinder's system, the examples of 32 point buy translated to 25 Pathfinder point buy, plus or minus one or two points. 25 points is listed as "epic fantasy" and is the highest amount of points mentioned by the Core Rulebook.)



> Why insist people who don't prefer point buy misunderstand their true motives. Isn't the more likely explanation that they simply like something different than you?




Whenever anyone proposes something that is hugely advantageous for themselves, even if you can somehow eliminate the idea they deliberately chose that for their advantage, one must seriously ponder the idea that they like it because it is advantageous, even if they don't consciously realize it. Even if he's completely honest, the roommate who is selling you on the idea that Domino's pizza is optimal in price and nutrition and thus should be had for dinner every night probably really loves pizza; if they hadn't, certain factors would have been reweighed until they came out in favor of foods the roommate liked.


----------



## Olgar Shiverstone

See, this is why I like the default array -- quick, simple, balanced, with enough placement variety to build different characters without accusations of extreme min-maxxage.


----------



## Bedrockgames

prosfilaes said:


> You said "This is why many people who use 4d6 drop the lowest, do two sets. They  want characters that have a certain level of competence but they do not  desire that character creation be fully predictable or controllable.  Basically they want some surprises but would nothing too game breaking." Using the stats rolled up by JamesonCourage, judging by Celebrim's 32 point standard, 6 are above 32 points, 2 are at 32 points, and only 2 pairs are both below 32 points. That's not a certain level of competence; that is reliably superpowered and potentially game breaking.
> 
> If I were convinced that everyone understood that, I'd be a lot more fine with this, but I get the impression that few really do understand how ridiculously powerful 4d6 drop lowest, two sets, really is. Pointing to that guy who got stuck with the 21 point buy doesn't really solve the problem that half the players have above 32 point attributes.




not all people who do 4d6 drop the lowest do two sets though. Lots of people do one set and only eliminate characters they consider hopeless. We have been covering a lot of ground here dealing with many different takes on the method. 




> Whenever anyone proposes something that is hugely advantageous for themselves, even if you can somehow eliminate the idea they deliberately chose that for their advantage, one must seriously ponder the idea that they like it because it is advantageous, even if they don't consciously realize it. Even if he's completely honest, the roommate who is selling you on the idea that Domino's pizza is optimal in price and nutrition and thus should be had for dinner every night probably really loves pizza; if they hadn't, certain factors would have been reweighed until they came out in favor of foods the roommate liked.




Again, not all groups do this. And two, the normal procedure is for people to agree on a single method and have all players use that, so it isn't like you would have one player doing this to get an advantage for himself over the other players. 

But ultimately I think it is a bit odd to question peoples' motives here. That whole business over the pizza, is a mentality I just do not understand. First, we know they like 4d6 drop the lowest. Maybe they are more or less insightful over their own motives, I don't really care if they are or not. The key thing is folks do know what they like, so attacking the reasons they provide for them, really just seems like a sneaky way of getting them to take your method rather than the one they prefer. Like I said, I prefer 3d6, not 4d6. Yet it doesn't bother me that people want 4d6 and say they want it because it gives them that spark of random, a bit of excitement and a little cushion against weaker characters. Seems reasonable to me and I will happily adopt this method if that is what the group as a whole wants.


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## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> not all people who do 4d6 drop the lowest do two sets though. Lots of people do one set and only eliminate characters they consider hopeless. We have been covering a lot of ground here dealing with many different takes on the method.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Again, not all groups do this. And two, the normal procedure is for people to agree on a single method and have all players use that, so it isn't like you would have one player doing this to get an advantage for himself over the other players.
> 
> But ultimately I think it is a bit odd to question peoples' motives here. That whole business over the pizza, is a mentality I just do not understand. First, we know they like 4d6 drop the lowest. Maybe they are more or less insightful over their own motives, I don't really care if they are or not. The key thing is folks do know what they like, so attacking the reasons they provide for them, really just seems like a sneaky way of getting them to take your method rather than the one they prefer. Like I said, I prefer 3d6, not 4d6. Yet it doesn't bother me that people want 4d6 and say they want it because it gives them that spark of random, a bit of excitement and a little cushion against weaker characters. Seems reasonable to me and I will happily adopt this method if that is what the group as a whole wants.




But even in single sets, you will find that the PC's in your games will almost always be higher value than the game standard.  Why?  Because "hopeless" is pretty subjective, and, again, funnily enough, hopeless pretty much starts at about 1 point below standard point buy.

Like I said, BRG, audit the characters in your games.  Again, dollars to donuts, the characters will almost all, if not all, be higher value than standard point buy.


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## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> It is so rare that I read Celebrim's points and keep nodding in agreement.
> 
> BedRockGames, I'm going to make an assumption here that you play using die rolled characters.  I want you to audit the current characters that are being played.  In 3e (and I assume Pathfinder) the standard point buy is 25.  In 5e I forget what the value is off the top of my head.  In any case, what I want you to do is audit the currently played characters in your campaign and tell us how many come in under the standard point buy value and how many come in over the standard point buy value.
> 
> Because I'll bet you dollars to donuts that not only will the majority of characters be over the standard point buy value, but, if you were to audit the PC's in every single die rolled campaign you've played in in the last ten years, the overwhelming majority would still come in over the baseline point buy value.
> 
> Now, if randomness was truly valued, that should not be true.  We should see the majority of characters right in or around the point buy value.  The mean should line up pretty close to the same value.  But, most likely, it won't.  The mean and the average will both be well above the standard point buy value.
> 
> Which pretty much demonstrates Celembrim's point that player's don't actually value randomness, they just want to have higher point buy values and still be able to say that they "earned" them.




First off this logic is flawed. Liking randomness doesn't have to mean liking a certain overall average value. One could love randomness but want randomness that pushes things to a higher level point buy. What they want is the fun of not knowing or having control of what their final scores will be. So even if we were to accept your premise about the audit, I don't but that that somehow means people actually secretly, in their heart of hearts, would be happier with a point buy. 

I also don't think averaging the number will give you a clear window into peoples' motivations. One high roll set can create a misleading impression. But even so, doing an audit of my last 3E campaign (which was an oriental adventures where I was encouraging more powerful characters than I normally do and being very lax on the whole ability score generation thing), where we were using the 4d6 method and but applying your 3.5 point buy tally to the totals we get characters with the following point buy values:

18
23
36
19
10
32

This is all over the map. Clearly we have two folks who are well above your 25 point value cap. But we also have one character who has a 10, as well as characters with an 18 and 19. This is what randomness gives you. Yes people are hoping for something beyond that cap (though to be honest the point buy cap isn't something they are even thinking about so its not like they are thinking in terms of that number) but they know they could get something much worse and accept it when that happens. Everyone had fun in this campaign. No one swapped out characters midway through for any reason other than death during combat.

EDIT 
Just for fun I pulled out my old ravenloft binder with characters, where we rolled them doing 3d6 down the line. Here are the point totals from those sets:

13
14
11
19
26

So in this party we had one character above the 25 point buy. 

Here is the thing though. let's assume that this wasn't the case, that yes all the totals came in above 25 (or at least most of them). That doesn't prove anything really. It just shows people like random but want it on the higher end (and this could be because the rolling method they chose rigs it for higher results, such as rolling 2 or more sets, or because they have a low threshold for hopeless and chuck characters clocking in at 24 or less). Either way, if these people really wanted higher stats, they would obviously be much better off using one of the higher value point buy options (heck nothing stopping you from doing a 38 point buy if you really want to even thought he books only go up to 32). Why would people deny themselves the option that gives them what they really want and then either lie about it or misunderstand their own motives? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. There is nothing to be gained here by convincing you I like random rolls over stat arrays. There are zero stakes in this debate. We are talking about which method of the 5 in the book your group goes with and all are perfectly kosher. If you want to use point buy, that is no skin off my back. I am not going to interrogate you and suggest your lying.


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## Bedrockgames

But either way, I think even if they were all exceptionally above the point buy, that doesn't mean people don't want random. You seem to equate wanting random with wanting low, or secretly desiring high. So your solution is give them a bunch of point buy arrays and they should be happy. I've tried giving arrays of pregen stats to my groups, they do not like it. And it doesn't matter if the stats are good or bad. You could give everyone a 32 point buy array and they would still not like it because that spark of randomness is missing, the pleasure of rolling the stats and seeing the character unfold is missing. Reducing it to a question of the overall value largely misses the point. And it is also a bit insulting to tell people that the thing they like, they actually don't because their either lying or don't understand what they really want.


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## Janx

Bedrock's been putting up the good fight for me 

Let's look at it my way.   [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], who do you think you are to tell me that I don't actually like the Pepperoni Pizza that I've been enjoying eating for the last 20 years?  Do you have any idea of how offensive it is to hear that I should eat a Mushroom Pizza instead because you say it is far superior when I have an extreme irrational dislike of Musrooms to the point that if I had a time machine, I'd go back in time and substitute Mushrooms for Jews and have Hitler slaughter millions of Mushrooms instead?


For better or worse, my group has played for 20+ years using 4d6, without much problem.  I HAVE seen problems with cookie-cutter characters in point based stat systems (like ShadowRun).  So my tastes are aligned to my experiences.

It's just that simple.


----------



## SteveC

This is a pretty interesting article, and John Wick continues to be pretty controversial. I think that's actually what he does best. I completely disagree with just about everything he writes.

John starts off with a pretty workmanlike definition for role-playing games:



> Roleplaying game: a game in which the players are rewarded for making choices that are consistent with the character’s motivations or further the plot of the story.




And he then proceeds to ignore the game aspect of the definition for the rest of the article. A lot of newer "story-games" try to do this as much as possible, and I enjoy them, but they aren't the only games that represent what an RPG is.

He also says that D&D isn't a role-playing game. I have read John's commentary for a long time, and so I know he does not like D&D, so this isn't really surprising. I'll say that If your definition of a thing is such that the most widely accepted example of that thing does not qualify, the problem is with your definition, not the thing or the example.

He writes a lot about how balancing rules are simply not necessary and good parts to tell a story, and to that I'd simply say that it depends on the kinds of stories you want to tell.

I am a big fan of Larry Correia and Jim Butcher. Both make excellent "Urban Fantasy" novels, and both have RPGs about them. The two different games are very different in terms of what the consider important and how balance factors into them. Both are RPGs! I think the hobby works best when it's a big tent that has lots of different games in it.

So yeah, disagree with John pretty strongly.


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## Celebrim

prosfilaes said:


> You said "This is why many people who use 4d6 drop the lowest, do two sets. They  want characters that have a certain level of competence but they do not  desire that character creation be fully predictable or controllable.  Basically they want some surprises but would nothing too game breaking." Using the stats rolled up by JamesonCourage, judging by Celebrim's 32 point standard, 6 are above 32 points, 2 are at 32 points, and only 2 pairs are both below 32 points. That's not a certain level of competence; that is reliably superpowered and potentially game breaking.




Crap.  Yeah.  I keep forgetting how much divergence there is from my game and RAW.  I used my formula, but I'm not really sure what it corresponds to without doing some investigation.  



> If I were convinced that everyone understood that, I'd be a lot more fine with this, but I get the impression that few really do understand how ridiculously powerful 4d6 drop lowest, two sets, really is. Pointing to that guy who got stuck with the 21 point buy doesn't really solve the problem that half the players have above 32 point attributes.




Exactly.  Once you throw in, "4d6 drop the lowest _and reroll hopeless characters_", you have so much randomness mitigation and so much potential for high stats that is really hard to separate out "I enjoy randomness" from the mathematical fact that the sort of 'randomness' they enjoy tends to produce results so out of scale that no point buy chargen methodology would endorse them.   And it turns out in practice that, "Make them play what they roll.", is impossible anyway.   So as a methodology to get everyone to 34-40 point buy while still feeling like you are hardcore, it's great.  But as an actual endorsement of random chargen, it's highly suspect.  

One way to demonstrate this is to show just how uncomfortable those same people would be with a different methodology that produced the same results in play.   Suppose we did chargen this way:

The DM secretly rolls stats for each player using 4d6 drop the lowest, and then figures out the point buy of that stat array.  The DM then reports to the player total as how many points they have to spend during character creation.   So, Dave gets 34 points, Anne gets 27 points, Jim gets 32 points, and Carl gets 8 points.   Fair?  By the definition that everyone had equal opportunity to get a large or small amount of points.  Sure.   Actually fair though?  Ask Carl what he thinks.



> Whenever anyone proposes something that is hugely advantageous for themselves, even if you can somehow eliminate the idea they deliberately chose that for their advantage, one must seriously ponder the idea that they like it because it is advantageous, even if they don't consciously realize it. Even if he's completely honest, the roommate who is selling you on the idea that Domino's pizza is optimal in price and nutrition and thus should be had for dinner every night probably really loves pizza; if they hadn't, certain factors would have been reweighed until they came out in favor of foods the roommate liked.




Pretty much.  There is more too it than that, but as I said.  I know lots of people who claim to love random chargen.   And I'm sure that these people honestly do enjoy random chargen.  But its become clear to me over the years that it isn't mainly because of the randomness that they enjoy it, and even if it were true that they did, it still wouldn't be good for the game as a whole.   For those tables where it is functional, there are often elaborate social contracts around chargen that allow for the illusion of randomness, but in practice the rituals around chargen amount to means for eliminating the randomness from the chargen and keeping what they like of the process.  In some cases everyone at the table actually has the same agenda, and in some cases its that a few players have that agenda and everyone else doesn't really care so its just more functional to let that player do his thing than fight it.

I used random chargen for ages.  I started out with 3d6 in order, but in practice that tended to be method IV - people would roll up a bunch of characters and only play the 'keeper'.   So then I went to 4d6 take the best three straight up in order, play what you get, because rearranging the scores seemed to me to defeat the good part of encouraging diversity.   Then I really started to realize just how important it was to have one 16+ in order to have a playable 1e character, so I started allowing players to designate one score as their primary ability and they could roll 5d6 take the best three for it so as to allow a greater percentage of characters to be really playable.   About that time I gave up on AD&D and went to GURPS.   I never liked point buy per se, and when I went back to 3e my first instinct was to allow both point buy or rolling as an option.   It was then that I realized as bad as point buy was, it was vastly superior to random both from a standpoint of fairness and from a stand point of simplifying the social contract of the table and eliminating all the drama and hassle I as the DM formerly had to put up with during chargen.   And in particular, since 3e made stats between 8-15 vastly more differentiated than 1e, point buy turned out to be the only way to be fair.   1e characters could differ vastly in post 3e era point buy terms, without having great difference in functionality.   If I came up with a 1e point buy it would look something like:

3: -6
4: -5
5: -4
6: -2
7: -1
8: 0
9: 0
10: 0
11: 0
12: 1
13: 1
14: 2
15: 4
16: 7
17: 10
18: 14

Really any character with 1 16+ and not having a noncomplimentary score below 5 was pretty much playable in 1e.   A 1e character with the stat array 18, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 (14 points with the above table) is vastly more playable than one with 13, 13, 13, 13, 13, 13 (6 points in the same table).   Vagaries in the randomness tended to be somewhat smoothed out - though again, not necessarily by a lot.   Also, certain 'prestige classes' - like the ranger - tended to reward good all around stats but no normally critical 16+.   But even with this organic design around random chargen and dealing with it, in retrospect it didn't work and to the extent that it did work it wasn't actually working like I thought it was.   The real point is that the dice justified a certain short term memory about what was actually going on around chargen.


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## Celebrim

Bedrockgames said:


> So your solution is give them a bunch of point buy arrays and they should be happy. I've tried giving arrays of pregen stats to my groups, they do not like it. And it doesn't matter if the stats are good or bad.




Of course not, if everyone is special no one is.  But if everyone got lucky, well that's different, right?


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## Celebrim

Janx said:


> Let's look at it my way.   [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], who do you think you are to tell me that I don't actually like the Pepperoni Pizza that I've been enjoying eating for the last 20 years?  Do you have any idea of how offensive it is to hear that I should eat a Mushroom Pizza instead because you say it is far superior when I have an extreme irrational dislike of Musrooms to the point that if I had a time machine, I'd go back in time and substitute Mushrooms for Jews and have Hitler slaughter millions of Mushrooms instead?




Godwin's Law.  Don't be telling me about offensive making that analogy.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Celebrim said:


> Of course not, if everyone is special no one is.  But if everyone got lucky, well that's different, right?




Except everyone is not getting lucky. They are getting random stats derived from the 4d6 or 3d6 method. Some are employing two sets because they want the average slightly higher than normal. Some eliminate completely hopeless characters (which can't even really be made using the point buy system because stats begin at 8 in that). These are very simply two different preferences that serve differing tastes. They don't reflect moral or gaming superiority. There is nothing to be gained by lying here. If people really wanted to be assured higher than normal stats, they could achieve that much more easily by doing a 32 point buy method.


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## Celebrim

Bedrockgames said:


> There is a big difference between chucking completely hopeless characters and rolling sets of 4d6 until you get overall higher stats. In the former case you are rolling and accepting what you get, but you might roll a new set if you got like three 6s and nothing over 12 (definitions of hopeless vary though).




In actual practice, I'm not sure there is.  Keep in mind that definitions of 'overall higher stats' also vary, and definitions of hopeless will depend on those definitions.  A functional definition of hopeful in 1e might be: "At least 1 16 and doesn't have a 5 or less in a conflicting category (for example 16 wisdom and if a 5 or less, then in dexterity) OR at least 2 15's in base class prime requisites (not charisma, in other words) and no 5's or less, at least 8 intelligence and at least 7 dexterity, OR qualifies for Ranger (2 14's and 2 13's and no 5's or less)."   So hopeless might be deemed everything else.  But another group may have different standards.

The important point is that everyone actually wants to be above the minimum standard, and preferably above them by a good deal.   So take the case of a group that is happy with 4d6 drop 3, but also agrees that truly hopeless characters can be rerolled.   And, look at the list of example ability scores generated by 4d6 drop 3.  Even if the group doesn't do point buy, lets evaluate them as point buy with the idea that average stats are like 28 point buy.   The first thing you note is that most sets end up being above 28 point, and therefore satisfy the players desires and expectations to be above average.   A few are really above 28 point buy by a wide margin.  However, there are a smattering of results where the system generated 9 point buy, 15 point buy, 12 point buy, 18 point buy and so forth.   So imagine that happens.  Well, SURELY everyone at the table will concede that's just a fluke, a hopeless character, and should be rerolled.

As soon as that happens, you've thrown randomness basically out of the equation.  Imagine the similar situation in game where you throw a dice, it's a remarkably low rare result, and you say, "Well gee, that's not supposed happen.  I'll just reroll the dice."  Once the game starts that is called 'fudging' or 'cheating' depending on the demeanor of the table.  What it really means is, "I had a result in mind.  This wasn't it.  But instead of actually admitting to myself that I'm choosing the results, I'm going to just reroll the results... until I get the result I was going for all a long."   For some reason emotionally, for irrational creatures like humans, this lets them mentally believe that they aren't actually choosing the result.  But that doesn't mean that this emotional conviction is in any way rational.

Once you grant that the player can reroll until he gets a non-hopeless character, look at that table of results again.  By and large that first reroll is going to produce a 'correct' result.  A few players may get a disappointing result just below 28 point buy, but there are lots of oppurtunities to 'win' once we throw out all the losers.  And observe also what that is doing to the average result.  If 4d6 take the best three is on average 28 points in point buy terms, 4d6 take the best three and keep rolling until you get a 'non-hopeless' result is in practice something like 36 point buy.  Because the standard deviation is huge, so once you throw out the bottom 20% or so of scores, the remaining scores are really good indeed.



> That doesnt ean your using 4d6 to somehow game a point buy you were never employing in the first place.




No, of course.  I'm not claiming that the players had some knowledge of point buy to compare it too.  I'm just using that as a means of measuring just how good, or not good, the various rolls are.  I'm just showing just how wide the range of characters real randomness would produce if it was actually employed in earnest - which I'm asserting it almost never actually is.

Worse for me though was the fact that this illusionism around randomness meant that the bar on what was hopeless was being continually raised, particularly as people began to figure out what they actually needed to have the best shot of a highly successful career with a character.   When we were using 3d6 straight up, that was a pretty low standard.   At least not mostly scores lower than 11 was enough, which should have clued us in right away that our definition of hopeless was already 'anything below the average expectation of the method'.   However, those characters tended to have short lives compared to the few lucky ones, and most people were - if not exactly cheating - working around the rules any way.   So we went to 4d6 and the standards of what was playable went up, and conversely what was hopeless went down.  In practice, it became 'not mostly scores lower than 13'.  12, 12, 11, 11, 9, 7 which might have been considered playable previously, gradually became understood to be hopeless.   And I discovered that, I really couldn't make people play what they didn't want to play.  So scores got better, but the percentage of 'do overs' - via some methodology - didn't decrease.   And as I understood the math better, my ability to see why 13, 13, 13, 13, 13, 13 wasn't actually a good result, but a bland character that would always be inferior to his peers lagging in XP and with no reliable abilities, my understanding of what a good character for the system looked like evolved.  I began to realize that guy with a 7 and two 8's wasn't actually paying much of a penalty if he had a 17 and a 15, and making him play it wasn't really a hardship nor was choosing to play it being really hard core.


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## Bedrockgames

Again i am not going to spend all day taking this point by point. Point buys do not appeal to some folks who like 4d6. One reason for this is randomness. You keep creating false choices or say randomness no longer matters once players remove hopeless characters (and your definition of hopeless doesn't match what I have ever seen in actual play, where it usually means something like three really bad stats below 9 and nothing over 12 or 13---but this will vary from group to group for sure). The fact is with point but you select the numbers you want or you start out with presets someone devised before hand. You can almost achieve the same numbers with point but that you can with rolling 4d6 drop the lowest---point but starts at 8 so unless there is a way to reduce that I am forgetting the big difference in value is point but won't see numbers like 3,4,5,6, or 7. And because you can set point but to any value really the only difference between Lonny but and 4d6 is the randomness and the fact you roll. So I think those are the only real 2 explanations for why people like 4d6---the randomness or the act of rolling. If they really just wanted to exceed a 25 point buy they would be doing like a 28 or 32 point but method. I suppose the only other possible explanation is the range of values: yes you can get 1 or more high stats with 4d6, but you can also get 1 or more very low stats with 4d6. So they might also like it because it gives you the possibility of having an 18 AND a 3. Either way probably best to take people at their word rather than essentially accuse them of lying or being deluded.


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## Bedrockgames

Celebrim said:


> Of course not, if everyone is special no one is.  But if everyone got lucky, well that's different, right?




Again looking at the character sheets from some of my own campaigns, the values vary. People seem to like having a mix with some folks getting above the 25 point value and some below. I don't see how you explain this as them secretly wanting to bust the 25 point buy cap when A) the GM is free to set a higher cap and B) both the players who have under 25 and over seem happy with the method, their characters and the campaign.


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## prosfilaes

Bedrockgames said:


> not all people who do 4d6 drop the lowest do two sets though. Lots of people do one set and only eliminate characters they consider hopeless. We have been covering a lot of ground here dealing with many different takes on the method.




And I have different responses to the different takes. I'll let Celebrim handle the 3d6 crowd; I'm skeptical, but whatever. But 4d6 drop the lowest, two sets, is a method that produces 3/5ths broken characters and 1/5 weak characters. If you drop any hopeless characters out of that, you've got a method for building straight-up overpowered characters. If the players and especially the DM don't know that, it skews how they view the game and interferes with the DM properly running the game. To properly handle powerful characters, one must know how and why they are powerful.



> Yet it doesn't bother me that people want 4d6 and say they want it because it gives them that spark of random, a bit of excitement and a little cushion against weaker characters. Seems reasonable to me and I will happily adopt this method if that is what the group as a whole wants.




Things are more likely to seem reasonable to you if you get really annoyed at anyone arguing about them or even discussing them and refuse to look at how they actually work out.


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## Bedrockgames

I am happy to discuss the topic but I don't have enough time in my day to spend on posting responses if folks are going to squeeze insults into their rebuttals. All I can say is if you like point but, the. Go for it. But I am not going to question the motives of folks saying they like random rolls when that seems quite a reasonable statement in light of the reasons I provided earlier a. What does not seem reasonable is assuming people are lying or have a hidden agenda because they say they like the random spark 4d6 provides.


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## Celebrim

Bedrockgames said:


> Again i am not going to spend all day taking this point by point.




I'm getting a bit tired of the topic myself, and finding it to be a longer and longer digression from the thread topic.  To sum up, most methods of random chargen produce highly unbalanced characters.  To resolve this, players that use chargen systems based on randomness (for example 1e D&D), develop elaborate ways of controlling for the randomness to produce less unbalanced results.



> or say randomness no longer matters once players remove hopeless characters




Because by definition, if you steer the results, it's no longer random.  



> (and your definition of hopeless doesn't match what I have ever seen in actual play, where it usually means something like three really bad stats below 9 and nothing over 12 or 13




Which is pretty much exactly the examples that I gave, for example, "At least not mostly scores lower than 11...", or "At least not mostly scores lower than 13"   And obviously, from my explanation its pretty clear that I considered just about anything with at least 1 16+ playable.  So, actually, I'd guess we are pretty much exactly on the same page - exactly as you'd expect if my theory that what was 'hopeless' was derived from expectations about the mathematical averages.

As for the rest, it's not worth responding to at length.  It would be fairly easy to devise point buy to allow for scores of any range, and in a well balanced system this would be fairly easy.  I'm pretty sure the only reason that D20 didn't do this by default was an admission that not all abilities were created equal in the default game.   Likewise, the choice to use point buy to create cookie cutter characters is just that - a choice.  And if when presented with the opportunity to create cookie cutter characters you do, then chances are diversity isn't the reason you like randomness.   Exceeding 25 point buy implies that there is a choice between using point buy and random - which there often isn't.   I never encountered point buy as a choice for D&D until I played 3e.  So if the goal was to exceed the equivalent of 25 point buy, only by manipulating 'random' chargen could you consistently do that.  However, even where point buy a choice, there would still be people who'd prefer random to it precisely because you can manipulate it and do so without really reflecting on the fact that you are doing so.  There is a certain boost to ones self-esteem that comes from feeling you earned a 40+ point buy character when you 'randomly' roll it up, for example, that you don't get when the DM says, "Sure, make 45 point buy characters."  People would rather think of themselves as "hard core" and "old school" and whatever.



> yes you can get 1 or more high stats with 4d6, but you can also get 1 or more very low stats with 4d6. So they might also like it because it gives you the possibility of having an 18 AND a 3.




Except no one actually plays characters with multiple 3s nearly as often as they play characters with multiple 18s - or at all.   For one thing, if you actually did randomly generate a 1e character with 2 or more 5's or less, it's literally unplayable (by the rules, you qualify for no class).  We've already established that the possibility of playing 1 or more very low stats doesn't really exist (except in parallel to also having mitigating good stats).  Everyone in this conversation admits that do overs were done when the character was "hopeless".   So in fact the real results aren't sometimes high and sometimes low, but high and high.   And that isn't actually random - though some of us aren't admitting it.  You can pretend its random all you want, but after you've admitted in practice the methodology isn't random, it's no longer unreasonably to note that it isn't random regardless of what you claim about it being random.


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## billd91

prosfilaes said:


> And I have different responses to the different takes. I'll let Celebrim handle the 3d6 crowd; I'm skeptical, but whatever. But 4d6 drop the lowest, two sets, is a method that produces 3/5ths broken characters and 1/5 weak characters. If you drop any hopeless characters out of that, you've got a method for building straight-up overpowered characters. If the players and especially the DM don't know that, it skews how they view the game and interferes with the DM properly running the game. To properly handle powerful characters, one must know how and why they are powerful.




Considering 4d6 is the default method of character generation, if it tends toward generating overly powerful characters (in your opinion), then maybe the problem is the point-buy value low-balls the amount PCs should be given. In any event, rolling 4d6, even rolling two sets and taking the preferred result, certainly doesn't create overpowered characters nor are they broken. I'd venture to say that they are less game breaking than point-buy characters considering randomly rolled characters tend to ameliorate differences between single-attribute and multi-attribute classes - a problem fed by point-buying stats.


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## Lwaxy

I've been using 4d6 drop lowest as default for many years. Only once, in a recently started forum game, did it happen that a player's rolls were totally hopeless *3 times in a row*. We were joking he should play a farmer... 

Recently, some groups I follow have taken to using the 5d6 drop 2 lowest method.


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## Bedrockgames

Celebrim said:


> There is a certain boost to ones self-esteem that comes from feeling you earned a 40+ point buy character when you 'randomly' roll it up, for example, that you don't get when the DM says, "Sure, make 45 point buy characters."  People would rather think of themselves as "hard core" and "old school" and whatever.
> .




I think you are seriously projecting here. Rolling high isn't an accomplishment. And playing in a game where you roll 3d6 down the line and take what you get (which I prefer personally) isn't a sign of being hard core or old school. The old school method from AD&D 1E was 4d6 drop the lowest and they even emphasized in the book the importance of having two high stats and being exceptional. So it isn't like people using 4d6 are busting the system. Even folks who use 4d6 and do two sets, are not disrupting the balance of the game. I think most of the folks here can attest the game runs fine whether you do 4d6 or two sets of 4d6. I've never encountered issues running it with those or with 3d6. With the latter you will get weaker characters generally and you might experience a bit more character death (particularly early on). Again none of that makes one hard core. This isn't MMA here. We are just rolling up characters and sending them into dungeons and wilderness. I mean whether your okay with characters being weak or characters dying a lot just has to do with whether you find character death disruptive to play or not (some people do, some don't). 

I don't know, like with the whole random thing, maybe people should just take us at our word here rather than project motives on us like wanting to be hardcore.


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## prosfilaes

billd91 said:


> if it tends toward generating overly powerful characters (in your opinion)




In Pathfinder, it creates characters with higher stats then the designers were designing the system for, as an objective matter.

In 5E, two sets produces characters with higher stats then 4d6, the default, but at least that should be obvious to DMs. Even 4d6 is likely to stomp 5Es other stat generation systems, which are 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 (place by taste) and a point buy that doesn't let you take stats above 15.


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## billd91

Lwaxy said:


> I've been using 4d6 drop lowest as default for many years. Only once, in a recently started forum game, did it happen that a player's rolls were totally hopeless *3 times in a row*. We were joking he should play a farmer...




One player of mine was commenting about always rolling low so I had him roll 21-3d6 for the exact same distribution and his stats came out pretty good.


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## billd91

prosfilaes said:


> In Pathfinder, it creates characters with higher stats then the designers were designing the system for, as an objective matter.




Not in a particularly significant manner. The game still defaults to 4d6 and whether or not rolling 2 sets lads to more power depends a lot on the player strategy. I've seen players take the set that tops out at 15 when an 18 was on the other set because it avoided multiple lows. It's just not that big a deal and not at all a game breaker.


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## Jacob Marley

prosfilaes said:


> In Pathfinder, it creates characters with higher stats then the designers were designing the system for, as an objective matter.




Yes, 4d6 does often result in higher overall stats; but it doesn't necessarily increase the power level of the character. 4d6 has a tendency of achieving those higher overall stats by increasing the value of tertiary stats and/or increasing the proportion of odd stats; both inflate the equivalent point buy without increasing the actual power level of the character. 4d6 also makes an 18 ability much harder to come by than a point buy system does.


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## Hussar

billd91 said:


> Considering 4d6 is the default method of character generation, if it tends toward generating overly powerful characters (in your opinion), then maybe the problem is the point-buy value low-balls the amount PCs should be given. In any event, rolling 4d6, even rolling two sets and taking the preferred result, certainly doesn't create overpowered characters nor are they broken. I'd venture to say that they are less game breaking than point-buy characters considering randomly rolled characters tend to ameliorate differences between single-attribute and multi-attribute classes - a problem fed by point-buying stats.




That's not really true though.  Looking at 3e, mostly because that's the system I'm most familiar with, a 35 point buy character is operating in all respects at one level higher than a 25 point buy character - his HP, AC, saves, bonus spells, skill bonuses - are all one level higher.

Whether you consider that to be broken or not is a matter of taste, but, the math certainly says its a pretty big advantage.

I mean, if you were to go to your DM and say, "Ok, I'll make a 25 point buy character instead of 4d6 drop lowest, roll twice.  But, I start at 2nd level instead of 1st like everyone else," do you think any DM would go for it?  

Heck, can I play an 18 point buy character in your game, but start two levels ahead of everyone else?  Would that be perfectly fine?

At the end of the day, die rolled characters are almost always higher value than point buy characters.  And that's a balance issue.  It might not be a huge one, but, it does make a difference.  I know that my earlier D&D experiences vary wildly from, say, [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]'s because we were very generous with character generation.  The idea of a fighter that didn't have a percentile strength was a foreign one to my groups.  Why would you play a fighter if you didn't have percentile strength?


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## Celebrim

Jacob Marley said:


> Yes, 4d6 does often result in higher overall stats; but it doesn't necessarily increase the power level of the character. 4d6 has a tendency of achieving those higher overall stats by increasing the value of tertiary stats and/or increasing the proportion of odd stats; both inflate the equivalent point buy without increasing the actual power level of the character. 4d6 also makes an 18 ability much harder to come by than a point buy system does.




That's only true if you run 4d6 drop the lowest straight up (which I did).  However, the default method 1 is 4d6 drop the lowest and _rearrange to taste_.   Most of your objections in practice don't actually follow.   In 3e, even boosting tertiary stats offers major advantages.  A fighter might could get buy without high dexterity or wisdom, but he certainly wouldn't object to them so having an extra high 3rd best or 4th best score or having no low scores in anything is certainly an advantage.   Odd stats don't lead to immediate advantage at low level, but can be easily bought up at higher level to significant advantage.  In fact, there is one school of thought that says that for certain classes don't pay for the even number which generally has high cost.  Instead, start odd and use the point savings to boost a tertiary stat by 2-4 points and then boost to the even number at 4th level.   And certainly in 1e with its less smooth adjustments, there was a huge advantage in a 15 over a 14 and 17 over a 16.  

And while 4d6 does make an starting 18 ability somewhat harder to rely on, generally in point buy systems buying that 18 requires gimping all the rest of your stats.  With 4d6, if you luck out and roll the 18, all the rest of your stats will likely be what they would be otherwise.  You get that huge point boost for free.

Your argument that 4d6 in general didn't lead to large advantages relative to other players is more applicable to 1e, where a 8 in anything but your prime requisite was not significantly worse than 14 in most cases and you often pay no relevant penalty for it over the course of your career.   So for example, a 1e centered point buy might well make it cost almost nothing to boost an 8 to an 11 and little to boost and 8 to 12 or 13.  Thus a player with the stats of 16, 15, 8, 8, 8, 8 isn't in 1e really that much disadvantaged over the one with 16, 15, 13, 12, 11, 11 even though by 3e centered point buy systems we might say the second scores cost much more to buy.   

However, I think we've pretty definitively demonstrated that played straight up with no rerolls, 4d6 drop the lowest produces a range of 1e starting characters between hopeless commoners and nascent demigods even over small sample sets.   And once you add a table rule that lets you "reroll hopeless characters until you get a good result", the average point buy in 3e terms becomes quite high - generally above that of any standard point buy.   Arguably, even if this was balanced for 1e's expectations of starting character ability, it's not balanced for 3e's EL/CR expectations which assumes that characters have something like an elite stat array to begin with.  And even to the extent that you can deal with that, it's certainly not balanced between the players themselves or ensuring equal access to gameplay.

However, for practical purposes, most 1e groups found some way of dealing with this by working around the randomness to get a end result similar to "set your own ability scores", so that many groups could say, "I've never seen a fighter without 18+ strength."  I didn't run my own table that way, but I certainly did play with DMs who found that tolerating that sort of thing was better in the long run that trying to hold players to the results of the random methodologies.   

Had I to go back to random method, I'd probably use some variation of Method III and perhaps adjust the number of rolls in each group (probably down to 5 rolls per group).  Method III produces rather OP characters compared to even Method I, but basically never requires a "hopeless character" rule (which means in practice it isn't that far from Method I + rerolls) and produces must more consistently playable characters concentrated around a small range of power levels.   I think you could use Method III without the social illusionism and hypocrisy I've seen around Method I or even Method V.


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## Umbran

prosfilaes said:


> Even 4d6 is likely to stomp 5Es other stat generation systems, which are 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 (place by taste) and a point buy that doesn't let you take stats above 15.




The array you give has an average value of 12.
4d6 drop lowest has, if I recall correctly, an average of 12.24

So, I'm not sure how that's a "stomp".  Taken straight, 4d6 drop lowest is, of course, more likely to generate high numbers - but it is also more likely to generate *low* numbers.  

From there, it isn't an issue of how good the stats are, but how good the player is at dumping the low stats, and how bad the GM is at challenging those dump stats so that it matters to the player.


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## Umbran

Hussar said:


> Now, if randomness was truly valued, that should not be true.  We should see the majority of characters right in or around the point buy value.  The mean should line up pretty close to the same value.  But, most likely, it won't.  The mean and the average will both be well above the standard point buy value.
> 
> Which pretty much demonstrates Celembrim's point that player's don't actually value randomness, they just want to have higher point buy values and still be able to say that they "earned" them.




If the group hasn't played with point buy, they can't be trying to beat point buy, because they will not have internalized the results of point buy.

The above seems based on the false assumption that a player *cannot* want two things.  You state it as one, or the other-  they want high stats, or they want randomness, and apparently it is impossible for them to want both.  This creates a false dichotomy.  Players do not generally think in those clearly defined ways when they are making their choices - they have the more normal mix of desires present in humans, which don't necessarily lead to a coherent result that fits neatly into your little boxes of analysis.  

As I already said upthread - there is such a thing as wanting *tailored* randomness.  

There is wanting high stats.  There is wanting randomness.  These two can be orthogonal, when you remember that the effects of random generation are not just about whether you match the recommended point buy or array.


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## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> That's not really true though.  Looking at 3e, mostly because that's the system I'm most familiar with, a 35 point buy character is operating in all respects at one level higher than a 25 point buy character - his HP, AC, saves, bonus spells, skill bonuses - are all one level higher.
> 
> Whether you consider that to be broken or not is a matter of taste, but, the math certainly says its a pretty big advantage.
> 
> I mean, if you were to go to your DM and say, "Ok, I'll make a 25 point buy character instead of 4d6 drop lowest, roll twice.  But, I start at 2nd level instead of 1st like everyone else," do you think any DM would go for it?
> 
> Heck, can I play an 18 point buy character in your game, but start two levels ahead of everyone else?  Would that be perfectly fine?
> 
> At the end of the day, die rolled characters are almost always higher value than point buy characters.  And that's a balance issue.  It might not be a huge one, but, it does make a difference.  I know that my earlier D&D experiences vary wildly from, say, [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]'s because we were very generous with character generation.  The idea of a fighter that didn't have a percentile strength was a foreign one to my groups.  Why would you play a fighter if you didn't have percentile strength?




I certainly won't deny that point buy characters produce greater parity and so yes, they are probably going to give you tighter balance and be further on the balance spectrum. I would contend though that does depend on how you define balance and what you want from it. Personally I find random results produce balance by having a fair starting point (every one has the same odds) and by eliminating the likelihood of power builds (because you can't customize as easily when your stats are random). But yes, characters will have greater parity using the point buy method. That is a whole different argument from what folks are talking about here. What is being debated is why people like 4d6 drop the lowest and I think it is a little bit nuts that posters are essentially calling those who say they like 4d6 because its random, liars. This is what I am objecting to. If you find point buy more balanced, I am fine with that. We can disagree on some of the distinctions surrounding the word and still respect each other's opinions.


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## Umbran

Bedrockgames said:


> What is being debated is why people like 4d6 drop the lowest and I think it is a little bit nuts that posters are essentially calling those who say they like 4d6 because its random, liars. This is what I am objecting to.




As well you should.  It is a kind of jerkish thing to do - some folks seem to feel that since the folks so described are largely unnamed masses, it is okay to tell them that they are lying, or somehow wrong about their preferences - doing so to win an argument is one of those behaviors that give the internet a bad name.


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## Hussar

I dunno.  I gotta go with Celebrim on this one.  If randomness was truly being sought, then why is randomness only mitigated in one direction - ever upward?  And, considerably upward.

Like I said, if you tried to ask your point buy DM if you could go with a lower point buy but add levels, you'd get laughed at.  But, with random die rolled characters that almost always default to a higher and often much higher baseline, you get to add levels to your character right off the bat.  

I think there is something here besides, "Oh, i just like randomly determining stats".  If that's all there was too it, then why have so many extras that mitigate that.  Heck, even back in Basic DnD, you got to swap points from stats (at 2:1) so you could get those exceptional stats on pretty much every character.


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## Celebrim

Umbran said:


> The array you give has an average value of 12.
> 4d6 drop lowest has, if I recall correctly, an average of 12.24




If and only if you don't reroll "hopeless" characters.  If you have a table rule that says, "Reroll "hopeless" characters", then depending on what the bottom percentile of characters that are being excluded, the average is much higher than that.   And if you don't have a table rule that says you reroll hopeless characters, you often have players working around that in some fashion - suiciding characters, cheating, creating multiple characters and then choosing which to play, etc.



> So, I'm not sure how that's a "stomp".  Taken straight, 4d6 drop lowest is, of course, more likely to generate high numbers - but it is also more likely to generate *low* numbers.




Again, mostly that matters (particularly for 1e) if in fact no rerolls are allowed.   Once you start throwing out the garbage results, it's just more likely to generate high numbers, plus perhaps also some low numbers at the same time.  Low numbers plus no high numbers typically means the character is discarded through some sort of social agreement or metagame activity.

My thesis since challenging this notion that random chargen was balanced is that random chargen is not balanced, creates large imbalances in play, and as a result pretty much everyone that used it (certainly everyone I've encountered and played with) over time developed some sort of metagame methodology to cope with the possible imbalances that actual randomness would necessarily produce.  The result was random chargen with strong conditions that made it effectively unrandom or else while still random was irrelevant to the game the player would play.   I haven't really argued that this secondary development was bad.  It is in fact a functional response to the problems created by random chargen.   Indeed, per Gygax's own discussion, the alternate methods in the DMG were an evolved response to the problems created by earlier more highly random chargen.  They were however but one step in that evolution, because the popular Method I itself (for instance) still didn't control for the randomness enough. 

The step I would like to take is to recognize that those sometimes unspoken metagame agreements actually existed and were in fact ways of evading the actual results of randomness.   So for example, stating, "I like random chargen, but hopeless characters should be rerolled", suggests at minimum an insertion of choice and fudging into the random dynamic that shows actual randomness was being highly mitigated by a desire for greater balance.  It also suggests, as I asserted earlier, that mathematical analysis of Method I is flawed compared to how it was actually used in play.  In actual play, as I said, it often stood for the excuse to set stats in a more balanced manner, with more playable character, because the actual method wasn't method I, but "Method I until everyone gets (at least approximately) what they want."   And that is not in fact random.


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## Jhaelen

Well, I'm with Celebrim regarding rolling for stats. We'd been playing for many years with randomly rolled stats, and what I've found was that our houserules to mitigate the randomness got more elaborate and complicated all the time. When 3e introduced the point-buy method, I used it and never looked back. 

(Warning: anecdote coming in I had exactly one player who complained and wanted to roll dice. That player was known to be rather lucky when rolling his d6. Still, I told him: "Well, you get to roll up one character using 6x 4d6 and you have to take it, no matter what you roll." And this time he wasn't lucky. When he then asked if he could use point-buy instead, I said "Sure!". And that was the last time a player wanted to roll for stats. (Okay, anecdote over )

In 4e I even took it one step further and only allowed a single default stat array.

I'm not doubting Bedrockgames when he states, he enjoys the randomness, but in my experience what most players enjoy is the gamble, the hope to get something better than 'average'.

Personally, I've always been happy to get rid of randomness when creating characters given the chance. I'd even take point-buy options if they resulted in sub-par characters compared to the chosen dice roll method. And, yes, part of the reason is that I often suck at rolling stats!

Having said that, there's something I consider even more important than using point-buy instead of rolling dice for stats in D&D, and that's gaining a fixed amount of hit points every level instead of rolling dice! It's something that was standard in 4e, but is used in no other edition before or after. No matter how good or bad your stats are, rolling badly for your hit points three times in a row can cripple your character, especially the fighter-types who use large dice. I've been really disappointed that 5e doesn't have at least an option for this.


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## Jhaelen

And since Celebrim mentioned troupe-style play:

I'm a big fan of Ars Magica - actually it's my favorite rpg. And one big reason (of many) is the troupe-style play. In our games, creating the covenant, where all player characters reside, was a group effort. We'd brainstorm about what kind of characters we wanted to populate it and then distributed them, so everyone got to create a bunch of them in addition to a player's magus. And since our typical stories rarely involved more than one or two magi, every player seemed to be interested to carefully design the companions, experts, and grogs, as well. It certainly makes sense to make sure you're going to enjoy playing any type of character if you only get to play your magus every once in a while. For our group this resulted in some of the best roleplaying I've ever experienced.
It's definitely a great thing to have such a rich cast of characters available. Normally, only the GM has the luxury to play someone else each session. In our Ars Magica campaigns we would sometimes even play different characters in one session. I suppose it's not for every player, but for our group of experienced players who have all at some point been GMs, it was awesome.

Luckily, in Ars Magica, there's no rolling dice during character creation. You can freely choose your stats and buy advantages (and disadvantages) to get better (or worse) stats. And although I'm not generally a fan of boon/penalty systems since they can always be abused by min-maxers, we've not had any problems with it in Ars Magica so far, which I attribute to the troupe play.


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## Celebrim

Hussar said:


> I dunno.  I gotta go with Celebrim on this one.




Thanks for the vote, but that doesn't give me a lot of confidence. 

It's sincerely weird to have you agreeing with me.



> If randomness was truly being sought, then why is randomness only mitigated in one direction - ever upward?




I think that there is a lot more to my argument than that, and it begins with, "Randomness isn't the goal in and of itself, but a means to some end."

In the 'old days', I think randomness was used because no one necessarily had better ideals about how to get to those ends.  Randomness was the method we had, it wasn't seriously questioned, we didn't have the technical language to talk about it, it was a sacred cow, and so that's what you went with.  But to make it actually functional, in my experience of play and in discussing it with other people, it was honored in the breach more than the use.  The dice rolling creates the illusion of randomness, but some sort of social contract existed to mitigate that as an actual result while retaining some of the end values that randomness was the methodology used to create.  "Throw out hopeless characters" so that the actual methodology wasn't Method 1, but rather Method 1 plus some number of rerolls until the player or table as a whole is happy with the character is one example of that.  But, "Keep rolling until we get what we want.", as any reflective DM knows that has rerolled random encounter tables is, "Pretend to be random, but actually choose the outcome."

If you start looking at the stated primary goals of random character - the actual values we are prizing when we apply the methodology - it turns out that we have the methodology now for creating pretty much any of that while retaining balance.

For example, many have suggested that the like randomness for sparking diversity and preventing cookie cutter builds.  Which is fine, but from a purely objective position, if what we valued most was diversity surely choice would produce more diversity than randomness would.  After all, with choice you can always choose to play something different, but with random results you could be given a set of numbers similar enough to the last one to be effectively identical.   If a player says, "I prize diversity over optimization and balance, but if I'm given a choice to create what I want, I always prioritize optimization over diversity.", what are we to make of that but at best and most charitably, "I like diversity, but the temptation to optimize is too great for me to over come so I need methodology that forces me to not do it".   However, I've actually suggested methodology that would spark diversity and yield balance, yet this methodology remains unattractive.   Clearly diversity as the end goal of randomness is at most secondary.

Others have said that the thrill of gambling is the reason that they like rolling dice.  This is the theory that rolling dice is fun, so that's why random chargen is preferred.   But the problem with that is that for most people, gambling is fun only when they win and that chargen carries no real cost.  So in actual play, players didn't gamble once and accept losing as a happy result.  They kept up the gambling until they produced some sort of 'winner'.  The discarded the "hopeless" characters through some methodology.   And so while we can honestly accept "the thrill of gambling" as being part of the attractiveness of the mechanic and part of the reason people honestly liked it, when we examine the actual impact on play that this thrill of gambling produced it was to produce a non-random set of playable "winners" who were perforce more balanced than randomness itself would have actually produced.  Again, this isn't actual random, and we can't overlook the end state when discussing why people actually liked the methodology that they actually used.



> I think there is something here besides, "Oh, i just like randomly determining stats"




As a DM, absolutely its fun to just randomly determine stuff - even stuff you'll never going to lose.  There is definitely exploratory pleasure in randomly making stuff.  But equally, absolutely there was and is more going on with random chargen than actual randomness.  If there wasn't, there wouldn't be such elaborate table agreements and social constructs around protecting players from it.  

Again, one of the most dominate aspects of random chargen is how much of the rerolling gets thrown out with the short term memory.


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## Bedrockgames

I think if you feel the need to ascribe hidden or false motives to people because they say they like rolling because it is random that shows a lack of respect in the conversation. This is a big problem in our hobby where it simply isn't enough to disagree over preferences but we also assign motivations to people that paint them as sinister or foolish. That is an easy thing to do. It is a simple thing to dissect a person's opinion in order to 'prove' that they want something other than they claim. In most cases I think, and here I will assign sinister motives, it isn't truly part of any effort to arrive at the truth but a product of kbe's own bias on the issue: the other side isn't just wrong---they are bad or stupid. Either way, I do not have a. Interest in continuing to humor that segment of the hobby (even those I agree with on issues) by responding to their point by points.


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## Bedrockgames

Celebrim said:


> Again, mostly that matters (particularly for 1e) if in fact no rerolls are allowed.   Once you start throwing out the garbage results, it's just more likely to generate high numbers, plus perhaps also some low numbers at the same time.  Low numbers plus no high numbers typically means the character is discarded through some sort of social agreement or metagame activity.




I am only responding to this because this is part of the misunderstanding. People are re-rolling hopeless characters. That is they are re-rolling characters that who have an entire stat set deemed non-survivable in the game. They are not re-rolling individual results. There is a big difference between chucking a character because it has four bad results and rolling a set but re-rolling each result you don't like. Even if you are chucking hopeless characters, you are still getting the spikes and dips associated with a random rolling method.


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## Bedrockgames

Jhaelen said:


> I'm not doubting Bedrockgames when he states, he enjoys the randomness, but in my experience what most players enjoy is the gamble, the hope to get something better than 'average'.




I appreciate the good faith here. I would just add to this, these are not mutually exclusive things. I've already said part of the attraction is the hope of a good roll. I want to roll well, absolutely. Getting an 18 is exciting. But part of the requirement of that excitement is that bad results also be allowed to stand. I think the gambling comparison is a good. That is in fact one of the key draws to the random method for me. But it ceases to be exciting if I can re-roll every bad result I get. I'm fine with 4d6 drop the lowest. I am even okay with doing two sets if that is what the group really wants to do. But anything beyond that and the excitement starts to diminish considerably for me because the higher results become more of a foregone conclusion. So it isn't just about the high results. I want them, but for the excitement of the roll to mean anything to me, there needs to be the possibility of doing poorly. And when a bad result happens I can take it in good spirits and work it into the fun of the game (it is actually one of the unique challenges to rolling stats that sometimes you get stuck with this terrible number and need to make sense of it---having a 4 Dex is very different flavor wise than an 8).  

I think these discussions are a lot more productive when folks do not assume people in favor of one thing or the other are not trying to pull a fast one.


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## Celebrim

Bedrockgames said:


> I am only responding to this because this is part of the misunderstanding.




I am only responding to this because this is part of a misunderstanding, and it's not a misunderstanding on my part.   I know well what people are rerolling and never said they are rerolling only single bad numbers.  I've talked about the impact (or lack of impact as the case may be) of single bad numbers at great length.  I've talked about meta-game procedures at great length.  There is no excuse for your claim that I'm misunderstanding what is being performed in the meta-game procedure.  Yes, I understand bad numbers are being accepted in play.  I've wrote pages on that by this point.  

But even were I misunderstanding your tables metagame procedure, it wouldn't undermine my thesis in the slightest because rerolling whole characters or rerolling only individual results both fall under the heading of metagame procedures that mitigate against randomness to a large degree.  



> People are re-rolling hopeless characters. That is they are re-rolling characters that who have an entire stat set deemed non-survivable in the game. They are not re-rolling individual results. There is a big difference between chucking a character because it has four bad results and rolling a set but re-rolling each result you don't like.




For the purposes of the thesis, no there isn't.



> Even if you are chucking hopeless characters, you are still getting the spikes and dips associated with a random rolling method.




As I have repeatedly suggested and discussed to the point of tedium just to try to correct this repeated assertion of yours that I don't get what you are talking about, I'm well aware of the effects of single low rolls and how high rolls in the same stat array tend to more than completely compensate.  It's not like even when given choice players don't min/max and utilize dump stats.   I've had point buy players buy down to single low stats to buy up their most important stat.   If "chucking hopeless" characters consists of throwing out "one bad, no good" and keeping "one bad, but one or more good" it's still heavily skewing the average and mitigating against probably the one unique aspect of random chargen - large inherent imbalance.



> I appreciate the good faith here. I would just add to this, these are not mutually exclusive things. I've already said part of the attraction is the hope of a good roll. I want to roll well, absolutely. Getting an 18 is exciting. But part of the requirement of that excitement is that bad results also be allowed to stand. I think the gambling comparison is a good. That is in fact one of the key draws to the random method for me. But it ceases to be exciting if I can re-roll every bad result I get. I'm fine with 4d6 drop the lowest. I am even okay with doing two sets if that is what the group really wants to do. But anything beyond that and the excitement starts to diminish considerably for me because the higher results become more of a foregone conclusion.




Hey, now we are getting somewhere. However, since I'm not writing to prove anything about you particularly, but how random chargen impacts games and social contracts generally...



> when a bad result happens I can take it in good spirits and work it into the fun of the game (it is actually one of the unique challenges to rolling stats that sometimes you get stuck with this terrible number and need to make sense of it---having a 4 Dex is very different flavor wise than an 8).




A single terrible number is not a bad result.  This is particularly true for 1e D&D, where all a single terrible number meant is you lost your choice over which class to be and added a character quirk to a system generally lacking in mechanical customization.   Nor is having a bad number even remotely a unique aspect of rolled stats compared to chosen stats.   During my open dungeon crawl days in 3e, a player bought a character down to two 3's - something illegal to play in 1e AD&D even with rolled stats - because he figured that his half orc needed neither intelligence nor charisma in a game that was almost solely about combat.   Even in my present on going serious campaign, one player has a caster with like 6 or 4 strength (I forget which) so as to buy up charisma.  More to the point though, go back and reread my original 'firestorm' post again regarding how people dealt with imposed imbalance at the metagame level.  This applies to players playing actual hopeless characters, and not just the "I played characters with single bad stats so this proves I like randomness" shtick you seem to be focused on, as if I hadn't also played a perfectly playable character with 5 charisma and other low scores, or would be unwilling to do so again.  (Ko-Ko the mutated gorilla in Gamma World remains one of my favorite characters.)

Anyway, since you find me such a cad, I'd appreciate you not responding to me


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## Bedrockgames

Sorry you feel that way Celebrim. I've tried to respect your position while simply asking that mine also be respected. I think if people put aside the desire to moralize over what is ultimately an issue of preference, and put aside the need to project motivations onto people and needlessly hair split definitions of words, we might get somewhere in these conversations see the tone of the hobby improved overall. But I acknowledge your request and will not respond further.

But to be clear. I don't think you are a cad Celebrim. I wouldn't think that about anyone over something like a heated internet debate about game mechanics.


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## prosfilaes

Umbran said:


> The array you give has an average value of 12.
> 4d6 drop lowest has, if I recall correctly, an average of 12.24
> 
> So, I'm not sure how that's a "stomp".  Taken straight, 4d6 drop lowest is, of course, more likely to generate high numbers - but it is also more likely to generate *low* numbers.




Except that I was told that counting rolled characters by point buy wasn't fair because point buy stats would have higher numbers for the prime ability. And let's look at these again: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. If you're rolling 4d6 drop lowest, how many people are going to argue 14, 13, 12, 11, 9, 7 is hopeless? Heck, I can see some people arguing 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 is hopeless. Almost certainly 13, 12, 11, 10, 8, 6. That's going to move your average quite a bit upwards.


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## X_Mythic

i like the idea rifts RPG put forward. Life isn't balanced, why should the RPG world be?


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## prosfilaes

X_Mythic said:


> i like the idea rifts RPG put forward. Life isn't balanced, why should the RPG world be?




Life is more balanced then Rifts, at least. If you have a police squad, or SWAT team, or army squad, or motorcycle gang, they're not going to drag the vagabond aside. In the first three cases, they've all been put through the same intensive training, and in all cases, any without the attributes or alignment to work well in the team have got weeded out. There's often a leader with more experience, but players aren't into that type of hierarchy, in my experience.

And because it's a game. Games are generally balanced because nobody wants to be Russia in Axis and Allies. D&D becomes very unfun for me when I think about attacking the enemy and realize that the best thing for me to do is to stay out of the battle and not waste healing magic.


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## Jacob Marley

prosfilaes said:


> Except that I was told that counting rolled characters by point buy wasn't fair because point buy stats would have higher numbers for the prime ability. And let's look at these again: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. If you're rolling 4d6 drop lowest, how many people are going to argue 14, 13, 12, 11, 9, 7 is hopeless? Heck, I can see some people arguing 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 is hopeless. Almost certainly 13, 12, 11, 10, 8, 6. That's going to move your average quite a bit upwards.




3.5 codifies a hopeless character as one in which the sum of modifiers before adjustments is 0 or less, or if your highest score is 13 or less. IIRC, 4d6 drop the lowest should produce an average array of something like: 16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 09. Removing hopeless characters, as defined by 3.5, pushes the average up somewhat - I believe you go from a 28-point buy equivalency to a 30-point buy equivalency. It's been a long time since I was a regular on the 3.5 optimization boards.


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## Janx

Jacob Marley said:


> 3.5 codifies a hopeless character as one in which the sum of modifiers before adjustments is 0 or less, or if your highest score is 13 or less. IIRC, 4d6 drop the lowest should produce an average array of something like: 16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 09. Removing hopeless characters, as defined by 3.5, pushes the average up somewhat - I believe you go from a 28-point buy equivalency to a 30-point buy equivalency. It's been a long time since I was a regular on the 3.5 optimization boards.




Good point.  4d6 drop the lowest, and 3e's rule to reroll if the total of all the stat modifiers isn't >0 is just setting the probability range, not making the results less random.  At least, not any more than deciding to use a d20 for Initiative rolls instead of a d10.

Plus, it's in the Rules.  Don't harp on me for following the bloody rules.

Personally, I think maybe once or twice I whined about a char-gen result.  But I've always played what I rolled and did my best to suceed with it.  I never re-rolled or rolled up "practice" characters.  I only roll when it is time to make a new PC that I need to play.

  Part of what I like about the randomness is that it is organic and it makes the decision about the stats for me.  I get 6 numbers that I have to use, instead of trying to figure out how to finagle getting an 18 on my prime stat and minimizing the consequences of that on my other stats.

Maybe my results aren't common.  But my group has done it this way for 20+ years.


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## Hussar

But, if you reduce the probability range, aren't you, by definition, making things less random?  A d6 is less random than a d100.  By defining "hopeless characters" you're removing the bottom 20% or so of results while retaining the top 80%.  Since the odds are pretty heavily stacked at the higher end of the scale, and because you arrange rolls to taste, you are making the results even less random as well.  

So, basically, we get random characters, but, the random characters skew to the baseline presumed by the game and higher, with a pretty healthy set of rolls stacking on the high to very high end of the scale and none on the low end.  If a player rolled 13, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, would you really make him keep it?  Even 13, 12,10, 10, 10, 10 would be pretty rare.  That last one is a 17 point character, which is as far below the baseline as a 32 point character is above.  But, the 32 point character would get played 100% of the time,


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> If a player rolled 13, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, would you really make him keep it?




This is not a hopeless character in my book.


----------



## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> This is not a hopeless character in my book.




Sure. Fine. How many players would look at that and be perfectly fine playing that character?  IME pretty bloody few.


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## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> Sure. Fine. How many players would look at that and be perfectly fine playing that character?  IME pretty bloody few.




I haven't encountered any except among optimizers. Nothing wrong with optimizers, that is a legitimate style of play in my opinion, and I can see why that stat array would be regarded as hopeless for such a group. 

Still let's assume your right, that very few would (I do not believe this but let's assume it here). That doesn't prove they don't like random or that they are trying to be sneaky and using rolls to get higher stats (if they were using point buy they would certainly be picking a higher value as base). It proves they want random but within a certain range considered acceptable to them. You can't take that and attribute additional motives to people just because you like point buy and they still don't want it for some reason (and point buy is totally fine I am not complaining about point buy). 

Now, could there be some more perfect random way to achieve what they want? Possibly. Certainly 4d6 drop the lowest gives a more suitable range of values for them than a d20 would. Both are random methods, but a d20 has an equal chance for all possibilities from 1-20. I am sure if you were to propose a method that had both the randomness they wanted and the range of values they would go for it. The fact that folks are not switching to point buy suggests there is some element here that draws them beyond the ranges themselves (and I believe the randomness is the most likely thing). 

One can like random, but also negotiate what ranges within a random method are acceptable for an adventuring party. They still like the surprise it creates, the excitement, etc. If they didn't they'd be all over your point buy method because obviously that would give them the exact ranges they want by just setting the buy value to the right number.


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## Janx

Hussar said:


> But, if you reduce the probability range, aren't you, by definition, making things less random?  A d6 is less random than a d100.  By defining "hopeless characters" you're removing the bottom 20% or so of results while retaining the top 80%.  Since the odds are pretty heavily stacked at the higher end of the scale, and because you arrange rolls to taste, you are making the results even less random as well.






This doesn't make any sense.  A d6 is random within the statistical range of a d6.  a d100 is random within the range of a d100.

Why does Battletech use a 2d6 instead of a 1d12?  Because the design wants the results to trend in the middle.

It's not a crime to design the game to generate results with statistical trends.  It is the point of designing the game.

It's not like we're talking about rolling 1d2+16 for stats.  We're talking about following the ACTUAL rules in D&D 3e.


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## Bedrockgames

Janx said:


> This doesn't make any sense.  A d6 is random within the statistical range of a d6.  a d100 is random within the range of a d100.
> 
> Why does Battletech use a 2d6 instead of a 1d12?  Because the design wants the results to trend in the middle.
> 
> It's not a crime to design the game to generate results with statistical trends.  It is the point of designing the game.
> 
> It's not like we're talking about rolling 1d2+16 for stats.  We're talking about following the ACTUAL rules in D&D 3e.




And even if we were to call it less random, that doesn't make it not random. Point Buys are not random. One could formulate an argument that certain methods of 4d6 drop the lowest with measures in place to ensure a certain range are "less random" than a d20 roll but they are still random. People can still enjoy the randomness, even if they don't want a d100 roll with no modifiers (which they may find too unpredictable or too broad). It is a false choice. We are told you either like random in its purest form or you must like point buy. There is no in between. I am sorry but there are endless shades in between and I think it is bit insulting for folks to suggests those of us who like 3d6, 4d6 or even 5d6, secretly want to bust the system, and are lying when we say we like the randomness. 

Now obviously one can drill down into what a person means by the statement "like the randomness". But rather than say "LIAR!" maybe just ask, "what do you mean by that?" For some it may have to do with the excitement. For others it may have to do with the surprising shape their character takes as they roll. For others it might be the hope of rolling high against the possibility of rolling low. For others it might be it seems the most fair (I know a lot of people on the other side don't accept this but many of us feel random stats to help block optimization). Could be any combo. 

The aim here isn't for any side to win but for people to find the best system for use at the table. If you genuinely believe point buy is the way to go, and people here would be happier using it, I can assure you that accusing them of either idiocy or deception won't persuade anyone.


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## Umbran

Hussar said:


> But, if you reduce the probability range, aren't you, by definition, making things less random?




Pie.  

As several of us have already mentioned several times - it isn't an all-or-nothing choice.  There are nuanced positions that aren't about the extremes.  There are reasons to have randomness in character generation that have little to do with character power.

I'll riff a little on something I think Janx mentioned upthread, that may demonstrate the point.

Some players love "blue sky" generation.  They thrive and are most creative when the GM says, "Play whatever you want - any book, any class, any race," and they'll come up with wild and wonderful ideas, and they are aided if given the ability to determine all the details themselves.

I am not one of those players.  Given the blue sky, I tend to suffer from option paralysis.  I like too many things to be able to jump to one specific idea strongly.  I will eventually resolve to something, but the choice may well be uninspired or arbitrary.  I become more creative and driven when I am slightly restricted - tell me the party needs a specific race represented, or a specific combat role filled.  Tell me you need me to play a character type you've heard me mention I really don't like playing.  Now, I have a specific challenge, how to make this thing work in an entertaining, effective, and coherent way, and I draw inspiration from the restriction.  If I were a poet, I would do much better with highly structured forms like sonnets and haiku than with free verse.

A randomly rolled set of stats helps in that kind of creative process.  It isn't the rote determinism of a standard array (which, after you've used it once or twice, isn't giving you any new restrictions or variations to work with), but restricts available choices to the point where creativity kicks in.  You may not want that randomly rolled set to have too much danger of being unplayable, but having a 6 stat in there that you have to work into your story and played personality may be seen as an excellent challenge.  You want some randomness, some swinginess, to give you new combinatiosn you have to work with, but you would like some assurance that the thing will be effective - thus, a probability distribution like 4d6 drop low makes a lot of sense.

Now, you may not be such a player, so you may not understand this - it may sound strange to you.  But that doesn't make it unreal.


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## billd91

Umbran said:


> .Some players love "blue sky" generation.  They thrive and are most creative when the GM says, "Play whatever you want - any book, any class, any race," and they'll come up with wild and wonderful ideas, and they are aided if given the ability to determine all the details themselves.
> 
> I am not one of those players.  Given the blue sky, I tend to suffer from option paralysis.  I like too many things to be able to jump to one specific idea strongly.  I will eventually resolve to something, but the choice may well be uninspired or arbitrary.  I become more creative and driven when I am slightly restricted - tell me the party needs a specific race represented, or a specific combat role filled.  Tell me you need me to play a character type you've heard me mention I really don't like playing.  Now, I have a specific challenge, how to make this thing work in an entertaining, effective, and coherent way, and I draw inspiration from the restriction.  If I were a poet, I would do much better with highly structured forms like sonnets and haiku than with free verse.
> 
> A randomly rolled set of stats helps in that kind of creative process.  It isn't the rote determinism of a standard array (which, after you've used it once or twice, isn't giving you any new restrictions or variations to work with), but restricts available choices to the point where creativity kicks in.  You may not want that randomly rolled set to have too much danger of being unplayable, but having a 6 stat in there that you have to work into your story and played personality may be seen as an excellent challenge.  You want some randomness, some swinginess, to give you new combinatiosn you have to work with, but you would like some assurance that the thing will be effective - thus, a probability distribution like 4d6 drop low makes a lot of sense.




I tend to approach games (but perhaps not poetry) in a similar way. It's one of the reasons I tend to be the last player at the table to decide on what type of character to play. I'll fill in the perceived gaps and build to fit the structure that has serendipitously appeared and work out how to be creative in that structure.

I look at rolled stats in much the same way. How is the character being revealed to me through this process not entirely under my control?


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## Janx

Umbran said:


> A randomly rolled set of stats helps in that kind of creative process.




As usual, Umbran has expressed my point in a far better fashion than my own.

I absolutely agree with Celebrims way early beginning points about the flaws of "rolling" compared to point buy.  But I still hate point buy and I still like my random method.

Because the rolling method gives me a challenge to work with and inspiration.  Point buy is dead boring accounting to me.


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## JamesonCourage

Janx said:


> As usual, Umbran has expressed my point in a far better fashion than my own.
> 
> I absolutely agree with Celebrims way early beginning points about the flaws of "rolling" compared to point buy.  But I still hate point buy and I still like my random method.
> 
> Because the rolling method gives me a challenge to work with and inspiration.  Point buy is dead boring accounting to me.



I wonder if there's some sort of roll you can come up with to help with inspiration that then uses point buy. Like, roll random stats, and then go on to use that as inspiration with your point buy distribution.

For example:
(1) I just rolled Str 11, Dex 7, Con 8, Int 15, Wis 8, and Cha 14.
(2) According to an online calculator, 25 points gets me Str 11, Dex 8, Con 8, Int 16, Wis 8, and Cha 16.

Another example:
(1) I rolled Str 13, Dex 12, Con 16, Int 5, Wis 15, Cha 13.
(2) Calculator at 25 points: Str 12, Dex 10, Con 16, Int 7 (with permission), Wis 14, Cha 12.

Final example:
(1) Rolled: Str 8, Dex 11, Con 8, Int 12, Wis 13, Cha 12.
(2) Calculator: Str 8, Dex 13, Con 8, Int 13, Wis 16, Cha 13.

I'm not trying to convince you to stop rolling, Janx, because I like rolling and the inspiration it brings. But maybe this method will help (or make it tolerable?) if you ever find yourself playing in a group that uses point buy? Just a thought.


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## Aura

Umbran said:


> Some players love "blue sky" generation.  They thrive and are most creative when the GM says, "Play whatever you want - any book, any class, any race," and they'll come up with wild and wonderful ideas, and they are aided if given the ability to determine all the details themselves.
> 
> I am not one of those players.  Given the blue sky, I tend to suffer from option paralysis.  I like too many things to be able to jump to one specific idea strongly...




I have that kind of issue, as well. I spend a lot of time entertaining various ideas, and usually end up with something very vanilla at the end of it all. However, I don't feel the effect you are promoting until you throw in the assumption that the stats, once rolled, are assigned for you (roll in order). Otherwise, I am still just as overwhelmed by the options, to be honest. That's the way it feels to me, anyway.

(Sorry for the hair splitting on the issue of placement of numbers, I can't remember if you mentioned one way or another on that regard so I didn't want to make false assumptions.)


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## Celebrim

Janx said:


> I absolutely agree with Celebrims way early beginning points about the flaws of "rolling" compared to point buy.  But I still hate point buy and I still like my random method.




I'm not completely happy with either method.  I'm just convinced random doesn't work and makes for a worse game.  My problems with point buy have more to do with how players choose to play though than anything inherently wrong with it.



> Because the rolling method gives me a challenge to work with and inspiration.




Rolling up characters is fun, but its not very functional for PCs (and non-functional for NPCs as well if it deprotagonizes the PCs).  The fun of rolling up characters - not knowing what you are going to get, in a nutshell - is more than counterbalanced by the fact that usually someone is going to get what they don't want, the method isn't fair, the fact that it makes it harder to give advice on how to balance scenarios to a group's abilities, and the pressure it puts on the metagame.  The better someone else's results, the less satisfactory your own results look.   The better results you've had in the past, the more disappointing a bad roll is.  The more difficult it is to engage the main game through your character's abilities, the more likely you are to be tempted to make your own fun and play a different game than everyone else is playing.  And so forth.

I feel the justifications for that tend to be pretty weak.

Balance is not an inherent property of randomness.  Randomness produces an arbitrary result.   Fairness requires that players get about the same thing.  Justice requires that they get what they deserve.   Randomness misses both marks.  This isn't a game show.  We aren't randomly selecting winners and contestants.  We are playing a game together.

Diversity is not an inherent property of randomness.  We expect if we flip 5 heads in a row the next coin is less likely to be heads, but that's not true.  If Diversity is your goal, you can guarantee diversity simply by choosing not being like the last X characters.

If inspiration is what you need because you are suffering from choice overload, there are plenty of ways to manage that that don't end up with the lack of balance of true randomness.  A functional random chargen would be randomly picking between things that are balanced.  For example, randomly selecting a class and race (assuming those are balance).  Or randomly selecting a highest ability score, then randomly selecting your second highest, and so forth.   Or you could randomly order your stats, generate 5 stats in order, and then buy the sixth one with your remaining points.   Or you could roll up random stats and then match them as closely as possible using point buy.  This wouldn't be purely random, but has the aspect of the producing the unknown and would generally not have strong balance problems in the outcomes.   So people get the thrill of not knowing what they are going to get, and they get the inspiration to play something that they might not have considered, but they don't break the Fundamental Law of Roleplaying.

Gambling is an inherent property of random levels of resources, but not I think a functional one in the context of a cooperative or competive game.  Winning is fun, but losing is not.  Gamblers gamble to win.  If they lose, this puts even more pressure on the metagame - chargen is becoming a competition.  The person motivated primarily by the thrill of gambling is going to compulsively gamble trying to win 'the jackpot' - I lost, but I'll win the next time.  What that tends to mean is you are setting your balance at the jackpot, and then going through frustration before getting what you actually want - the win.   And I think that some people who say that they like random, are probably actually saying that they don't like point buy for some reason or the other.   For example, if they've been used to playing 34 point buy characters (or higher!) using some random generation method (Method 1 with multiple rerolls, Method 3, Method 5, cheating), setting point buy to 25 feels like a rip off beyond any other aspects of rolling you miss.   If point buy limits you beyond what you are used to getting from 'random', then it feels like point buy is saying, "You can never win."


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## Ridley's Cohort

Umbran said:


> A randomly rolled set of stats helps in that kind of creative process.  It isn't the rote determinism of a standard array (which, after you've used it once or twice, isn't giving you any new restrictions or variations to work with), but restricts available choices to the point where creativity kicks in.  You may not want that randomly rolled set to have too much danger of being unplayable, but having a 6 stat in there that you have to work into your story and played personality may be seen as an excellent challenge.  You want some randomness, some swinginess, to give you new combinatiosn you have to work with, but you would like some assurance that the thing will be effective - thus, a probability distribution like 4d6 drop low makes a lot of sense.




I would recommend "4d6ish without replacement".

(1) Take the Ace to 6 from a deck of cards (24 cards) and shuffle.
(2) Deal into 6 piles.  Assign stat order.
(3) Best of three (obviously)
(4) [Optional] Swap two stats.

The nice thing about this is that having a very high stat correlates with having a very low stat.  There are some variances, some arrays are absolutely better than others, but typical results will be the equivalent of 25-28 points (3e).


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## billd91

Celebrim said:


> Balance is not an inherent property of randomness.  Randomness produces an arbitrary result.   Fairness requires that players get about the same thing.  Justice requires that they get what they deserve.   Randomness misses both marks.  This isn't a game show.  We aren't randomly selecting winners and contestants.  We are playing a game together.




Depends on what you mean by balance. If you're working with a game like D&D where there are some classes who depend on a single attribute while others depend of multiple attributes for the bulk of their power, then I would submit that point buy is no supporter of balance at all and is no more fair than rolling attributes. The monk player and the wizard player certainly don't get the same thing from a 20 or 25 point buying limit.

But ultimately, this *is* a game and not life. The only important justice or fairness is that the players will be treated in the same manner as the GM. They'll receive the same level of respect. Their ideas will be listened to and assessed with the same open-mindedness. Everything else is small potatoes.


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## Celebrim

billd91 said:


> Depends on what you mean by balance.




It keeps coming back to that, doesn't it?



> If you're working with a game like D&D where there are some classes who depend on a single attribute while others depend of multiple attributes for the bulk of their power, then I would submit that point buy is no supporter of balance at all and is no more fair than rolling attributes.




Certainly it can be the case that point buy isn't balanced either, and indeed frequently often isn't.  The core 3e classes are very poorly balanced in their RAW form and that won't really change regardless of how we get our ability scores.  Also, the hardest thing about point buy is scoring the possibilities correctly.  For example, how much should you be willing to pay for an 18?  That's one of the several reasons I soured on complex point buy systems like GURPS.

However, I think mathematically even then point buy tends to work out better than rolling in so far as it comes to balance.   After all, rolling encompasses all the possibilities available to point buy and then some that point buy excludes. 



> The monk player and the wizard player certainly don't get the same thing from a 20 or 25 point buying limit.




The more constrained the access to points, the more a SAD class would be advantaged against a MAD one.  Attribute dependency and class balance is something that should have been considered in the design and fixing it goes beyond this discussion.  It certainly won't be fixed by rolling.  That would be like expecting randomly rolling for your known spells to balance the spells themselves.  It might weaken spell-casters and depending on the rest of your context that might be better than nothing, but it wouldn't make a broken spell less broken or less game changing when it appeared.


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## Li Shenron

Morrus said:


> Having an intricate combat system does not make a game "not an RPG" it makes it "an RPG with an intricate combat system".




Excellent article, thanks for sharing!

I like also the problem solving/resource management/tactical aspects of D&D, so I don't think I would often play a game consisting of _only_ roleplaying, but at the same time I wouldn't play an intricate system of _only_ tactical rules and no roleplay, I'd rather stop at boardgames.

The author is spot-on however in saying that _a lot_ of gamers play D&D as nothing more than a boardgame on steroids with Monty Python jokes.


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## howandwhy99

The major mistake of the article is that role playing has nothing whatsoever to do with storytelling. Neither does game playing. 

Games are codes. Game play is the act of code deciphering by players. Usually in competition, but sometimes cooperatively ...to beat the game so to speak.

The game elements article writer speaks of, guns, swords, and so on in the game are for players to use in games. They are designed to be gamed and gamed with.

Chess is a game. Having read a couple of "games" Mr. Wick has created I don't think the same thing can be said of what he's doing. He wants group collaborative storytelling. That can't happen in games. 

Balance in games is largely about putting players on equal footing so they can compete with one another. 

D&D and other RPGs aren't balanced this way. Some players are 1st level, some are 10th level. Some are vastly wealthy and knowledgeable. Others are just starting out. Rather balance is used to modulate game difficulty for each individual player.

And different difficulties and imbalances between players is okay, because the game is designed as a cooperative game. Each player isn't balanced with the other players at the table too, right?

All of that is to say the game benefits those who play cooperatively. This is never a rule on how to play. Never does the game say "You MUST cooperate to play this game". The design by default puts players in a position where cooperation is the best strategy _in general_ over the course of the game. Just like any cooperative board game or card game competition and individual play are also a part of expected play.

There is a great deal of uniformity of thought in "RPG theory" today and silence in opposition to it. Most of it has to do with widespread ignorance mainly, but no small part is the zealous group who believe narrative theory isn't just a nice contraposition to game theory, but that game theory doesn't exist. For them it's simply 1970's narrative theory with a different name.


----------



## prosfilaes

howandwhy99 said:


> Games are codes. Game play is the act of code deciphering by players.




Having sat through classes in cryptology and played many games, I have no idea what you mean by that. You could say they're both generalized computing problems, which I might contend in the case of games, but they aren't simply isomorphic.



> He wants group collaborative storytelling. That can't happen in games.




I think this is a silly argument; the disagreement between you is not about whether group collaborative storytelling can occur in a game, but about what the definition of a game is.



> And different difficulties and imbalances between players is okay, because the game is designed as a cooperative game.




That seems to beg the question. All the people arguing in this thread that it was not okay understood that RPGs and D&D are cooperative games.



> This is never a rule on how to play. Never does the game say "You MUST cooperate to play this game".




That's an incredible claim. Never do cooperative games say you must cooperate to play this game? Never ever? 

D&D 5E Adventure League Player's Guide says: "No Undermining of Other Characters During Adventures. Adventurers are brought together by common cause, and during an adventure, they’re expected to work together to overcome challenges. Though certain factions might find others distasteful, individuals will put that aside and become a team when put in dangerous situations. In short, play nice with each other when things get deadly."

TORG Basic Set Rulebook (1990) says "Not all characters need to love each other, and you may even want some dramatic tension between them, but there has to be enough chemistry to bond the group together through all of the travails and troubles ahead--after all, adventuring isn't as much fun if you have to do it alone."

Sentinels of the Multiverse says "Sentinels of the Multiverse is a cooperative game in which each player plays as a hero with powers and abilities in the form of cards. ... Ultimately, either the heroes will successfully work together to defeat the villains and foil their plans, or the villains will triumph, and the heroes will be forced to regroup to fight another day."

D&D 4 PHB says "D&D is a cooperative game in which you and your friends work together to complete each adventure and have fun."

The line between rules and suggestions may be a little fuzzy, but at least the Adventurer's League is entirely clear that this is a rule.



> Just like any cooperative board game or card game competition and individual play are also a part of expected play.




There are semi-cooperative board games where competition is expected, but Sentinels of the Multiverse, Pandemic, Hanabi and Forbidden Island certainly don't expect competition, and being competitive would be a good way to lose those games. The biggest complaint about Pandemic is the lack of individual play, that it often turns out that one player functionally runs the other characters.



> There is a great deal of uniformity of thought in "RPG theory" today and silence in opposition to it. Most of it has to do with widespread ignorance mainly,




That's a good way to get me to tune out, when you suggest that everyone who disagrees with you in a subject is ignorant walking in blind conformity.


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## Hussar

What's the point of playing an RPG if it isn't cooperative storytelling?  You cannot, ever, win at an RPG, because there are no win conditions.  You could arguable lose - in that you cannot continue this particular storyline because all the characters are dead, for example, but, you cannot really win.

That being said, I suppose you could win in a narrative sense, in that you complete the story - you rescue the princess, save the kingdom.  That's the point of the game.  It's not like we keep score in an RPG.


----------



## Janx

Hussar said:


> What's the point of playing an RPG if it isn't cooperative storytelling?  You cannot, ever, win at an RPG, because there are no win conditions.  You could arguable lose - in that you cannot continue this particular storyline because all the characters are dead, for example, but, you cannot really win.
> 
> That being said, I suppose you could win in a narrative sense, in that you complete the story - you rescue the princess, save the kingdom.  That's the point of the game.  It's not like we keep score in an RPG.




Because some of us think we can or are winning?

Everytime I go out and don't die is a Win.

Or to quote Captain Sheridan, "Every time I say No"

I like Storytelling in my RPG, but i don't assert that is purely the point of an RPG or that it is the primary goal of every player.  Some people just like to kill stuff.  Some people just like to beat the GM's BBEG.

they Win, everytime they have fun doing the things they enjoy in the game.


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## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> What's the point of playing an RPG if it isn't cooperative storytelling?  You cannot, ever, win at an RPG, because there are no win conditions.  You could arguable lose - in that you cannot continue this particular storyline because all the characters are dead, for example, but, you cannot really win.
> 
> That being said, I suppose you could win in a narrative sense, in that you complete the story - you rescue the princess, save the kingdom.  That's the point of the game.  It's not like we keep score in an RPG.




I think somewhere between "an RPG has to be about collective storytelling" and "an RPG can never have storytelling" there is a mean you find at most gaming tables. Some people are indeed there purely for the story, to build a narrative. Some people are there purely to inhabit a character and explore. Some people are there to fight things and get treasure. Some people play adversarially against other players (I know groups where "winning" is basically being the top dog in the party and all the players find that competition enjoyable). I have no issue with talking about story in an RPG, but I am frustrated by arguments like Wick's that take that as a basis for absurd claims like "D&D isn't an RPG". Or arguments that use that to create some kind of onetrueway about design (i.e. RPGs are about storytelling, good storytelling in books and novels includes X, so RPGs must also include X). Yes many RPGs will have aspects of Riddick to them. But not all RPGs need to abide by the genre conventions or storytelling needs of Riddick. There is room for a lot of different approaches in the hobby.


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## Hussar

Janx said:


> Because some of us think we can or are winning?
> 
> Everytime I go out and don't die is a Win.
> 
> Or to quote Captain Sheridan, "Every time I say No"
> 
> I like Storytelling in my RPG, but i don't assert that is purely the point of an RPG or that it is the primary goal of every player.  Some people just like to kill stuff.  Some people just like to beat the GM's BBEG.
> 
> they Win, everytime they have fun doing the things they enjoy in the game.




It's pretty difficult to play an RPG without a story though.  It might be a pretty basic story - go to the Caves of Chaos and kill everything you find, but, I've found that even the most hack and slash games will still feature people developing some sort of narrative.  Considering how popular things like Paizo's Adventure Path modules are, I'd say that story ranks pretty highly at most tables.

Look at the most popular modules.  Most of them come with a fair degree of story and it's very much expected that you will add more as you play.  It's been a very long time since RPG's presumed that you were always playing in pawn stance, only treating game elements as pure game elements and not adding in any sort of narrative was you go.  Heck, even the D&D 5e Basic Set presumes that your character will have a background and other features that facilitate creating story.

I guess I see a distinction between succeeding and winning.  When you go out and don't die and come home again, you succeeded at your goal, whatever that was, but, since you're going to do it again and again, it's not a win, really.  If you won, there'd be no point in going out again.

I think any definition of RPG which doesn't include the idea of creating some sort of narrative through play misses the mark pretty well.  By the same token, I certainly do think you can play an RPG without roleplaying, the same way you can play a board game with roleplaying.


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## Janx

Hussar said:


> It's pretty difficult to play an RPG without a story though.  It might be a pretty basic story - go to the Caves of Chaos and kill everything you find, but, I've found that even the most hack and slash games will still feature people developing some sort of narrative.  Considering how popular things like Paizo's Adventure Path modules are, I'd say that story ranks pretty highly at most tables.
> 
> Look at the most popular modules.  Most of them come with a fair degree of story and it's very much expected that you will add more as you play.  It's been a very long time since RPG's presumed that you were always playing in pawn stance, only treating game elements as pure game elements and not adding in any sort of narrative was you go.  Heck, even the D&D 5e Basic Set presumes that your character will have a background and other features that facilitate creating story.




story provides framework for the adventure, the challenge and the conditions of victory in the context of people undertaking something.  Not the same as Soccer or Chess.

that doesn't mean Story is the more important thing to every player.  Why do you think there's the Sandbox crowd?



Hussar said:


> I guess I see a distinction between succeeding and winning.  When you go out and don't die and come home again, you succeeded at your goal, whatever that was, but, since you're going to do it again and again, it's not a win, really.  If you won, there'd be no point in going out again.
> 
> I think any definition of RPG which doesn't include the idea of creating some sort of narrative through play misses the mark pretty well.  By the same token, I certainly do think you can play an RPG without roleplaying, the same way you can play a board game with roleplaying.




Why do the Patriots keep playing football.  They've won a game.  heck, they've won a few Superbowls.

Because the Game doesn't end.  You only succeed at a present goal (win THIS contest) and then there is the next.

Otherwise, you would only play Chess once in your life, or once per opponent by the logic you espoused.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> I think any definition of RPG which doesn't include the idea of creating some sort of narrative through play misses the mark pretty well.  By the same token, I certainly do think you can play an RPG without roleplaying, the same way you can play a board game with roleplaying.




This is a matter of viewpoint and how one defines "story". I am pretty comfortable talking about story to mean "in game events" but it is a slippery term and can mean more than that. So you do get a lot of folks who reject the idea of story being in an RPG (basically because there are folks who make the leap from "story is present in an RPG" to "RPGs must serve story more than anything else"). Does story emerge naturally through the actions of the players? Sure, I have no problem with that. But does that mean that I am there to be entertained by a good yarn rather than to play a character in a believable world that feels real and doesn't follow the rules of a good story? Personally I don't like it when GMs start doing things "for the story", I am much more of a let the dice fall where they may, let stuff happen without concern for drama or pacing, kind of player. So I think some of the resistance you see to "RPGs are collaborative storytelling" comes from the fact that that often gets used to either say RPG mechanics should work to create a good story or that the ideal session produces a good story. But lots of people are not interested in that kind of game. In short, I think RPGs are collaborative storytelling is a fine definition provided the next sentence isn't "therefore good RPGs should have narrative mechanics" or something.


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## Hussar

Janx said:


> story provides framework for the adventure, the challenge and the conditions of victory in the context of people undertaking something.  Not the same as Soccer or Chess.
> 
> that doesn't mean Story is the more important thing to every player.  Why do you think there's the Sandbox crowd?




Even in Sandbox, there's a story there.  Again, look at Paizo's Kingmaker modules.  Or Keep on the Borderlands.  There's the beginning of several stories there and the expectation is that through play, you will flesh out those stories and create new ones.




> Why do the Patriots keep playing football.  They've won a game.  heck, they've won a few Superbowls.
> 
> Because the Game doesn't end.  You only succeed at a present goal (win THIS contest) and then there is the next.
> 
> Otherwise, you would only play Chess once in your life, or once per opponent by the logic you espoused.




But, the difference is, the Patriots don't die when they lose.  About the only way you "win" at D&D is retiring the characters and starting a new campaign.  Simply different win conditions.  Heck, you character in an RPG can die and you can still consider the game a success.  Look at something like Dread.  I'd certainly classify it as an RPG.  But, you are pretty much guaranteed to die.  Or Call of Cthulu.  It's not a good game if your character isn't locked up, in a straight jacket, and gibbering insane.


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## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> Even in Sandbox, there's a story there.  Again, look at Paizo's Kingmaker modules.  Or Keep on the Borderlands.  There's the beginning of several stories there and the expectation is that through play, you will flesh out those stories and create new ones.




This is why story is a somewhat tricky term when it comes to RPGs and why I thin we need to be cautious. Here is the thing about this case, most sandbox players are not there for the story. They will acknowledge that a story can be described after the fact, but I find the folks are into sandbox are very much against things like mechanics that give players control of the "narrative", devices that give players plot immunity, or obvious efforts by the GM to "tell a story". This is a crowd who want to feel like they are inhabiting a character in a world that feels real. If you talk to these people you don't see words like "story" or "narrative" but rather "exploration" or "setting" or "events". So I think Janx's point stands here. Story may be said to emerge or exist in some way in an RPG depending on how one defines it, but that doesn't mean that is the most important aspect of the game to people. And this is especially true if one's definition of story starts getting into territory that sandbox players explicitly reject. 

Now I understand that story can simply mean "there is a dragon ravaging a village, what do you do?". And most people would agree that sort of thing is a feature of sandbox. But that is different from saying people who play sandbox are there for the story. Most would say they are there to play a character. If your focus is on character rather than on story itself that does lead to a whole different set of expectations and conventions around play. So while I don't think the term "story" is bad on its own, and while I can say "story" to mean 'stuff that happens in game', once we start talking about why people are there to play in the first place, we need to listen to what they say, not impose "story" upon them as the ultimate aim of the game. And again most sandbox players I meet either are adamant they are not there for story, or they see story as this emergent thing that develops out of the actual goal which is to play a character and explore a world.

Story does have connotations in gaming beyond "there is a dragon ravaging the village". It suggests to some folks things like adventure paths, railroading, story RPGs, narrative mechanics, etc. Those are generally the things people are referring to when they say there is no story in their sandbox. And there are definitely folks out there who leap from RPGs include "There is a Dragon ravaging the village" to "your game should tell a good story". That is exactly what Wick does in his article and it is why people get a bit edgy around that term sometimes (even though it has multiple other meanings and some of them apply to pretty much any RPG).


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## howandwhy99

Role playing games are designed to teach and challenge players who play the roles within the game. 

That means you play your class. Not a character. Character performance is irrelevant to game play. 

A game without classes, roles like doctor, lawyer, or wizard, warrior, isn't a role playing game.

A game which doesn't use game systems to define those roles thereby enabling players who improve through mastering of those roles/systems/games aren't really role playing games either.  Or they are poorly designed.

_-Edited_


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## Bedrockgames

howandwhy99 said:


> Role playing games are designed to teach and challenge players who play the roles within the game.
> 
> That means you play your class. Not a character. Character performance is irrelevant to game play.
> 
> A game without classes, roles like doctor, lawyer, or wizard, warrior, aren't role playing games.
> 
> Games that don't use game mechanics to define those roles for players to increase their player proficiency within aren't really role playing games either.




If I understand you I couldn't disagree more.


----------



## howandwhy99

Bedrockgames said:


> If I understand you I couldn't disagree more.



D&D was a role playing game. It was never designed for group story telling. It was designed for players who preferred games. 

This is why contemporary D&D hardly has any aspects at all which could be considered D&D, much less include the game play from earlier years.


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## Bedrockgames

howandwhy99 said:


> D&D was a role playing game. It was never designed for group story telling. It was designed for players who preferred games.
> 
> This is why contemporary D&D hardly has any aspects at all which could be considered D&D, much less include the game play from earlier years.




I think any working definition of roleplaying game needs to be able to encompass early D&D as well as new versions of D&D and other roleplaying games people play. We can't limit the definition to OD&D alone. That is a great game and perfectly fine way to play but it isn't the only way, and I think we all need to start being more honest about how diverse and broad the hobby is. It definitely goes beyond my own personal tastes and preferences and I just don't feel the need to define it rigidly around those. We are arguing over really small territory here and I feel like it is constricting the hobby rather than expanding it (because I can assure you the distinctions people are fighting over make little to no sense to people from the outside looking in). What I think we need is for the hobby to include folks like you buy also folks like Hussar. We are all role-players. One segment of the community doesn't get to decide who belongs and who doesn't because they have an argument based on etymology or root terms. What matters is how the term roleplaying game is used by people in general. When I see folks playing OD&D I see people engaged in a roleplaying game. When I see folks playing Numenera, I see people engaged in a roleplaying game. When I see folks playing savage worlds, 4E or GURPS, I see people engaged in a roleplaying game.


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## howandwhy99

Bedrockgames said:


> I think any working definition of roleplaying game needs to be able to encompass early D&D as well as new versions of D&D and other roleplaying games people play. We can't limit the definition to OD&D alone. That is a great game and perfectly fine way to play but it isn't the only way, and I think we all need to start being more honest about how diverse and broad the hobby is. It definitely goes beyond my own personal tastes and preferences and I just don't feel the need to define it rigidly around those. We are arguing over really small territory here and I feel like it is constricting the hobby rather than expanding it (because I can assure you the distinctions people are fighting over make little to no sense to people from the outside looking in). What I think we need is for the hobby to include folks like you buy also folks like Hussar. We are all role-players. One segment of the community doesn't get to decide who belongs and who doesn't because they have an argument based on etymology or root terms. What matters is how the term roleplaying game is used by people in general. When I see folks playing OD&D I see people engaged in a roleplaying game. When I see folks playing Numenera, I see people engaged in a roleplaying game. When I see folks playing savage worlds, 4E or GURPS, I see people engaged in a roleplaying game.



They are vastly different designs of behavior because the goal and act of play are significantly different. Storytelling games are games where the overall objective is to create a narrative. And the players are there to invent it. 

D&D is a game like every other game. Players are there to game the game. To discern strategies inherent in the design and use them to achieve game objective which also exist in the design.

The limited philosophical viewpoint that the article's author and others use allow only "Problem Solving" to cover what is basically the entire scope of actual game play. That's because it's actually, inextricably different than invention, which story inventing requires.


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## Bedrockgames

howandwhy99 said:


> They are vastly different designs of behavior because the goal and act of play are significantly different. Storytelling games are games where the overall objective is to create a narrative. And the players are there to invent it.
> 
> D&D is a game like every other game. Players are there to game the game. To discern strategies inherent in the design and use them to achieve game objective which also exist in the design.
> 
> The limited philosophical viewpoint that the article's author and others use allow only "Problem Solving" to cover what is basically the entire scope of actual game play. That's because it's actually, inextricably different than invention, which story inventing requires.




To me this is just as narrow and limiting as the Wick article itself. I get what you are saying but I honestly think you are really describing a preference you have and then defining the hobby around it. I used to share this view and used to believe in this distinction. I don't anymore. I do agree there is a spectrum at work, with story RPGs on one end and more traditional RPGs on the other. But a lot of games mix and match from various points on the spectrum and few groups are completely on one side or the other. I think overthinking these points, constructing philosophies of gaming around them, has led people to paint themselves into rhetorical corners that not only guide the flow on online flamewars but limit what they permit themselves to enjoy at the gaming table. Personally I am no longer interested in limiting my gaming experience because someone online asserted a particular definition of roleplaying games.


----------



## howandwhy99

Bedrockgames said:


> To me this is just as narrow and limiting as the Wick article itself. I get what you are saying but I honestly think you are really describing a preference you have and then defining the hobby around it. I used to share this view and used to believe in this distinction. I don't anymore. I do agree there is a spectrum at work, with story RPGs on one end and more traditional RPGs on the other. But a lot of games mix and match from various points on the spectrum and few groups are completely on one side or the other. I think overthinking these points, constructing philosophies of gaming around them, has led people to paint themselves into rhetorical corners that not only guide the flow on online flamewars but limit what they permit themselves to enjoy at the gaming table. Personally I am no longer interested in limiting my gaming experience because someone online asserted a particular definition of roleplaying games.



I agree. My explanation is not THE way. It's my best understanding of early D&D design and play. 

I just don't see anyone else explaining what games and game theory have been for millennia in the face of the Big Model's one true understanding. 

I'd prefer people to be aware of multiple viewpoints and have unbelittled access to long standing game philosophy. That isn't the current climate as Mr. Wick is clearly trumpeting.


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## howandwhy99

prosfilaes said:


> Having sat through classes in cryptology and played many games, I have no idea what you mean by that. You could say they're both generalized computing problems, which I might contend in the case of games, but they aren't simply isomorphic.



I contend they aren't isomorphic, game play is code breaking. It's why we have a division between players and referees.



> I think this is a silly argument; the disagreement between you is not about whether group collaborative storytelling can occur in a game, but about what the definition of a game is.



His definition of game doesn't include games. It only includes group storytelling.



> That seems to beg the question. All the people arguing in this thread that it was not okay understood that RPGs and D&D are cooperative games.



No, they are arguing from a decade old usurpation of cooperation in games by attempting to make collaboration interchangeable. They are two different things. The previous posters' arguments all make sense for collaborative storytelling games. Not having read the entire thread I still suspect they don't touch on cooperative games or cooperative game designs.



> That's an incredible claim. Never do cooperative games say you must cooperate to play this game? Never ever?



Never as a rule of the game. Cooperation is a strategy taken by players or the game wouldn't be about cooperation.



> D&D 5E Adventure League Player's Guide says:
> _SNIP_



4th and 5th edition are exclusively storygames in design and advice and not really imitating D&D at all as a cooperative roleplaying game.

It was universally understood that only really bad games told players the choices there were to take in games rather than solely defining the rules resulting in the game's design. The other is strategy advice, like examples for divvying up treasure or how to beat a troll.



> There are semi-cooperative board games where competition is expected, but Sentinels of the Multiverse, Pandemic, Hanabi and Forbidden Island certainly don't expect competition, and being competitive would be a good way to lose those games. The biggest complaint about Pandemic is the lack of individual play, that it often turns out that one player functionally runs the other characters.



Competition or simply ignoring the other players are always options in cooperative games or the games wouldn't be about cooperating. They would be unreflective rule-following collaboration.



> That's a good way to get me to tune out, when you suggest that everyone who disagrees with you in a subject is ignorant walking in blind conformity.



They aren't disagreeing with me. And attempting to convince people they should tune out any voice that rejects the certitudes of a community isn't a sign of an open or diverse community. What are you engaging in with that last line?


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## prosfilaes

howandwhy99 said:


> A game without classes, roles like doctor, lawyer, or wizard, warrior, isn't a role playing game.




Nope. The terminology is established here, since it's been 30 years since the first roleplaying games without classes, and there's no disagreement that GURPS is a roleplaying game. That statement is simply false unless we use your idiosyncratic definition, in which case it's trivial; you can define roleplaying game however you want for your purposes, but stating that definition conveys no information.


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## howandwhy99

prosfilaes said:


> SNIP
> ...there's no disagreement that GURPS is a roleplaying game.



The fan war between D&D and GURPS raged the entire 1980s on exactly that point until White Wolf thumbed their nose at everyone by calling their game a "storytelling game". Which pretty much united everyone against them in the 90s, for awhile at least. 

Stating the original definition of roleplaying and RPGs enables us to reject contemporary groupthink created by an agenda-driven community trying to "win" everyone into their myopic view of games.  (Namely a bunch of WoD fans who didn't think WoD led to "good" stories.) 

We should not have a single definition of RPG because we have so many different understandings. Attempting a single one can only reject others. Mostly the attempt to remove D&D from the hobby.

EDIT: And _games_ don't result in good stories. They exist as one of the many alternatives to stories in life.


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## prosfilaes

howandwhy99 said:


> I contend they aren't isomorphic, game play is code breaking.




Isomorphic means they are fundamentally the same thing.



> Never as a rule of the game.




I just gave you several examples from the rulebooks where they stated as expectations, not strategy.



> It was universally understood that only really bad games told players the choices there were to take in games rather than solely defining the rules resulting in the game's design.




How come now being universally agreed upon is a good thing?



> And attempting to convince people they should tune out any voice that rejects the certitudes of a community isn't a sign of an open or diverse community.




I didn't say they should tune out any voice that rejects the certitudes of a community. I said they should reject any voice that comes in and acts like certitudes are obvious evidence of close-mindness instead of carefully building an argument against the consensus. A consensus in a diverse enough community often means that a subject has actually been analyzed long enough that people do understand that point. Given that I don't see much of a consensus in the RPG community, it's also a black strike that you argued for one to try and set yourself up as an iconoclast.


----------



## howandwhy99

prosfilaes said:


> Isomorphic means they are fundamentally the same thing.



It means they share the same mathematical morphism. Using it out of context wasn't helping. But it doesn't change the answer.



> I just gave you several examples from the rulebooks where they stated as expectations, not strategy.



And everyone of them is a worse game for attempting to include that as if rule. Those aren't cooperative games as I just explained.



> How come now being universally agreed upon is a good thing?



Because games designers understand this rule is against the entire spirit of game design. Instead of allowing players to play however they wish within the structure of the game the rules define, the rules tell the players how to behave instead. Rules have nothing to do with telling players how to behave.



> I didn't say they should tune out any voice that rejects the certitudes of a community. I said they should reject any voice that comes in and acts like certitudes are obvious evidence of close-mindness instead of carefully building an argument against the consensus. A consensus in a diverse enough community often means that a subject has actually been analyzed long enough that people do understand that point. Given that I don't see much of a consensus in the RPG community, it's also a black strike that you argued for one to try and set yourself up as an iconoclast.



You don't see a consensus in the RPG community that role playing is story telling and RPGs are collaborative storytelling? 

Maybe you don't know the history of the prejudice that led to such singular definitions. Or are like many others who simply have no idea there were, even completely different understandings. But I put it to you I understand there is at work an attempt for mass acceptance of (belief in) those two ideas above and are taken by most without question.


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## Bedrockgames

howandwhy99 said:


> The fan war between D&D and GURPS raged the entire 1980s on exactly that point until White Wolf thumbed their nose at everyone by calling their game a "storytelling game". Which pretty much united everyone against them in the 90s, for awhile at least.
> 
> Stating the original definition of roleplaying and RPGs enables us to reject contemporary groupthink created by an agenda-driven community trying to "win" everyone into their myopic view of games.  (Namely a bunch of WoD fans who didn't think WoD led to "good" stories.)
> 
> We should not have a single definition of RPG because we have so many different understandings. Attempting a single one can only reject others. Mostly the attempt to remove D&D from the hobby.
> 
> EDIT: And _games_ don't result in good stories. They exist as one of the many alternatives to stories in life.




I gamed during the 80s and the 90s. I never met anyone who felt GURPS wasn't a roleplaying game. I certainly met lots of people who didn't like it much, and I was never a big fan, but clearly what was taking place at a typical GURPS session was indeed roleplaying. If your definition of RPG excludes GURPS, there is a serious issue with your definition. That would be like having a definition of game that includes chess but excludes checkers.


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## howandwhy99

Bedrockgames said:


> I gamed during the 80s and the 90s. I never met anyone who felt GURPS wasn't a roleplaying game. I certainly met lots of people who didn't like it much, and I was never a big fan, but clearly what was taking place at a typical GURPS session was indeed roleplaying. If your definition of RPG excludes GURPS, there is a serious issue with your definition. That would be like having a definition of game that includes chess but excludes checkers.



I think what happened is game theory informed the design of D&D in ways no one had much experience in before. There were very few cooperative games anywhere, in boardgames, cardgames, or wargames. Almost none of them allowed players to have variable power levels and still be balanced (see the original Dungeon! boardgame for where that game design from). And none but perhaps Mastermind included a referee who relayed hidden information behind a screen to those who were to "play" the game. By which I mean to decipher the current game situation to obtain objectives within the game. 

I believe the term "role playing" came from the wargaming community in the military where roleplaying was used in military exercises. This was to differentiate it from theater and get at what the core of games where. That massive requirement of intellect and memory inherent to game design and play. Gary was very insightful to include many other aspects of great game design into D&D too, but I believe he borrowed a lot design from the golden age of wargaming too, so not everything is to his credit. Even advancement happens in many games.

What didn't happen was Gary explaining the design of the game. Or why he called it an RPG later. Or what made it an RPG. And when a slew of imitators came later they didn't know what they were doing. Neither did most players. But many did and many understood good game design and recognized it in D&D. 

That there was a disagreement at the top levels of the community between D&D and GURPS that trickled down to the fans is part of history. And afterwards no attempt was made for some clear distinction at what an RPG needed to be and RPG, or what went on in an RPG, or what was role playing even. (For D&D players performing a personality was understood by many as not necessary all the way into the mid-90s IME). 

Now we get to contemporary RPGs. There is still confusion. In fact, there is a history of confusion. But now the storygame community wants to make storytelling role playing and RPGs storygames. Something 1000s of prior games never were in the RPG hobby.

That to me is rewriting history to fit the absolutisms of today. And it is the deliberate extinction of a hobby by those who have a "better" understanding. Without the backlash who would be playing any of all those games? But the misunderstanding and ignorance persists. Even among those who are fans of older games.

So, I'm not here to exclude contemporary RPGs from being RPGs because they can't hang a label on their game. I'm trying to understand and put forth the definition of role playing and game D&D was designed within. These matter for anyone who wants to play D&D as it used to be before the 90s confusion and the contemporary attempt to make all RPGs, well, nothing whatsoever like D&D.

It's the removal of thought that other definitions seek by seeking widespread acceptance. It is the accuracy of understanding where we came from that I seek. 

No one's going to or should determine "the way all RPGs must be understood."


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## prosfilaes

howandwhy99 said:


> But it doesn't change the answer.




What does it mean for a game to be a code? Does it mean we can translate Nim into a code, apply code decryption techniques and translate that back into a solution to the game?



> You don't see a consensus in the RPG community that role playing is story telling and RPGs are collaborative storytelling?




No. I think there is consensus that RPGs _include_ storytelling. What of it? Instead of complaining about them, make a counter argument that accepts the prototype definition of RPGs (all editions D&D, GURPS, Trail of Cthulhu, Vampire, etc.) and then offers a better formal definition.


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## howandwhy99

prosfilaes said:


> What does it mean for a game to be a code? Does it mean we can translate Nim into a code, apply code decryption techniques and translate that back into a solution to the game?



Yes.  That's basic game theory.



> No. I think there is consensus that RPGs _include_ storytelling. What of it?



Okay. But role playing isn't storytelling and RPGs have nothing to do with it.



> Instead of complaining about them, make a counter argument that accepts the prototype definition of RPGs (all editions D&D, GURPS, Trail of Cthulhu, Vampire, etc.) and then offers a better formal definition.



Then no definition can occur. There is no overlap between storygames and roleplaying games except to say that both use the label game. They are utterly different activities.

i understand this makes me sound like Mr. Wick who is arguing for all storygames to be the only kind of roleplaying game. But for anyone who has experience with both can see they each deserve their own term to preserve their identity. 

Anything less becomes exceedingly bland. 

For example, neither can say they are necessarily human activities. Maybe they could say they are "stuff happening", but I hardly think the community will accept that definition of roleplaying game. (though it did for game).

Personally I understand that roleplaying meant something unequivocally different than improvisational acting from the 40s to the early 80s, almost the complete opposite in fact. But since then the term has been conflated with acting. 

So maybe D&D should stop being called a "role playing game" too, as Mr. Wick says? It will probably kill the game and hobby off which I suspect is the goal here, but the ongoing confusion of terms isn't helping anyone.


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## Bedrockgames

I am not particularly worried about the conception of the hobby as much as what it developed into. By the 80s you clearly have something called RPGs that include GURPS, Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, Call of Cthulu, Pendragon and many other types of games. Any definition of RPG that excludes D&D is absurd. Any definition that excludes GURPS or Call of Cthulu is also absorb on the face of it. We can construct all kinds of arguments going to the root of the hobby, going to the root meaning of the individual terms in RPG, etc. But that isn't how language works. You are not chained to the meaning from a word's inception. What matters is how the community of gamers uses the term RPG and how people outside the community use it. Giving it a definition in order to exclude elements we don't like from the hobby is a bad idea. Whether that is story gamers trying to make all RPGs narrative or immersionists trying to remove story gamers from the hobby. I think both are trying to set limits on how others can enjoy themselves at the gaming table. I am personally in the camp of immersion, but that doesn't mean I feel people who like bennies or are into shared narrative mechanics are doing it wrong. They are just doing it differently. I didn't always take this view. My vision of RPGs was much more narrow in the past. Now I give people the courtesy of not imposing my preferences upon the entire hobby and I expect the same courtesy from them in return. 

Fundamentally that is the problem with Wick's article. He tries to set his preference as the default definition of RPG. That is the problem with some of the issues you site where people have used the word "story" to enforce a design philosophy on the whole hobby. But the worst thing to do is to simply inverse that. We can have a clear sense of what makes our style of play (immersion) work without tearing down other styles. I can play the way I want, without narrative mechanics, and not deny people who do play with them he right to call themselves role-players. This kind of back and forth doesn't get us anywhere. It is just tribalism.


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## howandwhy99

Bedrockgames said:


> I am not particularly worried about the conception of the hobby as much as what it developed into. By the 80s you clearly have something called RPGs that include GURPS, Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, Call of Cthulu, Pendragon and many other types of games. Any definition of RPG that excludes D&D is absurd. Any definition that excludes GURPS or Call of Cthulu is also absorb on the face of it. We can construct all kinds of arguments going to the root of the hobby, going to the root meaning of the individual terms in RPG, etc. But that isn't how language works. You are not chained to the meaning from a word's inception. What matters is how the community of gamers uses the term RPG and how people outside the community use it. Giving it a definition in order to exclude elements we don't like from the hobby is a bad idea. Whether that is story gamers trying to make all RPGs narrative or immersionists trying to remove story gamers from the hobby. I think both are trying to set limits on how others can enjoy themselves at the gaming table. I am personally in the camp of immersion, but that doesn't mean I feel people who like bennies or are into shared narrative mechanics are doing it wrong. They are just doing it differently. I didn't always take this view. My vision of RPGs was much more narrow in the past. Now I give people the courtesy of not imposing my preferences upon the entire hobby and I expect the same courtesy from them in return.
> 
> Fundamentally that is the problem with Wick's article. He tries to set his preference as the default definition of RPG. That is the problem with some of the issues you site where people have used the word "story" to enforce a design philosophy on the whole hobby. But the worst thing to do is to simply inverse that. We can have a clear sense of what makes our style of play (immersion) work without tearing down other styles. I can play the way I want, without narrative mechanics, and not deny people who do play with them he right to call themselves role-players. This kind of back and forth doesn't get us anywhere. It is just tribalism.



Good post. And I do agree with much of what you're saying. 

Admittedly, I do not identify as an "immersionist" as that has been beat to a pulp by narrativists into "yet more storytelling, be it character or world exploration". What I believe we are doing in D&D is pre-generating all game content in a kind of formula/map and allowing players to decipher its underlying meaning. Exactly as Chess players do in their game designs, but with more recognizable and relatable game constructs. But I do feel where you're coming from. I don't seek to exclude, but to highlight the act of self-righteous exclusion by others.

You don't have to agree with my understanding of RPG for early D&D. But I believe it's becoming more accurate the more I learn.


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## prosfilaes

howandwhy99 said:


> Yes.  That's basic game theory.




Really. Then the question is why do you think that's interesting here, and does "game theory" in this sense have anything to do with RPGs?



> Okay. But role playing isn't storytelling and RPGs have nothing to do with it.




Great, you've asserted something. Stop making assertions and argue the case.



> There is no overlap between storygames and roleplaying games except to say that both use the label game. They are utterly different activities.




I can draw a continuum between OD&D and Torg and Amber and My Life With Master and about any story game you want. I can do that with boardgames, too, which doesn't prove they should have the same name, but does mean they aren't trivial to separate.



> But for anyone who has experience with both can see they each deserve their own term to preserve their identity.




I have no clue what that means. Inanimate games "deserve something"? "to preserve their identity"? Right now, people understand what storygames are, and their existence as RPGs does nothing to make D&D not the prototypical RPG.


----------



## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> This is why story is a somewhat tricky term when it comes to RPGs and why I thin we need to be cautious. Here is the thing about this case, most sandbox players are not there for the story. They will acknowledge that a story can be described after the fact, but I find the folks are into sandbox are very much against things like mechanics that give players control of the "narrative", devices that give players plot immunity, or obvious efforts by the GM to "tell a story". This is a crowd who want to feel like they are inhabiting a character in a world that feels real. If you talk to these people you don't see words like "story" or "narrative" but rather "exploration" or "setting" or "events". So I think Janx's point stands here. Story may be said to emerge or exist in some way in an RPG depending on how one defines it, but that doesn't mean that is the most important aspect of the game to people. And this is especially true if one's definition of story starts getting into territory that sandbox players explicitly reject.
> 
> Now I understand that story can simply mean "there is a dragon ravaging a village, what do you do?". And most people would agree that sort of thing is a feature of sandbox. But that is different from saying people who play sandbox are there for the story. Most would say they are there to play a character. If your focus is on character rather than on story itself that does lead to a whole different set of expectations and conventions around play. So while I don't think the term "story" is bad on its own, and while I can say "story" to mean 'stuff that happens in game', once we start talking about why people are there to play in the first place, we need to listen to what they say, not impose "story" upon them as the ultimate aim of the game. And again most sandbox players I meet either are adamant they are not there for story, or they see story as this emergent thing that develops out of the actual goal which is to play a character and explore a world.
> 
> Story does have connotations in gaming beyond "there is a dragon ravaging the village". It suggests to some folks things like adventure paths, railroading, story RPGs, narrative mechanics, etc. Those are generally the things people are referring to when they say there is no story in their sandbox. And there are definitely folks out there who leap from RPGs include "There is a Dragon ravaging the village" to "your game should tell a good story". That is exactly what Wick does in his article and it is why people get a bit edgy around that term sometimes (even though it has multiple other meanings and some of them apply to pretty much any RPG).




OTOH,  I think that sandbox players who are adamant that story is only emergent are fooling themselves.  

Note, story in no way equates to player having narrative control, at least in the way that I think you mean it - narrative style mechanics that allow players to affect the story beyond the capabilities of their character.  Although, to be fair, the entire point of Sandbox play is to give players as much narrative control as possible, so long as it only is generated by the capabilities of their character.  Since sandbox play should largely be player driven, it could easily be argued that the players are largely in control of the narrative.

But, "there is a dragon ravaging the village" absolutely IS a story.  It's generally people who are trying to draw lines in the sand who will bring in those extra connotations.  "My game isn't a story game because there's no story" is a ludicrous statement about any RPG in play.  Of COURSE there is a story.  You can't play an RPG without one.  And, really, it's more of a short step to say your game should tell a good story.


----------



## Hussar

howandwhy99 said:


> I agree. My explanation is not THE way. It's my best understanding of early D&D design and play.
> 
> I just don't see anyone else explaining what games and game theory have been for millennia in the face of the Big Model's one true understanding.
> 
> I'd prefer people to be aware of multiple viewpoints and have unbelittled access to long standing game philosophy. That isn't the current climate as Mr. Wick is clearly trumpeting.




What long standing game philosophy?

Blackmoor had several stories built right into it.  Col Playdoh (AKA Gary Gygax) is on record on these boards, that the story developed in his campaigns was a driving force behind the design of D&D.  One only has to read the AD&D 1e books to see how much story is directly built into the game.  Heck, much of the negative reaction to 4e is because WOTC changed story elements that have very little mechanics impact.

Game theory for millennia?  That's a trifle hyperbolic don't you think?

It's not that people don't understand your point howandwhy99.  I, for one, understand your point.  I just think you are very wrong.  But, huge props for sticking to your guns.


----------



## Hussar

howandwhy99 said:


> Good post. And I do agree with much of what you're saying.
> 
> Admittedly, I do not identify as an "immersionist" as that has been beat to a pulp by narrativists into "yet more storytelling, be it character or world exploration". What I believe we are doing in D&D is pre-generating all game content in a kind of formula/map and allowing players to decipher its underlying meaning. Exactly as Chess players do in their game designs, but with more recognizable and relatable game constructs. But I do feel where you're coming from. I don't seek to exclude, but to highlight the act of self-righteous exclusion by others.
> 
> You don't have to agree with my understanding of RPG for early D&D. But I believe it's becoming more accurate the more I learn.




Umm, you have that particular drum to beat backwards.  Self-identified "immersionists" react very strongly against narrativists and storytelling.  All you have to do is look at Bedrockgames's posts to see that.  Narrativism allows for the player to affect the game outside the abilities of the character, typically in service to creating a specific type of story, which pulls the player out of the "immersion" of play.

Then again, by deciphering "its underlying meaning" aren't players generating story?  After all, the story IS the underlying meaning of an RPG.  Unless the game content is nothing but a string of completely random events with no causal link, you have no choice but to generate a story during play.  You have character, you have plot and you have location.  That's a story.  Even going back to the Braunstein experiences, roleplaying has always been tightly bound to story generation.


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## howandwhy99

prosfilaes said:


> Really. Then the question is why do you think that's interesting here, and does "game theory" in this sense have anything to do with RPGs?



If RPGs are games, then it matters here. It's what leads game design so players can engage in game play. 



> I can draw a continuum between OD&D and Torg and Amber and My Life With Master and about any story game you want. I can do that with boardgames, too, which doesn't prove they should have the same name, but does mean they aren't trivial to separate.



There is virtually no relationship between the two, so attempting to define them both under the same definition would not just be a waste, but ultimately an injustice. At least one or both must be robbed of their identity as someone tries to determine it for them. 

For instance, I could define storygames under a definition that no storytelling ever occurs within them, but that hardly helps those who believe it does.



> I have no clue what that means. Inanimate games "deserve something"? "to preserve their identity"? Right now, people understand what storygames are, and their existence as RPGs does nothing to make D&D not the prototypical RPG.



But D&D isn't a story much less a story making game. It's a game. Meaning it's about putting players in the position of deciphering. Original D&D does that. Storygames, when they are actual games, do that only so much as the players navigate their rules in order to stop playing (discerning) and start creating (inventing) a story. 

Making stories and playing games are two completely different acts. Attempts to make storytelling (or any act of creating) as the unending universal act of everyone is part of the prejudice being pushed here.


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## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> OTOH,  I think that sandbox players who are adamant that story is only emergent are fooling themselves.
> 
> Note, story in no way equates to player having narrative control, at least in the way that I think you mean it - narrative style mechanics that allow players to affect the story beyond the capabilities of their character.  Although, to be fair, the entire point of Sandbox play is to give players as much narrative control as possible, so long as it only is generated by the capabilities of their character.  Since sandbox play should largely be player driven, it could easily be argued that the players are largely in control of the narrative.
> 
> But, "there is a dragon ravaging the village" absolutely IS a story.  It's generally people who are trying to draw lines in the sand who will bring in those extra connotations.  "My game isn't a story game because there's no story" is a ludicrous statement about any RPG in play.  Of COURSE there is a story.  You can't play an RPG without one.  And, really, it's more of a short step to say your game should tell a good story.



'

Whether one characterizes something as a story is a bit subjective. And like I said story has multiple meanings, some of which will apply to most RPGs. A man telling the President not to touch his wife at the voting booth was a story in the news but it was also a real event that happened. People went to the event were not there to experience a story they were there to participate in an actual moment in time. For sandboxes, that is more the experience they are after. And I think the goal for them is not a story, therefore story is emergent, not the purpose. I think they are coming from a reasonable position in that respect. Where I think people go wrong is trying to say story doesn't exist there or that we can;t use the word story to talk about in game events. 

But where I think your post starts getting into the realm that creates problems in these discussions is you pivot on that very broad and basic meaning of "story" to then say sandbox is all about narrative control. I think that is not the case. Narrative control is about conscious manipulation of plot and events external to your character. Sandbox is about inhabiting a single character and exploring a world through that character. A character in a sandbox campaign has the same level of narrative control over its experience as I do over my experience. Your definition of narrative control then would stretch it so far that it is essentially meaningless because every game ever made has it. But we know when we talk about narrative control in games we are not referring to taking actions through your character, we are talking about things that allow you to edit the script or the "fiction", to assume powers over the setting that a sandbox game would limit to the GM. 

The problem with saying "you should therefore tell a good story" is once you do that now you really are focusing story as a literary concept. It suggests that a game shouldn't just have mechanics for resolving conflict but it should propel narrative forward and that a good adventure should have themes and make use of pacing and plot devices. I don't think this is true. Sure for some people that is what they want from a game and that is what they expect from an adventure, but I really have no desire for such things. This is a taste issue. And this kind of rhetoric is exactly why people are so hostile to the word story in RPGs. If you are going to use it to just talk about the stuff that happened in game, no one will care. But if you turn on that to tell people how they should play and how their games should be designed, as if that is the only or the best way, then you will meet resistance and the term will continue to generate a negative response from some gamers.


----------



## howandwhy99

Hussar said:


> What long standing game philosophy?



Look at any game design book prior to 2000 (and some later) and you see that the Big Model doesn't have anything to do with game design at all. Nor does the postmodern critical theory he's borrowing as unquestionable certainty. These are theories, which us to say they are stories. They are us discerning reality. 



> Game theory for millennia?  That's a trifle hyperbolic don't you think?



Not if you study games as mathematical constructs. I'm trying to be accurate here.



> It's not that people don't understand your point howandwhy99.  I, for one, understand your point.  I just think you are very wrong.  But, huge props for sticking to your guns.



If you understood where I'm coming from I think you'd be asking more acute questions. If anyone else was traveling down the same roads of the past in order to understand I think we'd actually have people on this forum who did understand more of what D&D is and where it came from. But if they are, they aren't expressing these ideas whatsoever.



Hussar said:


> Umm, you have that particular drum to beat backwards.  Self-identified "immersionists" react very strongly against narrativists and storytelling.  All you have to do is look at Bedrockgames's posts to see that.  Narrativism allows for the player to affect the game outside the abilities of the character, typically in service to creating a specific type of story, which pulls the player out of the "immersion" of play.



Neither of those occur in games. Immersionism is a failed attempt to define their gaming from a bunch of guys in 2001 or so in response to the Big Model and has since been sucked back into its one true wayism. Of course some OSR guys identify with it. It's all that's been left them from widely known contemporary theory. And I don't begrudge anyone understanding themselves through it. If you think I was claiming Bedrockgames was a storygamer, you've misread what I said.



> Then again, by deciphering "its underlying meaning" aren't players generating story?



Players come up with theories, not stories. And they note them on their character log. Same with when they track time or location on maps. This is them theorizing what the referee has behind the screen. That's called game play. Story making it isn't. Story making is invention. Invention is used to come up with informed (hopefully) strategies to use in the game. 

Every player is continually discerning, tracking, comparing with others, and revising their current understanding. That's D&D.
The Referee simply relates what has already be constructed without their decisions coming into it after the game starts. Quite like Mastermind. So the players can decipher the game.



> After all, the story IS the underlying meaning of an RPG.



In no way is role playing about stories. This is an algorithm at best being discerned.



> Unless the game content is nothing but a string of completely random events with no causal link, you have no choice but to generate a story during play.  You have character, you have plot and you have location.  That's a story.  Even going back to the Braunstein experiences, roleplaying has always been tightly bound to story generation.



You are completely off base here. There are no plots. Locations are game board constructs, not stages. Game pieces are instruments of the players, not personalities. 

Stories are not inevitable. Only religious true believers believe in inevitables. Please stop pushing story as if it had anything to do with the hobby.


----------



## Bedrockgames

howandwhy99 said:


> But I do feel where you're coming from. I don't seek to exclude, but to highlight the act of self-righteous exclusion by others.
> n.




I appreciate this and understand what you mean here. I certainly know the kind of attitude you describe, but in my experience fighting exclusion by setting up definitions that also exclude just escalates the flames. Most gamers could care less about the discussion we are having right now. They just want to roll the dice, have some fun and they are not rigidly aligned to a point of view like all of us on this thread are. They will slip in and out of various modes that we all see as the one true way, not think twice about what that means for gaming as a whole, and have a lot more fun doing it than we will ever have because they are not chaining themselves to strange philosophies that emerge around internet flamewars over how to play RPGs. I realized a while ago while gaming discussions online can provide some helpful tools for making your game experience better there is also a huge downside and I had to deliberately stop seeing things in forum discussion terms because I realized it was causing me to see and play games in a way that was disconnected from the way people at my table actually experienced things. At the end of the day now, all I care about is whether my players have fun. If that means one of my players wants me to give them a little dramatic pacing every so often, find, who cares what it means in terms of immersion versus story games. I am a pretty immersion heavy GM, and I think I am pretty good at developing believable setting and characters, but I am not there to tell my players how to think about gaming.


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## howandwhy99

Bedrockgames said:


> SNIP
> ....It suggests that a game shouldn't just have mechanics for resolving conflict but it should propel narrative forward and that a good adventure should have themes and make use of pacing and plot devices..."



I don't agree with most of what you're saying here. But wanted to point out that there is no such thing as a conflict resolution mechanic in a game just like there is no such thing as narrative resolution outside of a story.

Game mechanics define the game constructs that make up games. There are no narrative components to games. Including conflict, which is a narrative device.

What the Big Model does is use narrative theory and hundreds of narrative terms and uses them exclusively in reference to games. And never references actual game design theory from the hundreds of years prior to it. It is not just the whitewashing of roleplaying games and peoples thoughts, but all games in general. Which is what it purports to be. A theory that explains all games.

Nowhere else will you see the belief that all games require the act of performing a character and therefore all gamers must have a "stance" and all games must be treated as "fictional narrative".  There are no narrative in games because games are simply different. Making all things stories is the uniformity of groupthink bordering on fascism from that community.

I mean, stories don't even exist except as a culture. It's simply a long tradition of ideas. Not an actuality. No one should let their culture be conformed into another's, especially narrative culture, just because of some determinedly close-minded people.


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## Bedrockgames

howandwhy99 said:


> I don't agree with most of what you're saying here. But wanted to point out that there is no such thing as a conflict resolution mechanic in a game just like there is no such thing as narrative resolution outside of a story.
> 
> Game mechanics define the game constructs that make up games. There are no narrative components to games. Including conflict, which is a narrative device.
> 
> What the Big Model does is use narrative theory and hundreds of narrative terms and uses them exclusively in reference to games. And never references actual game design theory from the hundreds of years prior to it. It is not just the whitewashing of roleplaying games and peoples thoughts, but all games in general. Which is what it purports to be. A theory that explains all games.
> 
> Nowhere else will you see the belief that all games require the act of performing a character and therefore all gamers must have a "stance" and all games must be treated as "fictional narrative".  There are no narrative in games because games are simply different. Making all things stories is the uniformity of groupthink bordering on fascism from that community.
> 
> I mean, stories don't even exist except as a culture. It's simply a long tradition of ideas. Not an actuality. No one should let their culture be conformed into another's, especially narrative culture, just because of some determinedly close-minded people.




i am not into game theory and I am not into big model. But mechanics do exist that resolve conflict. An attack roll is exactly that. A diplomacy roll is exactly that. Now maybe the term has some additional connotation associated with the big model that perturb you, but I am not using it in any kind of sense related to narrative (though certainly it could be applied to narrative). I am not talking about conflict resolution in the academic sense. I am literally talking about dice rolls for determining the outcomes of conflict in the game. That does exist and is a feature of RPGs.


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## JamesonCourage

Remember when we were off on that tangent about stat generation? I like that conversation so much more than John Wick's or howandwhy99's needlessly restrictive definitions of RPGs. (And I don't mind listening to John Wick's videos at times.)

I know, I know, it was a tangent. Now back to arguing over the basic definition of role playing. As absurd as that it, in my opinion.


----------



## howandwhy99

Bedrockgames said:


> i am not into game theory and I am not into big model. But mechanics do exist that resolve conflict. An attack roll is exactly that. A diplomacy roll is exactly that. Now maybe the term has some additional connotation associated with the big model that perturb you, but I am not using it in any kind of sense related to narrative (though certainly it could be applied to narrative). I am not talking about conflict resolution in the academic sense. I am literally talking about dice rolls for determining the outcomes of conflict in the game. That does exist and is a feature of RPGs.



That belief didn't even exist prior to the Big Model. That's what I'm saying. I believe you are being honest with me. You aren't pretending what you have typed here. The ideas in that one true wayism have become so ingrained as to be believed as basic certainty. So I posted what I posted. Conflict resolution never actually occurs at the gaming table. That is a theory and one that doesn't relate to games because the players aren't in conflict necessarily. Conflict is a player judgement. Not an absolute as it is in that theory. 

Attack rolls are random number generations which determine the results within a predetermined game system. You move around a game board after the roll. That's what occurs behind the screen.


----------



## prosfilaes

howandwhy99 said:


> If RPGs are games, then it matters here. It's what leads game design so players can engage in game play.




So isomorphism was the correct word. RPGs are not games for the purposes of combinatorial game theory, as they involve randomness. If you can find a way to express such a simple game as poker as a code, go ahead, but I'm pretty sure that's beyond anything that anyone has studied. 



> There is virtually no relationship between the two,




In My Life with Master, you have two stats, and you roll dice based on those stats to manipulate the world around you; in these rolls, you can only get the larger dice if you convince the GM they're situationally appropriate. If you are successful enough in your dice rolls, you can kill the BBEG, with the how well you survive depending on your final stats. That's an RPG by pretty much any definition. It's also a story game. You can say there is virtually no relationship between the two all you want, it doesn't make it true.



> Making stories and playing games are two completely different acts.




The only way this is true is if you define "playing games" so that it is true.


----------



## Hussar

Howandwhy99 said:
			
		

> In no way is role playing about stories. This is an algorithm at best being discerned.
> 
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Illusion-of-Game-Balance/page26#ixzz3GpT6ixz1




Give me an example of a role play that lacks setting, character and plot.  Because, if you have those three, then you have story.  Every single role play, whether in game form or as a teaching tool, clearly has all three.  "Student A, you are a waiter, Student B, you are the customer, Student B, using your English skills, order lunch from the menu at the restaurant.  Student A, take Student B's order".

That's a story.  That has every single element of a story.  There's nothing not a story about that.

So, instead of telling me that role playing is not about stories, show me.  Give me examples of what you mean, because, I've been gaming for over thirty years and been a teacher for more than half of that, and I'm going to tell you that it's not possible to role play without a story.


----------



## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> '
> 
> Whether one characterizes something as a story is a bit subjective. And like I said story has multiple meanings, some of which will apply to most RPGs. A man telling the President not to touch his wife at the voting booth was a story in the news but it was also a real event that happened. People went to the event were not there to experience a story they were there to participate in an actual moment in time. For sandboxes, that is more the experience they are after. And I think the goal for them is not a story, therefore story is emergent, not the purpose. I think they are coming from a reasonable position in that respect. Where I think people go wrong is trying to say story doesn't exist there or that we can;t use the word story to talk about in game events.
> 
> But where I think your post starts getting into the realm that creates problems in these discussions is you pivot on that very broad and basic meaning of "story" to then say sandbox is all about narrative control. I think that is not the case. Narrative control is about conscious manipulation of plot and events external to your character. Sandbox is about inhabiting a single character and exploring a world through that character. A character in a sandbox campaign has the same level of narrative control over its experience as I do over my experience. Your definition of narrative control then would stretch it so far that it is essentially meaningless because every game ever made has it. But we know when we talk about narrative control in games we are not referring to taking actions through your character, we are talking about things that allow you to edit the script or the "fiction", to assume powers over the setting that a sandbox game would limit to the GM.
> 
> The problem with saying "you should therefore tell a good story" is once you do that now you really are focusing story as a literary concept. It suggests that a game shouldn't just have mechanics for resolving conflict but it should propel narrative forward and that a good adventure should have themes and make use of pacing and plot devices. I don't think this is true. Sure for some people that is what they want from a game and that is what they expect from an adventure, but I really have no desire for such things. This is a taste issue. And this kind of rhetoric is exactly why people are so hostile to the word story in RPGs. If you are going to use it to just talk about the stuff that happened in game, no one will care. But if you turn on that to tell people how they should play and how their games should be designed, as if that is the only or the best way, then you will meet resistance and the term will continue to generate a negative response from some gamers.




Yet, funnily enough, virtually every single session of a good sandbox game will have at least one event similar to your news story.  You would not characterise a sandbox game where several sessions pass with nothing of interest happening as a good sandbox game would you?  The players go looking for adventure, and, lo and behold, they find adventure.  A sandbox where you never found adventure would be a pretty poor sandbox.

So, even in a sandbox, there is someone there (the DM in conjunction with the players) making sure that every session brings about interesting events.  AKA stories.

Narrative control can be defined as "players taking actions outside the conrol of their characters" and that's certainly one definition.  But, in a larger sense, narrative, ie. story, control is exactly what happens in a Sandbox game.  Again, while there might not be direct mechanics at play, the player's choices will always lead to interesting play.  Or at least should.  In a sandbox game, you never go into that hole in the ground and find it empty after several sessions of exploration.  That kingdom will always have something troubling it that needs the player's attention.  The players might not have narrative control in the limited sense, but, the DM and the players certainly do.  

In a sandbox game, if my character's background is that he's looking for his long lost sister, in a good sandbox, I'm going to FIND my long, lost sister.  

Narative control and author stance are not the same thing.  You want to play entirely in Actor stance, and that's fine, but, claiming that in sandboxes, players have no control over the narrative is not accurate.  They most certainly do, since the narrative in a sandbox is largely generated by the players.


----------



## howandwhy99

prosfilaes said:


> So isomorphism was the correct word. RPGs are not games for the purposes of combinatorial game theory, as they involve randomness. If you can find a way to express such a simple game as poker as a code, go ahead, but I'm pretty sure that's beyond anything that anyone has studied.



That's easy. Poker is a game and entirely part of math. Some people play poker only as a mathematical betting game, never bluffing. And deck draws are _mathematically_ random because the deck is predetermined. It's the players that aren't going to be limited to math because they change too quickly. But players should not be confused with the game. Games are separate from people.



> In My Life with Master, you have two stats, and you roll dice based on those stats to manipulate the world around you;



No, they don't. There is no game board a referee generated behind a screen that must be altered based on your relayed intended manipulation. 



> in these rolls, you can only get the larger dice if you convince the GM they're situationally appropriate.



Which makes the GM a player and no longer capable of running an RPG.



> If you are successful enough in your dice rolls, you can kill the BBEG, with the how well you survive depending on your final stats. That's an RPG by pretty much any definition.



Luck is only part of game play when it is a probability and therefore can be gamed. Players are gaming when they game the game. Game the system that is the game. They make decisions which may lead to sequential numeric probabilities, the results of which are determined with actual dice rolls, random number generators. (no conflict ever occurs).  If players play well and the game system involves play within it as performing a social role the player must actually perform, then they are role playing and game playing all at once. They are playing a role playing game. What you've said doesn't really get into the game design underpinning common warrior RPG designs, just common practices.



> It's also a story game.



Frankly. it's not even a game because there's no game system to be played. But it is group story making with some random elements thrown in as part of the practices to make those stories. 



> You can say there is virtually no relationship between the two all you want, it doesn't make it true.



Games are designed to test player physical and mental abilities. Sport games mainly test physical performance. All other games test mental abilities. And there is overlap. But without memory and strategy there isn't a mental game occurring. 

Stories don't occur in either instance and invention isn't especially required in either instance.



> The only way this is true is if you define "playing games" so that it is true.



Lets not playing language games. Playing a games doesn't require players to innovate. They must discern. D&D allows both, but it is unique that way. 
And incidentally role playing isn't a language game either.


----------



## prosfilaes

howandwhy99 said:


> That's easy. Poker is a game and entirely part of math.




I'm convinced you don't know what you mean when you say game playing is code breaking, or at least can't explain it coherently.



> There is no game board a referee generated behind a screen that must be altered based on your relayed intended manipulation.




Yes, there is. NPCs can die just like in any other game, which has effects on the game world, and that's tracked on your theoretical game board.



> Which makes the GM a player and no longer capable of running an RPG.




Then there never has been a GM capable of running an RPG. It's no different then a DM adjudicating the results of a rogue trying to hide or trying to swing on a chandelier. That's what GMs do in RPGs.



> Frankly. it's not even a game because there's no game system to be played.




Are you actually familiar with My Life With Master? Boiled down to its game mechanical essence, you're rolling dice to try and put enough points into Love so your character wins at the end of the game. What's more gamey then that? There are RPG aspects where you have to describe your characters actions, and your goals may be more subtle then just that, but those are very RPGlike aspects.



> Lets not playing language games.




But that's exactly what we're doing. You cannot argue for a new definition for a word without playing language games.


----------



## howandwhy99

Hussar said:


> Give me an example of a role play that lacks setting, character and plot.



My dog is a setting, character, and plot. So are we. Your map isn't reality. Stop demanding I disprove your beliefs as obviously false. You can project your stubborn understanding onto everything. You can stop doing that. Me making you stop is a waste of both of our time. Open your mind and quit banging on the drum of "Story Now, Story Always, Story Only!"



> That's a story.  That has every single element of a story.  There's nothing not a story about that.



You keep repeating Story Element A, Story Element B, C, D, E, and these are _always, always, always_ part of what _you know_ we are all doing. We _must_ be doing. Except some of us aren't. Stop being so certain and open your mind to other possibilities.



> So, instead of telling me that role playing is not about stories, show me.  Give me examples of what you mean, because, I've been gaming for over thirty years and been a teacher for more than half of that, and I'm going to tell you that *it's not possible to role play without a story.*



Your a teacher? That's role playing. Your a gamer? That's role playing. Know any doctors, lawyers, parents? Still role playing. If you perform a social role, either in reality or fantasy, you are role playing. Do you need to perform a fictional persona to role play? NO! But isn't that what D&D is? Absolutely not! That wasn't part of role playing until the 80s and not part of this game.

Is there a game construct that must be drawn out like any game board is prior to each and every game session by a D&D referee? YES! So you can game it. 

Is that map actually navigated with other players where you succeed at the game, get role playing points (XP), and actually improve at the role by playing the game? YES! This is gaming and roleplaying where you performing the role is the gaming of the game.

Is there fiction going on here? NO. Like any game the game construct must be actualized prior to play.
Is there a plot you must follow? NO. Players may do anything within the game design just like any actual game.
Is there a setting? NO. Fictions have settings, games can only be made to resemble other realities.

There is an actual game structure that must be generated by the referee and drawn out ahead of time. Pieces of it may be called "the setting" or "a character", but none of them actually are any of those things. Those are borrowed terms from stories to refer to elements of games instead. This is how D&D was created. By borrowing words from other practices like writing and acting because game theory hadn't expanded this far yet. 

These are not reasons to torch games or game theory and supplant them with narrative theory.
_Edit: removed last line_


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> In a sandbox game, if my character's background is that he's looking for his long lost sister, in a good sandbox, I'm going to FIND my long, lost sister.
> .




I think we are largely quibbling over terms with the other points in your post and both of us already know we strongly disagree over the value and accuracy of forge terminology. On that subject I will just say I think 'narrative' is much more loaded and problematic than 'story' though perhaps I am bringing my background in history to that particular word. But on the above point, I think you are wrong and this points to why saying sandbox players are there for story is misguided. I don't know a lot of things but I do know sandbox players. There are sandbox players who would agree with the above statement but most would not. But the vast majority would say in a good sandbox finding your sister should never be a forgone conclusion just because it is in your background. If might happen, it might not. The GM gets to decide if finding her remains a possibility and where you would need to go to learn about it. You can certainly set out to find your sister, that doesn't mean you will encounter any clues or leads. For most sandbox players 'say yes' isn't something they expect and they are also not expecting a good story. Do they expect fun and excitement? Certainly they at least expect the opportunity for these things....but fun and excitement are not synonyms for story. 

I agree you can speak of in game events as story in the very broad meaning of the word, but then once you turn the word toward a more specific meaning to start arguing that RPGs are all about story and those that fail to tell good stories are not successful RPGs, I think the logic breaks down.


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## Bedrockgames

howandwhy99 said:


> That belief didn't even exist prior to the Big Model. That's what I'm saying. I believe you are being honest with me. You aren't pretending what you have typed here. The ideas in that one true wayism have become so ingrained as to be believed as basic certainty. So I posted what I posted. Conflict resolution never actually occurs at the gaming table. That is a theory and one that doesn't relate to games because the players aren't in conflict necessarily. Conflict is a player judgement. Not an absolute as it is in that theory.
> 
> Attack rolls are random number generations which determine the results within a predetermined game system. You move around a game board after the roll. That's what occurs behind the screen.




Meh. I am not worried about origins. Talking about a 'resolution mechanic' is just an easy way for referencing any kind of roll for resolving outcome in games. I find it handy and don't associate it with any particular set of ideas about gaming. Pretty sure I encountered the term long before the big model developed. Like I said I have zero interest in game theory and even less interest in the big model.


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## howandwhy99

prosfilaes said:


> SNIP



I'm not seeing anything to respond to here, but I need to log off anyways. 

I'm not sure what responses I could give you later. It does sound like MLWM may be a game system, but not one that supports roleplaying. And I completely disagree on your role for GMs. That's a failure of a great game design made into no game content where players game another person.


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## prosfilaes

howandwhy99 said:


> And I completely disagree on your role for GMs.




I don't understand; if the player says he's going to jump down on the goblins from above, it's not the GM's job to adjudicate what dice need to be rolled to make the attempt?


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## billd91

Well this thread has taken a strange turn.


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## Hussar

[MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] - Dog is not a role play.  Pretending to be a dog in a park catching a frisbee is role play.  Doctor is not  a role play.  Pretending (or actually being I suppose) a doctor in a hospital dealing with patients is role play.  It appears that you are confusing role with role play.  The two are certainly not synonymous.

So, I ask again, can you give me an example of role play that does not involve character, setting and plot?  I honestly can't think of one.

------

On another note, there are three major issues I'm drawing here.

1.  Howandwhy's definitions would include Microsoft Flight Simulator as a role playing game.  It's pure math and your job playing the game is to game the game to succeed.  You have a role - a pilot, and a game.  Ok, fine.  But, this breaks down when the same definition then excludes any version of Dungeons and Dragons.  That's a pretty hard row to hoe if you want to have a definition of role playing game that doesn't account for D&D.  

2.  H&W's history is severely lacking.  He comments that the idea of playing a fictional persona was added in the 80's.  This is flat out false.  Anecdotes from Gygax's table disprove that, as well as the genesis of Dragonlance, which was played in the 70's before being published in the 80's.  Role playing requiring or at least being enhanced by, taking on a fictional persona was part of the game from day one.  Reread the accounts of the Braunstein games and you can see this.  Never mind Blackmoor or other examples.  Playing in pure Avatar Stance has been possible since day one, but, certainly not the only way to play.

Heck, Gygax mentions the need to fudge die rolls in the 1e DMG.  If results are not to the DM's liking, the DM is advised to over rule the rolls.  That's not an impartial Referee as H&W is characterising it.

3.  By making continuous connections between those that disagree with him and fascists and doublethink, any claim to academic standards goes straight out the window.  He's essentially Godwinned himself by doing this and repeatedly characterising those that disagree with him as either uneducated, or guilty of ulterior motives instead of actually providing any substantial proof of his claims.  

 [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] - it's time to either piddle or get off the pot.  Show me your proof.  Give me examples of role play that does not require all the elements of a story.  Games?  Oh, hey, games don't need stories at all.  There's certainly no narrative (small n, not the Forge term) involved or assumed in Tic Tac Toe or Poker or Chess or Monopoly.  In fact, a narrative wouldn't make much sense in those cases other than a simple relating of the events that occurred during the game.  There is no "in game fiction" to talk about.  A role playing game will always (at least as far as I can think) have an in game fiction that is distinct from the actions of the players.


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## Janx

Hussar said:


> Give me an example of a role play that lacks setting, character and plot.  Because, if you have those three, then you have story.  Every single role play, whether in game form or as a teaching tool, clearly has all three.  "Student A, you are a waiter, Student B, you are the customer, Student B, using your English skills, order lunch from the menu at the restaurant.  Student A, take Student B's order".
> 
> That's a story.  That has every single element of a story.  There's nothing not a story about that.
> 
> So, instead of telling me that role playing is not about stories, show me.  Give me examples of what you mean, because, I've been gaming for over thirty years and been a teacher for more than half of that, and I'm going to tell you that it's not possible to role play without a story.




I'm not sure that's a correct definition of story.  It's a scene or situation on which a story might evolve or contain.  I'd have to ask an English Major.

But I do agree with your most recent post, that H&W's line of discussion isn't being fruitful.  The onus is on the guy with the very unusual view of the situation to make it relevant to the everybody else.  Otherwise, it's just not productive.


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## Bedrockgames

howandwhy99 said:


> My dog is a setting, character, and plot. So are we. Your map isn't reality. Stop demanding I disprove your beliefs as obviously false. You can project your stubborn understanding onto everything. You can stop doing that. Me making you stop is a waste of both of our time. Open your mind and quit banging on the drum of "Story Now, Story Always, Story Only!"




I think this is a fair point and it is why I say you CAN describe in game events as "story" but you do not have to. Basically everyone here is dealing with different models for understanding what is going on at the table, but models are just that, a framework for talking about something, they are not the thing itself. 

Like HowandWhy points out, I am not a story, you are not a story. Nor are we narratives. Even the events of my morning do not equate to a narrative. Right now, in my kitchen there are characters, location and "plot" (in the sense of things occurring). But there isn't a narrative. A narrative is constructed by a mind to relate what is going on. However it isn't the only way to talk about it. Narrative is one of many modes available. 

Or look at history. The events of the past are not themselves stories or narratives, historians construct narratives after the fact based on evidence that includes primary accounts. But narrative is not the only way to deal with history. Not all history books employ narrative. Narrative is one way of writing about history, a fine and entertaining way, but there is also the analytical approach for example. These are just frameworks though, methods of understanding, they are not the events of history themselves. A sandbox player often looks at the events in a game, the way a historian might look at the events of history. They don't view the events themselves as stories, they view them as events and after the fact a story or narrative can be constructed.

Again, I get what people mean when they equate "dragon attacks village" with plot or story. And I use those words my self in every day conversation but there is a difference between that very broad usage of the word story and the more specific usage of of narrative. I think once you start equivocating on that broad usage to mean something much more specific like "narrative" or say literature with themes, etc, in order to show that games should do X or Y, or that GMs should do X or Y, you are getting into the territory of sophistry. If you conceive of games as stories that is great, and that doesn't detract from them being RPGs. However that doesn't mean everyone has to see them that way. And this is important because as we saw earlier the leap was made from "dragon attacking village is a story" to good sandboxes should tell good stories (and the example given of finding one's sister because it was part of the background the player had given is one most sandbox players would reject as a good sandbox). And I think the problem boils down to ideas about narrative control. They are being conceived of way too broadly here. If narrative control simply means "power" then it is so broad it has no meaning at all. That isn't what gamers mean when they use the term. No one thinks they have narrative control simply because they attacked the goblin. But more importantly if the player attacking the goblin is simply doing so because that was his honest response to the situation, and not some attempt to direct the "story" in a particular direction, then he isn't trying to assert narrative control through his character. That isn't his aim or purpose. He is not thinking of the game in terms of story. 

Keep in mind the tables could just as easily be flipped. One could talk about all RPGs as simulation if one wanted to (simulation of reality, simulation of genre physics, simulation of story structure, etc). This would be just as easy to do as talking about RPGs strictly as story because it is a model with categories and models with categories can be overlaid on anything if you insist on them. But I think doing so would be counter productive, because even though I can conceive of all RPGs as trying to simulate something, I don't think people who play narrative RPGs for example regard themselves as doing that. These are just ways talking about things in reality, they are not reality itself. When we forget that and start imposing ideas of play on people, what are we doing except promoting another onetrueway approach?


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## Bedrockgames

Janx said:


> I'm not sure that's a correct definition of story.  It's a scene or situation on which a story might evolve or contain.  I'd have to ask an English Major.




I wasn't an English major either, maybe they have a particularly broad definition of story, but this is my issue with this as well. Location, plot and character may indeed describe a story but it also describes my morning commute or the events surrounding the release of Jeffrey Fowle. That describes too many things that are not themselves stories (though they could be rendered as stories). If the definition of story is so broad that nearly everything is a story, that doesn't seem particularly useful to me.


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## Janx

Bedrockgames said:


> I wasn't an English major either, maybe they have a particularly broad definition of story, but this is my issue with this as well. Location, plot and character may indeed describe a story but it also describes my morning commute or the events surrounding the release of Jeffrey Fowle. That describes too many things that are not themselves stories (though they could be rendered as stories). If the definition of story is so broad that nearly everything is a story, that doesn't seem particularly useful to me.




I suspect key communciation issues are happening.  Hussar sticking to "It's a story!" and H&W's "It's CodeBreaking!" isn't functionally useful or so broad that nobody gets it.

My experience with RPGs is that a GM gives you situational or environmental information and as a player, you tell him what the response of your character is to that.  The options a player has are constrained to what his character in the game can do (skills, gear, etc).  The player can't choose to disintegrate the wall, if he doesn't have the ability.

The player is always reacting/responding to the most recent described game state.  I say always, because the GM effectively speaks first.  he describes the campaign world, says where your PC starts the game.  A player can't jump in and say "I attack the goblin on the left and then gather my army to conquer The Shire!" before the GM ever speaks because he doesn't know if there Shire even exists in this campaign or whether there's any goblins nearby.

I'm certain a story can come out of that, I certainly run my games that way.
I'm certain there's a bit of simulation going on, though how "realistic" is a matter of chosen ruleset
I'm certain there's code-breaking going on when I put in clues and such that the players need to realize exist and interpret them.

But it's not any one absolute.  Choosing to attack the goblin on the left isn't a story.  It's not breaking a code, it's just common response to a stimulus or threat.  It's probably more simulation during that point in the game as we use rules to resolve how a fight ends, instead of going into the back yard with real weapons.

There's probably RPGs that give players some "Narrative Control" to make story things happen "I play my Long Lost Nemesis card on the orc, making him the guy who's behind all the kidnappings."  This sort of overrides the traditional GM role in deciding stuff like that.  I don't know what games specifically do stuff like this, but it's definitely a change from the simplistic "Respond to Game State" process that I described as common to RPGs I've seen.


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## prosfilaes

Janx said:


> There's probably RPGs that give players some "Narrative Control" to make story things happen "I play my Long Lost Nemesis card on the orc, making him the guy who's behind all the kidnappings."  This sort of overrides the traditional GM role in deciding stuff like that.  I don't know what games specifically do stuff like this, but it's definitely a change from the simplistic "Respond to Game State" process that I described as common to RPGs I've seen.




TORG did some of that, though it was relatively tame: the Connection card let you declare that there was a contact of yours in the area, subject to GM approval. Primetime Adventures has no GM, and anyone can declare anything not about another PC, subject only to a random draw if someone else demands it. I'm sure there's stuff in between, but nothing particularly notable is jumping to mind right now.


----------



## Celebrim

I think you are all being quite insightful, and at the same time talking right past each other.   One thing though I'm very satisfied by is how this discussion is confirming for me something I've long suspected and believed, namely, that during any session of a traditional RPG (like D&D) that there is more than one game being played simultaneously.  And it is with this fact that the GNS theory tends to break down, because GNS insists that the game is only functional if only one game is being played whereas I've always insisted that no RPG which provides only one game can be broadly successful.

I get what howandwhy99 is saying.  He's saying that if the game doesn't provide what he calls 'the game board', and if there aren't associated mechanics for manipulating the game board in predictable ways that require updating of the game state, then it isn't a Game - and I'm capitalizing game because what he's defining (correctly) as a game is only a portion of what we normally understand a game to be.    To a large extent, howandwhy99 is right but what he's failing to understand is that though that is that though the Game is the only part of the game he's interested in playing (because its the only part that is Playable), it's never the only game that is being played.   Another player at the table observes the game and says, the Game is a machine for generating Story, and that player is also correct, even if howandwhy99 is not at all interested in this because its not part of the Game but an artifact of the Game.   howandwhy99 may well say, "Who cares.  We are playing a game.  We are not Playing the Story.", and he's right to say that.   Nonetheless, it remains the case that another player, lets call him Hussar, not only perceives the Story but while he is playing the Game begins playing it not just for the satisfaction of winning, but also because he sets for himself a goal of not only winning but also producing a Story of a certain form as one of the rewards of play.  

Where I think GNS breaks down is that it suggests that howandwhy99 and Hussar are in inherent conflict now.   This is because GNS assumes that there is a 'onetruewayism' under the 'System Matters' mandate.   Each system must strive to produce one pure form of play - either only Game or only Story.   But this is because humans are really bad at thinking about abstract things in terms of quantities instead of qualities.   The assumption humans have is if we can't find an easy way to measure the quantity, then it must be a quality and if a quality then the thing is either X or it is Y.   But in truth, that's rarely the case.   A good example would be the quality of 'color' which is perceived as being a distinct thing.  The thing is either 'red' or it is 'blue'.   But now that we've found a measurement, we know that color is actually a quantity and it is not the case that a thing is either 'red' or it is 'blue'.   Some things can be more 'more red than blue' and even white is not (only) a quality but also a quantity that is 'a bit of red and a bit of blue'.  

At each table I think we are sharing the game, usually quite functionally, in a way that lets us each have a bit of Game and a bit of Story and a bit of a lot of other things.  It's not like the only other goal of play is Exploration (whatever that means, which turns out to mean multiple things that GNS lumps together in order to keep its theory simple).

howandwhy99: What you are calling The Game Board can just as easily be thought of and is absolutely equivalent to The Fiction.  And as long as The Fiction can be manipulated by performing associated mechanics and has concrete game states, then you have a Game.  Equally, as long as The Game Board has a concrete description and a logic to it - the very factors that make it playable despite being hidden from you - it is a Fiction and produces a Story.  

Or in other words, every story produced by an RPG is isomorphic to a series of moves on a game board.  If you go back to my very first post on EnWorld, I think I observed that every sort of game - including those that are event or narrative driven - can be thought of as a sort of map.  That is to say, the choice as to whether or not speak to an NPC about his son is basically the same choice as whether or not go left or right at a fork in the passage, and alters the game state.  In the Savage Tide adventure path, there is a section where the players accumulate abstract victory points toward preserving a village and causing it to thrive.  It's an example of a game structure that produces story and yet meets every definition you have of a Game.

You could do the exact same thing with My Life With Master, the only difference is that the players of My Life With Master aren't encouraged to think of the game board or focus on it, but instead focus on the Story outcome.  But even if they don't focus on it, it's there, they just may not see it clearly, which may or may not have consequences in the play in the same way you not focusing on the story even though it is there may or may not have consequences is play.   Yes, I understand you'd prefer they focus on the game board, and honestly, I think many of the theoretical story telling games might can be improved in some cases by having more attention to the game board and that many fail to make good stories precisely because they don't think the game board matters (I've seen this criticism of mechanics also made by adherents to Nar games, but in a different way).


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## Bedrockgames

Celebrim said:


> I think you are all being quite insightful, and at the same time talking right past each other.   One thing though I'm very satisfied by is how this discussion is confirming for me something I've long suspected and believed, namely, that during any session of a traditional RPG (like D&D) that there is more than one game being played simultaneously.  And it is with this fact that the GNS theory tends to break down, because GNS insists that the game is only functional if only one game is being played whereas I've always insisted that no RPG which provides only one game can be broadly successful.




I agree and think it goes beyond GNS. You see it in discussions about immersion for example, you see it in discussions all over the net about gaming in general (in fact you sometimes see it as a response to GNS where another one true way is simply proposed in its place). Most tables straddle a range of styles, approaches, goals, etc. Most players seem to fluctuate between various goals and motivations as well. We have to understand these ways of talking about games are merely models and lenses and they don't necessarily align 100% with every person's experience. They are useful so long as they help you game, but when they start constraining us as players, GMs or designers, we need to take a step back and re-evaluate. For me, while I've never been into GNS, I have been into other ideas surrounding immersion and I've found them very useful but I also found aspects of them too rigid and I noticed a gap between the idea and the table. I think this is going to be a problem anytime you have a unified theory of games, especially if that idea becomes exclusionary (i.e. games with narrative mechanics or dissociative mechanics are not RPGs, realism can't be a goal of RPGs, people who want 90s style storytelling are wrong, people who want tactics to matter are wrong, games that cater to multiple agendas are flawed, people who don't talk in character are wrong, etc, etc). We end up with a giant victorian list of "do nots", yet many of the things on the list people love and see as features not bugs. 

Again this is what I see going on in the Wick article. He has a big idea about gaming and it is an eloquent and attractive sounding idea, but we know from our experience even if we can't put it into words, that his conclusion that D&D isn't an RPG is just flat wrong. There are some great and useful seeds in that article. He makes several good points, but the model overtakes everything to the point that he is forced to see D&D, the definitive RPG, as not an RPG. Either his model is flawed or he is applying it recklessly.


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## Janx

Celebrim;... during any session of a traditional RPG (like D&D) that there is more than one game being played simultaneously.  And it is with this fact that the GNS theory tends to break down said:
			
		

> From the Wick article, this is essentially the fault I saw as well.  D&D has aspects that appeal to many different players simultaneously.
> 
> It may not be perfect/best at any one of them, but the fact that it tends to accommodate feeding different play styles/goals/interests at the same time is a large part of its success.
> 
> Ironically, unbalanced focus on any one aspect is what turns players away from D&D (hence some of the 4e backlash)
> 
> I'm not sure if a given session has to hit all those different aspects, or if a GM should cater to the narrow interests of his players (usually the case), but D&D itself has to be balanced and neutral on those aspects, so that it remains capable of providing for them on demand by the players/GM.


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## Umbran

Celebrim said:


> Where I think GNS breaks down is that it suggests that howandwhy99 and Hussar are in inherent conflict now.   This is because GNS assumes that there is a 'onetruewayism' under the 'System Matters' mandate.




Agreed.  I've long had that thought about GNS - it is one of the reasons why I feel it is an interesting and occasionally useful framework for theoretical consideration, but it should not be applied to *real world* use very strictly.



> The assumption humans have is if we can't find an easy way to measure the quantity, then it must be a quality and if a quality then the thing is either X or it is Y.   But in truth, that's rarely the case.   A good example would be the quality of 'color' which is perceived as being a distinct thing.  The thing is either 'red' or it is 'blue'.   But now that we've found a measurement, we know that color is actually a quantity and it is not the case that a thing is either 'red' or it is 'blue'.   Some things can be more 'more red than blue' and even white is not (only) a quality but also a quantity that is 'a bit of red and a bit of blue'.




Purple.  There is already a quality for that, and it is called "purple".  Or, perhaps "checkerboard" or "patchwork" or "striped" or "herringbone" - there are several qualities we can name for "both red and blue"

One of the problems of strictly defined things like "Gamism, Narrativism, and Simulationism" are that once you've set that these are the only qualities you can talk about, you cannot admit to various forms of mixtures easily.  The language is guiding, but also limiting.



> At each table I think we are sharing the game, usually quite functionally, in a way that lets us each have a bit of Game and a bit of Story and a bit of a lot of other things.  It's not like the only other goal of play is Exploration (whatever that means, which turns out to mean multiple things that GNS lumps together in order to keep its theory simple).




Agreed.



> Or in other words, every story produced by an RPG is isomorphic to a series of moves on a game board.




Be careful.  Discussions of isomorphisms are often about one-to-one relationships.  But, unless our maps and game rules are infinitely complex, it is possible to have two different stories that have the same moves on the game board - their structures can be the same, but the audience experience is not.  As a base analogy - if you were to map "Romeo and Juliet" in game terms, you'd say it was the same as "West Side Story" - but if you watch the two, the singing and dancing give away that they aren't quite the same 

It probably works the other way, as well - one story could me mapped through two different sets of rules to two different maps.  I can play the same basic story out in FATE and Savage Worlds, but the rules-based moves are different.


----------



## Hussar

I'd largely agree with that Celebrim.  Particularly the part about the views being in conflict.  I agree, they aren't, or at least, shouldn't be.  I'm not particularly interested in playing any RPG that leans too far one way or the other.  At least, not for anything longer than a couple of sessions.  Balance and moderation does tend to make a more fun game for me.


----------



## Celebrim

Umbran said:


> Agreed.  I've long had that thought about GNS - it is one of the reasons why I feel it is an interesting and occasionally useful framework for theoretical consideration, but it should not be applied to *real world* use very strictly.




I think it's a good first step, but its too simplistic.  It wants to tie up things in a neat little bow, and it ignores some things that I think are fundamental truths to do that.   One example of how it misleads designers is it over prioritizes putting rules into a neat little bow because it doesn't notice that several games can be going on at once and to the extent it does it is appalled by the lack of elegance of that.  

So Forge influenced designers tend to want to make "the one true mechanic" to fit to GNS's idea that each game has one true way to be played based on its written rules.  But even if you think about the game board howandwhy99 is talking about, you'll see that one true mechanic isn't necessarily helpful.  Even within the game howandwhy99 is playing, there are bunches of little minigames present.  To suggest that you need to have exactly the same mechanics for handling the minigame of turning left and right on the gameboard that represents the physical space of the dungeon, as you have for the minigame that is about defeating some obstacle that blocks further progress down one of those paths, as you have for the minigame that involves navigating the often poorly documented mental space that represents changing an NPCs mental space (from hostile to helpful, or helpful to hostile, or whatever), is I think to miss the point and potentially do harm to the game as a whole.  

Each minigame only needs to be functional for the part of the game board it references.  It's ok to be playing one game and then 15 minutes later switch to a completely different one.  If you've been playing RPGs for any length of time, you're doing it all the time even if you aren't conscious of it.  



> Purple.  There is already a quality for that, and it is called "purple".  Or, perhaps "checkerboard" or "patchwork" or "striped" or "herringbone" - there are several qualities we can name for "both red and blue"




Yes.  But the important point is that we realize those qualities actually are "both red and blue".  That purple is red and blue together is something you are taught at an early age.  But it's not actually a trivial point.



> One of the problems of strictly defined things like "Gamism, Narrativism, and Simulationism" are that once you've set that these are the only qualities you can talk about, you cannot admit to various forms of mixtures easily.  The language is guiding, but also limiting.




That would be a problem with imposing a system for discussing things generally, but specifically GNS as developed by Ron Edwards also argues that mixtures are _wrong_.  Edwards argues that any game that has rules that allow for a good game from one perspective inherent conflicts with any other agenda.  Each game must be approached from a 'one true way' perspective, and a good designer is one that knows his perspective and rigidly adheres to it.   They even have a word for a game that tries to fulfill multiple agendas: actually, they've gone through a series of words in a fit of private political correctness, so I don't remember what it is but its like 'kludged', 'conflicted', 'incoherent' or some such thing that suggests 'bad'.  



> Be careful.  Discussions of isomorphisms are often about one-to-one relationships.  But, unless our maps and game rules are infinitely complex, it is possible to have two different stories that have the same moves on the game board - their structures can be the same, but the audience experience is not.




There is actually a lot to be unpacked in my suggestion, but I didn't want to start unpacking any of it until I gave everyone a chance to respond and digest my first set of conjectures and assertions.



> As a base analogy - if you were to map "Romeo and Juliet" in game terms, you'd say it was the same as "West Side Story" - but if you watch the two, the singing and dancing give away that they aren't quite the same




The players of the characters in "West Side Story" were given an additional mini-game to play that isn't found in the original source material. As a result, the story produced by the game has features not found in the original.  

Stretching the analogy even more thinly, Shakespeare didn't specify the combat system to be used to resolve contests between the characters, leaving GM's open to very creative interpretations of the mini-game suggested by "They fight." 

Which proves simultaneously that "System matters", and "System doesn't matter.",  for different values of "matters".  



> It probably works the other way, as well - one story could me mapped through two different sets of rules to two different maps.  I can play the same basic story out in FATE and Savage Worlds, but the rules-based moves are different.




Exactly.


----------



## Umbran

Celebrim said:


> Yes.  But the important point is that we realize those qualities actually are "both red and blue".  That purple is red and blue together is something you are taught at an early age.  But it's not actually a trivial point.




It is more complicated than that.  

The thing that we name is a human experience, "Purple".  It comes about from a mix of signals from different kinds of light receptors in our eyes.  Any combination of light that sets off the right signals is "purple".  What you have to mix up to get that final experience depends upon your medium - if you are mixing paint, then equal amounts of red and blue get you purple (this is the the RBG Color Model).  But, if you are working with inkjet printers, you're probably going to use a lot of Magenta with a bit of Cyan (The CMYK color model).  But, if you can work directly with light, you can just find one wavelength, and it alone will generate "purple" for your audience.

GNS gave us names for things, and those who have been exposed to it strongly tend to think only in terms of those things - as if there were no other way to approach the issue.

The 1999 WotC survey gave us another framework we could use - a story/combat and strategy/tactics approach we could use.  And the fact that we can do this supports your point that these aren't incompatible.

F'rex: Maybe that "Gamist" player is really a *tactical* player, but all he's been exposed to are games with strong tactical combat minigames, and he hasn't been presented with a coherent and interesting way to approach story from a *tactical* perspective.  Or maybe that "Narrative" player is really strategic - he has a natural ability to make good long-term choices fitting with fictional genre, but D&D's strategic combat tools are weak, so he's never really approached that area.



> That would be a problem with imposing a system for discussing things generally, but specifically GNS as developed by Ron Edwards also argues that mixtures are _wrong_.




Yep.  And I think the WotC results above pretty much put a hole in that boat.  If he had the mathematical education, Edwards never thought in terms of coordinate systems.  GNS is one set of coordinates.  WotC had another show up in their data.  Just like you can map a globe in polar coordinates or rectangular ones.  Both are merely frames of reference for talking about a physical planet.


----------



## Sunseeker

The first time the record came to a halt for me was with


			
				John Wick said:
			
		

> -help you tell stories?




RPGs are a lot of things and that is what I find so great about them.  You want to tell a story?  Write a book.  Starting off with characters like Riddick and "Lieutenant Colonel Alan Caldwell" is a really really bad idea in order to make a point.  Why?  Because they're characters in a story, not players at an RPG table.  They don't have stats.  They don't roll poorly.  They do exactly what they are written to do because they are written to do so.  They will never do anything more and they will never do anything less.  They live when they are written to live, they die when they are written to die, they kill with a teacup or their thumb because they are written to do so.  They are utterly unlike the players and their characters at the table and comparing them ignores their substantial differences.



			
				John Wick said:
			
		

> Because the focus of an RPG is to tell stories.



Oh he just had to go and repeat it didn't he?  I'm only a little while in and already I'm getting a sinking feeling that this is a great big article on how everyone who doesn't play the way he does is having badwrongfun.  



			
				John Wick said:
			
		

> Video games like World of Warcraft call themselves roleplaying games, but are they?



Ruh-roh, he just dove head first into a debate that is more heated than "What came first, the chicken or the egg?"  Worse, he defends his position with some of the oddest examples.  Yes, you _can_ play video games without actually role-playing.  Especially MMOs.  But the fact that you _can_ do something is not really evidence for anything substantive of any sort.  The implication here is that you can't really be playing an RPG unless you're actually RPing.  Meaning that if you're RPing in a game where you mustn't, then you are doing it wrong and conversely if you are not RPing in a game where you may, you're also doing it wrong.  And even with those who agree with Mr Wick here, I suspect will not take kindly to being told that they're having fun the wrong way.



			
				John Wick said:
			
		

> You know why they get the same experience? Because World of Warcraft and Dungeons & Dragons have the same design goals.



Well John, let me play Clint Eastwood and pretend you're in the chair beside me and ask you a few questions:
What came first, D&D or WoW?
What preceeded both 4th Edition and WoW?
Would you like to retract your point now?



			
				John Wick said:
			
		

> When 4th Edition came out, there was an almost universal negative reaction.



And here we get down to it.  John Wick is essentially reliving the glory days of the edition wars.  John, there are many names I'd like to call you right now.  But quite plainly I think I'll just go out on a limb and suggest that just because you design games does not give you the right to define what is or is not the purpose of an RPG (save those you design I suppose) and what is or is not fun to do with them.  

Mr Wick: Your points are bullocks.  You're welcome to your opinion and quite frankly I'm highly inclined to let you keep it and never touch one of your 'RPGs'.  I can't read a single word beyond this point in your 'article' because I'm so unwordingly infuriated with your 'opinion' on RPGs that I might just vomit the next time you try to explain why games that aren't designed by you aren't RPGs.


----------



## Celebrim

Umbran said:


> It is more complicated than that.




I would say this is a statement you'll never find me disagreeing with, except that it is probably more complicated than that.

However, since that tends to lead me to extreme verbosity, I have to cut off my discussion somewhere.  In fact, I was aware of the situation with purple.  

More when I have time.


----------



## prosfilaes

Celebrim said:


> You could do the exact same thing with My Life With Master, the only difference is that the players of My Life With Master aren't encouraged to think of the game board or focus on it, but instead focus on the Story outcome.




Actually I chose My Life With Master to talk about because My Life With Master has a game board in this sense, has stats that are very important and are raised and lowered through skill checks and those stats ultimately produce the outcome at the end of the game.  Something like Primetime Adventures, in isolation I'd happily say isn't an RPG, but My Life With Master provides part of the chain that connects it to D&D, that makes story games not trivially separable.

Certainly part of the reason I'd consider storygames RPGs is sociological; storygamers consider themselves playing RPGs, and the two groups are entangled; also, storygamers aren't a big enough group to need separating out. Same way Magic: the Gathering is Magic, whereas Spellfire or Dragon Dice would probably end up tossed in with the boardgames.


----------



## howandwhy99

prosfilaes said:


> I don't understand; if the player says he's going to jump down on the goblins from above, it's not the GM's job to adjudicate what dice need to be rolled to make the attempt?



What the probability curve is is predetermined by the game rules, or the code in the case of D&D. The GM could ask for any roll of dice that are isomorphic to that probability curve. That's not the important part. Applying the rules is the important part and what a referee does. They don't play, which is kind of the whole point of having refs and umpires and judges. Yes there may be some measuring involved here and there on the map, probably some calculation, but that's what's running a game. It isn't playing the game to achieve an outcome within it, which is playing a game.



Hussar said:


> [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] - Dog is not a role play.  Pretending to be a dog in a park catching a frisbee is role play.  Doctor is not  a role play.  Pretending (or actually being I suppose) a doctor in a hospital dealing with patients is role play.  It appears that you are confusing role with role play.  The two are certainly not synonymous.



People performing roles is roleplaying. Whether it be fantasy or reality. 

What I'm saying is what others have since said as well. You have a singular schema you are not looking out of for RPGs. It isn't what's actually occurring. If you are like me and more interested in playing and enjoying the game of D&D, the one I know I grew up with and still play, then narrative theory doesn't apply because it wasn't part of what those games were and still are. Nor is storytelling or acting in character what roleplaying was then. And still don't have to be. 



> So, I ask again, can you give me an example of role play that does not involve character, setting and plot?  I honestly can't think of one.



You just did so with people being doctors. There are no settings, characters, or plots in hospitals. But there are many people role playing.



> On another note, there are three major issues I'm drawing here.
> 
> 1.  Howandwhy's definitions would include Microsoft Flight Simulator as a role playing game.  It's pure math and your job playing the game is to game the game to succeed.  You have a role - a pilot, and a game.  Ok, fine.  But, this breaks down when the same definition then excludes any version of Dungeons and Dragons.  That's a pretty hard row to hoe if you want to have a definition of role playing game that doesn't account for D&D.



Yep, check out Roleplay Simulation. That's roleplaying. Dungeons & Dragons was created as that, the only kind of roleplaying anyone did for decades before D&D came about. But TSR didn't follow up with that design philosophy. Even Gary didn't later, he even joined the skill game camp after the disagreement over GURPS. By the 1990s no one knew what the hell they were doing designing RPGs but kept building systems which were in front of screens and only covered half the content. Then the Forgites came and basically mocked that design philosophy (which I don't know so well) and 3e D&D design and players until they quit making it. 

4e and 5e edition are wholly storygames. No one's disputing that. But no definition can cover all these games now. Claiming every "version" of D&D must be included is poisoning the well. 



> 2.  H&W's history is severely lacking.  He comments that the idea of playing a fictional persona was added in the 80's.  This is flat out false.  Anecdotes from Gygax's table disprove that, as well as the genesis of Dragonlance, which was played in the 70's before being published in the 80's.  Role playing requiring or at least being enhanced by, taking on a fictional persona was part of the game from day one.  Reread the accounts of the Braunstein games and you can see this.  Never mind Blackmoor or other examples.  Playing in pure Avatar Stance has been possible since day one, but, certainly not the only way to play.
> 
> Heck, Gygax mentions the need to fudge die rolls in the 1e DMG.  If results are not to the DM's liking, the DM is advised to over rule the rolls.  That's not an impartial Referee as H&W is characterising it.



No one had to express a fictional persona back then, they just liked to. That wasn't the roleplaying part of it. The game is immersive, like a flight simulator. Now imagine a conversation with people simulator. Think people are going to exhibit personalities? Knowing that it's D&D many still didn't. It isnt' the game and isn't roleplaying. It's the usurpation of roleplaying into a completely different act. But that's how history actually went. 

Oh yeah, and AD&D and Gygax's bad advice. Thousands of gamers knew that was horrible game advice and no one should ever do it. AD&D was not the great achievement. It had and has hundreds of flaws. Making the flaws justification for promoting "how people actually played" was Forge followers attempt to rewrite history to conform yet again to the one true explanation.



> 3.  By making continuous connections between those that disagree with him and fascists and doublethink, any claim to academic standards goes straight out the window.  He's essentially Godwinned himself by doing this and repeatedly characterising those that disagree with him as either uneducated, or guilty of ulterior motives instead of actually providing any substantial proof of his claims.



Not Fascists, fascists, which is a fair approximation of the article's attempt to close down thought. No one actually believes anyone here is Hitler. Instead, let's not try and close this thread .



> howandwhy99 - it's time to either piddle or get off the pot.  Show me your proof.  Give me examples of role play that does not require all the elements of a story.  Games?  Oh, hey, games don't need stories at all.  There's certainly no narrative (small n, not the Forge term) involved or assumed in Tic Tac Toe or Poker or Chess or Monopoly.  In fact, a narrative wouldn't make much sense in those cases other than a simple relating of the events that occurred during the game.  There is no "in game fiction" to talk about.  A role playing game will always (at least as far as I can think) have an in game fiction that is distinct from the actions of the players.



It's nice to see you don't believe games need to be stories. Roleplaying games _that are not storygames_ do not include fiction or fiction creation. There is no "story cloud". There is always a game board that is to be gamed by the players. So no, story doesn't need apply.


----------



## prosfilaes

howandwhy99 said:


> What the probability curve is is predetermined by the game rules, or the code in the case of D&D. The GM could ask for any roll of dice that are isomorphic to that probability curve.




If you're playing GURPS, that might be more of the social expectation, and I can't imagine a GURPS GM call for a check that wasn't 3d6. In D&D, on the other hand, DMs will call for rolls on whatever weirdass dice they have around. Could be a d20, but also could be d2 or d100 or even d1000, and d100s are likely to explode in some DMs' games. My Pathfinder DM has us each roll percentile for random encounters and the like, and if anyone gets, say, 01-05, we get one. I don't know what probability curve that is, but I'm pretty sure it's not mentioned in the book.



> They don't play, which is kind of the whole point of having refs and umpires and judges.




Unlike refs and umpires, we have people lining up to be DMs. (When's the last time you say a playground game have an ump?) One might argue that something like a D&D Encounters DM is umpire-like, but a home DM in drawing the "board" for the game is hardly a neutral arbitrator.  Using these analogies, we might say that a DM is actively designing the game, frequently changing it in play.



> 4e and 5e edition are wholly storygames. No one's disputing that.




I think everyone who compared 4e to WoW did. 5E is basically AD&D 1 with some rejiggering of numbers plus skills and feats. There's some difference, but not at the 40,000 foot level.



> But no definition can cover all these games now.




Most human things have that problem. There's no definition that can cover all things that are generally called "games" and exclude everything that's not called a "game. Likewise for "phone" or "book" or "computer". Human internal definitions are generally prototype based; we know these things are games and those aren't, instead of working from a definition of game.


----------



## Celebrim

prosfilaes said:


> Certainly part of the reason I'd consider storygames RPGs is sociological; storygamers consider themselves playing RPGs, and the two groups are entangled; also, storygamers aren't a big enough group to need separating out.




I'm not entirely sure where to draw the line myself.  I know where the box gets fuzzy, and I know what lies outside the box, but in that fuzzy area around the box it not only would be easy to make a mistake and speak too quickly, but based on my own theory of RPGs its highly likely that some groups are playing those edge cases as actual RPGs and some are playing them as story games.  System itself wouldn't tell us enough to make a judgment.  How you think about a game and how you prepare to play are at least as important as the rules themselves.   

You play a Prime Time Adventure about the cast trying to escape a building overrun with zombies, and the producer secretly makes a map and the cast members play as if the map is an unalterable part of the fiction and bring with them other similar preconceptions, you are going to produce a game that resembles D&D or other traditional RPGs even though it doesn't have rules that suggest this result.   

I discovered this problem trying to run a game of Paranoia.  My disposition as a story teller and my particular mental and social skills (or their lack) prevented the game from being the game intended by the designer.  The longer I ran the game, the more it started to resemble a serious investigation of a science fiction dystopia until at some point the game wasn't funny - but frightening and angsty.   I learned that I could not think about the story Paranoia wanted to tell.  It was just not something I could do.  I could play the game; but it was something I couldn't run - at least not as intended.   Conversely, I run CoC really well.

For my purposes, I feel safe to say that the following isn't an RPG:

"Whose Line is it Anyway" (the TV show): WLiiA involves roleplaying and is a game by the definition of being structured play, but I feel pretty confident in saying that isn't a RPG.   WLiiA is just the most visible example of a long history of Theater Games.  Modern RPGs have over the years borrowed or at least convergently evolved many of the same forms as Theater Games, but they are distinctive.  howandwhy99 would object, and I would agree, that one of the problems with a Theater Game being an RPG is that there is no game board - nothing exists concretely in the shared imaginary space.  Actors take turns adding to the story, passing the hat as it were, and there may even be a director that sets the stage, but neither actor can propose a concrete move that may or may not successfully alter the game board.  There is no formal conflict resolution.  If someone points a finger gun at you and goes, "Bang."  You decide how to follow from that lead based on what you think will be funny or dramatic according to the story goals.   Or in other words, the Fundamental Law of Role Playing is not in effect in this game.  Hense, it's not an RPG.

Games I'm Fuzzy On:

Amber Diceless Roleplaying: I've got limited experience with this system, just sitting in for a few hours, but based on my experience with it it's more of a theater game than it is an RPG.  With no fortune mechanic, and rather minimal concrete guidance on how propositions and conflicts are to be resolved, much of the game involved 'back channel' negotiation and cooperation regarding what the best outcome for the scene would be - where best generally meant 'a compromise that satisfied all parties'.   That to me felt more like my experience with theater games than it did RPGs.  Hense, I'd be fairly confident in asserting Amber is in the world of 'story games'.  That said, it's hard for me to be fully confident in that until I spent a lot of time with the system (which frankly, I wouldn't want to do).  

Fiasco RPG - I'm even less confident in declaring Fiasco is a story game than I am Amber, perhaps because I have even less direct experience (ei, none).  Also, it declares itself to be an RPG and has won awards as an RPG.  Also, in a strange way, it seems to implement the Fundamental Law.  However, if it is an RPG then its possible that all story games and all theater games are actually subsets of an RPG and Gygax and Arneson didn't invent anything we actually have a unique term for.  The issue that I have is that the mechanics of Fiasco seem to mostly resolve around who gets to play the role of the director during a theater game, but the game itself seems intended to play from that point more like a theater game.  There is no conflict resolution.  There is no propositions and no real fortune mechanic.   All you have is some basic rules for allocating stage direction to everyone playing the game in a cooperative fashion.  However, for all that the Fundamental Law does seem to be present in some form.  It's not possible for a player to demand a good result, because while you are in the player role someone can take the director hat and require you to play out a scene in a failing fashion.   What I'm fuzzy on is whether that really counts.   It feels like you have two games going on here.  A metagame which is not an RPG, because no roleplaying occurs in it, which allocates resources fairly.   And a theater game, which does involve roleplaying, but which has no game component.   The part that is a game doesn't share in the roleplaying, and the part that is roleplaying doesn't share in the game.   Does this count?  I'm not sure, though at a certain level it doesn't really matter.   It looks like with the right people it could be fun, and whether we label it a story game or an RPG probably doesn't matter a lot.


----------



## howandwhy99

prosfilaes said:


> If you're playing GURPS, that might be more of the social expectation, and I can't imagine a GURPS GM call for a check that wasn't 3d6. In D&D, on the other hand, DMs will call for rolls on whatever weirdass dice they have around. Could be a d20, but also could be d2 or d100 or even d1000, and d100s are likely to explode in some DMs' games. My Pathfinder DM has us each roll percentile for random encounters and the like, and if anyone gets, say, 01-05, we get one. I don't know what probability curve that is, but I'm pretty sure it's not mentioned in the book.



The stats progressions are listed, the algorithms aren't. Welcome to old school :rollseyes: We've had to deal with that for years.



> Unlike refs and umpires, we have people lining up to be DMs. (When's the last time you say a playground game have an ump?) One might argue that something like a D&D Encounters DM is umpire-like, but a home DM in drawing the "board" for the game is hardly a neutral arbitrator.  Using these analogies, we might say that a DM is actively designing the game, frequently changing it in play.



DMs generate with die rolls the campaign and game scenarios unless suggested by players. See Appendix A & B in AD&D DMG specifically, but most of those appendices apply.



> I think everyone who compared 4e to WoW did. 5E is basically AD&D 1 with some rejiggering of numbers plus skills and feats. There's some difference, but not at the 40,000 foot level.



To me, that's 5e edition marketing speak. The game didn't even have the completely nongame mechanic of the "check" mechanic until the Dungeneers Survival Handbook in '85 (I think, it could have been the Wilderness guide thing). 

5e is a storygame that, yes, could be rejiggered into a roleplaying game, but has no rules for doing so as of yet.



> Most human things have that problem. There's no definition that can cover all things that are generally called "games" and exclude everything that's not called a "game. Likewise for "phone" or "book" or "computer". Human internal definitions are generally prototype based; we know these things are games and those aren't, instead of working from a definition of game.



Yeah, but we're ignoring the man attempt to confuse that understanding by storygame theory. By making all actions in games not game deciphering and strategy creation and enactment, but exclusively storytelling. 

Remember, the Big Model isn't an RPG theory. It's purports to reveal what all games actually are. For instance, all games require character stances by players. Even sporting games. It's far out there. He's tried to jam "games are always stories" and "roleplaying is making stories" as far up the hobby's backside as he conceivably could. And story has nothing whatsoever to do with either. Roleplaying as a term was actually come up with in 1920 to differentiate it from acting. But that's not fashionable to say anymore.


----------



## prosfilaes

howandwhy99 said:


> The stats progressions are listed, the algorithms aren't.




I have no idea what you mean. Where are the stats progressions listed for "roll nd100 and something happens if anyone of them is below 05"? And how can a DM be a neutral arbitrator following the rules when two DMs would decide on entirely different ways of randomly determining random encounters? 



> DMs generate with die rolls the campaign and game scenarios unless suggested by players.




This is incredibly counterfactual. I don't think any successful DM has ever ceded control to those tables in the DMG, instead of using them as inspiration and help.



> To me, that's 5e edition marketing speak.




"To me" doesn't change the fact that that statement is again provably false. I do not market 5e; I still haven't been entirely sold on it. So it's not marketing speak; it's my feelings from comparing the two games. Looking at page 5 of S2: White Plume Mountain, I could run that as is in D&D 5 with changing some numbers. I might need to play with a few other power differences, and could change a few other things to make it feel more like D&D 5, but they're not that different. Anyone considering AD&D 1 and D&D 5 different classes of things is not making sense to me.



> Yeah, but we're ignoring the man attempt to confuse that understanding by storygame theory. By making all actions in games not game deciphering and strategy creation and enactment, but exclusively storytelling.




Of course there's other things in roleplaying games. I don't know where everyone arguing with you stands, but certainly several of us don't believe that at all. The problem is, you want to put it into another box where story doesn't play any part in roleplaying games, and most of the exemplars I have of RPGs are not RPGs. To go back to an earlier comment:



howandwhy99 said:


> By the 1990s no one knew what the hell they were doing designing RPGs but kept building systems which were in front of screens and only covered half the content.




That's absurd. In the 1990s, successful game designers were designing games that people wanted to play in the 1990s. It is absurd to say that they didn't know what they were doing; they made games people bought, because they made games people enjoyed. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, not your theory about how RPGs should be designed.


----------



## Hussar

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] - could you explain your Fundamental Law again?  I'm following what you are saying but I missed this bit.


----------



## Celebrim

Hussar said:


> [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] - could you explain your Fundamental Law again?  I'm following what you are saying but I missed this bit.




Well, there are several ways to state it, but briefly, "Thou shalt not be good at everything."


----------



## Umbran

howandwhy99 said:


> 4e and 5e edition are wholly storygames. No one's disputing that.




I might dispute that.  I have seen folks having a great time playing 4e as a straight up tactical combat skirmish game dungeon crawl, with not a scrap of story.  Just, "Oh, hey, a monster, kill it and take its stuff!"  The game, with all of its detailed movement rules and strategizing of how to get powers to play off each other, seems quite well suited for it.  So I don't see where *wholly* storygame comes from.  

In any case, did you just see us address how the really successful games serve more than one agenda?  D&D is pretty much the poster child for successful game, in any edition, whcih would mena it isn't *wholly* any one thing.  Didn't you just see Celebrim and I go over how GNS terminology can be *limiting*.  Taking games and putting them into pigeonholes is limiting in the same sense.

If you need a definition of "storygame" for your theoretical considerations, that's fine.  But we should resist the urge to shove games *wholly* into one bin or another, because, to be honest, they usually don't fit nearly as well as one would like to believe.


----------



## Umbran

howandwhy99 said:


> People performing roles is roleplaying. Whether it be fantasy or reality.




No.  Because *PLAY* has meaning.  

When a doctor has your guts cut open to take out cancer, he or she is not playing at anything.   Or, you darn well *hope* they aren't playing around, because those are your guts that could be on the operating room floor in a moment.


----------



## Hussar

I think I'm finally understanding why I'm having such a tough time following H&W's larger points.  He's taking the word Role Playing Game, and then breaking that word apart to serve whichever meaning he needs at a given time. 

A doctor might be in a particular role when operating, but, he's not role playing and there's certainly no element of game there.  Not in real life anyway.  It would have to be a mock surgery, a simulation of a surgery in order for it to be a role playing exercise.  And even then, game still has meaning.

You can't split the word up. Role playing game is a phrasal noun (essentially a single word made up of two or more words - bus stop is a single word, even though there is a space there and the words bus and stop can stand on their own).  In order to define role playing game, you cannot break it into its component words, any more than you could define bus stop by defining the words individually.  English isn't Latin.


----------



## prosfilaes

Celebrim said:


> Amber Diceless Roleplaying




For me, Amber is one of the prototypes of the concept "roleplaying game" in my head. That's part of the frustration of this argument, is that I, as I suspect the vast majority of people do, have a prototype-based idea of what a roleplaying game is; for me, an RPG is something that is like D&D or GURPS or Amber, though that's making explicit what's implicit, and not nearly so simple or limited. Aggressive declaration that these things aren't RPGs is frustrating, because it's simply outside the bounds of discussion; this things are RPGs, the question is does the definition cover them.

(Which is not meant personally: I can certainly discuss the categorization without rancor. I can understand that Celebrim's definition of RPG may not include Amber. It's the dogmatic assertion of a definition that doesn't fit the prototypes in my head that's frustrating.)


----------



## Janx

Umbran said:


> I might dispute that.  I have seen folks having a great time playing 4e as a straight up tactical combat skirmish game dungeon crawl, with not a scrap of story.  Just, "Oh, hey, a monster, kill it and take its stuff!"  The game, with all of its detailed movement rules and strategizing of how to get powers to play off each other, seems quite well suited for it.  So I don't see where *wholly* storygame comes from.
> 
> In any case, did you just see us address how the really successful games serve more than one agenda?  D&D is pretty much the poster child for successful game, in any edition, whcih would mena it isn't *wholly* any one thing.  Didn't you just see Celebrim and I go over how GNS terminology can be *limiting*.  Taking games and putting them into pigeonholes is limiting in the same sense.
> 
> If you need a definition of "storygame" for your theoretical considerations, that's fine.  But we should resist the urge to shove games *wholly* into one bin or another, because, to be honest, they usually don't fit nearly as well as one would like to believe.




Not only that but H&W's made a number of statements like the one you quoted that don't jibe with my understanding of those editions.

Which means, he's basing his whole argument on his OPINION on how those games were and not the many varied realities of how people used them.

4e was widely criticized for being more of a tactical board game and less and RPG. 1E was not a procedurally generated world run off of tables.

Those statements aren't true for everybody, but they were true for plenty of people such that H&W's facts are called into question.


----------



## Bedrockgames

howandwhy99 said:


> 5e is a storygame that, yes, could be rejiggered into a roleplaying game, but has no rules for doing so as of yet.




Sorry but neither 5E nor 4E are story games. 4E is highly focused, but I don't think it is about giving players narrative control so much as tactical control. 5E is pretty much a standard roleplaying game with a dusting of borrowed elements from the narrative end of the spectrum (but little more than you'd find in games like Savage Worlds or the new Doctor Who), but it is also quite the traditional RPG as well. I think it is meant to appeal to a broad audience so naturally there is a little bit of everything for everyone. But it isn't Fiasco.


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## Neonchameleon

Welp.  This is a long thread, and my replies reach quite far back.  John Wick is self-contradictory, and any time you define D&D as not an RPG you need to check your definitions.  Now getting into the meat of this thread (far more than in the John Wick article):



Umbran said:


> For example, #2 - this can be okay *if* your struggle with that minion is as crucial to events as the struggle with the Big Bad.  Superman is off slugging it out with General Zod, while Jimmy Olsen struggles with a minion - if Jimmy wins, he gets to turn off the Device of Doom!  Balancing really hefty mechanical differences like superman/Jimmy Olsen can be met with adventure design.




To me this is symptomatic of bad GMing for multiple reasons.
1: It's patronizing to Jimmy Olsen's player.  Negative play experience.
2: It's very very railroady in all the worst ways.  The DM literally has to plot in advance what Superman and Olsen are going to do.
3: It requires either Superman to be carrying an idiot ball or mind control.  Because Superman could negligently deal with the minion with a simple breath before turning back to Zod.  Or Zod could try to zap Olsen in a textbook villain move.

The way you are proposing the adventure design to work is an adventure design that dictates the actions of the PCs.  So yes, you can write an adventure that batters the players into submission and forces them to take their assigned roles rather than to try to solve things at any other level.  But this means that the imbalance is forcing you to write really bad railroading adventures.  So how is this a good thing?



Umbran said:


> _Every_ edition?  I don't think so.  1e and 2e rather fail on the whole "balance" thing.




1e is actually fairly well balanced but that's because it's an adventure about dungeon crawling with a time limit in which everyone is expected to take a pack of hirelings with them, and the wizard will be hiding behind the hireling wall at low level.  2e ... isn't.  Because it largely removes the hirelings, the dungeon walls, the wandering monster checks, and a lot of other factors.

There is a lot of subtle balance in 1e - the wizard may be weak at 1st level, but the most powerful thing on your character sheet isn't your abilities but your war dogs (and fighters need armour).  By 5th level when the wizard is catching up, the minion wall is no longer other than cannon fodder making naked physical power much more useful.  7th level?  The wizard should pull ahead - but that's when the fighter gets an extra attack, turning into that much more of a blender.  9th level the wizard actually does pull ahead - for one level before you enter the endgame and the fighter gets a castle and army.

Move into 2e and all this goes away.  The Hirelings are rare, meaning the wizard goes splat easily and has no melee power at all at low levels - and the frequent absence of dungeon walls makes them even more vulnerable.  Wandering monsters almost go away meaning that 8 hour rests without schlepping back to town are practical.  I could go on.



Janx said:


> But we also don't want cookie-cutter PCs that were just using the exact same point buy as the last PC.




Then mix up your point buy choices.  No one is forcing you to always pick the same.



Celebrim said:


> Of course not, if everyone is special no one is.




I wish people would stop quoting that cartoon supervillain.



Umbran said:


> The array you give has an average value of 12.
> 4d6 drop lowest has, if I recall correctly, an average of 12.24
> 
> So, I'm not sure how that's a "stomp".  Taken straight, 4d6 drop lowest is, of course, more likely to generate high numbers - but it is also more likely to generate *low* numbers.




Not all stats are equal for all characters.  More highs and more lows normally means more power where you need it.



Hussar said:


> I dunno.  I gotta go with Celebrim on this one.  If randomness was truly being sought, then why is randomness only mitigated in one direction - ever upward?  And, considerably upward.




If we look at Ron Edwards on Fantasy Heartbreakers (homebrew D&D house rules professionally published - this was written in the 2e era) we notice "All of them except one have randomized attribute systems, but also an extensive set of secondary attributes which serve to homogenize the actual Effective values (i.e., those used in play)."



X_Mythic said:


> i like the idea rifts RPG put forward. Life isn't balanced, why should the RPG world be?




Because otherwise you end up with a game like Rifts?



Umbran said:


> Agreed.  I've long had that thought about GNS - it is one of the reasons why I feel it is an interesting and occasionally useful framework for theoretical consideration, but it should not be applied to *real world* use very strictly.




One thing I'd point out here is that ENWorld is literally the only forum I know of where GNS is still taken seriously.  It was an interesting idea but even Ron Edwards gave up on it.  Story-games certainly has en masse.



Umbran said:


> The 1999 WotC survey gave us another framework we could use - a story/combat and strategy/tactics approach we could use.  And the fact that we can do this supports your point that these aren't incompatible.




A much better system - and one that maps pretty well to Robin Laws' player types.



Bedrockgames said:


> Sorry but neither 5E nor 4E are story games. 4E is highly focused, but I don't think it is about giving players narrative control so much as tactical control. 5E is pretty much a standard roleplaying game with a dusting of borrowed elements from the narrative end of the spectrum (but little more than you'd find in games like Savage Worlds or the new Doctor Who), but it is also quite the traditional RPG as well. I think it is meant to appeal to a broad audience so naturally there is a little bit of everything for everyone. But it isn't Fiasco.




Absolutely correct.

To expand slightly, a Story Game was originally an RPGwith a defined end point because a whole lot of people said that this was one reason Paul Czege's My Life With Master couldn't possibly be an RPG and those who liked it were more interested in the game than the name.  4e and 5e are both open ended leveling up games.   Currently there is a tendency for it to be a tribal banner.


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## Celebrim

prosfilaes said:


> For me, Amber is one of the prototypes of the concept "roleplaying game" in my head. That's part of the frustration of this argument, is that I, as I suspect the vast majority of people do, have a prototype-based idea of what a roleplaying game is; for me, an RPG is something that is like D&D or GURPS or Amber, though that's making explicit what's implicit, and not nearly so simple or limited. Aggressive declaration that these things aren't RPGs is frustrating, because it's simply outside the bounds of discussion; this things are RPGs, the question is does the definition cover them.




Again, as I said I am fuzzy about whether Amber is an RPG or a story game, and I'd be happily convinced either way.  

I think it is safe to say that neither you nor I know the definition of an RPG.  All we can do is make lists of things we think are RPGs, and things we think are not RPGs.   Our lists will probably not match up exactly.   After that we can only try to explain why we think that this or that belongs on the list.

"Whose Line is it Anyway" is one of my opening examples.  I declare that the games played on "Whose Line is it Anyway" are not RPGs.  I do not think that it would occur to anyone to list them as RPGs or to say of them naturally that they were playing RPGs.   While there is a theoretical connection to Dungeons and Dragons, I think it is safe to say that the sort of play that always occurs in Dungeons and Dragons need not and might never occur in WLiiA, and conversely the sort of play that always occurs in the theater games on WLiiA need not and might not ever occur in Dungeons and Dragons.   With me so far?  

As a side note to this, whatever our definition of RPG is, it has to include Dungeons and Dragons as the first and archetypal example.   If our definition doesn't do that, then I suggest that the definition might define something, but its appropriation of the term RPG is inappropriate.   In fact, I believe that Wick was actually offering a definition of "story game" and incorrectly labeled his definition RPG.   One reason I believe that is I'm inclined to think that the theater games in "Whose Line is it Anyway" do fit under Wick's definition, and do exclude Dungeons & Dragons.   Wick declaring his preference for story games over RPGs is perfectly acceptable, and had he done so, I think he would have provoked a bit less nerd rage (not that anything fails to provoke at least a little nerd rage).  But by misusing the term RPG to apply it to a story game, he confused himself and his readers. 



> (Which is not meant personally: I can certainly discuss the categorization without rancor. I can understand that Celebrim's definition of RPG may not include Amber. It's the dogmatic assertion of a definition that doesn't fit the prototypes in my head that's frustrating.)




I'm not even asserting I have the definition of an RPG.  I'm not sure a really definitive and useful definition exists.  All I'm trying to do is show why I think Amber might be outside of it by noting that in my limited experience with it, it shared with theater games a need to resolve action by appealing to the narrative preferences of the players and not by appealing to the rules.   The lack of a fortune mechanic and the consequent lack of any unknown quality, the sort of arbitrariness involved in deciding how to apply mechanics, the dramatic empowerment of the gamemaster to just decide the outcome without recourse, all struck me as being very much an elaborate theater game.   I think that I'm prepared to suggest that any game without a fortune mechanic is not an RPG because its that fortune mechanic that critically ensures the potential for failure and weakness of all the players, but I'd love to hear your take on it.

I think my definition would be something like:

a) Is there a fiction that is important to the resolution?  (Chess: no, no one need really think of the game as representing a battlefield)
b) Are you playing a role? (Chess: no, you are directing a large number of pieces, none of which you are required to identify as you)
c) Is there a fortune mechanic, such that you can offer propositions within the fiction without certainty of success?  (Chess: Hmmm... Taken as a whole the game itself could be taken as a fortune mechanic, weighted so that it was more likely that the player of greater skill would win, but on the whole, no.)

Now, by this definition, what would it take to make chess a RPG?

a) There would need to be a fiction, what some have helpfully called "the game board".  Chess's existing game board is not a fiction, but it would be easy to imagine chess played on a game board that was a fiction - having multiple perhaps connectable boards and some sort of 'fog of war' mechanic so that you never knew exactly what would be on the next board.
b) Each player would need to play a single role:  That's fairly easy.  We just distribute a knight, bishop, castle, or some sort of balanced fairy piece to each player.
c) There would need to be fortune mechanics.:  Again, that would be fairly easy.  We could just assign a random chance of succeeding at capturing or resisting capture to all the pieces.  Obviously, some work would be required to actually make this interesting and not merely a game of random chance, perhaps by giving each piece the ability to absorb hits or having a chance of pulling off some sort of fairy alternate move (knights stretching to move an extra space, castles bowling over two pieces at once, bishops shifting to an adjacent color, etc).

I assert, at that point, chess is an RPG.  And I think critically, it meets H&W's definition as well.

UPDATE: It just occurred to me that if you only have 'a' and 'c', then what you have is a wargame.  And it is precisely the invention of 'b' in the context of a wargame that is credited with the invention of the RPG.


----------



## Umbran

Hussar said:


> You can't split the word up. Role playing game is a phrasal noun (essentially a single word made up of two or more words - bus stop is a single word, even though there is a space there and the words bus and stop can stand on their own).  In order to define role playing game, you cannot break it into its component words, any more than you could define bus stop by defining the words individually.  English isn't Latin.




Well, you can start  by splitting it up - at the bus stop, there is a bus, and stopping involved, and that's useful to know.  But you must then remember that the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts.


----------



## Hussar

Umbran said:


> Well, you can start  by splitting it up - at the bus stop, there is a bus, and stopping involved, and that's useful to know.  But you must then remember that the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts.




Exactly. If you split up bus stop, you might think that it means that the bus can no longer move, or has ceased to function in some way. Bus stop is meant to be treated as a single word grammatically. 

Trying to break up RPG dives down the same rabbit hole.


----------



## Neonchameleon

Celebrim said:


> Again, as I said I am fuzzy about whether Amber is an RPG or a story game, and I'd be happily convinced either way.




An RPG.  There are two definitions of Storygame I'm aware of - and Amber certainly doesn't fit the first and I don't think it fits the setting.
1: A game that comes from a certain corner of the RPG community.
2: A game from the RPG family (whichever side of the line it falls on) that has a predefined end point and you can't continue after that point because the setup no longer makes sense, and is not just a module for a larger game.

So to expand on the second, My Life With Master has one of the PCs fighting it out with The Master as the signal for the endgame - and the mechanics lead inexorably to that fight.  Without the Master, any and all mechanics that are specifically about the relationship with the master no longer make sense.  The characters survive - but unless they immediately find a new master you need a different ruleset.  Fiasco is a five act structure on a highway to hell.  But after the epilogue the rules no longer make any sense at all - and this is built into a game.  Montsegur 1244 and Grey Ranks are similar - in another RPG they might be modules - but the game has been entirely written round that module.

I don't believe Amber has any such defined end point other than that it's PVP.  So it doesn't fit type 2.



> "Whose Line is it Anyway" is one of my opening examples.  I declare that the games played on "Whose Line is it Anyway" are not RPGs.  I do not think that it would occur to anyone to list them as RPGs or to say of them naturally that they were playing RPGs.   While there is a theoretical connection to Dungeons and Dragons, I think it is safe to say that the sort of play that always occurs in Dungeons and Dragons need not and might never occur in WLiiA, and conversely the sort of play that always occurs in the theater games on WLiiA need not and might not ever occur in Dungeons and Dragons.   With me so far?




With you on your conclusion.  But Hillfolk is definitely an RPG.



> As a side note to this, whatever our definition of RPG is, it has to include Dungeons and Dragons as the first and archetypal example.




Yup (if we use RPG as shorthand for Tabletop Role-Playing Game).



> In fact, I believe that Wick was actually offering a definition of "story game" and incorrectly labeled his definition RPG.




"a game in which the players are rewarded for making choices that are consistent with the character’s motivations or further the plot of the story."

Arkham Horror is neither and RPG nor a Story-game.  It gives the characters two simple motivations (stop the Elder God, stay alive) and rewards for that.  And someone playing a Fishmalk is regrettably rewarded despite not _having_ consistent motivations.

How about "A game where you are expected to make moves outside the _direct_ scope of the game's mechanics, and where your moves are informed by intangibles like your character's motivations"?



> I think that I'm prepared to suggest that any game without a fortune mechanic is not an RPG because its that fortune mechanic that critically ensures the potential for failure and weakness of all the players, but I'd love to hear your take on it.




You're in that case taking out a range of games _I_ consider RPGs.  Like Montsegur 1244.  The argument here would appear to be that they are roleplaying but not roleplaying _Games_?



> I think my definition would be something like:
> 
> a) Is there a fiction that is important to the resolution?  (Chess: no, no one need really think of the game as representing a battlefield)
> b) Are you playing a role? (Chess: no, you are directing a large number of pieces, none of which you are required to identify as you)
> c) Is there a fortune mechanic, such that you can offer propositions within the fiction without certainty of success?  (Chess: Hmmm... Taken as a whole the game itself could be taken as a fortune mechanic, weighted so that it was more likely that the player of greater skill would win, but on the whole, no.)




And you've just included a wide range of tabletop wargames where you are playing the general and the fiction is important.



> I assert, at that point, chess is an RPG.  And I think critically, it meets H&W's definition as well.
> 
> UPDATE: It just occurred to me that if you only have 'a' and 'c', then what you have is a wargame.  And it is precisely the invention of 'b' in the context of a wargame that is credited with the invention of the RPG.




But you can add b without making it an RPG.  Fog of War rules for one.

I'm going to say that what's critical is the corollary to A.  That you can use the logic of the fiction to take actions the writers of the rules have not considered.  And it's stepping round the rules that is credited with the invention of the RPG.


----------



## Hussar

Celebrim I'm not sold on the single role thing though. It's pretty common for players to have more than one role in an rpg. Controlling multiple characters isn't that rare. Note are adjunct characters like familiars or the like.


----------



## Janx

Celebrim said:


> a) Is there a fiction that is important to the resolution?  (Chess: no, no one need really think of the game as representing a battlefield)
> b) Are you playing a role? (Chess: no, you are directing a large number of pieces, none of which you are required to identify as you)
> c) Is there a fortune mechanic, such that you can offer propositions within the fiction without certainty of success?  (Chess: Hmmm... Taken as a whole the game itself could be taken as a fortune mechanic, weighted so that it was more likely that the player of greater skill would win, but on the whole, no.)




I see where you're going with it, and it's a fine observation that D&D came from a war game.  The scale of player focus/command& control transitioned from army to squad to individuals.  once one player controlled on character, its a simple leap to "acting like that character" aka Role Playing.

I do have a nitpick. Feature C, Fortune.  I don't think that's the right concept.  a game doesn't have to use random chance (ex. dice) to resolve a conflict.  Chess obviously uses initiative (if it's your turn, you win the fight when you move into another square). Other games use numeric rank (I have a 5, you have a 4, I win).

It's less about certainty of success, and more about "there's a system that exists to resolve failure or success in specific ways"

Which is sort of the difference between Improv Theatre, and Games (capital G meaning activities with rules).


----------



## Janx

Hussar said:


> Celebrim I'm not sold on the single role thing though. It's pretty common for players to have more than one role in an rpg. Controlling multiple characters isn't that rare. Note are adjunct characters like familiars or the like.




That depends on the game and GM.  I think players controlling multiple characters in an RPG is usually a GM concession to needing more characters in the party, or simplifying his workload so he doesn't have to "fight himself" with NPCs vs. monsters.

I'd say a "typical" RPG expects the player to be controling a single character, but that's not absolute.

If nothing else, difference is that the player is focussed on that character and responding from that character's viewpoint, rather than moving a number of generic pawns on the board.  So a player running 2 PCs, is expected to determine PC1's actions from PC1's information, and likewise for PC2.

Though there are still players who will play D&D and run their fighter as a nameless token on the board, that is sort of the exception to the concept.


----------



## howandwhy99

Hussar said:


> I think I'm finally understanding why I'm having such a tough time following H&W's larger points.  He's taking the word Role Playing Game, and then breaking that word apart to serve whichever meaning he needs at a given time.



No, I've been using the same definition all along. Role playing is since it was coined the act of playing a social role. It's part of sociology. Pretending isn't the roleplaying D&D was defined for. 

Character role playing in the acting sense didn't become widespread until well after D&D took it as a label. That's the language confusion stemming from the 80s that leads to much confusion about the earlier books. Not to mention how games were not considered conflict resolution agreements then either, but mathematical constructs to be mastered through practice.


----------



## billd91

Janx said:


> If nothing else, difference is that the player is focussed on that character and responding from that character's viewpoint, rather than moving a number of generic pawns on the board.  So a player running 2 PCs, is expected to determine PC1's actions from PC1's information, and likewise for PC2.
> 
> Though there are still players who will play D&D and run their fighter as a nameless token on the board, that is sort of the exception to the concept.




I would agree that requiring a one-to-one relationship between player and character is reaching too far. An RPG isn't less of an RPG just because I play two characters in the same game. Rather, the in-game representation(s) of the players are *personified*. They aren't just tokens but are expected to have the characteristics of persons.


----------



## Umbran

howandwhy99 said:


> Role playing is since it was coined the act of playing a social role. It's part of sociology.




In my understanding, role theory in sociology talks about "acting out a role" or "acting in a role", "taking on a role"or "assuming a role" more than "playing" roles.  Probably because in this context, we are probably talking about the various roles a real person must fulfill, and how they come into real conflict, and it would be dismissive to talk about it as "play" when you're discussing the issues of being a mother and a professional, for example.

In _psychology_, however, role playing is used for therapy or training - and here it does have the connotation of "This is pretend, not the real thing".  



> Pretending isn't the roleplaying D&D was defined for.




I don't think it is all that clear cut.  Nor do I think the original starting definition is really relevant now.  We've had a few decades, and even Gygax's own later offerings lean to the, "pretending to be an elf" thing.


----------



## Celebrim

Neonchameleon said:


> 2: A game from the RPG family (whichever side of the line it falls on) that has a predefined end point and you can't continue after that point because the setup no longer makes sense, and is not just a module for a larger game.




I rather dislike all your definitions.  They are meaningless, tautologies, and I can easily imagine an RPG that is not a story game that plays to an end and is only be designed to run for a single scenario.  Likewise, I can imagine a story game that is meant to play on and on and on in multiple episodes until the players become tired of it.   So the fact that Amber is meant to generate long running scenarios and has no defined end point doesn't to me seem to matter all that much.  It just would fall then into a general class of "open ended games" which many RPGs belong to, but which many things we'd agree are not RPGs (but often have RPG elements, such as game pieces that persist between sessions of play) would also belong to.  For example, neither Bloodbowl (a board game) nor Necromunda (a tactical wargame) is an RPG, but both are intended to support open ended play.



> I don't believe Amber has any such defined end point other than that it's PVP.  So it doesn't fit type 2.




Which as I said only means Amber is an open ended game, but I disagree that being open ended is an inherent attribute of RPGs or that not being open ended is an inherent attribute of story games.  



> With you on your conclusion.  But Hillfolk is definitely an RPG.




I think given the loose definition of RPGs floating around that you are used to thinking of it as an RPG, but I'm rather unconvinced.   I think Hillfolk is better represented as an example of an open-ended story game.



> "A game where you are expected to make moves outside the _direct_ scope of the game's mechanics, and where your moves are informed by intangibles like your character's motivations"?




Maybe.  To me this relates back to the notion that there exists a fiction.  I didn't want to get into this because it raises the problem of associated mechanics.  I think all RPGs have at least some associated mechanics (or there wouldn't exist a fiction), but I'm not sure how to phrase things in such a way that it doesn't look like I'm saying "If you have dissociated mechanics, you aren't an RPG." - something I don't believe.  For one thing, dissociation itself is going to be hard to precisely define as all mechanics tend to be abstract (and thus dissociated) on some level.   I do absolutely agree that (it would seem) RPGs are defined by having open ended rules, and I think I'd add that up as a 4th entry on the list I'm making so far, though I think that it will be controversial with some because often people who play say D&D believe that they have a closed rules set (when I'm inclined to think that they don't).  However, the reason I'm adding it is that the creation of open ended rules, the inspiration of which was reputedly "What happens if I fire a star trek phaser in a medieval battle?", is pretty much inextricable from the invention of the notion that you were playing the role of a single character within a fictional space in that moment when wargames became RPGs.

Still, this is fuzzy.  It's quite conceivable to play an RPG with a closed rules set and setting.  You could play D&D in a way that you rigorously adhered to the maxim, "No proposition without a predefined set of stakes is a valid proposition."   In fact, I can think of one case where that is actually done, but it doesn't involve dice or paper.



> You're in that case taking out a range of games _I_ consider RPGs.  Like Montsegur 1244.  The argument here would appear to be that they are roleplaying but not roleplaying _Games_?




Here I have to agree at least a little with Hussar.  RPGs aren't merely games that have some roleplaying in them.   If we go that far, then it must be true that "Whose Line is it Anyway?" is also an RPG - at which point RPG has morphed from being something rather specific into an umbrella term that covers almost everything.  What then happens is that we've left ourselves with no specific term for the thing we used to call an RPG.  Since we already have terms like Story Game and Theater Game for things that share many traits with RPGs but which aren't RPGs, I see no need to make RPG the umbrella term.   That said, I do agree that part of the problem here is that I'm getting a bit late to the party.  In common usage, RPG has already morphed to mean both the specific thing I know as an RPG and also the umbrella term for all games that feature some sort of dramatic play.

Anyway, from my perspective, Montsegur 1244 is pretty much definitively a story game.  Montsegur 1244 is really nothing more than a slightly structured theater game.  With the exception of the formalization of the playing peices, it could well be a theater game.  It's pretty much entirely an exercise in improvisational theater.  Even if you only narrated, mistaking M1244 for an RPG would be like mistaking the act of outlining a module when playing "Iron DM" for the act of playing an RPG.  If Montsegur 1244 is an RPG, then we must concede that "Whose Line is it Anyway?" is also an RPG.  



> And you've just included a wide range of tabletop wargames where you are playing the general and the fiction is important.




Possibly.  However, I don't think I'm including games like Warhammer Fantasy, since even if you have a leader, the focus of play is on the manipulation of the whole army.  You can play Necomunda, but the 'you' in that scenario is the gang, not really the gang leader.  On the other hand, I can see Necromunda being played as an RPG quite easily with only a slight shift in perspective.  (Remember, how you think about the game and how you prepare to play it is as important or more important than the system.)  I might be including a game like Battletech if each player was limited to a single mech and single pilot and played in an ongoing campaign, but at that point we'd be shading off into MechWarrior and the game would probably start becoming recognizably an RPG. 



> But you can add b without making it an RPG.  Fog of War rules for one.




Mentioning fog of war was a mistake.  I didn't mean to imply that fog of war was necessary for creating a fiction.  I was just reaching for examples of the sort of things that are done with table top games to support the idea that the game board represents a concrete and imaginable fictional space in which the activities are taking place.  The notion of fiction as it exists in RPGs is almost certainly a development of how wargames had developed more and more detailed fictions in which the battle was to take place.  Putting terrain on the chessboard - hills, ravines, ponds, etc. - would also serve to create a fiction.   That said, it is a distinctive feature of RPGs that the fiction tends to be open ended in the same way that the rules are open ended.  Playing a wargame, no aspect of the fiction not covered by the rules has any actual importance to play.  The play isn't actually taking place in the shared imaginary space.  The visible board is itself the shared space in a wargame or board game.  I would suggest this departure from traditional closed system games is something that RPGs share with story games, and probably the entire 'dramatic game' family.  

That said, this leaves me with a problem and suggests a way that cRPGs are different than 'true' RPGs and an area I feel somewhat sympathetic to Wick's observation that WOW is not an RPG.  Computers created closed game worlds and game systems.  Only to the extent that this is ignored and the computer is used as a minigame interface for certain kinds of proposition resolution, are you actually playing a 'true' RPG on a computer.   So either I'm going to have to abandon the closed/open system/setting divide, or else either story games or cRPGs are going to have to drop out of the definition.   Hmmmm.

Types of Dramatic Play
RPGs: ???
Story Games: RPGs without procedural fortune mechanics. (??)
Theater Games: Story Games that don't implement the Fundamental Law except by social contract.  (Fairly sure on that one)
Improvisational Theater: A theater game played before an audience.
Traditional Drama: Theater Games that don't allow the players agency


----------



## Umbran

I wold imagine the basic definitional difference should lie in this question:

What is more important to the play - manipulating the actions of an individual character, or manipulating the elements of the story?

There is no reason why a story game should have a player take the position and viewpoint of a single particular character that they own - the storygame should be properly about *the story* and its elements, not *the character*.

There is a card game, "Once Upon a Time".  This is a story game - it is about creating, shaping, and guiding a story.  There is no playing of individual roles at all, so it is clearly not a role-playing game.

I don't think "role playing game with some authorial/editorial control for players" really equates to "story game".


----------



## prosfilaes

Celebrim said:


> I think it is safe to say that neither you nor I  know the definition of an RPG.  All we can do is make lists of things  we think are RPGs, and things we think are not RPGs.   Our lists will  probably not match up exactly.   After that we can only try to explain  why we think that this or that belongs on the list.




I think thinking of "the definition" can be misleading. Each person has their own idiolect, their own conception of any word, and for most people, for "roleplaying game", the concept is prototype-based, not definition-based, thus "I know that this set of things are roleplaying games, and anything sufficiently similar must therefore also be a roleplaying game." You can try and create some underlying definition, but it's going to be synthetic.


----------



## billd91

Umbran said:


> In my understanding, role theory in sociology talks about "acting out a role" or "acting in a role", "taking on a role"or "assuming a role" more than "playing" roles.  Probably because in this context, we are probably talking about the various roles a real person must fulfill, and how they come into real conflict, and it would be dismissive to talk about it as "play" when you're discussing the issues of being a mother and a professional, for example.
> 
> In _psychology_, however, role playing is used for therapy or training - and here it does have the connotation of "This is pretend, not the real thing".
> 
> <snip>
> I don't think it is all that clear cut.  Nor do I think the original starting definition is really relevant now.  We've had a few decades, and even Gygax's own later offerings lean to the, "pretending to be an elf" thing.




Yeah, I have to agree that the first definition is too narrow to be of much use. Role playing has also been long used to describe pretend play by children consciously taking on a role such as when they play house or cops and robbers. I think it highly dubious to assume the developers of D&D did not have that version of role playing in mind once they made the leap to playing individual characters. The pretend aspect is certainly present in AD&D. But I don't have any earlier rulebooks handy to check earlier publications.


----------



## Umbran

prosfilaes said:


> the concept is prototype-based, not definition-based, thus "I know that this set of things are roleplaying games, and anything sufficiently similar must therefore also be a roleplaying game." You can try and create some underlying definition, but it's going to be synthetic.




In essence, RPGs are a genre of game.  Genres are almost never defined in hard terms, but instead in terms of, "If it has enough of the common tropes and themes, it is in the genre", where "enough" is kind of subjective.


----------



## mouselim

pemerton said:


> The sort of rules structure you describe is 100% not required for an RPG.
> 
> For instance, your example assumes that combat in the game involves initiative, affected by weapon speed and DEX scores. Which also assumes that PCs have ability scores such as DEX. You also make assumptions about action economy, consequence generation and imposition, etc.
> 
> None of that is true for the 4 RPGs I mentioned above. Characters are defined by descriptors (completey free descriptors for 2 of them, a mix of free and semi-free descriptors for MHRP, a mix of free descriptors and skill ranks for Fate).
> 
> Even Burning Wheel, which involves a weapons table with speed and vs armour, can be played without it. If the table doesn't want to bother differentiating in any detail between daggers and polearms, they're not obliged to. Situations where one weapon would be particularly advantageous or disadvantageous can easiy be handled via ad hoc modifiers (eg if the dagger wielder is charging the polearm wielder, the polearm wielder gets a bonus die; if the dagger wield is shaking the hand of the polearm wielder when the fight breaks out, then the dagger wielder gets a bonus die).
> 
> Incorporating weapons speed, DEX stats, vs armour, etc into combat resolution is a choice in design. Not a requirement.




Again I have to disagree. Let's take a real life scenario. Presumably that you have some experience in the army (as I have) and/or weapon arms.

A M16 rifle vs carbine - which has more recoil?

Will a person who has more strength shoot better (handling the recoil effect) than another? 

Will having the correct technique (butt between chest and shoulder, release half-breath and hold, etc) help?

In your definition of RPG, I have a scrawny character who wields a GPMG but he is shooting it single-handedly and hits your brawny character wielding a M16 and at the same time, dives down to throw a bayonet at another character 200 feet away.


----------



## prosfilaes

mouselim said:


> In your definition of RPG, I have a scrawny character who wields a GPMG but he is shooting it single-handedly and hits your brawny character wielding a M16 and at the same time, dives down to throw a bayonet at another character 200 feet away.




Okay? In one edition of Champions, a baby could throw a football 100 feet. Is it realistic? No. Does anyone care? No. Presumably anyone playing a game where that's possible doesn't really care about those details.

Cthulhu Dark has combat rules: the PCs die. At least with the skills rules in He Who Laughs Last, it's pretty clearly an RPG, but one that doesn't want to deal with combat.


----------



## Hussar

Like any genre, you are probably better off trying to define the center and not the edges. When does fantasy become SF is an endless wank with no resolution. 

But I can point to the Hobbit and pretty clearly say that it's fantasy and point to 2001 A Space Odyssey and say that it's SF without too much controversy. 

I have to admit, I'm liking the turn this thread has taken.


----------



## Jhaelen

Hussar said:


> Celebrim I'm not sold on the single role thing though. It's pretty common for players to have more than one role in an rpg. Controlling multiple characters isn't that rare. Note are adjunct characters like familiars or the like.



It may not be a requirement, but it's definitely recommended to limit players to one character each at a time.

Back in '84 when I first tried to play a table top RPG, that was the major thing I didn't understand or get right: I was trying to play the whole party resulting in a game without any roleplaying. I was playing it like I would play 'The Bard's Tale' on my computer several years later. Of course part of the reason was that I was the only player and the GM didn't have any experience with playing's either, but still. It required reading the introduction to a few other rpg systems until it 'clicked' and I realized I was supposed to portray a single character rather than a kind of insubstantial 'team manager'.

Another thing that is tricky when trying to play several characters at a time is that you basically have to speak in third person: 'x is doing this, y is saying that'. If you have a single character you can use first person - something I consider crucial for good roleplaying.


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## Hussar

I dunno. Aren't you still role playing even if you are managing a team?  Might not be the deepest role playing but, it shouldn't be impossible to switch hats. 

Many groups let a player control a cohort or other kind of hireling type character in addition to the "boss" character. Do I stop playing an RPG if I gain followers?  Does AdnD stop being an RPG at name level?

I don't think so. And to take it further, castle or domain management is seen as a pretty good module for 5e.


----------



## pemerton

Neonchameleon said:


> To expand slightly, a Story Game was originally an RPGwith a defined end point because a whole lot of people said that this was one reason Paul Czege's My Life With Master couldn't possibly be an RPG and those who liked it were more interested in the game than the name.  4e and 5e are both open ended leveling up games.   Currently there is a tendency for it to be a tribal banner.



I don't really use or understand the term "story game", except that I often see it used as a label by those who don't like them to characterise the things they don't like.

But 4e does at least incline towards a defined end-point: 30th level and the resolution of a PC's epic destiny. Admittedly it doesn't have the mechanical tightness of Nicotine Girls or My Life With Master. It relies much more upon ad hoc GM management via scene framing and the narration of consequences.

Does having an end point managed via GM adjudication rather than mechanics make a game less of a story game?



Neonchameleon said:


> How about "A game where you are expected to make moves outside the _direct_ scope of the game's mechanics, and where your moves are informed by intangibles like your character's motivations"?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I'm going to say that what's critical is the corollary to A.  That you can use the logic of the fiction to take actions the writers of the rules have not considered.  And it's stepping round the rules that is credited with the invention of the RPG.



I prefer your second go to your first, if only because a well-designed modern RPG will have mechanics that, with appropriate adjudication and player/GM negotiation, will permit the resolution of any move declared by the player.

Furthermore, I don't think that the second clause in your first go is right: Tomb of Horrors clearly counts as an RPG scenario, but no one playing ToH is meant to have regard to intangibles such as PC motivations. In fact, if you're playing ToH and you give your PC a personality or motivations you've already missed the point of the exercise! (Much the same is true of many of the classic modues, eg Barrier Peaks, White Plume Mountain, Ghost Tower etc. I would say that the GD series and KotB are on the cusp.)

What is key to RPGing, and is as present in ToH as it is in a Burning Wheel session or something more to the "story game" end of the spectrum than that, is a shared fiction. An imagined state of affairs, which imposes no limits on permissible moves other than those that the players (with the GM taking the lead) can envisage as feasible within that fiction.

If you read the original tournament report on ToH you can see the shared fiction being crucial to resolution when the players hammer spikes into a wall and stand on them before pulling a lever - thereby ensuring that they can't fall if the lever makes the floor drop away.

Of course, in some games the shared fiction is meant to inform not just the resolution of actions, but which actions are declared. This is what is happening when you have regard to PC motivations (themselves part of the fiction) in deciding what moves to make.


----------



## Neonchameleon

Celebrim said:


> I rather dislike all your definitions.  They are meaningless, tautologies, and I can easily imagine an RPG that is not a story game that plays to an end and is only be designed to run for a single scenario.  Likewise, I can imagine a story game that is meant to play on and on and on in multiple episodes until the players become tired of it.   So the fact that Amber is meant to generate long running scenarios and has no defined end point doesn't to me seem to matter all that much.




Dislike it all you like.  According to AndyK, who runs the Story-Games forum that was what people were objecting to in My Life With Master that meant that it couldn't possibly be an RPG - so they came up with the term "Story-game" to describe it.  And it's the main point of difference between a lot of story games and most trad RPGs.



> Maybe.  To me this relates back to the notion that there exists a fiction.  I didn't want to get into this because it raises the problem of associated mechanics.  I think all RPGs have at least some associated mechanics (or there wouldn't exist a fiction), but I'm not sure how to phrase things in such a way that it doesn't look like I'm saying "If you have dissociated mechanics, you aren't an RPG."




I'd not go for that side at all.  "In an RPG you can and are expected to use pre-existing elements of the fiction for which there are no clearly defined mechanics in the rulebook."  To me that's the critical difference between an RPG and various games like Descent and Arkham Horror.

Of course a lot of modern RPGs have very wooly definitions anyway.



> Here I have to agree at least a little with Hussar.  RPGs aren't merely games that have some roleplaying in them.   If we go that far, then it must be true that "Whose Line is it Anyway?" is also an RPG - at which point RPG has morphed from being something rather specific into an umbrella term that covers almost everything.




Which bit of "Whose line is it anyway"? 



> What then happens is that we've left ourselves with no specific term for the thing we used to call an RPG.




Tabletop RPG or Trad RPG.  Or even Tactical RPG.  Whether it should include My Life With Master may be a point we can disagree on.



> Since we already have terms like Story Game and Theater Game for things that share many traits with RPGs but which aren't RPGs, I see no need to make RPG the umbrella term.




And yet it _is_ an umbrella term that includes things as diverse as World of Warcraft, dressing up as vampires, and bedroom games.



> Anyway, from my perspective, Montsegur 1244 is pretty much definitively a story game.
> 
> No argument.  I'd also call it an RPG.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If Montsegur 1244 is an RPG, then we must concede that "Whose Line is it Anyway?" is also an RPG.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Not true.  The objectives of the subgames in Whose Line is it Anyway are almost entirely meta.  Montsegur 1244 has logic following from the characters.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Possibly.  However, I don't think I'm including games like Warhammer Fantasy, since even if you have a leader, the focus of play is on the manipulation of the whole army.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> That's why I mentioned Fog of War rules - the goal of which is sometimes to restrict your prior information to only things the general would know.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That said, it is a distinctive feature of RPGs that the fiction tends to be open ended in the same way that the rules are open ended.  Playing a wargame, no aspect of the fiction not covered by the rules has any actual importance to play.  The play isn't actually taking place in the shared imaginary space.  The visible board is itself the shared space in a wargame or board game.  I would suggest this departure from traditional closed system games is something that RPGs share with story games, and probably the entire 'dramatic game' family.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> On this we agree   Where we differ is that Story Games _are_ RPGs
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That said, this leaves me with a problem and suggests a way that cRPGs are different than 'true' RPGs and an area I feel somewhat sympathetic to Wick's observation that WOW is not an RPG.  Computers created closed game worlds and game systems.  Only to the extent that this is ignored and the computer is used as a minigame interface for certain kinds of proposition resolution, are you actually playing a 'true' RPG on a computer.   So either I'm going to have to abandon the closed/open system/setting divide, or else either story games or cRPGs are going to have to drop out of the definition.   Hmmmm.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> And given that WoW is so overwhelmingly popular it makes about as much sense to exclude it from the heading as it does D&D.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Types of Dramatic Play
> RPGs: ???
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Umbrella term.  We need something like Tactical RPG.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Story Games: RPGs without procedural fortune mechanics. (??)
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Nope.  Doesn't fit either My Life With Master or Monsterhearts (which bills itself as a Story Game).  Or about half the other games under the banner of Story Games.  Of course what they choose as stats is ... non-traditional.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Theater Games: Story Games that don't implement the Fundamental Law except by social contract.  (Fairly sure on that one)
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Fundamental Law?  Rule 0?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Improvisational Theater: A theater game played before an audience.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Again, no unless the participants are also the audience.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Traditional Drama: Theater Games that don't allow the players agency
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Trad Drama isn't a game in the same way.
Click to expand...


----------



## Hussar

Pemerton said:
			
		

> Furthermore, I don't think that the second clause in your first go is right: Tomb of Horrors clearly counts as an RPG scenario, but no one playing ToH is meant to have regard to intangibles such as PC motivations. In fact, if you're playing ToH and you give your PC a personality or motivations you've already missed the point of the exercise! (Much the same is true of many of the classic modues, eg Barrier Peaks, White Plume Mountain, Ghost Tower etc. I would say that the GD series and KotB are on the cusp.)
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Illusion-of-Game-Balance/page33#ixzz3H3mnshJC




But, to be fair, you're moving towards the edge and away from the centre.  It's not surprising that three of the first four modules you mention are all from the same series.  The S series of modules are something of an outlier, even in AD&D.  Most of the AD&D modules come with a much stronger story.  Look at Temple of Elemental Evil or the Slave Lord's modules.  There's a definite progression through a story present in those, and most other 1e modules.  KotB is again a bit of an outlier in that it was serving double duty in being an adventure module and a DM training adventure as well.  Compare to B4 The Lost City and you see a much stronger presence of intangibles - players are expected to join one of the three factions and then unify those factions against the lower levels of the city.

Never minding things like the Dragonlance Modules and pretty much anything by Weiss and Hickman.

I think that NeonC might be on to something here - an RPG is a game where the motivations of the character are meant to be a driving element of the game, isn't a horrible starting place for defining an RPG and nicely separates RPG's from most board games and even most video games as well.


----------



## pemerton

mouselim said:


> Presumably that you have some experience in the army (as I have) and/or weapon arms.



No. The main physical activite in which I have experience are running and cycling.



mouselim said:


> Let's take a real life scenario.
> 
> A M16 rifle vs carbine - which has more recoil?
> 
> Will a person who has more strength shoot better (handling the recoil effect) than another?
> 
> Will having the correct technique (butt between chest and shoulder, release half-breath and hold, etc) help?
> 
> In your definition of RPG, I have a scrawny character who wields a GPMG but he is shooting it single-handedly and hits your brawny character wielding a M16 and at the same time, dives down to throw a bayonet at another character 200 feet away.



And? Maybe my RPG is emulating a certain sort of war comic or movie.

I mentioned running upthread. From time to time I have to run from my office to catch my train. I know that the run typically takes me around 13 minutes. Variables that can effect the time taken include traffic and traffic lights (I have to cross some streets on my journey), how tired I am, how much I am carrying in my backpack or in my arms, and what shoes I am wearing. Wearing runners rather than hiking boots improves my speed, mostly because it reduces exertion.

I've never seen an RPG in which the movement rules have regard to footwear - eg in AD&D their are rules for the interaction between hard boots and sneaking, but not hard boots and sprinting. Does this mean that those aren't RPGs? Or aren't good RPGs?

Futhermore, for your example to even get going in an RPG, we have to be keeping track of details like different firearm types, the physical distance between the characters, etc. Neither of those things is essential to an RPG. When I GMed a session of Marvel Heroic RP, as part of the climactic final battle War Machine (PC) fought an aerial duel with Titanium Man (NPC). War Machine was firing rockets and repulsor rays at Titanium Man. Titanium Man was retaliating by ensnaring War Machine in force rings, and in the end won the combat - flying off to a secret base in Khazakstan while War Machine fell to earth somewhere in Florida (the fight started over Washington, DC).

Here are some of the questions to which I don't know the answers, because the game system doesn't require paying attention to them:

* What sorts of rockets does War Machine use?

* What precisely are the capabilities of a repulsor ray?

* At what distance(s) were the two combatants attacking one another?

* How high were the combatants flying?

* How long were they fighting for?

Some rough answers are possible to some of these questions: as neither combatant is equipped for operations in space, they must have remained within earth atmosphere; and as the combatants can fly at supesonic speed but not fast enough for interstellar travel, the fight must have lasted for some time to make it down the coast from DC to Florida. A quick Google tells me that's a distance over 1000 km, so even at mach 2 it's abut half-an-hour. When I was GMing I didn't worry about this - like my players I am Australian, with a fairly patchy knowledge of US geography, and narrated the falling point as Florid for colour - to indicate a large distance had been travelled - rather than on the basis of any actual calculations.

When declaring and adjudicating actions in MHRP, the sorts of details you're talking about simply aren't relevant. We aren't interested in the size of the gun - we're interested in whether it is Cable, The Punisher, War Machines, etc who is using it!


----------



## pemerton

Hussar said:


> I think that NeonC might be on to something here - an RPG is a game where the motivations of the character are meant to be a driving element of the game, isn't a horrible starting place for defining an RPG and nicely separates RPG's from most board games and even most video games as well.



I don't agree. You're making the same escape as John Wick did, of overly narrowing your characterisation.

Any definition that rules out ToH or WPM has ruled _itself_ out!

The role of the fiction in framing and adjudication is enough to differentiate from board games and most video games.


----------



## Neonchameleon

mouselim said:


> Again I have to disagree. Let's take a real life scenario. Presumably that you have some experience in the army (as I have) and/or weapon arms.
> 
> A M16 rifle vs carbine - which has more recoil?
> 
> Will a person who has more strength shoot better (handling the recoil effect) than another?
> 
> Will having the correct technique (butt between chest and shoulder, release half-breath and hold, etc) help?
> 
> In your definition of RPG, I have a scrawny character who wields a GPMG but he is shooting it single-handedly and hits your brawny character wielding a M16 and at the same time, dives down to throw a bayonet at another character 200 feet away.




And in a game of Wushu, created to emulate the sillier action movie martial arts genres, that would be fine.  In _any_ tabletop RPG, actually checking the PC releases a half breath and holds is going to slow the game down to a ridiculous crawl.  Are you saying that all RPGs (and all movies) should follow real world physics?  At best correct technique is going to be rolled up into some form of guns skill.



pemerton said:


> I don't really use or understand the term "story game", except that I often see it used as a label by those who don't like them to characterise the things they don't like.




It's also a term used for a variety of post-Forge games.



> But 4e does at least incline towards a defined end-point: 30th level and the resolution of a PC's epic destiny.




Ever reached it?  I haven't.  I've not gone beyond mid-Paragon, and the 30th level endgame is largely theoretical.  Most of the type of game I'm talking about take up to half a dozen sessions.



> Does having an end point managed via GM adjudication rather than mechanics make a game less of a story game?




Yes.



> I prefer your second go to your first, if only because a well-designed modern RPG will have mechanics that, with appropriate adjudication and player/GM negotiation, will permit the resolution of any move declared by the player.




Me too 



> Furthermore, I don't think that the second clause in your first go is right: Tomb of Horrors clearly counts as an RPG scenario, but no one playing ToH is meant to have regard to intangibles such as PC motivations. In fact, if you're playing ToH and you give your PC a personality or motivations you've already missed the point of the exercise!
> 
> If you read the original tournament report on ToH




Taking things a step back _ToH was not designed for tournament play_.  It was designed for Gygax' ongoing game with cocky and greedy adventurers.  Who accepted and destroyed the challenge.


----------



## Hussar

pemerton said:


> I don't agree. You're making the same escape as John Wick did, of overly narrowing your characterisation.
> 
> Any definition that rules out ToH or WPM has ruled _itself_ out!
> 
> The role of the fiction in framing and adjudication is enough to differentiate from board games and most video games.




As I said, ToH in particular is very much an outlier for modules and D&D experiences though.  It's not like there are a slew of ToH style modules out there (although there are a few).  There are far, far more adventures out there where the goals of the character drive the game.  Playing ToH might be role playing, but, it's a singular enough experience that I'm not terribly worried about a definition of RPG's that doesn't exactly include it.  ToH style play certainly isn't the presumed style of play for most tables, IMO.  

I mean, could you really see designing a campaign around ToH style adventures?  And ongoing, say, eighty session campaign?  I certainly don't see it.

Again, we shouldn't be trying to define things by the edges.  Find the stuff in the middle that is generally common and build the definition from there.  The S series modules are one data point, but, we shouldn't get too tied up on them.

Just like you can add roleplaying to just about anything, turning something like Battletech into a roleplaying game, for example, you can also strip out a fair degree of role playing and make an RPG less an RPG and more a board game or a simple tactical simulation.


----------



## pemerton

Neonchameleon said:


> Ever reached it?  I haven't.  I've not gone beyond mid-Paragon, and the 30th level endgame is largely theoretical.  Most of the type of game I'm talking about take up to half a dozen sessions.



I agree that "tightness" of the end game matters. But my 4e campaign is currently at 28th level, and 30th is coming up. The campaign is in its endgame, and endgame in some ways forseeable from the earliest sessions.



Neonchameleon said:


> Taking things a step back _ToH was not designed for tournament play_.  It was designed for Gygax' ongoing game with cocky and greedy adventurers.  Who accepted and destroyed the challenge.



That doesn't change the fact that, in ToH, the fiction is meant to matter, and did matter, to resolution; but that character motivations are meant to be irrelevant to how the module is tackled.



Hussar said:


> As I said, ToH in particular is very much an outlier for modules and D&D experiences though.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ToH style play certainly isn't the presumed style of play for most tables, IMO.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> we shouldn't be trying to define things by the edges.  Find the stuff in the middle that is generally common and build the definition from there.  The S series modules are one data point, but, we shouldn't get too tied up on them.
> 
> Just like you can add roleplaying to just about anything, turning something like Battletech into a roleplaying game, for example, you can also strip out a fair degree of role playing and make an RPG less an RPG and more a board game or a simple tactical simulation.



ToH might be an outlier, but the definition still needs to include it.

_The relevance of fiction to framing and resolution_ is enough to distinguish an RPG from a board game or a tactical simulation. Why the need to add in as essential, what is a strictly optional if nevertheless typical element, of PC motivation mattering to what choices the players make?


----------



## Hussar

Because _the relevance of fiction to framing and resolution_ doesn't exclude Microsoft Flight Simulator, as far as I can see.  To me, something like Tomb of Horrors is not really meant as an RPG exercise.  There's no story, particularly, there, no character motivation, no real reason to do X and not Y, other than a pretty much entirely meta-game level examination of the situation.  Many of the traps could not be solved by a character within that game world.  Only someone with real world information could resolve many of the traps.  And that was the point of the exercise, to challenge the players and not the characters.  

An RPG which ignores character, is not longer role playing.  It's still a game, sure, but, what role playing is going on when the player is forced to make decisions based on his own real world knowledge, and not through the lens of the character that he is trying to portray.  In order to have an RPG, you need an R.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> I think that NeonC might be on to something here - an RPG is a game where the motivations of the character are meant to be a driving element of the game, isn't a horrible starting place for defining an RPG and nicely separates RPG's from most board games and even most video games as well.




I don't think starting with the goal of RPG is a good definition though. That gets us right back into Wick territory. On the surface this sounds reasonable but plenty of people play RPGs as themselves and don't care at all about character. But more than that, this definition suggests that tables where the motives of the characters are not a driving force (and in some types of adventures or styles of play they might not be) are not RPGs. I think these kinds of reductionist definitions are not helpful. At best we can describe what RPGs include and what they look like (i.e. generally a group of players taking on the role of characters with a GM managing play and dealing with externals like setting, but there are exceptions so these need to be included in the definition as well). I think we need to start honestly describing what people are doing rather than what we'd like them to do (and I include my own sets of biases and assumptions in here as well).


----------



## Celebrim

Neonchameleon said:


> Dislike it all you like.  According to AndyK, who runs the Story-Games forum that was what people were objecting to in My Life With Master that meant that it couldn't possibly be an RPG - so they came up with the term "Story-game" to describe it.  And it's the main point of difference between a lot of story games and most trad RPGs.




Sense when has an appeal to authority ever carried any weight with me?  If that was sufficient, citing that Wick was a game designer would be enough to get me to agree with him.  AndyK is simply wrong.   He's wrong at the level that we can point to counter examples.   Hillfolk is pretty obviously a story game, but is open ended.   If we play Tomb of Horrors as a one shot, and that tournament style format is my tables sole experience with D&D - every time we play it we run a stand alone scenario - then by AndyK's definition D&D is a story game.  Worse, we've now covered a set of games with goals and experiences that are radically different.   If by story game we are accepting D&D at its most tactical and least story centered mode of play belongs to the same genera of as a narrative generation system like Hillfolk, then surely the central element that they share is not a focus on 'Story'.   The term we've chosen 'story' is far less descriptive of the group as a whole than something like 'short' or 'closed'.   It would be like defining story as the characteristic that distinguishes short stories and novels.  

The more examples I think about, the more I'm certain that the difference between a story game and an RPG is a lack of procedural mechanics.   If you look at a traditional theater game (and working with the assumption that those games belong to a different class of games than D&D), you have a director that will assign roles and motivations and dramatic goals at the beginning of a scene - and sometimes intervening and prompting players if the scene appears to be flat.   Theater games have no procedural mechanics.  By and large story games play out exactly like theater games with one major exception - they have some sort of fortune mechanic that at least in part replaces or informs the role of the director in the game.  So by referring to those mechanics, you can decide what the roles are like, what sort of elements the scene might have, what sort of motivations the characters might have, and how the scene is to play out - as tragedy or comedy, or which character is intended to get the upper hand in the scene.   But in contrast to RPGs, story games like a means of resolving the actual process of the scene.  They rely on the players sense of timing and drama for how the processes are to play out, bearing in mind the stage direction given to them by the narrative or director mechanics.  "I got the low dice, I have to figure out how this goes badly for me."   Where as RPGs use fortune mechanics to resolve processes for individual events, story games are focused on resolving processes at the level of scenes.

Consider a game like Dogs in the Vineyard.  This is clearly a nar game with a focus on creating story.  But the game still allows for process resolution within the scene - whether or not you intimidate or persuade, whether or not you can beat a character on the draw, etc.   Dogs in the Vineyard remains an RPG with a story focus.  My Life with Master moves one step further away from that.  It's a story game with a clear RPG heritage.



> I'd not go for that side at all.  "In an RPG you can and are expected to use pre-existing elements of the fiction for which there are no clearly defined mechanics in the rulebook."  To me that's the critical difference between an RPG and various games like Descent and Arkham Horror.




It is certainly important, and I'd like to go there.  But if I went there, I'd be as bad as Wick.  I admit that 99% of RPGs as they are played at tables assume that the rules set is open ended - that is they assume the traditional "Rule Zero".   But just as 99% of RPGs as I've seen them played at tables involve some amount of method acting, I don't agree that any RPG that is played without method acting isn't an RPG - because tables can still choose to play them without method acting and they'd be missing IMO but still playing an RPG.   This is obvious to me as a computer programmer where I know Rule Zero can't be implemented - yet Mass Effect is surely an RPG - but also because I know some tables hate Rule Zero and do play with a largely closed set of rules were nothing that isn't explicitly permitted is allowed.   Yet, just because there imaginary space has a one to one correspondence with a game board, doesn't make it less of an RPG.   Consider my example of Chess played as an RPG a simplification of the type.  There'd be rooms in the dungeon.  There'd be roles to play in the party.  There'd be monsters to overcome and goals of scenarios.   It's an RPG.



> Which bit of "Whose line is it anyway"?




Well, all of it.



> Tabletop RPG or Trad RPG.  Or even Tactical RPG.




It still think it's not reasonable to relegate D&D to being something other than an RPG.  Saying that D&D is a TRPG is in the same category of saying its "not an RPG" if by that you mean it belongs to a subcategory of this sort, and not merely "an RPG played on a tabletop".   Plus, story games are played on table tops as well.   That's as bad as saying that "story game" is meant to exclude types of play based on length.



> No argument.  I'd also call it an RPG.




Why?  It is a theater game with some randomization elements regarding the roles and scenes you play.



> The objectives of the subgames in Whose Line is it Anyway are almost entirely meta.  Montsegur 1244 has logic following from the characters.




No wait a minute.  Theater games also have logic following form the characters.  Absolutely the scenes in WLiiA involve following the logic of the stage direction and the assigned characters.



> On this we agree   Where we differ is that Story Games _are_ RPGs




Only if we use RPG as the umbrella term for all sorts of dramatic play.  I don't agree that that is the best approach.



> Nope.  Doesn't fit either My Life With Master or Monsterhearts (which bills itself as a Story Game).  Or about half the other games under the banner of Story Games.  Of course what they choose as stats is ... non-traditional.




They have a fortune mechanic, but it doesn't dictate the process of play.   Focus some more on that 'non-tradional' aspect.



> Fundamental Law?




"Thou shalt not be good at everything."



> Trad Drama isn't a game in the same way.




No, but it is play.


----------



## billd91

Hussar said:


> Because _the relevance of fiction to framing and resolution_ doesn't exclude Microsoft Flight Simulator, as far as I can see.




If I'm reading pemerton right, if the fiction element pretty much has to allow the player's representative in the game to do just about anything it wants to try to do not just what the code or rules constrain it to doing. If you can't make crank phone calls to Ed Begley, Jr in-game while flying your aircraft at sufficiently low altitude to be picked up by the cell towers, then it's probably not an RPG. Otherwise, I don't think that definition would work because I don't think it would be able to distinguish a game like Advanced Squad Leader from an RPG either.[/QUOTE]


----------



## Umbran

Hussar said:


> Like any genre, you are probably better off trying to define the center and not the edges. When does fantasy become SF is an endless wank with no resolution.






Bedrockgames said:


> I think we need to start honestly describing what people are doing rather than what we'd like them to do....




And, now, these two points should get hooked together.

It also helps to sprinkle in qualifiers.  Rather than say, "In an RPG, players do X..." aim for, "In an RPG, players typically do X..."  Speak about what is common, but not what is always or never done - genre definitions based in absolutes often fail.

Oh, and figure out *why* you want a definition.  What purpose does the definition serve?  What *can't* you do without the definition?


----------



## billd91

I think people are being too quick to dismiss Tomb of Horrors and other S-series modules from the realm of PC motivations. Isn't that sort of thing up to the individual campaign to decide? Return to the Tomb of Horrors presents a fairly interesting in-campaign reason PCs might investigate and explore the tomb aside from just the desire for filthy lucre (which is a motivation for plenty of PCs - it certainly seemed to motivate the PCs in the original campaign).

I think it's true that most RPGs don't challenge just the PCs but also the players. I don't think it's very realistic to expect them not to and so I think any definition that expects the PC's motivations to be primary is probably too limiting. Playing a role isn't an on-off sort of judgment - it's a spectrum. If I play just based on the PC's mechanics, I am still playing a particular role that will be different from a role based on PCs with different mechanics - it's just not very far along the spectrum toward immersion. But I would submit it's still different from playing the role of "white chess player", "monopoly player", or "Munchkin player" in the sense that the game itself incorporates and encourages (even with just explanatory text and flavor rather than mechanics) developing and taking on the individual character's POV.


----------



## Janx

billd91 said:


> If I'm reading pemerton right, if the fiction element pretty much has to allow the player's representative in the game to do just about anything it wants to try to do not just what the code or rules constrain it to doing. If you can't make crank phone calls to Ed Begley, Jr in-game while flying your aircraft at sufficiently low altitude to be picked up by the cell towers, then it's probably not an RPG. Otherwise, I don't think that definition would work because I don't think it would be able to distinguish a game like Advanced Squad Leader from an RPG either.



[/QUOTE]

Probably the key virtue in a TableTop RPG is that if we are in a modern setting with Cellphones and my PC has a Ed Begley Jr's number, then the GM inherently has to allow me to attempt to call him.  Even though the rules don't cover it specifically.  The GM is expected to abjudicate it, even though it's outside of the rules.

I suspect it is relying on the Simulation aspect of the game, where the GM is trying to process things reasonably and plausibly.

In other games (like Advanced Squad Leader), that's not even possible.  If the squad captures a farmhouse, they can't dial the phone to call back home and tell Mom you're OK.  Because the rules don't exist and it is outside the scope of the game.

Personally, I would consider that an RPG typically has this flexibility of scope, and a non-RPG does not.  However, Computer RPGs have always lacked this capability, and if nothing else it is the dividing line for Table Top vs. Computer RPG.


----------



## Neonchameleon

Celebrim said:


> Sense when has an appeal to authority ever carried any weight with me?  If that was sufficient, citing that Wick was a game designer would be enough to get me to agree with him.  AndyK is simply wrong.




Eyewitness accounts matter.  And if _anyone_ has the right to define the term Story-Games then it's the person who runs the forum Story-games.com.  Rather than people (like the RPG Pundit or, for that matter yourself) who use it to define games they don't like.

That is what the term was created to cover.  It has drifted since then.  The only practical definition of a Storygame I'm aware of is "A game produced by those people over _there_."



> He's wrong at the level that we can point to counter examples.   Hillfolk is pretty obviously a story game, but is open ended.   If we play Tomb of Horrors as a one shot, and that tournament style format is my tables sole experience with D&D - every time we play it we run a stand alone scenario - then by AndyK's definition D&D is a story game.




The second is definitely not true - there is a difference between a game and a module.  If you were to invent an entire game to play Tomb of Horrors in and boil down the game to only that which was relevant to ToH then that would qualify.  

As for Hillfolk being "pretty obviously a storygame", not a bit of it.  Until you called it one I hadn't seen anyone call it one.  Hillfolk is certainly a Dramasystem.  But where is the actual Story part of Hillfolk?  It certainly draws on the Storygame tradition but is not itself one.  You could certainly use Hillfolk as the engine underlying a storygame, but that's an entirely different matter.



> Worse, we've now covered a set of games with goals and experiences that are radically different.   If by story game we are accepting D&D at its most tactical




Then we are creating a strawman.  Moving on.



> The more examples I think about, the more I'm certain that the difference between a story game and an RPG is a lack of procedural mechanics.




Congratulations.  You've just claimed that Monsterhearts, which claims on the cover, to be a Storygame  (and is so far as I am aware universally accepted by those who use the term for things they actually play) isn't one.  Disproof by counterexample.



> They rely on the players sense of timing and drama for how the processes are to play out, bearing in mind the stage direction given to them by the narrative or director mechanics.  "I got the low dice, I have to figure out how this goes badly for me."




And there goes the entire PBTA family.  Although most of them, to be fair, aren't Storygames.



> Where as RPGs use fortune mechanics to resolve processes for individual events, story games are focused on resolving processes at the level of scenes.




Except where they aren't.  See Monsterhearts for an example.



> Consider a game like Dogs in the Vineyard.  This is clearly a nar game with a focus on creating story.  But the game still allows for process resolution within the scene - whether or not you intimidate or persuade, whether or not you can beat a character on the draw, etc.   Dogs in the Vineyard remains an RPG with a story focus.  My Life with Master moves one step further away from that.  It's a story game with a clear RPG heritage.




And yet a lot of people consider Dogs a Storygame.  Not everyone does.



> This is obvious to me as a computer programmer where I know Rule Zero can't be implemented - yet Mass Effect is surely an RPG




It's certainly a CRPG.



> Yet, just because there imaginary space has a one to one correspondence with a game board, doesn't make it less of an RPG.   Consider my example of Chess played as an RPG a simplification of the type.  There'd be rooms in the dungeon.  There'd be roles to play in the party.  There'd be monsters to overcome and goals of scenarios.   It's an RPG.




As is the boardgame Descent?



> It still think it's not reasonable to relegate D&D to being something other than an RPG.  Saying that D&D is a TRPG is in the same category of saying its "not an RPG" if by that you mean it belongs to a subcategory of this sort, and not merely "an RPG played on a tabletop".




D&D may be an RPG and a good early one _but it does not get to define the entire category._  If the category excludes it it's wrong.  All Tabletop RPGs are RPGs.  Not all RPGs are Tabletop RPGs.



> Plus, story games are played on table tops as well.




And almost all of them are RPGs.



> Why?  [Montsegur 1244] is a theater game with some randomization elements regarding the roles and scenes you play.




You've never played sessions where you didn't roll a dice?  It's a game with victory conditions that follow from the logic of the character in which you use the fiction of the setting while expected to do things the designer never thought of.



> No wait a minute.  Theater games also have logic following form the characters.  Absolutely the scenes in WLiiA involve following the logic of the stage direction and the assigned characters.




In character victory conditions?  And "How can you use this ridiculous foam rubber prop" isn't the same thing at all.



> They have a fortune mechanic, but it doesn't dictate the process of play.   Focus some more on that 'non-tradional' aspect.




What do you mean "dictate the process of play"?



> "Thou shalt not be good at everything."




Alternatively: Thou shall not be the best at everything.  There's nothing wrong with assuming high baseline competence.


----------



## Janx

Umbran said:


> And, now, these two points should get hooked together.
> 
> It also helps to sprinkle in qualifiers.  Rather than say, "In an RPG, players do X..." aim for, "In an RPG, players typically do X..."  Speak about what is common, but not what is always or never done - genre definitions based in absolutes often fail.
> 
> Oh, and figure out *why* you want a definition.  What purpose does the definition serve?  What *can't* you do without the definition?




That is certainly a valid question.  Why does it matter what I consider an RPG to anybody else?  Or vice versa.

I assume because it offends somebody's sensibilities that something is included or excluded.

But unless we're the well respected Gaming Organization , I don't think anything we decide here is going to have much weight


----------



## Umbran

Neonchameleon said:


> Eyewitness accounts matter.  And if _anyone_ has the right to define the term Story-Games then it's the person who runs the forum Story-games.com.




Eyewitnesses, however, are notoriously open to bias. And while we can, as individuals, choose to consider someone's authority on a subject to help us estimate how likely they are to be correct, that authority does not substitute for them actually _being_ correct.

If "storygame" is "a game produced by those people over there", then it is a marketing term, not a term for analysis.


----------



## Neonchameleon

Umbran said:


> Eyewitnesses, however, are notoriously open to bias. And while we can, as individuals, choose to consider someone's authority on a subject to help us estimate how likely they are to be correct, that authority does not substitute for them actually _being_ correct.




They are also less open to bias when it's a text medium.



> If "storygame" is "a game produced by those people over there", then it is a marketing term, not a term for analysis.




That certainly seems to be how a lot of those critical of storygames use the term.


----------



## Bedrockgames

billd91 said:


> I think it's true that most RPGs don't challenge just the PCs but also the players. .




I think this point is essential and it is a dividing line that causes a lot of confusion and debate when people are discussing investigative adventures (some people want to be challenged, some people want their character to be challenged and some want a mix of both). 

Personally when it comes to investigations I lean on the GM challenging me the player, but like all people I don't fit neatly into that one box. I probably shift a bit between that and my character being challenged depending on the moment.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Neonchameleon said:


> They are also less open to bias when it's a text medium.
> 
> 
> 
> That certainly seems to be how a lot of those critical of storygames use the term.




One thing we need to get used to in the RPG world is words have different meanings depending on context and who is using them. No one really gets to control the words. But definitions are about identifying all those uses and describing them (not picking one and favoring it). 

I agree there are a lot of bad faith definitions of story games, but even those have use in that Story Game has that particular meaning when it is used by those folks who are hostile to the style. Obviously you wouldn't use that definition alone or give it primacy but you might mention it. Look at a word like Yankee. Outside the US it means someone from the US, inside the US, it means someone from the the north. In the North it sometimes means someone from New England, and in New England it can mean a person who traces their lineage to the mayflower. All of those definitions are valid but their context matters. In some of these cases Yankee isn't a good thing, it has a negative connotation. Accepting all these definitions doesn't mean accepting that anyone who can be described as a Yankee is worthy of ridicule, it just is an acknowledgement of particular uses. 

As long as our definition is descriptive and not proscriptive this shouldn't be an issue. When people start using one of these definition to enforce a norm in gaming, that is when issues arise. So when someone starts doing things like saying: Yankee is a term of derision for people from the North, therefore anyone from the North deserves our scorn, that is clearly a bad faith, illogical argument trying to use semantics as a rhetorical bludgeoning instrument and enforce an idea. I think it is the same with these various definitions of Story Game, Simulation, Immersion, etc. In some quarters those will be bad things, and in other quarters they may be good things. Both might also have different definitions of each one.


----------



## Umbran

Neonchameleon said:


> They are also less open to bias when it's a text medium.




I don't see how the medium matters.  Eyewitnesses give their *personal* view of events - especially when discussing the whys and wherefores.  That personal view is subject to emotional involvement and the faults of human perception and memory.


----------



## Celebrim

Neonchameleon said:


> Rather than people (like the RPG Pundit or, for that matter yourself) who use it to define games they don't like.
> 
> That is what the term was created to cover.  It has drifted since then.  The only practical definition of a Storygame I'm aware of is "A game produced by those people over _there_."




Ok, we're pretty much done then.  

I quite happen to like Story Games.  I think they are great.  I think it is wonderful innovation in the art and scope of gaming.  My hat's off to those that developed them.   I had thought we were trying to learn something about the design of games, and hone our language so that we could speak more clearly and more correctly than someone like Wick who is busy spouting nonsense like, "D&D is not an RPG".   But apparently that's not your motivation.   Your motivations is that you like the gobbledly-gook.  You are trying to argue for useless and flimsy definitions because for some reason you think that not being able to speak about something with precision protects your thing from criticism, and you are so focused on that that you are completely unable to imagine that anyone else in the discussion doesn't have the same motivation.  

Your fundamental assertion is that 'story game' has no meaning.  That's its just a veiled insult.   As such, you can't allow it to have meaning (because then the insult, as you perceive, might be pointed).   Personally, I don't like terms that have no meaning.  Words that have no meaning need to be tossed out, which is apparently your real desire, so what's the point of discussing this with you?

But somewhere along the line I find it really bizarre that Hillfolk - a game that uses the Drama Engine - is somehow definitively an RPG whereas MonsterHearts - which uses the Apocalypse World Engine - is somehow definitively a Story Game.    I'm not a strict believer in 'System Matters' but neither is system wholly unimportant.   The Apocalyse World Engine and the Drama Engine have very different traits and play out very differently in game.  These systems are so different that to me it seems obvious that they belong to different catagories of games.   Not as you would have it superior and inferior categories, not as something were we need to pretend the differences don't exist so that people don't get their feelings hurt, but as different sorts of games that might be equally enjoyable to some or not so appealing to others and all that be ok. 



> As for Hillfolk being "pretty obviously a storygame", not a bit of it.  Until you called it one I hadn't seen anyone call it one.  Hillfolk is certainly a Dramasystem.  But where is the actual Story part of Hillfolk?




You are arguing that Drama System and Hillfolk is not only not designed to put story first, but doesn't produce one?  Seriously?   



> Congratulations.  You've just claimed that Monsterhearts, which claims on the cover, to be a Storygame  (and is so far as I am aware universally accepted by those who use the term for things they actually play) isn't one.  Disproof by counterexample.




John Wick asserts D&D isn't an RPG.  Does that prove it isn't?   Some people on this board are asserting that everything that isn't OD&D is not a true RPG.  People can assert whatever they like.  Absent actual definitions - particularly in the presence of definitions that seem as yours do to just indicate which team you belong to - people are liable to assert all sorts of erroneous things.   At which point, this is nothing more than an alignment debate with someone that doesn't believe good and evil have definitions, so what's the point of labels beside identifying the colors of the hats.   And so now I finally see why everyone is talking past each other.



> And there goes the entire PBTA family.  Although most of them, to be fair, aren't Storygames.




Agreed.  Actually, none of them are story games.  



> As is the boardgame Descent?
> 
> I've never played it, but as far as I can tell, yes, yes it is.   The fact that D&D is sometimes played as a grand version of something like the boardgame Descent is precisely the sort of thing that provoked Wicks rant about how D&D is not in its essence an RPG.   Wick is like, "Everyone that isn't using low drama method acting at the table is not playing an RPG." and "If it has a weapons table, its' not an RPG because RPGs are about story."   All of which struck me as silly except that I think the problem is that Wick's vocabulary is starved.  Wick needs to say, "I prefer games that focus on story over process simulation to the extent that they totally deprecate purist for process simulation and don't feature it at all.  Hense, I like Story Games more than RPGs."   Wonderful.  Let's discuss the features of story games and how to make them great play experiences.   I'd love to add more types of games to my already broad gaming vocabulary.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Alternatively: Thou shall not be the best at everything.  There's nothing wrong with assuming high baseline competence.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Like the laws of Thermodynamics, there are a lot of ways to phrase the concept.
Click to expand...


----------



## Celebrim

Oh God.  This all makes sense now.  I was busy trying to figure out how people could write the sorts of things that they wrote, especially Wick, and now I get it.

As Wick is using the term, RPG is just a synonym for 'good'.  D&D is 'bad', D&D has things I don't like, therefore 'D&D is not an RPG'.   Apparently there are people ought there that have defined 'story game' as 'bad', so then something like "My Life with Monster is not an RPG (ei 'good'), it must be a Story Game (ei 'bad')" provokes comments like, "Oh No! It must be an RPG (ei 'good').  D&D is a board game! (ei 'bad')"

I finally understand this thread.


----------



## Hussar

Oh hell  [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] that's always been true.  Didn't you learn anything from the edition wars?  You've just summed up the past five or six years perfectly.


----------



## Celebrim

Hussar said:


> Oh hell [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] that's always been true.




I'm a high function autistic.  Sometimes things that should be obvious to me aren't.   I honestly thought people - even Wick - were seeking to find an accurate definition using  Socratic discourse in order to speak on the topic of game design and implementation with greater clarity.   That they are not literally for me a stunning revolution.  I physically gasped when I realized it and nearly fell out of my chair.

Sounds silly I suppose, but it's true.


----------



## Hussar

On the challenging players vs characters thing- I'd say that in rpg's you need a bit of both. If it only challenges one or the other it has probably gone too far and either stepped into story game territory or tactical board game. If we only challenge the character, it might look a lot like a CRPG where the player simply points the characters in the right direction.  If it's all on the player then it's a board game. 

An RPG needs both.


----------



## Celebrim

Hussar said:


> If it's all on the player then it's a board game.
> 
> An RPG needs both.




I'm not sure that I disagree, but for the sake of argument, do we agree that Bloodbowl is a board game?  If so, then it has at least some concept of "challenge the character"  Any board game with differentiated pieces (and a fortune mechanic?) challenges the character at least to some degree.  

While the fact that RPGs challenge both character and player seems to be reasonably true, even if we accept it as true, I'm not sure it is a distinguishing feature from other classes of games.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> On the challenging players vs characters thing- I'd say that in rpg's you need a bit of both. If it only challenges one or the other it has probably gone too far and either stepped into story game territory or tactical board game. If we only challenge the character, it might look a lot like a CRPG where the player simply points the characters in the right direction.  If it's all on the player then it's a board game.
> 
> An RPG needs both.




I don't think it becomes a non-RPG just because players are being directly challenged or just because characters are being challenged. Most tables probably have both but there are definitely groups who do just one or the other and they are most definitely still playing a roleplaying game.

Again this boils down to descriptive versus proscriptive definitions of RPGs. I know for a fact many game tables do the thing where you pretty much just challenge the players. i also know many tables who just roll their skills and never interact with the setting directly. I still consider these within the RPG hobby, and both are viable approached. The standard approach probably does include a mix of the two, but we shouldn't set up a definition that keeps these folks outside hobby or labels games that might focus on say players directly investigating a scenario outside the hobby.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Celebrim said:


> I'm a high function autistic.  Sometimes things that should be obvious to me aren't.   I honestly thought people - even Wick - were seeking to find an accurate definition using  Socratic discourse in order to speak on the topic of game design and implementation with greater clarity.   That they are not literally for me a stunning revolution.  I physically gasped when I realized it and nearly fell out of my chair.
> 
> Sounds silly I suppose, but it's true.




Yes I think this is what is going on. People are using definitions to make their way, the best way, the way that is truest to what an RPG is.


----------



## Umbran

Celebrim said:


> But apparently that's not your motivation.




I am not using mod-voice here, but dude, you probably want to back off.  Address the reasoning of the post, not the person of the poster.



> Your fundamental assertion is that 'story game' has no meaning.  That's its just a veiled insult.




Not necessarily.  If, in practical use, the term is muddied by having so many people use it many different ways, then it can be left in a state where it has no clear meaning.  This can happen with created jargon, and is not so much an insult as a realization that we, the community, are not of one mind on the topic.


----------



## Umbran

Bedrockgames said:


> Yes I think this is what is going on. People are using definitions to make their way, the best way, the way that is truest to what an RPG is.




Some people are, sure.  

People refer to "edition wars".  In my time as a moderator, I've realized that there's a generalization of this concept - the Dichotomy War.  It can be 3e vs 4e, Old School vs New School, Story game vs "Real RPG", or what have you.  Definitions are often used to draw the lines between Us and Them in such conflicts.  This is part of why I asked *why* folks want to define a thing.

But, some folks aren't - I'm not.  I question the driving *need* for hard definitions, but I'm willing to engage on the subject. I don't think Janx is trying to be warlike about it, either.  

And here's where we get to thinking of this as a genre, and using the genre-definition style - about inclusion rather than exclusion.  Things that have enough of the tropes, elements, or what have you fit in the genre, even if they also have things that are not normally found in the genre!  A thing can even (*gasp*) be a member of more than one genre!  The Dresden Files are both urban fantasy and noir detective stories, and that's okay!


----------



## Neonchameleon

Celebrim said:


> I had thought we were trying to learn something about the design of games, and hone our language so that we could speak more clearly and more correctly than someone like Wick who is busy spouting nonsense like, "D&D is not an RPG".   But apparently that's not your motivation.   Your motivations is that you like the gobbledly-gook.




The gobbeldygook is either me explainign unclearly or your failure to read, and your unwillingness to accept counter-examples.  My motivation is that your definitions simply aren't true and you keep to them despite counter-examples.  



> You are trying to argue for useless and flimsy definitions because for some reason you think that not being able to speak about something with precision protects your thing from criticism, and you are so focused on that that you are completely unable to imagine that anyone else in the discussion doesn't have the same motivation.




This is complete nonsense.  I've been demonstrating that your definitions fit two categories - ones for which there are counter-examples and ones which are meaningless.



> Your fundamental assertion is that 'story game' has no meaning.




And this is strictly false.  I have given story-gaming two separate meanings.  One of which is a game designed to be short in run time and not open ended and quite deliberately so, and based round a story structure.  More of that below.



> But somewhere along the line I find it really bizarre that Hillfolk - a game that uses the Drama Engine - is somehow definitively an RPG whereas MonsterHearts - which uses the Apocalypse World Engine - is somehow definitively a Story Game.




Look at the cover of Monsterhearts.  You might find it bizarre that it calls itself a story game.  But all that shows is that either (a) Avery Mcaldando is misrepresenting their game, (b) Your definitions are incorrect or (c) Monsterhearts is subtler than it looks.  I'm going with B and C.

And using the original definition of Storygame, as I was, with the finite story, Monsterhearts is one.  And not because you run off the end of the XP track.  It's either a superb or not very good game to analyse because there are a dozen or so factors that obfuscate this.



> I'm not a strict believer in 'System Matters' but neither is system wholly unimportant.   The Apocalyse World Engine and the Drama Engine have very different traits and play out very differently in game.  These systems are so different that to me it seems obvious that they belong to different catagories of games.   Not as you would have it superior and inferior categories, not as something were we need to pretend the differences don't exist so that people don't get their feelings hurt, but as different sorts of games that might be equally enjoyable to some or not so appealing to others and all that be ok.




The problem is that you are miscategorising.  Hillfolk calls itself what it is.  A Dramasystem.  And it was definitely inspired by Story Games.  System does matter.  But there is a huge difference between drama and a tightly crafted story.  At the top level very few Storygames aren't RPGs.  They are just one type of RPG.  oD&D is another.



> You are arguing that Drama System and Hillfolk is not only not designed to put story first, but doesn't produce one?  Seriously?




And this is where your definitions are incoherent and irrelevant.  A game of _golf_ produces a story.  There is no game that does not - and it's hard to think of a human activity that doesn't.  What Hillfolk is designed to do is not put story first, but to put drama first.  It's designed for conflicting PC interaction.  This is not, strictly speaking, necessary for a story.  And it doesn't help frame a complete one.  That's why the engine is called the _Dramasystem_.

If we look at Fiasco (as a very clear storygame), the thing is written round a five act structure.   Exposition: The setup.  Rising Action: Pre-tilt.  Climax: The Tilt.  Falling Action: Post-Tilt. Resolution: Endgame.

This mapping could not IMO be any clearer or more obvious.

My Life With Master also has a defined structure in the same way.  When one PC decides to attack The Master.  That's the climax.  And that triggers the start of Act 4.

If we look at Monsterhearts, things are not as obvious.  But they are there.  Act 2 runs long (as it should in a five act structure IMO, but that's me playing with lit crit).  And each of our screwed up kids is on their own separate storyline for a season.  But it has a defined climax that brings up the season end.  That's when someone manages to get their fifth advance.  At that point each PC can take one growing up move.  Which is a (normally positive) climax of their story.  They get to get over themselves in some way - or even spiral further.  And it changes their nature as a character (sometimes literally).  And after the climax, as in MLWM, the end is not far away.

You'll note that this is something you _may_ do in Apocalypse World (change Playbooks) - but in Monsterhearts _all_ the season advances fundamentally alter the PC, and they bring about the endgame.  It's a looser connection than in MLWM or (especially) Fiasco, but it's there.

I could go into detail about other games - but I think that that's enough to make the point.  (And no, the five act structure isn't essential - it's just a good one (and much better than the three)).

Dramasystem on the other hand doesn't do this.  Not even close.  It _might happen_ in Hillfolk.  There's no denying that.  It might also happen in D&D.  Hillfolk, however, has _not been designed round_ a story structure.  It's been designed round dramatic tension (and IMO treats dramatic tension in roleplaying games the way Michael Bay treats action scenes in movies).  There's no built in climax or endgame and certainly no specific climax that flows straight from the rules.  It calls itself what it is - a Dramasystem.  And focusses exclusively on drama.



> John Wick asserts D&D isn't an RPG.  Does that prove it isn't?   Some people on this board are asserting that everything that isn't OD&D is not a true RPG.  People can assert whatever they like.  Absent actual definitions - particularly in the presence of definitions that seem as yours do to just indicate which team you belong to - people are liable to assert all sorts of erroneous things.   At which point, this is nothing more than an alignment debate with someone that doesn't believe good and evil have definitions, so what's the point of labels beside identifying the colors of the hats.   And so now I finally see why everyone is talking past each other.




I've been saying throughout that the colour of the hats is a common definition.  And providing another one - and getting counters back that involve adding a story structure to a game by means of a module rather than designing the whole game round it - this makes about as much sense as giving all the PCs in a game of D&D first level commoner stats and putting them effectively through Montsegur 1244.  That's adding story-structure to a prior game and being left with a complete mess.



> Like the laws of Thermodynamics, there are a lot of ways to phrase the concept.




But some of them cause confusion.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Umbran said:


> Some people are, sure.
> 
> People refer to "edition wars".  In my time as a moderator, I've realized that there's a generalization of this concept - the Dichotomy War.  It can be 3e vs 4e, Old School vs New School, Story game vs "Real RPG", or what have you.  Definitions are often used to draw the lines between Us and Them in such conflicts.  This is part of why I asked *why* folks want to define a thing.
> 
> But, some folks aren't - I'm not.  I question the driving *need* for hard definitions, but I'm willing to engage on the subject. I don't think Janx is trying to be warlike about it, either.
> 
> And here's where we get to thinking of this as a genre, and using the genre-definition style - about inclusion rather than exclusion.  Things that have enough of the tropes, elements, or what have you fit in the genre, even if they also have things that are not normally found in the genre!  A thing can even (*gasp*) be a member of more than one genre!  The Dresden Files are both urban fantasy and noir detective stories, and that's okay!




I am not suggesting that any attempt to define is rooted in this. I think there are plenty of good reasons to have a working definition of something (even if only to label it for consumers so they can get what they want). In this respect terms like OSR, Story Game, Genre, etc can all be very useful. I think where it is a problem is when people use highly proscriptive definitions and it is clear their definition also just happens to align with their preferred style of play and exclude styles they dislike. Things I generally look for is how is the person arriving at their definition. If they take the OSR and simply try to describe what they see it including, that is fine. No problem. It is when someone starts playing games with root words or tries to reduce to come up with a definition that is obviously meant to exclude certain players, that I have an issue. This is something we see a lot of in gaming discussions and posters often don't realize what is going on so they fall into the trap of accepting a flawed definition and then trying to fit their position within it.


----------



## Neonchameleon

Celebrim said:


> Oh God.  This all makes sense now.  I was busy trying to figure out how people could write the sorts of things that they wrote, especially Wick, and now I get it.
> 
> As Wick is using the term, RPG is just a synonym for 'good'.  D&D is 'bad', D&D has things I don't like, therefore 'D&D is not an RPG'.   Apparently there are people ought there that have defined 'story game' as 'bad', so then something like "My Life with Monster is not an RPG (ei 'good'), it must be a Story Game (ei 'bad')" provokes comments like, "Oh No! It must be an RPG (ei 'good').  D&D is a board game! (ei 'bad')"
> 
> I finally understand this thread.




Pretty much.  And I've been misreading you because one thing the people who are trying to make that distinction as one of good/bad (and further claim in the case of the RPG Pundit that a collection of "Storygaming SWINE" are trying to subvert the hobby) always do is say that Storygames are emphatically not RPGs.  My apologies for misreading you that way.

As a rule of thumb (although not a hard and fast rule), people who try to claim that things only go in exclusive categories are generally in the good/bad camp.  People willing to have more than one subcategory on something are trying to classify it, and are aware that things sprawl across definitions.


----------



## Ridley's Cohort

Jester Canuck said:


> That passage just irked me.
> 
> See, the mechanics are there to let you play something you're not. You can play the genius and the mechanics will pick up the slack in terms of knowledge. You can play a gun nut and the mechanics will enable you. And you can play a charming smooth talking quick-witted James Bond type character and the mechanics will have your back.
> 
> ...
> 
> Half of roleplaying is being something you're not, being someone you can't be. If you can only roleplay to your strengths then that aspect is lost.




That passage irked me as well, and I think the problem is that Wick is employing a False Choice Fallacy.  We are not stuck with only the two choices of True Roleplaying or Mere Rollplaying.

It is not as if the DM is shackled into only resolving a social interaction by the standard of "if it does not charm _me_, then you are not charming".  The DM is inevitably going to employ a standard that is subjective to a significant degree.  Rather than feeling boxed in by this ambiguity, we can see this as an opportunity to tailor the resolution mechanics to the players at the table.

For example, the shy and poorly spoken player should be required to have his PC present his case to the king.  The king is never going to go against his perceptions of his interests simply because a Face skill.  But once a logical reason to interpret his own interests in a different light are presented, the player can use the dice.  (If the player and PC are both naturally gifted at persuasion, I probably do not bother to roll at all.)

Yes, a tongue-tied player will have disadvantages playing certain kinds of characters.  But I want to use his PC's skills as positive opportunities to stretch himself.


----------



## prosfilaes

Celebrim said:


> If you look at a traditional theater game (and working with the assumption that those games belong to a different class of games than D&D),




I would consider traditional theater games not RPGs because they don't consider themselves RPGs, and they don't descend from D&D. Games like Mars Colony: 39 Dark, My Life with Master, The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Sorcerer and Best Friends label themselves RPGs right up front, so I'd prefer to draw the lines inclusive of them. (Puppetland doesn't.) When most of the games in the genre call themselves RPGs; when they claim descent from D&D or The Fantasy Trip or offer thanks to Gygax; when there's no strong line between what we're considering RPGs and these games; I prefer to draw the line inclusive of them.


----------



## Janx

Celebrim said:


> I'm a high function autistic.  Sometimes things that should be obvious to me aren't.   I honestly thought people - even Wick - were seeking to find an accurate definition using  Socratic discourse in order to speak on the topic of game design and implementation with greater clarity.   That they are not literally for me a stunning revolution.  I physically gasped when I realized it and nearly fell out of my chair.
> 
> Sounds silly I suppose, but it's true.




I'm not an autistic, and I assumed folks were trying to define RPG as well.  Sometimes the problem is simply the manner in which a writer approaches a topic, and how a reader approaches it.

Hence why at various points I listed aspects that I think RPGs have that not-RPGs don't tend to have.


----------



## Celebrim

Umbran said:


> I am not using mod-voice here, but dude, you probably want to back off.  Address the reasoning of the post, not the person of the poster.




Since your not using mod-voice here, dude, why is it that you never notice that when I'm addressing the person of the post, it's because the poster has previously addressed my person?  I think I'd actually be ok with this being a standard, if it was actually one you applied equitably.

Read again what I'm quoting:

"Rather than people (like the RPG Pundit or, _for that matter yourself) who use it to define games they don't like._   That is what the term was created to cover. It has drifted since then. The only practical definition of a Storygame I'm aware of is "A game produced by those people over there." - emphasis added

Why is that you are always so one sided in how you apply those standards?  Why is it that you only have a problem with them, and can only see them, after some one else notices them, dude?   Are you actually addressing the reasoning of my post?  Because the reasoning of my post as I see it is quite clear.   Since the person I'm responded to stated what they thought my reasoning was, this became a window into me seeing the argument how they saw the argument.  For the first time I was able to see not just the argument, but a glimpse of the motivations and reasoning behind it.  New facts were provided to me that for the first time let me address the posters real underlying concerns - that is, that they believed that I was just trying to separate out Story Games for the purposes of demeaning them or trivializing them or putting them into the 'not fun' category.

I didn't just come to this point out of left field.  The point is, if someone believes that of my motivations, first there is no basis for a discussion, and second they are going to be consistently misreading me.   

And if you have a problem with the fact that I can be abrasive, that's a different problem, but consider that what you might not mean as abrasive can be very easily seen as abrasive by who you are speaking to, dude, even if you don't mean it to be and even in cases where it is abrasive you've just never considered the implications.   It's really really hard to figure out what people mean by what they say, and that is made even harder by the fact that on the internet even what few cues we might have just aren't there.  No smiles.  No body language.  No tone of voice.  

Do you probably want to back off, dude?  Are you addressing my substance or my person?  

Think about it.

And is "I am not using my mod-voice here, but...", the logical equivalent of, "I don't mean to be rude, but..."?



> If, in practical use, the term is muddied by having so many people use it many different ways, then it can be left in a state where it has no clear meaning.




Totally agree.  And in that is my interest and motivation in the thread.  I hate terms without clear meanings.   Is 'dude' affectionate or is it patronizing?   Veiled insult or just generic form of address.   No clear answer.   It's very hard to know what to do with that term, particularly in context.

What I would like is to be of one mind on the topic.


----------



## Celebrim

prosfilaes said:


> I would consider traditional theater games not RPGs because they don't consider themselves RPGs, and they don't descend from D&D. Games like Mars Colony: 39 Dark, My Life with Master, The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Sorcerer and Best Friends label themselves RPGs right up front, so I'd prefer to draw the lines inclusive of them. (Puppetland doesn't.) When most of the games in the genre call themselves RPGs; when they claim descent from D&D or The Fantasy Trip or offer thanks to Gygax; when there's no strong line between what we're considering RPGs and these games; I prefer to draw the line inclusive of them.




Self-identification is really helpful because it tends to avoid arguments.  

The problem with it is that it really only works if everyone knows what they are identifying as and has no real reason to misidentify.   It ends up really being just a hat to wear - I'm going to call myself a story game because I want to be identified as part of the story gaming community, or vica versa.   At which point, I consider the label to be useless - just unnecessary division.   So from my perspective either we need to decide RPGs have a definition other that self-identification, or we just need to recognize the term has no meaning and drop it in favor of something that actually does.  If RPGs have no distinctive features that distinguish them from games, lets just call them games.  And I think we all could agree we like games.


----------



## Umbran

Celebrim said:


> Since your not using mod-voice here, dude, why is it that you never notice that when I'm addressing the person of the post, it's because the poster has previously addressed my person?  I think I'd actually be ok with this being a standard, if it was actually one you applied equitably.




If you want to take it to PM, I'm happy to discuss it with you.



> And is "I am not using my mod-voice here, but...", the logical equivalent of, "I don't mean to be rude, but..."?




You'd prefer to *not* get less confrontational notes, and have me go straight to Official stance without conversation?  I was just trying to be a bit friendly about it, so as not to derail the conversation.  That seems to have failed.  I'll remember that for the future.


----------



## prosfilaes

Celebrim said:


> The problem with it is that it really only works if everyone knows what they are identifying as and has no real reason to misidentify.




Who has a reason to misidentify? And what does "misidentify" mean there? When an offshoot of RPGs colonized the idea space now known as story games, there's no nonarbitrary way to say whether they were RPGs or not. So when the authors of these story games, knowing their origins in RPGs, declared them RPGs, why should we argue?



> It ends up really being just a hat to wear




I wasn't arguing that this necessarily works on a game by game case, but when a whole subgenre calls themself RPGs, then I'm hard put to say that they aren't. 



> So from my perspective either we need to decide RPGs have a definition other that self-identification, or we just need to recognize the term has no meaning and drop it in favor of something that actually does.  If RPGs have no distinctive features that distinguish them from games, lets just call them games.




As I said previously, I think that too much focus on the definition of "roleplaying games" overlooks reality. Every person has a slightly different understanding of what "roleplaying games" means, and their understandings almost invariably will be prototype-based. If you ask them if My Life with Master is an RPG, they'll blink and ask you if that's anything like D&D or maybe Rifts or Vampire, depending on their base RPG. 

(Aside: One discussion at Wiktionary was over the definition of PC; ultimately the problem is you can't ask most people "do you consider an Alpha server running Windows NT a PC? What about Linux on x86? on Alpha or S/360?", because they have no idea what those mean, that those fuzzy edges exist.)

But in any case, not excluding story games from RPGs doesn't mean it has no meaning. Game creators have an understanding of what is and isn't an RPG; if a boardgame, no different from a dozen others, called itself an RPG, we could look at other boardgames like it, that neither the players nor the makers think are RPGs, and say it's not. But a lot of times it doesn't matter enough; if a storygame, daughter of Sorcerer, daughter of The Fantasy Trip, daughter of D&D, wants to call itself an RPG, I don't see the win in arguing that it's too similar to a theater game to be an RPG. 

(Likewise, there are number of country bands that rock more then a number of rock bands, but as long as they don't cross the line too far, it's easier to let them self-identify then to try and define exactly where the line between country and rock is.

Or, are two people related? Siblings are, nigh-universally. Someone who is pureblood Kikuyu and someone who is pureblood Navaho (no close ties by marriage, either) aren't, even though they share an ancestor not more than 100,000 years ago. What about two random descendants of Genghis Khan? What about people who share a common great-grandparent? Does the fact there's no bright line, that one person might answer differently based on the context, really make "related" have no meaning?)

In any case, nobody is going to mistake bridge for an RPG. The fact that we can't draw bright lines doesn't mean the concept is void. When my friend says he likes board games better then RPGs because the choices are more limited and more concrete, I can understand what he's saying without arguing out the fine lines.

(continued...) Note also that lines are arbitrary and even mobile. In another universe where Dungeon was labeled an RPG and similar boardgames were also labeled RPGs, I'd be arguing that they're included as RPGs. Had the storygaming idea space been colonized from theater games written by people who didn't have an RPG background, I'd be arguing they weren't RPGs.


----------



## JamesonCourage

Umbran said:


> You'd prefer to *not* get less confrontational notes, and have me go straight to Official stance without conversation?  I was just trying to be a bit friendly about it, so as not to derail the conversation.  That seems to have failed.  I'll remember that for the future.



Personally, I'd rather you do that in the future. When mods start modding without mod voice, it makes me wonder if I can do so as well. I can quite easily separate your mod posts from your personal opinions by the colors you use -when not using red or orange, you're just another poster, same as we are. As such, I assume that you'll be following the same basic rules that we all have to follow (that we agreed to when we signed up for the site). That means when mods use their non-mod voice, it sets an example of acceptable behavior on these boards.

If you want to mod, please, mod away. I love the moderation on this site compared to other sites I've visited. The moderation at several other popular RPG sites actively drove me away, in fact. But if you're going to mod, please be up front about it. It just makes it less confusing for me as a fellow poster.*

*A few years ago, when I was new, I was chided in orange for trying to mod another poster instead of reporting it. (I think you were the one that warned me, too, Umbran.) That helped define the roles of posters and mods on this site, and that was useful. It's confusing when I see some mods here (you and Morrus most often, in my experience) refrain from using your mod voice, since I've been chided for 'attempting to mod' years ago.

It's just easier if you skip to the mod voice. Use orange if it's not as confrontational. It's just a warning, not a hard slap-down like red is. Just my opinion. And I'm writing it openly because we're apparently allowed to discuss mod practices openly in this thread (no mod voice yet, including from a mod).


----------



## Hussar

Celebrim said:


> I'm not sure that I disagree, but for the sake of argument, do we agree that Bloodbowl is a board game?  If so, then it has at least some concept of "challenge the character"  Any board game with differentiated pieces (and a fortune mechanic?) challenges the character at least to some degree.
> 
> While the fact that RPGs challenge both character and player seems to be reasonably true, even if we accept it as true, I'm not sure it is a distinguishing feature from other classes of games.




I suppose, although, really, what character is being challenged?  There's no expectation of more character (as in thinking of the piece as having independent motivations that the player is trying to express) in Bloodbowl than there is in Chess.  The player is never expected to say, "Well, I don't think this piece would move there because he doesn't want to."  The expectations are entirely tactical considerations.  If  I (the player) move my piece here, I have these odds of gaining this result.   There's no character motivation or challenge is there?


----------



## Hussar

Profilaes said:
			
		

> In any case, nobody is going to mistake bridge for an RPG. The fact that we can't draw bright lines doesn't mean the concept is void. When my friend says he likes board games better then RPGs because the choices are more limited and more concrete, I can understand what he's saying without arguing out the fine lines.
> 
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Illusion-of-Game-Balance/page37#ixzz3H6e3u84W
> 
> 
> 
> I like the idea of RPG being a rather big tent concept.  Kind of like how Speculative Fiction divides into Fantasy, Horror and SF (with lots of bleed through in between - more of a Venn diagram than anything), I see the "genre" of Games dividing into things like Board Games, RPG's and CRPG's (With bleed through, and very obviously more categories under Games like Sports and others) again with lots of bleed through.
> 
> Like you say, no one is going to mistake bridge, or Monopoly or Risk as an RPG.  CRPG's obviously need some sort of Computer.  Just as there are lots of games on the edges that might be one or the other.  Is Diplomacy a role playing game?  It's bloody well close.
> 
> Bedrockgames - I do understand what you're saying about specific tables, but, then again, I don't think that's a particularly useful direction to take.  We have to stick to what the expectations of the game are, rather than how someone plays it. Otherwise, the categories really don't mean much.  If I play Baldur's Gate entirely in character, only taking actions that would make sense for that character, am I playing an RPG?  Well, maybe.  But, the game as it stands certainly doesn't presume that you will play that way.  Conversely, I could play D&D entirely in Pawn stance, 100% metagaming every encounter (which is how I think @Howandwhy expects RPG's to work) but, that doesn't mean that the game presumes that this is what you will do.  There is certainly an expectation within the game of D&D that you will create a character whose motivations and actions are separate from your own and that you, the player, will take those motivations into consideration when trying to portray the game.
> 
> As I said earlier, we need to focus on the middle, not on the edges.  Players who do nothing but reference the character sheet are not the expected norm of a player, and nor is the 100% meta-gamer.  The expectation of most RPG's that I can think of, is a mix of both where you have a little of column A and a little of column B.  When the expectations of the game move very far in one direction or the other, then I think it goes to the edge of the definition of RPG and then into something else, like Story Games where the expectation is that the player isn't really being challenged directly by the game but rather the expectation is that the player will, in part, create some of the challenges for the characters in order to craft a better story for the group.  Player decisions shift from "What can I do to make my character succeed in this situation?" to "What can I add to this situation to challenge this character?"
> 
> I guess, for me, this is why I don't mind that the definition of, "Role playing games focus on character motivations separate from the player" does sweep up something like Tomb of Horrors.  ToH is such an outlier anyway, that trying to include every single exception will result in a definition so broad that it becomes meaningless.  In the module "The Silver Key", PC's are transformed into Orcs in order to infiltrate an orc city.  The challenge is specifically directed at the players - characters gain "orc points" every time they do something "orcish".  So, if you burp or swear at the table, you gain an Orc point if anyone else in the group nominates you and the majority of the group agrees.  However, you also gain bonus xp for every orc point you gain, but, if you gain too many, you are forever turned into an orc.
> 
> Now, these are pretty much entirely Story Game style mechanics.  Certainly not something presumed by baseline D&D (even 2e).  If our definition of RPG has to include ToH, shouldn't it also have to include this?  But, if we include this, then we're pretty much back to square one where there is no differentiation between Story Games and RPG's.
> 
> In order to actually build a working definition, there will always be exceptions.  That's just how Genre works.  Is Star Wars Fantasy or SF?  Well, it depends on who you ask, mostly because genre is always porous.  Is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban Fantasy or Mystery?  Is Vampire an RPG or a Story Game?  Again, it depends on who you ask really.  I think the best we can do is build a fairly broad set of typical characteristics and simply accept that any definition will never be 100% accurate.  Try to define "forest" and you run into the same limitations of language.
Click to expand...


----------



## Celebrim

Hussar said:


> I suppose, although, really, what character is being challenged?  There's no expectation of more character (as in thinking of the piece as having independent motivations that the player is trying to express) in Bloodbowl than there is in Chess.  The player is never expected to say, "Well, I don't think this piece would move there because he doesn't want to."  The expectations are entirely tactical considerations.  If  I (the player) move my piece here, I have these odds of gaining this result.   There's no character motivation ....is there?




I snipped out two critical words so that I could agree with the whole statement.

All of that is true, but it doesn't mean that the character isn't being challenged.  Generally speaking, when we speak of a character being challenged, we aren't talking specifically about challenges to the character's beliefs and motivations - something that I think the "Indie" gamer crowd felt quite keenly.   In an RPG, when we speak of a character challenge we usually mean something that is overcome by recourse to the character's abilities, rather than the player's abilities as a diplomat, tactician, or problem solver.  

So for example, a puzzle door which must be overcome by a character succeeding on a Knowledge (Puzzles and Enigmas) check is a character challenge, where as a puzzle door that requires the players figure out the combinations that the different levers have to be sat at is a player challenge.   This is pretty obvious I think in a cRPG because we recognize in the cRPG that we are shifting to a minigame to be played by the player, rather than resolving whether the door opens with a pass/fail mechanic that references whether or not you have a character with at least a 75 in lockpicking.  

Of courses, some minigames can be both character challenges and player challenges.  Traditional RPG combat is of this sort.  You have to rely as a player on your character's combat abilities, but skillful deployment of those abilities and coordination between the players can improve your odds of a favorable outcome or reduce the amount of resources lost or committed during the combat.  

And in that sense, the character of the Bloodbowl player is being challenged during the game.   Can "Whiff Windtail" the Gutter Runner pass his 2+ agility roll now that you are out of rerolls?  Can that Black Orc Blocker actually manage to pick up the ball, go for it twice and score for the win?   Often victory or defeat in Blood Bowl comes down to being able to pull off those sorts of character challenges, where the player challenge is figuring out the least likely to fail path to success.   Sure there is no expectation that the character has a developed personality (though it might) but there is I should point out not necessarily any expectation that Black Dougal has a developed personality in a game of D&D beyond being 'the thief'.   Can Black Dougal perform an disarm traps check to stop the room from flooding?  Failing that can he find the secret door and open the lock to escape?   You don't have to play D&D as if the characters had independent motivation from the player, backstories, or personalities.   Some groups just don't.   Which I think gets back to Wick's complaint.   D&D has no real expectation that a character's beliefs will be challenged.  It cares very little about the character of the character.   You can play it as if the character of the character is very important, but Wick argues that if you don't have to play it that way, it's not an RPG.  

I don't agree, but I also don't agree that character challenge is unique to RPGs.  It's one of those things that is probably essential to RPGs (I'm trying to think of a counter example, but failing), but is not the unique and defining element of an RPG any more than story itself is (lots of things have stories that aren't RPGs).  Bloodbowl has adopted some RPG-like elements to provide for RPG like open ended game play.   But it is not I think an RPG just because it shares one or several elements with an RPG.  

What's missing in Bloodbowl is the idea of personification.  I may create a sort personality for Whiff Windtail, Warren Doom, Prince Charming and Angelina Balerina (and many other players I've had over the years).  I may even describe and add flavor to his moves on the game board to entertain myself.  But I'm never really acting out a role.  My relationship to the pieces remains basically the same as my relationship to the pieces on a chess board, save that since these pieces can persist from game to game, you develop something of an attachment to them.  

Now something like Bloodbowl or Necromunda shares so much in common with RPGs that I think it would take very few steps to turn them into an RPG, but then again, I don't think it takes many steps to turn a theater game into an RPG or chess into an RPG.  So I don't think it is going to turn out that the definition of an RPG is really complicated.  It's a game with certain features.  We know it when we see it.   We have some differences in the fuzzy edges but I think on the whole we can tell ravens from writing desks.   It's just going to be a matter of figuring out how to reify that understanding.


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## Hussar

I have no problems with that Celebrim.  I'd buy that.  I think your point about essential vs unique is telling and I think explains my point better than I did.  In RPG's, there is usually a pretty strong expectation that you will take on the role of your character.  You can certainly do that in other games, but, it's not expected.  Would that be a fair way to say it?


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## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> Bedrockgames - I do understand what you're saying about specific tables, but, then again, I don't think that's a particularly useful direction to take.  We have to stick to what the expectations of the game are, rather than how someone plays it. Otherwise, the categories really don't mean much.  If I play Baldur's Gate entirely in character, only taking actions that would make sense for that character, am I playing an RPG?  Well, maybe.  But, the game as it stands certainly doesn't presume that you will play that way.  Conversely, I could play D&D entirely in Pawn stance, 100% metagaming every encounter (which is how I think @Howandwhy expects RPG's to work) but, that doesn't mean that the game presumes that this is what you will do.  There is certainly an expectation within the game of D&D that you will create a character whose motivations and actions are separate from your own and that you, the player, will take those motivations into consideration when trying to portray the game.
> 
> As I said earlier, we need to focus on the middle, not on the edges.  Players who do nothing but reference the character sheet are not the expected norm of a player, and nor is the 100% meta-gamer.  The expectation of most RPG's that I can think of, is a mix of both where you have a little of column A and a little of column B.  When the expectations of the game move very far in one direction or the other, then I think it goes to the edge of the definition of RPG and then into something else, like Story Games where the expectation is that the player isn't really being challenged directly by the game but rather the expectation is that the player will, in part, create some of the challenges for the characters in order to craft a better story for the group.  Player decisions shift from "What can I do to make my character succeed in this situation?" to "What can I add to this situation to challenge this character?"




But what is the purpose of defining from the middle? What are we attempting to achieve? What is the utility? Clearly the hobby also includes lots of people who don't spend a single second thinking what their character would do and just roll skills, on the other end arepeople who don't worry about characterization but just play as if they are their character...yet in all these cases something is still going on at the table that constitutes a roleplaying game. Something about the structure of play still makes it RPG in my view (even when someone is just basically playing themselves). 

I do agree, some things are clearly not RPGs (like bridge or jump rope), there is an "I know it when I see it" element. But stuff that lots of people still view as roleplaying (i.e. playing my character straight from the sheet or playing myself) shouldn't be excluded from a definition of what the hobby. Those are valid ways to approach the game. I don't see why that suddenly makes it not a roleplaying game. Heck in the early days of RPGs tons of people basically just played themselves, there was even a variant skill system in the 2E PHB for having the player and character share the same sets of skills (what you know, your character knows). I don't think we should define these players away, nor should we define away games intended to cater to them. Calling those RPGs, does nothing detrimental to the hobby. What is detrimental to the hobby is setting up arbitrary lines that people are not supposed to cross if they still want to call themselves RPG players (I used to believe those lines myself, but I think they just constrain what we allow ourselves to enjoy).


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## Hussar

But, "I play the game this way, thus it's an X" isn't really helpful.  I'm not sitting at your table.  I have no idea what you're doing and it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for you to tell me what you do, other than in very broad strokes.  Like Celebrim says above, if I give personalities to my Bloodbowl players, is _Bloodbowl_ now an RPG?  I'd say no.  I'd say I've added role playing to a game and that Hussar's Bloodbowl might be an RPG, but, since I'm the only one playing (well, other than the other people at my table) then that definition isn't really helpful.

If I pick up D&D, there is an expectation, written right there in the rules of the game, that I will attempt to create a fictional persona (a character) and play the game through the eyes of that fictional persona.  That is right there in the game books.  I'm not making that up.  I'm not adding anything.  Anyone else reading those same books gets the same advice.  You don't have to play Hussar's D&D in order to do that.  

The purpose of these definitions is never about specific tables.  Why would you want to do that?  What difference does it make to that table what they are playing?  They aren't going to play differently depending on what label you happen to slap on.  But, if I talk about Fiasco and call it an RPG, I'm not really telling you what I'm doing.  I could probably play it as a more traditional RPG, but, then again, now I'm playing Hussar Fiasco and that doesn't help you either.  OTOH, if I label Fiasco a Story Game, that tells you something.  That tells you that this isn't really an RPG, and if you want to play an RPG, then Fiasco probably isn't what you should be looking for.  

The point of defining genre is to give everyone a common language with which to discuss whatever that genre is.  We gain a common acceptance of that genre and I can say, "Hey, I read a really good SF book last night, it's ..."  OTOH, if we try to include every single reader's views on what is SF, then someone who says, "Hey, I read a really good SF book last night, it's" simply leads to an endless list of questions to pin down how that person defines SF.  You might have that conversation anyway if the book is on the edge between SF and Fantasy, but, by and large, you now have a solid starting point and you can discuss the book without getting bogged down in semantics.  At least, that's the hope.  

By saying that X is an RPG, and RPG's share these traits, then when someone says, "Hey, this is a great RPG", I can know, with some degree of certainty what they're talking about.

Yes, we should be as inclusive as possible, but, trying to include very subjective perspectives into a definition is virtually impossible.  Someone who is acting at the table in a manner that the game does not presume, is something I'm fairly comfortable excluding from the definition of _that game_.  I do not want to define a table.  That's too subjective and idiosyncratic to ever be of any use to anyone other than the people at that table.


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## Celebrim

Hussar said:


> RPG's and CRPG's




I think that the majority of cRPGs are a subset of RPGs.  A few very simple cRPGs are probably more like tactical board games with RPG elements, but get called 'RPG's for lack of a ready term.   This is particularly true of some very simple linear cRPGs that ask you to play a team of characters, and give you no choices that aren't tactical.   But crucially, those sorts of games are often broken out of the main RPG genera by calling them TRPGs (tactical role-playing games).

Now that I think about it, Necromunda and Bloodbowl are probably pen and paper tactical role-playing games.  So TRPGs are probably skirmish level wargames that have adopted the open ended gameplay of RPGs, but not the rest that comes along with (whatever that is).  Since RPG elements are getting pretty ubiquitous in gaming showing up even in first person shooters like World of Tanks and Borderlands 2, if we are going to say any game that shares a feature with an RPG is an RPG I think this RPG tent is going to become really big indeed.  Am I roleplaying being a T-29 experimental American heavy tank fighting in a vaguely Korean setting against a mixture of other tier 7 tanks of various nationalities and from different eras?   I don't think so.   If I am, then something is wrong with your definition of role-playing, and of RPG if World of Tanks is one.   If World of Tanks is an RPG, then probably so is Monopoly and "Whose Line is it Anyway".


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## Bedrockgames

But Hussar we are not talking about a few specific tables we are talking about common styles of play, things you see people do all the time and things that are not breaches of the rules of the game. Even in early D&D in the rules it isn't terribly explicit in terms of what playing the individual character means. It wasn't like there was the clear bright dividing line between player and character that emerged later (at least reading Chain Mail and the White Box, that was my impression, I could be misremembering). I think that is a common aspect of RPGs that developed pretty quickly, i don't think it is essential for the definition of what an RPG is. Like I said I can play an investigative RPG where I am directly challenging the players the whole time. This doesn't mean I am not playing an RPG or doing it wrong. This is still within the framework of what most people understand an RPG to be. What your definition does is it eliminates this approach from the hobby. When I run investigations, that is how I prefer to play them. I don't want to challenge players through their Diplomacy skill or through their Detect skill, I want the investigation to be a puzzle the player solves, so the gap between player and character narrows when we turn to mystery adventures. I think this is still well within the scope of RPG. 

I am fine saying RPGs are about playing a character. But to me what you are saying seems to go beyond that, it seems to be saying it is also about how you play that character and it excludes very common ways of approaching characters in RPGs. If people want to refer to their character in the third person, treating it as a pawn with a list of skills on the sheet, that is fine.


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## prosfilaes

Hussar said:


> Just as there are lots of games on the edges that might be one or the other.  Is Diplomacy a role playing game?  It's bloody well close.




Not really. You don't play any role beyond a nation, and about half of board games give you that much role, at least; Lords of Waterdeep's Lords, for example. There's negotiation, but it's all at the player level; there's nothing in the game that encourages someone to play as their nation might, instead of optimally.



> We have to stick to what the expectations of the game are, rather than how someone plays it.




We don't have to. If there are a substantial number of people playing D&D purely tactically, or playing certain boardgames in character, that's interesting information. I don't know why we'd expect any game to be conceptually pure.



> But, if we include this, then we're pretty much back to square one where there is no differentiation between Story Games and RPG's.




Why should there be? Why should a group of self-proclaimed RPGs get evicted from the RPG space?


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## Hussar

But, what does "playing a character" mean?  If it's simply a pawn with a list of skills, then Squad Leader becomes an RPG, as does Battletech and Blood Bowl.  After all, a Blood Bowl character has a list of skills which the player uses to manipulate events in the game.  It's too broad.  

Again, you keep talking about your specific game, which is only played at your table.  What system are you using for this mystery game?  Does the SYSTEM support this style of play or have you drifted it into something else?  Of course you can play games this way.  But, if I play Monopoly and start role playing, does that make Monopoly an RPG?  Is World of Tanks an RPG simply because it includes some RPG elements?  Conversely, if I strip out all the role playing (in the common sense of the word - assuming a role in a fictional setting, even if that is meant to be you, personally, in that fictional setting) from an RPG, does that make it not an RPG? 

No, of course not.  

All the notions of "playing wrong" and other value judgements are not part what what we're doing here.  Saying D&D is a Role Playing Game because it presumes that the players will create a character within the fictional world and that character will have goals and motivations within that fictional world doesn't mean that you can't play D&D in other ways.  It's just that D&D does presume this to a large degree.  As do virtually all RPG's.  Once you no longer have that presumption of role assumption, you probably aren't talking about an RPG anymore.  

It doesn't matter how you use your Nissan 300ZX.  You can do whatever the heck you want to it.  But, when you buy a 300ZX, it's listed as a sports car.  Because, well, it has all the features of a sports car.  It is not listed as a family sedan.  I can use it as a family sedan if I want to.  I could use it as a really big paper weight if I wanted to.  But, when talking about either sports cars or my 300ZX in particular, it's not helpful to say that my 300ZX isn't a sports car.  

I mean, look, virtually every single RPG published in the last thirty years, certainly since AD&D 1e, has had a foreword section that says something to the effect of, "What is an RPG".  And virtually every single time, role assumption is the primary play assumption.  When you play Vampire, it's assumed that you are going to try to portray your Tremere as a certain kind of Vampire.  If you play D&D, it's assumed that your half-orc barbarian will be played as a certain kind of character.  Granted, you don't have to do this.  You certainly don't have to.  There is no have to in these presumptions.  But, at the end of the day, the writers of the game are assuming that that's what your going to do.  Don't play your paladin in a certain way?  Come on En World and start a hundred page paladin alignment wank thread when your DM strips your Paladin powers.    Don't play your fighter in a certain way, you are penalised during training and have to spend extra in game time and money to gain a level.  On and on and on.  

How someone is playing the game is not relevant to trying to define the genre the game belongs to.  You have to look at the game itself.  Monopoly isn't a role playing game because there is absolutely no presumption of roll assumption.  Same as Chess.  D&D is a role playing game because the rules presume you are going to assume a role.  Again, there are fuzzy bits at the edges - is Tomb of Horrors a role playing game module or a Tactical RPG (I think the latter to be honest)?  But, at the end of the day, we have to work from what the game says, not what someone claims they use the game for.  Pounding in a nail with a screwdriver does not make the screwdriver a hammer.


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## Hussar

prosfilaes said:


> Not really. You don't play any role beyond a nation, and about half of board games give you that much role, at least; Lords of Waterdeep's Lords, for example. There's negotiation, but it's all at the player level; there's nothing in the game that encourages someone to play as their nation might, instead of optimally.
> 
> 
> 
> We don't have to. If there are a substantial number of people playing D&D purely tactically, or playing certain boardgames in character, that's interesting information. I don't know why we'd expect any game to be conceptually pure.
> 
> 
> 
> Why should there be? Why should a group of self-proclaimed RPGs get evicted from the RPG space?




Evicted?  Why the negative phrasing?  Defining a game as a story game or an RPG is helpful.  It lets us know what to expect.  That's what genre definitions do.  They allow for a common language in order to discuss something.  Most definitions of SF would not include Star Wars.  Mostly because Star Wars doesn't use most of the themes you would expect to find in an SF story.  It's far closer to fantasy.  Does that make Star Wars a less interesting story to say it's fantasy and not SF?  No, not really?  But, it's useful in categorising what to expect if you sit down to read or watch Star Wars or it's related stories.  I certainly wouldn't expect an A. C. Clark style story in the Star Wars universe.  Hard SF in Star Wars?  Not a very good fit, IMO.

Sure, how people play games might be interesting in its own right, but, it's not terribly useful in a categorisation exercise.  Lots of people open bottles with lighters.  Does that mean lighters are bottle openers?  No.  It's an interesting point, but, when trying to define what a lighter or a bottle opener is, it's not terribly useful.  Would you define the word lighter by referencing bottle opening?  Would you define the word bottle opener with references to a lighter?  Not likely.  There's no difference here.

Once you get away from the value judgements that are not really inherent to the terms themselves, it gets a lot easier to have a discussion.  "I don't like story games, so, any game I play isn't a story game" or, "Boardgames are boring, any game I don't like is similar to a board game" are lines of thought that never go anywhere.  It's what [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] referred to earlier in that the negative and positive connotations are more tied to the speaker than the terms themselves.  Once we can get past that, then we can actually start speaking the same language.


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## prosfilaes

Hussar said:


> It doesn't matter how you use your Nissan 300ZX.  You can do whatever the heck you want to it.  But, when you buy a 300ZX, it's listed as a sports car.  Because, well, it has all the features of a sports car.  It is not listed as a family sedan.  I can use it as a family sedan if I want to.  I could use it as a really big paper weight if I wanted to.  But, when talking about either sports cars or my 300ZX in particular, it's not helpful to say that my 300ZX isn't a sports car.




I think it unhelpful to look at the SUV and act like it's a sports or utility vehicle. Any realistic understanding of the SUV requires understand that no matter what the ads say, no matter what the dealers are selling, many, possibly most, of them are used as minivans. And the better selling SUVs are designed with features that support that, no matter how much they advertise off-road performance. I don't trust forewords to accurately reflect how the game is being played, or even necessarily how the game is designed to be played. I'm curious if WoD authors ever had that explicit contrast put to them, the need to sell the game as dramatic, angsty art and yet write stuff that appeals to the group of people who just wanted to play vampires and werewolfs for maximum carnage. 



> How someone is playing the game is not relevant to trying to define the genre the game belongs to.




Nothing else matters other then what happens when the rubber meets the road. Has Magic: the Gathering always been a collectible card game? When first released, they did not fully expect the randomness and rarities to interact the way they did to produce the first CCG. Should we look at what WotC intended, or how it's always been played in practice?



Hussar said:


> Evicted?  Why the negative phrasing?  Defining a game as a story game or an RPG is helpful.  It lets us know what to expect.  That's what genre definitions do.  They allow for a common language in order to discuss something.  Most definitions of SF would not include Star Wars.




Any definition of SF that did I would expect to be negative towards Star Wars. Star Wars derives from deep SF roots and much SF has grown from it. You want to say that Star Wars is not science fiction, despite it coming from a rich heritage including the Lensman series, then you're making up a new definition that doesn't match who people use the word science fiction. Prescriptive definitions of a genre like that are almost always to evict someone; that's not really "heavy metal" or "country" or "science fiction". 

Descriptively? Everyone accepts Star Wars as science fiction. People who aren't trying for negative phrasing simply label it as space opera or not hard science fiction and move on.

Likewise, again, 5 out of 6 story games I had at hand labeled themselves RPGs. By giving a definition of RPG that excludes them, you're telling an entire group of people, some of whom are established writers for games that (almost) everyone agrees are RPGs, that despite what they think, they're not writing roleplaying games. That is negative. Why not accept that there's "story games" and "traditional RPGs" all under the RPG umbrella, instead of writing a definition that excludes a bunch of things labeled and understood to be "roleplaying games" from the genre?


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## billd91

prosfilaes said:


> Nothing else matters other then what happens when the rubber meets the road.




No, self-definition has to matter even if people don't always use the game to its fullest design potential.


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## Bedrockgames

I would think how people play the game matters a great deal.


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## Bedrockgames

The whole Star Wars and sci if thing is apt here I think. I am a hard sci-fi fan. As a kid I loved stiff like Rama more than Star Wars. But I think attempts to define Star Wars out of the genre are really just a way for folks like me to sneer at Star Wars fans. It clearly has connections to the genre and clearly had an influence on it. There is a spectrum of hard to light sci fi but the genre shouldn't be defined solely around the hard sci go end of the spectrum.


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## Umbran

Hussar said:


> Evicted?  Why the negative phrasing?  Defining a game as a story game or an RPG is helpful.




It can be helpful.  It can be harmful.  The effect of labels depends upon context.

You are in the context of a message board that has, over the years, seen a great deal of divisiveness.  So, keep that in mind.



> That's what genre definitions do.  They allow for a common language in order to discuss something.




It is only common if we, in fact, agree upon it.  



> Sure, how people play games might be interesting in its own right, but, it's not terribly useful in a categorisation exercise.




Oh, it can be quite useful.  Your Star Wars analogy rather proves that.  Yes, from the point of view of a literary critic, Star Wars is at best Space Opera, and may well be fantasy.  But, if you shelve it with the fantasy movies, the public will, perforce, be confused, and not find it when they are looking for it.  This should tell you something about your categorization - it is missing something relevant to the bulk of users!

And, if your response is to say, "I don't care what users think!  My ideology is more important!"  well, then we know where we stand, don't we?

Designers are not perfect - sometimes, what they intend to make, and what the effectively make, are different things.  What a thing is designed to do is not nearly so important as what is actually accomplishes, and that is generally seen in how people use it.  If that lighter, in fact, doesn't light very well, and is rarely used to produce flame, but in practice gets used to open bottles all the time, well, that tells you something important, and you are remiss if you ignore it.

The categorization for the sake of having categories is itself useless.  There must be a point to sorting things, or the activity is wasted energy.  So, I ask again - what is the point of having definitions?  What is the purpose of the exercise?  What are we trying to gain?  Tell us that, first.  

And no, "a common language we can all understand" isn't sufficient.   What is that language to be used to accomplish?  Proscriptive definitions are not themselves something we can learn from, except in the sense that if we use them, and find we come to nonsensical results, we know the definitions are flawed.



> Lots of people open bottles with lighters.  Does that mean lighters are bottle openers?  No.




Actually, if people use your lighter more for opening bottles than for lighting fires, that tells you something about your lighter design.  The proof, sir, is in the pudding, not on the drawing table.  This is something that the folks over at The Forge missed out on - their theories came from their heads, rather than from empiricism, and it shows.


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## prosfilaes

billd91 said:


> No, self-definition has to matter even if people don't always use the game to its fullest design potential.




Yes, what the creator thought of his creation does have to factor in. But I don't get what that has to do with the second part; it's possible the self-definition is unachievable in the game system or that the fullest design potential is more then what the designers dreamed of. I'd pull out Starcraft and probably OD&D for the second, and any number of failed games for the first.


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## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> The whole Star Wars and sci if thing is apt here I think. I am a hard sci-fi fan. As a kid I loved stiff like Rama more than Star Wars. But I think attempts to define Star Wars out of the genre are really just a way for folks like me to sneer at Star Wars fans. It clearly has connections to the genre and clearly had an influence on it. There is a spectrum of hard to light sci fi but the genre shouldn't be defined solely around the hard sci go end of the spectrum.




I suppose that gets into what Umbran is saying about shelving the movie at the video store.  The general public doesn't really care about literary criticism.  So, which one is right?  The general public for viewing it as SF because it has robots and lasers, or someone who is trying to categorise it by theme?  Well, I suppose, at the end of the day, they are both right.  You are going to confuse people if you put it in fantasy because that's not what people envision when they talk about fantasy.  For those of us who spend probably far too much time trying to work through what a genre actually is, it's probably better placed in fantasy.  It's pretty much straight up heroic fantasy - cast of thousands, fate of the world, classic quest themes, magic powers, wizards and knights.  

So, I guess, the question becomes, when defining RPG, who are we defining it for?  Is it for someone just off the street who has only a basic knowledge of RPG's?  Then, fine, giant umbrella term it is.  Is it for someone like probably everyone posting in this thread, who has played a number of different games, knows that there are differences between them and that those differences might be enough to warrant a different classification.

Then again, I'm all for simply using RPG as the umbrella term.  It is what the general public would call everything we do.  So, RPG gets shifted to the same level as Speculative Fiction as a genre classification, with story games, traditional games, and maybe a couple of other sub categories (horror?  Comedy?) thrown in.  I could certainly live with that.


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## prosfilaes

Hussar said:


> It's pretty much straight up heroic fantasy - cast of thousands, fate of the world, classic quest themes, magic powers, wizards and knights.




It's pretty much straight up heroic fantasy; a magical society spends a millennium working towards the birth of the Chosen One, whose his family gets killed and who is exiled to the savages, where he rides the wild animals to impress them and learns the gift of prophecy, then leads them swords in hand back to defeat those who killed his family and deposed him from his rightful place. And yet, I suspect most of the people who would blithely label Star Wars fantasy would object to my labeling Dune fantasy.

Wizards are pretty common in science fiction, from Star Trek's Q to The Rowan's T1s to E. E. Smith's Lensmen. You're cutting out a lot of what's understood as the genre by that definition. And it's a little suspicious that the statement is always about Star Wars, a popular piece, instead the more thought provoking discussion of stuff like Dune.and Stranger in a Strange Land. 



> there are differences between them and that those differences might be enough to warrant a different classification.




In the Dewey Decimal System, cookbooks covering Mediterranean cultures go in 641.591 and African in 641.596. That distinction was made because there are sufficient differences to warrant a different classification, and yet somehow it was done without defining one set or the other to not be cookbooks.

It's fine to classify works. The problem is when you then want to take a term that has a general understanding and attach a category to that term that excludes much of what's understood to be in that category. It's easy to say that Star Wars isn't hard science fiction, and uncontroversial, because the phrase "hard science fiction" actually is a decent fit to the concept you're offering.



> RPG gets shifted to the same level as Speculative Fiction as a genre classification




I don't understand. You seem to be stating as objective fact the comparison of two incomparables. If we're talking by size, roleplaying games as a group are hardly anywhere near speculative fiction; on LibraryThing, the top 8 books are speculative fiction (all fantasy), whereas the most held RPG book (PHB 3.5) is in position 8,317, and there are 1.5 million uses of the tag "fantasy" and 74,000 for RPG.  I don't know that I can claim that Monopoly has always outsold roleplaying games, but I bet there haven't been more then four months in the last 40 years where RPGs beat that one board game for gross sales. Including storygames takes a tiny genre of games and makes it a bit larger.


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## Hussar

Whoops, that was unclear.

What I meant is that RPG becomes the umbrella classification, like Speculative fiction, not that RPG is anywhere near the same size.  

What I meant was that I'm not opposed to RPG being the overarching classification, same as Spec Fic , and that we then subdivide RPG into different flavours, same as Spec Fic gets subdivided.  

It wasn't meant to be a comparison of size.

So it would looks something like this: 

Games - RPG - (various more specific flavours of RPG)

Would that be acceptable?


----------



## Umbran

prosfilaes said:


> Wizards are pretty common in science fiction, from Star Trek's Q to The Rowan's T1s to E. E. Smith's Lensmen.




Nitpick - E.E. "Doc" Smith's work is generally considered Space Opera.  It is Science Fiction only in the "shelving" sense I noted above.  In terms of themes and tropes, it sits pretty well with, say, the John Carter stories - adventure, in space, with little or no science present.


----------



## prosfilaes

Umbran said:


> Nitpick - E.E. "Doc" Smith's work is generally considered Space Opera.  It is Science Fiction only in the "shelving" sense I noted above.




And since when has space opera not been considered science fiction? It is science fiction in every generally accepted sense; the tags on Librarything for Galactic Patrol include 238 times tagged "science fiction", 82 times "sf", 53 times "space opera", 26 times "sff", 2 times "H. Beam Piper"*, 2 times "adventure", 1 time "hard sf", and 1 time "fantasy". (* Yes, I know that Galactic Patrol was written by E.E. Smith. No, I don't know why anyone would tag it H. Beam Piper.) Looking at those numbers, I'd say putting it in any other genre then science fiction is beyond minority into marginal. Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke considered E.E. Smith the first nova of twentieth-century science fiction. 

These exclusions really do make excluding D&D from the RPG genre seem more reasonable.


----------



## Umbran

prosfilaes said:


> And since when has space opera not been considered science fiction?




Thank you for asking.  That's kind of the point, now isn't it?

The term "science fiction" as a commonly used thing dates to about 1929 (before then, they were more often called "scientific romance").

The term "space opera" dates to 1941 (thank you, Wilson Tucker)

"Sci-fi" dates to 1954 (Forrest J Ackerman, of course.)

So, literary recognition of the distinction of Space Opera from other forms dates to about 1941.

We can argue about whether Space Opera (or Science Fantasy, for Star Wars) is a sub-genre or a parallel genre.  That argument will be academic, and largely unconstructive.  Kind of like the argument about "Story Game" and "RPG".


----------



## prosfilaes

Umbran said:


> So, literary recognition of the distinction of Space Opera from other forms dates to about 1941.




As a distinct set of literature, maybe, but not as distinct from science fiction.



> We can argue about whether Space Opera (or Science Fantasy, for Star Wars) is a sub-genre or a parallel genre.  That argument will be academic, and largely unconstructive.  Kind of like the argument about "Story Game" and "RPG".




In the English language, space opera is a subset of science fiction, at least outside specialized context. Claiming it isn't is like me pointing out that English wasn't around in AM 1929, during the reign of Senusret III, because we can argue about whether 1929 means AD 1929 or AM 1929.

It's not much like the argument about "story game" and "RPG", since the majority of people using the term RPG have never heard of "story games" and have no real opinion on the subject.


----------



## Umbran

prosfilaes said:


> It's not much like the argument about "story game" and "RPG", since the majority of people using the term RPG have never heard of "story games" and have no real opinion on the subject.




I don't think the majority of folks who partake of scifi know what "space opera" is either.  It isn't exactly a household term, and most of the works for which the term most solidly holds are out of vogue. 

But, I think it is more properly akin to discussion of whether modern birds are dinosaurs than your year-distinction.  Yes, some folks, coming from one point of view, will say that, having an origin in the older classification means that older classification will hold forever.  Others, take a more functional view - Space opera and science fiction have differentiated trope-sets, and should be considered parallel at this point.  

But, see my previous note about how arguing over this would be academic.  It serves no practical purpose.  Nothing is gained by wrangling over it.


----------



## Janx

Umbran said:


> I don't think the majority of folks who partake of scifi know what "space opera" is either.  It isn't exactly a household term, and most of the works for which the term most solidly holds are out of vogue.
> 
> But, I think it is more properly akin to discussion of whether modern birds are dinosaurs than your year-distinction.  Yes, some folks, coming from one point of view, will say that, having an origin in the older classification means that older classification will hold forever.  Others, take a more functional view - Space opera and science fiction have differentiated trope-sets, and should be considered parallel at this point.
> 
> But, see my previous note about how arguing over this would be academic.  It serves no practical purpose.  Nothing is gained by wrangling over it.




Yup.

What are we going to call Science Fiction or Space Opera when we've colonized 20 other star systems?  When does Starship Troopers go from Science Fiction to War Story.  Alien becomes a man vs. nature story.


----------



## prosfilaes

Janx said:


> What are we going to call Science Fiction or Space Opera when we've colonized 20 other star systems?




What do we call Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea today?


----------



## Hussar

Umbran said:
			
		

> But, see my previous note about how arguing over this would be academic. It serves no practical purpose. Nothing is gained by wrangling over it.
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Illusion-of-Game-Balance/page40#ixzz3HOJmQ01w




I'm not sure that it serves no practical purpose.  For example, for all the problems with Forge criticism, it has given people a set of tools with which to talk about RPG's.  Now, I'm not saying that Forgisms are right or they should be taken as gospel.  Of course they shouldn't.  But, to simply dismiss it as "academic" is a disservice as well.

When Robin Laws comes along and talks about the different kinds of players you find around an RPG table, that's no different.  No one is 100% one kind of player or another, but, it is useful, both as a self reflexive tool and as a means for resolving table issues, to be able to point to some fairly commonly accepted definitions of play style and talk about them.

I think it's very useful to have these sorts of classification discussions.  It forces people to examine pre-conceptions about different games.  In particular, it can really shine light on why a game might be better or worse at some kinds of activities.

 [MENTION=40166]prosfilaes[/MENTION] - why wouldn't Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea be considered Science Fiction.  It's got all the basic themes right there - an examination of how man fits in with his world through technology.  That's fundamental SF right there.  To be fair, some of the really early SF, particularly the Pulp stuff, is kind of its own thing.  Much of it is simply an adventure story with some ray guns and space ships tossed on.  None of the SF themes are there.  Compare to H. G. Wells, where, even though it's very negative towards science (after all, the only thing that saves mankind is a microbe), it's still a story about what it means to be human in the face of the alien.  

Rolling this back around to RPG's, you cannot ignore the text of the game if you are going to classify it.  



> I don't trust forewords to accurately reflect how the game is being played, or even necessarily how the game is designed to be played.
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Illusion-of-Game-Balance/page38#ixzz3HOMBw6JJ




But, you trust purely anecdotal evidence that cannot ever be verified?  How many people play in a certain way?  Beyond, "Well, I know a guy (or guys) who do it this way, so, that's the way the game is played" is not terribly useful.  It just comes down to dueling anecdotes.  Your example of SUV's is a bit different because we can actually look at market research (if we had access to it) and find out how people are using SUV's.  Although, even then, which people?  Middle class American suburbanites or maybe people in Afghanistan.  Do we include Range Rovers or not.  

And, even a large segment of people are using SUV's as a minivan, what difference does that make?  Other than, yes, you can use it as a minivan.  It doesn't change what the car was designed for.  I can use a Hummer as a minivan, but, again, I wouldn't say that's it's primary design goal.  

You cannot ignore the text of the game when criticising that game.  It would be like saying we can ignore the movie Star Wars when criticising the movie Star Wars.


----------



## prosfilaes

Hussar said:


> why wouldn't Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea be considered Science Fiction.




I didn't say it would or wouldn't, but it's an example of where technology in the fiction is completely here, which goes to the question I was responding to.



> But, you trust purely anecdotal evidence that cannot ever be verified?  How many people play in a certain way?  Beyond, "Well, I know a guy (or guys) who do it this way, so, that's the way the game is played" is not terribly useful.




It could in theory be verified, and we certainly do know for some major games in what ways many people play them in off-brand ways. 



> And, even a large segment of people are using SUV's as a minivan, what difference does that make?  Other than, yes, you can use it as a minivan. It doesn't change what the car was designed for.




In reality, it does change how the car was designed and natural selection will add more to that. If the producers of a car know that SUVs sell as SUVs and are used as minivans, they don't have to worry about making it a good off-road vehicle. It has to look like a good SUV, has to sell to the family who believes they're going to be exploring the wilderness every weekend, and work like a good minivan. And to the extent that the designers don't do, the market probably will. The stories in the air will be how the SUV did fail them, not how it would have had they gone off-road.

For RPGs? Again, I have to wonder if Werewolf and Vampire employees ever with forethought added the high-concept intro but wrote a decent part of the book for the people who wanted their characters to rip out human throats with their teeth. Even to the extent they didn't, I bet that was part of the thing that shaped the White Wolf market, that caused Changeling and Wraith to fail while Werewolf and Vampire raged on; that is, that section of the market supported those games that facilitated ultraviolence as well as the high concept and didn't support those games that supported only the high-concept genre all the White Wolf were seemingly designed for.

So, yes, I do believe it changes how they were designed, that they wrote books that would sell, which are those that support the styles the customers want.



> You cannot ignore the text of the game when criticising that game.  It would be like saying we can ignore the movie Star Wars when criticising the movie Star Wars.




To the extend I said you can ignore the text of the game, I repudiate that. (But I don't know where "criticizing" came from.) But the text of the game is more like the screenplay of the movie then the movie itself, since the game is not normally enjoyed by reading it alone (well, at least to the extent it is, I believe that's beyond the scope of the current discussion.) And certain movies and certain games may have inexplicable popularity until you understand what's going on. Rocky Horror Picture Show is a minor picture blown up by how the audience responded to it. I don't think you can truly understand any edition of D&D without understanding what came before it. Why the set of races in D&D 5? Not a single race could the developers really say "we needed this type of race of the type of fantasy we wanted" instead of "we didn't want the Gnomish Liberation Army to hit our houses again" and "we kept getting anonymous emails with pictures of dragons swallowing gnomes whole and the gnomes had the faces of D&D developers on them".

And who really cares how the game is supposed to be played? We're gamers, and good games are ones that play well in practice, and frequently even if the developer is there to explain how it's supposed to be played, maybe people like it better this way! Nothing really matters but the game in play.


----------



## Umbran

Hussar said:


> I'm not sure that it serves no practical purpose.  For example, for all the problems with Forge criticism, it has given people a set of tools with which to talk about RPG's.  Now, I'm not saying that Forgisms are right or they should be taken as gospel.  Of course they shouldn't.  But, to simply dismiss it as "academic" is a disservice as well.




Let us be clear about what I said - I said that argument over definitions would be academic, and non constructive.   Not that definitions can't be useful, but arguing over them isn't.

Can you demonstrate to me that Forgisms were brought about through argument?  As I know the history, it isn't the process that developed Forgisms.  Yes, there was a lot of argument over them, but ultimately they came to be what Ron Edwards said they were, the argument over it was largely academic - the functional bits just came form Edwards, personally.  Basically, for all the discussion, Forgisms are the construction of one man, not a committee.

And, as with Forgisms - you need a purpose to make the definitions useful.  At the Forge, Ron Edwards, personally, had some goals in mind.  I have asked repeatedly what the purpose here is, and nobody's given me a suitable answer.  Until I am given a constructive purpose for them, I will view the discussion as academic.


----------



## Hussar

prosfilaes said:


> I didn't say it would or wouldn't, but it's an example of where technology in the fiction is completely here, which goes to the question I was responding to.
> 
> 
> 
> It could in theory be verified, and we certainly do know for some major games in what ways many people play them in off-brand ways.
> 
> 
> 
> In reality, it does change how the car was designed and natural selection will add more to that. If the producers of a car know that SUVs sell as SUVs and are used as minivans, they don't have to worry about making it a good off-road vehicle. It has to look like a good SUV, has to sell to the family who believes they're going to be exploring the wilderness every weekend, and work like a good minivan. And to the extent that the designers don't do, the market probably will. The stories in the air will be how the SUV did fail them, not how it would have had they gone off-road.
> 
> For RPGs? Again, I have to wonder if Werewolf and Vampire employees ever with forethought added the high-concept intro but wrote a decent part of the book for the people who wanted their characters to rip out human throats with their teeth. Even to the extent they didn't, I bet that was part of the thing that shaped the White Wolf market, that caused Changeling and Wraith to fail while Werewolf and Vampire raged on; that is, that section of the market supported those games that facilitated ultraviolence as well as the high concept and didn't support those games that supported only the high-concept genre all the White Wolf were seemingly designed for.
> 
> So, yes, I do believe it changes how they were designed, that they wrote books that would sell, which are those that support the styles the customers want.
> 
> 
> 
> To the extend I said you can ignore the text of the game, I repudiate that. (But I don't know where "criticizing" came from.) But the text of the game is more like the screenplay of the movie then the movie itself, since the game is not normally enjoyed by reading it alone (well, at least to the extent it is, I believe that's beyond the scope of the current discussion.) And certain movies and certain games may have inexplicable popularity until you understand what's going on. Rocky Horror Picture Show is a minor picture blown up by how the audience responded to it. I don't think you can truly understand any edition of D&D without understanding what came before it. Why the set of races in D&D 5? Not a single race could the developers really say "we needed this type of race of the type of fantasy we wanted" instead of "we didn't want the Gnomish Liberation Army to hit our houses again" and "we kept getting anonymous emails with pictures of dragons swallowing gnomes whole and the gnomes had the faces of D&D developers on them".
> 
> And who really cares how the game is supposed to be played? We're gamers, and good games are ones that play well in practice, and frequently even if the developer is there to explain how it's supposed to be played, maybe people like it better this way! Nothing really matters but the game in play.




Criticised=analysed.  Sorry, lit crit in me jumped into my fingers.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> You cannot ignore the text of the game when criticising that game.  It would be like saying we can ignore the movie Star Wars when criticising the movie Star Wars.




Why not? I mean all that matters is what the system is good for at the table. Sure we don't have peer reviewed studies on table styles but we do have our experiences at the table. Ultimately that is what is important because that is the experience one is seeking to enhance through discussion. I mean design goals and intent are important, they can matter, but game designers are not omnipotent, they design games and release them. Their mechanics often have unintended uses they never anticipated. Arguably the designers of 3E never truly intended for players to be able to optimize to the extent they did after its release. But optimization itself became a focus of play for many, many tables. One thing I have learned putting games out is you have to listen to what the fans are doing with your system, you can't just put it out with notes about how you want the game to be played and assume that is the only thing the book is good for. So I think one could ignore the text of a game while critiquing it to an extent, particularly if the text didn't foresee something that emerged later during play at different tables. I think this is particularly true of forewords, where the designers often see the game being used one way, but actual tables often have their own interpretation which differs from the stated purpose in the foreword but still naturally flows from the mechanics themselves. Obviously as a player I pay attention to what the designers state but I am also not going to limit play to that if other obvious things leap out at me.


----------



## Hussar

But, again, we're back to duelling anecdotes.  "Many player", "many tables", "lots of people", who knows how many these actually are?  Is the Charops board at the WOTC site indicative of how the mainstream player plays D&D?  I don't know and neither do you.  Voices of what fans?  Fans who post on websites like En World?  Good grief, we've seen poll after poll where the average age of respondents on EN World is about a decade or two older than the average D&D player.  I mean, the average age of a Paizo Dragon reader was about 22 - at least according to their own magazine poll done a few years back.  The average age here is darn near 40.  

So, what's the truth here?  Are gnomes a beloved element of D&D, or a minor element that got blown out of proportion?  I don't know.  And, again, neither do you.

As far as what the point of categorisation is, well, it provides tools in order to assess issues with a game.  @Profislaes talks about Vampire, and I'm assuming OWoD here.  Now, was original Vampire a story game or a traditional RPG?  It billed itself as more of a story game, but, mechanically, it was pretty much stock standard trad RPG.  And, IMO, therein lie the problems with the system.  As a trad game, it lacked the rigourous math that trad RPG's need.  It was ludicrously easy to break VtM during chargen.  You almost had to actively try to not break the system, it was so easy to break.  But, as a story game, it lacked all the elements that story games need - the devolution of power and authority over the game from the DM (or Storyteller in this case) to the players.  It was too much of a traditional game to really work very well as a story game.

So, you wound up with a game that looked like an R rated Supers game.  It was Watchmen with fangs.  Not that that is a bad thing, but, it wasn't the goal that was being set out.

Having the categorisation and analytical tools that categorisation brings to the table means that you can look at a game and judge it's flaws and good bits much better than if you treat each game as a unique item with no relationship to other games.  Further blurring the lines by adding in "well, this is how someone plays" just makes it that much harder to have a discussion about the game.  "Well, in my game, PC's only gain levels every fifteen sessions, so, this game levels up really slowly", is not a useful bit of data to anyone other than a player at your table.


----------



## Umbran

Hussar said:


> As far as what the point of categorisation is, well, it provides tools in order to assess issues with a game.




Here's some wood to build the frame of a house.  And a pipe wrench.  Go!

I have noted, several times, that you need to be more specific about the goal before you figure out what definitions you need.  You cannot just define terms, and expect that they'll be useful in general.  That's like expecting a tool picked from your toolbox at random to be applicable to a particular home repair job you're trying to do.  What issues are you trying to assess?  In what games?  Or, do you figure somehow your non-purpose-built definitions will be good for all issues in all games?  Define yourself a hammer, and every game will look like a nail!  

In the world of physics, I might point you to coordinate systems - your choice of system can dramatically simplify, or dramatically complicate, a job you are trying to do.  Any flat three dimensional space could be described with spherical coordinates, or rectangular coordinates.  Writing down the motion of our local planets in, say, Earth-centered rectangular coordinates is insanely difficult. Doing it in Sol-centered spherical coordinates is far easier.  Meanwhile, you'd likely not use spherical coordinates to describe the addition you'd like to build onto your home to the contractor.  But it is still just a flat 3D space we are talking about.  

Case in point:  Forge Theory and the 1999 WotC survey give us two differing perspectives on games and gamers.  Different language, defining different things, but both looking at the same phenomena.

Pick the job first, then pick the tools, not the other way around.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> But, again, we're back to duelling anecdotes.  "Many player", "many tables", "lots of people", who knows how many these actually are?  Is the Charops board at the WOTC site indicative of how the mainstream player plays D&D?  I don't know and neither do you.  Voices of what fans?  Fans who post on websites like En World?  Good grief, we've seen poll after poll where the average age of respondents on EN World is about a decade or two older than the average D&D player.  I mean, the average age of a Paizo Dragon reader was about 22 - at least according to their own magazine poll done a few years back.  The average age here is darn near 40.
> 
> So, what's the truth here?  Are gnomes a beloved element of D&D, or a minor element that got blown out of proportion?  I don't know.  And, again, neither do you.
> .




Sure but this is the nature of designing for a niche hobby. Concrete data is not widely available and we have to base much of what we do on things like 1) direct customer feedback, 2) what we see and expect at our own table, 3) what we see online and what we see at other tables, 4) sales, and 5) what little data is out there. 

Unless a designer has the pocket book of WOTC, in depth market research is unlikely. And when people do conduct in depth market research they usually keep the useful information to themselves (at least in gaming). 

So on the one hand, yes this is all anecdotal based on peoples experience, but on the other hand there isn't much more than that to truly go on. 

I keep seeing you talk about having categorizations and analytical tools. Those sound great but to make useful tools you need real data and I don't think many of the models people have proposed have enough of that. And I don't think us constructing a definition of RPG here in this forum based on the arguments you, I or anyone else puts forward, is going to do us much good. So far all I have seen are definitions that narrow the hobby in a bad way. At worst I've seen definitions that try to sneak in one play style over others.  think an honest definition simply describes what RPG means to people who play such games and identify as such players. The best way for us to do that is share our different experiences of what RPG means at the tables we play at.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> As far as what the point of categorisation is, well, it provides tools in order to assess issues with a game.  @Profislaes talks about Vampire, and I'm assuming OWoD here.  Now, was original Vampire a story game or a traditional RPG?  It billed itself as more of a story game, but, mechanically, it was pretty much stock standard trad RPG.  And, IMO, therein lie the problems with the system.  As a trad game, it lacked the rigourous math that trad RPG's need.  It was ludicrously easy to break VtM during chargen.  You almost had to actively try to not break the system, it was so easy to break.  But, as a story game, it lacked all the elements that story games need - the devolution of power and authority over the game from the DM (or Storyteller in this case) to the players.  It was too much of a traditional game to really work very well as a story game.
> .





Tools and Categories are just models when it comes to game design and they can blind us to things as well as help us. There are models for all sorts of things in this world and while frameworks of understanding are helpful they usually have a downside too. If you cut the world up in to four groups, you only see things in terms of those four groups. In a hobby made up of highly individual groupings of gamers with 4-7 individual people at each table, that can be a problem. I think this is why for example, highly focused games tend to be niche. Most tables tend to be (in my experience) a sloppy mixture of styles, tastes and motivations. And many individual gamers themselves are a blend of styles, tastes and motivations. When you start establishing categories and definitions in conversations like this one, it can be very difficult to fit them to real people and groups. This is why I have pretty much abandoned the things I've picked up on the internet in terms of how I see gaming. It just never really aligns with the reality. 

I think Vampire and the Forge is an example though of how "categories" and "tools" can create blindspots. Sure Vampire billed itself as a storytelling game (though it is important to understand they in no way meant this at all like people at the forge do when they say story game). And yes some people felt the system didn't live up to the hype in the text. On the other hand there are lots and lots of people who love white wolf games and believe fully in the storyteller concept. It might not of worked for you, and it might not have worked for me (probably for different reasons) but I know for a fact there is a huge community of people (probably bigger than the community of people you or I belong to) who think it is the best thing in the world. I think it is odd to hold up vampire as a failure of design when it was the first game to ever truly give D&D a run for its money before Pathfinder (and pathfinder is really just D&D). In hindsight, some of what they did seems a little odd, but at the time it worked and it converted a lot of people from D&D to Vampire. 

That said, I don't want to take away from the fact that something productive did come out of that discussion. Vampire did upset some players. Some took this and made things like story games, others took this and thought more in terms of character agency and immersion. But still in my experience, the majority of gamers were not at all concerned with this discussion. If they were I don't think things like adventure paths would be so popular. For all of our complaining about railroading or people complaining about mechanics not producing story, people still very much play games like D&D and Pathfinder the way they've been played for years. A few concepts from both camps have been brought in here or there, but very, very lightly I think. Still I think there is a danger in reading the success of Vampire from our small online enclaves and the gaming philosophies they produce.

So I think more than models and definitions (particularly definitions because SOOOO often I see them used to establish the primacy of one style over others), we would do better to just game and learn from the tables we play at. That is limited. But it is real. It isn't abstract like these discussions. I can be persuaded by a good argument online that GMs should always do X or games should always do Y but 99% of the time, it doesn't pan out at my actual table in my experience. At the end of the day I am there to make sure people at the table have a good time. So I find it much more helpful to listen to the table than well constructed arguments about definitions and models.


----------



## prosfilaes

Hussar said:


> Are gnomes a beloved element of D&D, or a minor element that got blown out of proportion?




That's not an objective question. It doesn't matter how much data you could have, you could redirect the budget of the NSA, FBI and CIA to surveilling gamers, wiretapping their houses, installing cameras over their gaming tables, and analyzing the data, and you still couldn't answer that question. I suspect it wouldn't be that hard to get some counts of how many people are playing gnomes, even if they're rough and partial, or counts on sales of gnome orientated books versus elf orientated books.



> As a trad game, it lacked the rigourous math that trad RPG's need.  It was ludicrously easy to break VtM during chargen.  You almost had to actively try to not break the system, it was so easy to break.




I don't know what means coming from the text of the game. You have to study how players make characters to know that. You'd have to know what power meant in game. One argument about wizards vs. fighters in D&D I saw here recently said that AD&D 1 was balanced because the hoards of hirelings protected the wizard at low levels and empowered the fighter at high levels. That doesn't mean anything until you study how people played the game, whether they played it with those types of hirelings.



> So, you wound up with a game that looked like an R rated Supers game.




I believe that was sometimes true. I also believe it was sometimes not true, and I know that without looking at how people actually play it, you can't tell the difference. It's easy to play D&D as R rated Supers; how many people do? You can't tell without looking at how people play the game.



> Having the categorisation and analytical tools that categorisation brings to the table means that you can look at a game and judge it's flaws and good bits much better than if you treat each game as a unique item with no relationship to other games.




What flaws? That's like looking at an airplane engine and talking about judging its flaws while refusing to put it in a windtunnel or on an airplane. And that's something that can theoretically be simulated, unlike human behavior.


----------



## Hussar

Umbran said:


> Here's some wood to build the frame of a house.  And a pipe wrench.  Go!
> 
> I have noted, several times, that you need to be more specific about the goal before you figure out what definitions you need.  You cannot just define terms, and expect that they'll be useful in general.  That's like expecting a tool picked from your toolbox at random to be applicable to a particular home repair job you're trying to do.  What issues are you trying to assess?  In what games?  Or, do you figure somehow your non-purpose-built definitions will be good for all issues in all games?  Define yourself a hammer, and every game will look like a nail!
> 
> In the world of physics, I might point you to coordinate systems - your choice of system can dramatically simplify, or dramatically complicate, a job you are trying to do.  Any flat three dimensional space could be described with spherical coordinates, or rectangular coordinates.  Writing down the motion of our local planets in, say, Earth-centered rectangular coordinates is insanely difficult. Doing it in Sol-centered spherical coordinates is far easier.  Meanwhile, you'd likely not use spherical coordinates to describe the addition you'd like to build onto your home to the contractor.  But it is still just a flat 3D space we are talking about.
> 
> Case in point:  Forge Theory and the 1999 WotC survey give us two differing perspectives on games and gamers.  Different language, defining different things, but both looking at the same phenomena.
> 
> Pick the job first, then pick the tools, not the other way around.




But your analogy falls flat.  Genre classification isn't as specific as a pipe wrench.  It would be closer to, "You want to build a house?  What kind of house do you want to build?"  Without classifications, you can't ask that question.  You can't ask, "Do you want a log house, or a split level or a back split or a three storey house or what? "

I can say, "I want to design a game".  The obvious question here is, "What kind of game is it?"  Without genre classification, all you get are things like, "Well, it's kinda like A, not like B and C is right out the window".  Same goes for "I want to play a game".  What kind of game do you want to play?  What kinds of games do you enjoy?  Do you enjoy games like X or games like Y?  Which is where your genre conventions come into play.

That's why your physics analogy also falls flat.  You are applying a mathematical model to genre.  Good grief, genre is never that specific.  It's porous and there are all sorts of things bleeding over from one edge to the other.  That sort of thing usually doesn't happen in physics until you get into the really wonky stuff.  



			
				Prosfilaes said:
			
		

> That's like looking at an airplane engine and talking about judging its flaws while refusing to put it in a windtunnel or on an airplane. And that's something that can theoretically be simulated, unlike human behavior.
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Illusion-of-Game-Balance/page41#ixzz3HVJrXTXO




And yet, we do that all the time.  In the design phase, you can exclude all sorts of designs long before you get to the wind tunnel.  You certainly don't need to build a working model to tell that some designs are flawed.  A steam engine won't work, for example, to fly an airplane (at least, not easily) and we can reject steam power for airplanes.  We can look at the design of an engine and know, fairly well, how much thrust that engine will produce and know, while still in the drawing on paper (or computer screen) that an engine might not be powerful enough or too powerful for a particular air frame.

All of this we know because we have all sorts of theoretical models for how engines work.  

After forty years, tens of thousands of hours of play time, hundreds of thousands of players, why can't we start building theoretical models for RPG's?  I don't need to sit a group down and play test to know that a game that uses farting for a random generator is likely not going to work.  Why can we not look at the body of work that is out there and not create genres for that body of work?


----------



## prosfilaes

Hussar said:


> After forty years, tens of thousands of hours of play time, hundreds of thousands of players, why can't we start building theoretical models for RPG's?  I don't need to sit a group down and play test to know that a game that uses farting for a random generator is likely not going to work.  Why can we not look at the body of work that is out there and not create genres for that body of work?




Err...



Hussar said:


> But, again, we're back to duelling anecdotes.  "Many player", "many tables", "lots of people", who knows how many these actually are?  Is the Charops board at the WOTC site indicative of how the mainstream player plays D&D?  I don't know and neither do you.




If we don't know how the mainstream player plays the most common game on the market, how on Earth are we going to build a theoretical model of how a game acts in play?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> After forty years, tens of thousands of hours of play time, hundreds of thousands of players, why can't we start building theoretical models for RPG's?  I don't need to sit a group down and play test to know that a game that uses farting for a random generator is likely not going to work.  Why can we not look at the body of work that is out there and not create genres for that body of work?




You absolutely can if you want, but people don't have to accept your model or your definitions if they fail to reflect their experience at the table. You yourself point out we know very very little of actual play (we don't know how much char-op boards reflect widespread use at real tables for instance). I don't know what basis there is here for a working model of RPGs (and I personally haven't seen one that I have found useful for design or for play). My concern with models and definitions is they so often seem to be about getting the hobby where folks would like to see it of (don't like min-maxing? make a model of RPGs that excludes that as a valid style of play. don't like story? make a model of roleplaying where story is the antithesis of roleplaying). We can do the same with definitions. Once again this is exactly what Wick is trying to do. Clearly he favors some kind of RP-heavy campaign and is redefining RPG to exclude groups that play differently than him (even though I think most of us know a huge chunk of people play the way he defines as not roleplaying). What is worse, he also clearly doesn't have much love for D&D and so he uses definitions to claim it isn't an RPG---which is an insane claim to make). Stuff like this is exactly why folks are so wary of models and people trying to control definitions in the hobby. 

What I do know is players are pretty diverse and to get a game off the ground you need to please 4-7 people at the same time. Give me a model that allows me to do that, to sell lots of books and make lots of gamers happy, and I would happily use it.


----------



## Janx

prosfilaes said:


> What do we call Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea today?




I've forked a bit.  I think you missed my point though.

In the 21st century, a story written now, about a guy captaining a star ship is Science Fiction

In the 24th century, a story written then, about a guy captaining a star ship is just contemporary fiction.


----------



## Hussar

prosfilaes said:


> Err...
> 
> 
> 
> If we don't know how the mainstream player plays the most common game on the market, how on Earth are we going to build a theoretical model of how a game acts in play?




Why would you claim we don't know this?  Or are you now claiming that players who play entirely in Pawn stance, not assuming any roll at the table are the mainstream of play?

I'd say we have a pretty decent idea how the mainstream of players play.  But, even without knowing how the game is being played at a given table, we should still be able to look at the rules themselves and figure out what the game is about.  

Again, you are going in a very strange direction here.  Why would you insist on including "how we play the game" in a definition of game genre?  Why can't we simply look at the game itself?

I don't care how people are playing the game.  It's pretty hard to know that.  I care about what the game says it's trying to do.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> I don't care how people are playing the game.  It's pretty hard to know that.  I care about what the game says it's trying to do.




That is fine, but it is the opposite of what I am concerned with. I care what people are doing. Certainly what the rules say are important too, but they cannot be looked at separate from how they are being used in my opinion if the goal is to improve design. Looking at just the text can lead you to conclude that something is imbalanced or flawed but then you see how it is used at the table and you realize it isn't a problem for 90% of people, or again looking at the text alone you might conclude a mechanic is perfectly designed for a particular goal, then you realize when you talk to people they have a lot of trouble implementing it.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> Why would you claim we don't know this?  Or are you now claiming that players who play entirely in Pawn stance, not assuming any roll at the table are the mainstream of play?
> .




I am not a fan of the term pawn stance, but if I understand what you mean by it, I think they are a bigger chunk than you realize. And I think, while not a majority, not the mainstream, they make up a huge enough portion of how people approach RPGs, we shouldn't leave them out of a definition of the term, of the hobby. The impression I get is some gamers don't much care for people in perpetual "pawn stance" so they don't want that to be considered roleplaying. I have no problem with roleplaying including that. It isn't how I personally play but I've seen it at enough tables to know it is common and the people doing it still regard what they are doing as roleplaying rather than playing a board game. These people used to drive me nuts, until I realized they are doing nothing wrong except having fun playing D&D.


----------



## Janx

Bedrockgames said:


> I am not a fan of the term pawn stance, but if I understand what you mean by it, I think they are a bigger chunk than you realize. And I think, while not a majority, not the mainstream, they make up a huge enough portion of how people approach RPGs, we shouldn't leave them out of a definition of the term, of the hobby. The impression I get is some gamers don't much care for people in perpetual "pawn stance" so they don't want that to be considered roleplaying. I have no problem with roleplaying including that. It isn't how I personally play but I've seen it at enough tables to know it is common and the people doing it still regard what they are doing as roleplaying rather than playing a board game. These people used to drive me nuts, until I realized they are doing nothing wrong except having fun playing D&D.




In my experience, in a D&D game, players who are "perpetually in pawn stance" are not considered to be "role playing" though they are still playing D&D and still playing a Role Playing Game (RPG).

I think the double-meaning of the world "role playing" in that context is part of the communication problem.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Janx said:


> In my experience, in a D&D game, players who are "perpetually in pawn stance" are not considered to be "role playing" though they are still playing D&D and still playing a Role Playing Game (RPG).
> 
> I think the double-meaning of the world "role playing" in that context is part of the communication problem.




I think it is true roleplaying has a double meaning and a lot of folks (myself included) use equivocation on that double meaning to prove their style of play is The Style, the right way. Sometimes I say Roleplaying to mean "talking in character and seeing things through your characters eyes". That is certainly a deep point on the roleplaying spectrum but I think someone who is just controlling a character in the setting can also be said to be roleplaying. It is certainly still an RPG in my opinion, even if people are not talking in character or viewing their character as a piece on a board. 

To me so long as a world beyond that board exists to be interacted with, your still roleplaying. To me that is the chief difference between an RPG and a board game. All action in a board game needs to be contained within the boundaries of the board...whatever that means for the particular game. Roleplaying games don't limit you to that. One of the reasons the GM exists is to adjudicate actions that were not thought of in advance by the designers. It doesn't have to explicitly say in the rules that you can go to 7/11 and buy coca cola. But if you are in a setting with a 7/11 then the GM will allow you to try. Board Games are not really meant to accommodate that kind of going off the grid, and when they do, it is because they are veering into RPG territory.

I think the term Pawn Stance though really muddles things here, because it isn't incompatible at all with talking in character from what I understand. Pawn Stance is more about how you make your decisions as a character. So my understanding is it means using your motives as a player rather than the character's to arrive a a decision (I could be wrong on that, but that is how it has been explained to me). If that is all Pawn Stance is, then I think it really just means "playing yourself" and playing yourself is totally fine in my opinion. My guy might be called Uloff instead of Brendan, but if I am basically making decisions as Brendan, that is still roleplaying IMO. Most people don't play this way, but many do. 

Again though I think this just shows how problematic these kinds of discussion are because they really ultimately do come down to trying to establish some styles as proper RP and some as being outside what an RPG is supposed to be.


----------



## prosfilaes

Hussar said:


> Why would you claim we don't know this?




Because I quoted you saying that we don't know this.



> I'd say we have a pretty decent idea how the mainstream of players play. ... I don't care how people are playing the game.  It's pretty hard to know that.




Those are two contradictory statements.



> But, even without knowing how the game is being played at a given table, we should still be able to look at the rules themselves and figure out what the game is about.




For the same reason we can't just look at an airplane engine and figure out how it's going to work, as the designers of the 737-400 found when one of there planes crashed on the M1 due to engine problems undiscovered in testing. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.



> Why would you insist on including "how we play the game" in a definition of game genre?  Why can't we simply look at the game itself?




Because a definition of game genre that doesn't care how we play is like a definition of food types that doesn't worry about who eats it or how it tastes. A game of Pictionary that gets played for classroom credit at an art college is an entirely different game, an entirely different type of game, then one played by drunk people at a party. A Vampire game that's all talk is different from a Vampire game that's all combat.



> I care about what the game says it's trying to do.




That's useless. Utterly and incredibly so. And not even terribly consistent with what you've said before; is The Galactos Barrier a science fiction setting because it says so in the preface? Are most storygames roleplaying games because they say they are on the title page? Going back to an example I've used several times before, I suspect despite the high concept intros, at least some White Wolf material was written to be R-rated supers for the R-rated supers fans. What good does a genre division that ignores that do for anyone?


----------



## Hussar

Prosfislaes said:
			
		

> A game of Pictionary that gets played for classroom credit at an art college is an entirely different game, an entirely different type of game, then one played by drunk people at a party.
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Illusion-of-Game-Balance/page42#ixzz3HaFwqFiM




No, it isn't.  It's exactly the same game.  Nothing about that game is any different.  The rules are the same, the exact same set up is used and the same materials.  

The only thing that is different is the idiosyncratic elements that have been added by the players.  Which aren't actually part of the game and have nothing to do with the game as it is written.  Nothing in Pictionary assumes that you are going to be graded on your art.  In fact, that's kinda the point of Pictionary - that your artistic abilities are not the point of the game - the point of the game is, can you communicate non-verbally to a small group of people a specific word or phrase.  That's what Pictionary is about.  

I can use D&D in my English as a Second Language class to teach English to second language learners.  Does that mean D&D is a teaching tool?  Not really.  I've re-purposed it for that, but, outside of my classroom, my experiences aren't going to help anyone.  Unless you want to use D&D as a teaching tool, which means, you have to pretty much copy my experiences if you want to get similar results.  Which is the biggest problem I have with the idea that we have to only look at how the game is being used.  That's the argument that you see all the time in edition wars - "Well, at my table we do X, so Y is not a problem.  If you are having a problem with X it's because you are not doing Y" with the presumption that Y is the right thing for all groups.

As soon as we start dueling anecdotes and stop looking at the actual text of the game, we dive down a rabbit hole that you simply cannot find the end of.  Every situation devolves into competing ideas for what is the "right" solution and no one can ever fix anything.  Any change is viewed through the lens of "How does this impact my table specifically" and not "Does this make a better game?"  Everyone becomes an advocate for their own, specific table, and no one can come to any agreement on methods for resolving issues.  

Heck, I've got another thread right now on the 5e boards where this is being claimed:



Saelorn said:


> I'm glad that I'm not the only one who makes that distinction. I guess the difference for me is that I _enjoy_ roleplaying games, and I actively _dislike_ storytelling games. Hence my desire to excise any and all storytelling elements from D&D, in favor of roleplaying.




THIS is why we need to nail down definitions of genre, at least in broad terms.  Adding elements like Inspiration or Action Points to D&D hardly makes D&D a Story Telling game.  The language that he's using right here doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  No story telling elements in D&D?  Huh?  That's the point of playing D&D - a story.  He means, he wants to excise any player authorial control from the game.  But, because the language we're using is so imprecise, his meaning gets lost.

And, I will agree, the idea of role playing game should be the umbrella term.  This sort of thing is just noxious.  Traditional game vs story telling game might be a better comparison.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Hussar said:


> THIS is why we need to nail down definitions of genre, at least in broad terms.  Adding elements like Inspiration or Action Points to D&D hardly makes D&D a Story Telling game.  The language that he's using right here doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  No story telling elements in D&D?  Huh?  That's the point of playing D&D - a story.  He means, he wants to excise any player authorial control from the game.  But, because the language we're using is so imprecise, his meaning gets lost.
> 
> And, I will agree, the idea of role playing game should be the umbrella term.  This sort of thing is just noxious.  Traditional game vs story telling game might be a better comparison.



The problem is that none of these terms ever gain traction, so we're stuck going back to the old GNS theory just because that's the only thing that everyone has heard of.

Roleplaying vs Storytelling is a spectrum, and it's the same spectrum as Actor vs Author, which is similar to Character vs Player. I suppose you could use 'Roleplaying Game' as the umbrella term, and separate them based on the degree to which they include Storytelling elements; but, I don't see why that's any better than using 'Roleplaying Game' for only pure roleplaying games with no storytelling elements, and 'Storytelling Game' for roleplaying games which include such things.

It's not as though there are any pure Storytelling Games out there, devoid of roleplaying elements. (Are there?)


----------



## Mishihari Lord

Saelorn said:


> It's not as though there are any pure Storytelling Games out there, devoid of roleplaying elements. (Are there?)




I'm pretty sure collaborative writing qualifies, and there are probably more people doing that than RPGs.


----------



## Hussar

Saelorn said:


> The problem is that none of these terms ever gain traction, so we're stuck going back to the old GNS theory just because that's the only thing that everyone has heard of.
> 
> Roleplaying vs Storytelling is a spectrum, and it's the same spectrum as Actor vs Author, which is similar to Character vs Player. I suppose you could use 'Roleplaying Game' as the umbrella term, and separate them based on the degree to which they include Storytelling elements; but, I don't see why that's any better than using 'Roleplaying Game' for only pure roleplaying games with no storytelling elements, and 'Storytelling Game' for roleplaying games which include such things.
> 
> It's not as though there are any pure Storytelling Games out there, devoid of roleplaying elements. (Are there?)




But, that's not the spectrum.  You don't do storytelling games without role playing.  At least, not when we're talking about RPG's.  Role assumption is fundamental in all role playing games.  If you're not taking on a role, you're not playing an RPG.  That shouldn't be controversial.  The same way as if every single decision point was pre-determined before play started, you wouldn't be playing an RPG, because there's no game there.

A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book isn't an RPG.  Collaborative story telling or improv theater isn't an RPG either.  There's no G there.  It's no different than what Howandwhy99 was trying to do earlier - break the term apart and pretend that there is no larger meaning when you examine each individual word.

A role playing game needs all three elements - role assumption, some sort of random mechanic for determining outcomes and a narrative that follows causal links.  Without any of those three, I'd say you aren't really playing an RPG.

So, no, roleplaying is not the other side of the spectrum from story gaming.  There's a reason you still have a character in story games - the presumption is, you are going to act in accordance to the dictates of that character.  Granted, in a story game you ALSO have degrees of authority over the game as a whole, but, you still have a character in front of you.

D&D doesn't stop being a role playing game because I use Inspiration (a purely player resource) to affect some change in the game world.  That's ridiculous.  Nor do I stop roleplaying just because I have inspiration points.  Inspiration points are there to promote role play - you gain them by promoting the character that you are playing.  AD&D used Training in the same way.  If you played your character against type, you were penalized.  It took longer and was more expensive to train if your fighter acted cowardly, for example.  Paladin's lose their status if they don't behave in a certain way.  It's the same thing, just approached from the carrot perspective instead of the stick.


----------



## prosfilaes

Hussar said:


> Every situation devolves into competing ideas for what is the "right" solution and no one can ever fix anything.  Any change is viewed through the lens of "How does this impact my table specifically" and not "Does this make a better game?"




For something like a roleplaying game, "a better game" is one that impacts many tables positively. Far from not needing to worry about the issue of how it works in play, "a better game" means that you need to worry about a broader spectrum of how it works in play.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book isn't an RPG.  Collaborative story telling or improv theater isn't an RPG either.  There's no G there.  It's no different than what Howandwhy99 was trying to do earlier - break the term apart and pretend that there is no larger meaning when you examine each individual word.




I don't think these kinds of definitions are particularly useful. I see them a lot in my circles and find them not to be descriptive of rpgs at all. Words are not defined by their roots. The root words can matter but terms change over time to go beyond the meanings of the compounds. I've seen dozens and dozens of definitions of RPG that take each individual term (Role-Playing-Game) define them and put them together. It doesn't matter what those individual components mean, what matters is what people mean when they say roleplaying game. Others have already pointed this out. English isn't latin and I think it is pretty obvious when the term was adopted it was a term of convenience, one that seemed to describe something fairly new and exotic going on at the table (but the people who first employed that term were not using RP in the full sense of the word as it was used in Psychology circles for example, and we would be foolish to think any working definition of RPG needs to also be therapeutic with the aim of reducing conflict simply because it shares a word with a psychological technique. 

In terms of whether you can define it as a game where you take on a role, I think people might not disagree but it really depends on what you mean by that. If you mean, to use your language, that being in pawn stance the whole time makes it not an RPG, I would disagree, because you are still a character in the setting, even if it is being informed by your metagame concerns. I've seen many players over the years play a character as if it was them, freely using player knowledge and desires in place of character knowledge and desires. It may have irked me because it isn't how I like to play, but I would never look at that and say the person isn't roleplaying. It is just one style of RP just like min/max, kick down the door, thespian, etc are all valid approaches to an RPG.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Hussar said:


> But, that's not the spectrum.  You don't do storytelling games without role playing.  At least, not when we're talking about RPG's.  Role assumption is fundamental in all role playing games.  If you're not taking on a role, you're not playing an RPG.  That shouldn't be controversial.



Right. Everyone agrees on that, which is why it makes sense for RPG to be the umbrella term. The question is how to sub-divide them, so that you end up with useful categories. Segregating all of the games that contain storytelling elements into their own category is a logical way of doing so, from the perspective of anyone who wants to avoid playing those types of games.



Hussar said:


> A role playing game needs all three elements - role assumption, some sort of random mechanic for determining outcomes and a narrative that follows causal links.  Without any of those three, I'd say you aren't really playing an RPG.



As a side note, I would disagree that you _need_ a random element in order for it to be a game. Chess, for example, does not have any random elements. (Unless chess was debunked as a game earlier in this thread, and I just missed that by skipping to the end here.) You definitely need to play a role, though, and exist within a causal world.



Hussar said:


> So, no, roleplaying is not the other side of the spectrum from story gaming.  There's a reason you still have a character in story games - the presumption is, you are going to act in accordance to the dictates of that character.  Granted, in a story game you ALSO have degrees of authority over the game as a whole, but, you still have a character in front of you.



Story_gaming_ is not a term which has yet been defined. As a game element, story_telling_ is the opposite of roleplaying, because it involves the player just deciding stuff without actually playing a _role_ within the world - you're just _telling_ what happens, because the player has assumed authorial agency within the narrative beyond that which is granted by the character.



Hussar said:


> D&D doesn't stop being a role playing game because I use Inspiration (a purely player resource) to affect some change in the game world.



Inspiration is not purely a player resource, though. It _has_ meaning within the game world, in much the same way that a barbarian's limited number of rages per day has meaning within the game world. It's just kind of nebulous and hard to define.

The character doesn't decide to spend Inspiration to gain advantage in this particular situation, but the player should recognize when the character _is_ inspired, and use it to represent that. Given that Inspiration is handed out by the DM in situations where it is appropriate, and the DM can easily veto inappropriate uses of Inspiration, I would say that it's working mostly as intended as an in-game resource.

The same is not necessarily true of Action Points (from various earlier d20 products), or Hero Points (from Pathfinder), or "bennies" (from whatever game would be silly enough to assign such a common name to a significant game mechanic; you might as well call them "steves" or "freds" for as silly as it sounds).

In many cases, these resources are only given when the character suffers by playing into its flaws, as though there is some sort of karmic connection between, for example, wasting money on alcohol and later succeeding on a difficult skill check.


----------



## Neonchameleon

Saelorn said:


> Right. Everyone agrees on that, which is why it  makes sense for RPG to be the umbrella term. The question is how to  sub-divide them, so that you end up with useful categories. Segregating  all of the games that contain storytelling elements into their own  category is a logical way of doing so, from the perspective of anyone  who wants to avoid playing those types of games.




Of  course.  This, of course, makes games such as AD&D 2e and the whole  of the WoD Storygames. In fact I'm not sure what you've got left if you  take out the games with story elements.  _Possibly_ OD&D.



> As a side note, I would disagree that you _need_ a random element in order for it to be a game. Chess, for example, does not have any random elements.




We're agreed here.  And  "Diceless RPGs" (technical term for RPGs with no randomisers) are  definitely a thing including (amongst others) Amber, Nobilis, and a  licensed Marvel game.



> Story_gaming_ is not a term which has yet been defined.




Objection!  I've tried to throughout the thread - and most clearly right here.   A game where the mechanics include a narrative structure and the games  are planned to last for a limited number of sessions - in practice the  games are generally based round the five act structure (it makes for  better games than the three act structure).



> As a game element, story_telling_ is the opposite of roleplaying, because it involves the player just deciding stuff without actually playing a _role_ within the world




Nope.  This is where the _Storyteller System_  messed things up and poisoned the well a little.  A good Storygame can  have the players never leaving character to decide anything.  For this  I'm going to cite My Life With Master, Monsterhearts, and Montsegur  1244.

In Fiasco the PCs need to set the scenes.  There is a case to be made that Fiasco is a Storytelling game _without_  being an RPG.  But MLWM and Monsterhearts both have fairly orthodox  GMs, and Montsegur is on a pre-plotted railroad where you play your role  to the bitter end and is still deep and challenging; you're just  dealing with overwhelming forces.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Neonchameleon said:


> Objection!  I've tried to throughout the thread - and most clearly right here.   A game where the mechanics include a narrative structure and the games  are planned to last for a limited number of sessions - in practice the  games are generally based round the five act structure (it makes for  better games than the three act structure).



Sorry, that's what I get for jumping into a 40-page thread without reading it. It really does sound like an extreme deviation from anything like a traditional RPG, though. Like, I don't even have an opinion on it, because it's so far beyond what I understand an RPG to be.



Neonchameleon said:


> Nope.  This is where the _Storyteller System_  messed things up and poisoned the well a little.  A good Storygame can  have the players never leaving character to decide anything.  For this  I'm going to cite My Life With Master, Monsterhearts, and Montsegur  1244.



Yeah, that's probably where my confusion came from. The Storyteller in the Storyteller System is the one who has authorial power to decide things, so I use the term "storytelling" to define authorial power that exists outside of actual in-character agency.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Neonchameleon said:


> Of  course.  This, of course, makes games such as AD&D 2e and the whole  of the WoD Storygames. In fact I'm not sure what you've got left if you  take out the games with story elements.  _Possibly_ OD&D.



Nonsense, there are plenty of roleplaying games which feature zero storytelling elements. Unless you go out of your way to add some, AD&D or 3E included no storytelling mechanics by default. Palladium, by and large, also avoids granting authorial power to the players. I never encountered storytelling elements in Shadowrun (2E or 3E) until we purchased one of the supplements. And it should go without saying that GURPS is generally devoid of that sort of thing, as well.


----------



## Bedrockgames

i think we already had like four to five pages of debate on this thread about story/narrative/etc. I am pretty tapped on that subject.


----------



## Mishihari Lord

Saelorn said:


> Yeah, that's probably where my confusion came from. The Storyteller in the Storyteller System is the one who has authorial power to decide things, so I use the term "storytelling" to define authorial power that exists outside of actual in-character agency.




That's how I'd define it to.  The degree to which a game is a storytelling game is the degree to which players have out of character authorial control.  The extreme is collaborative writing, where all parties have authorial control, and which, contrary to an assertion above, can be done as a game.  If there's another way it's used, I haven't seen it.

"Pawn stance" vs "actor stance" is another sometimes disputed term.  For me it's just 3rd person vs 1st person play.  If I think and act in terms of "I do this" rather than "my guy does this" that's actor rather than pawn.

There should be a sticky at the top of the forums with a definition of how we're going to use words like this on the board.  Then we can spend our time arguing about RPGs rather than arguing about how we're going to argue about RPGs.


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## Neonchameleon

Saelorn said:


> Nonsense, there are plenty of roleplaying games which feature zero storytelling elements. Unless you go out of your way to add some, AD&D or 3E included no storytelling mechanics by default. Palladium, by and large, also avoids granting authorial power to the players. I never encountered storytelling elements in Shadowrun (2E or 3E) until we purchased one of the supplements. And it should go without saying that GURPS is generally devoid of that sort of thing, as well.




A game with no storytelling mechanics would be one entirely lacking in cause and effect.  A Storygame adds a story structure onto it.

And GURPS isn't devoid of storytelling elements even if you go beyond the cause-and-effect definition and into the scene framing.  I'm pretty sure it actively has more storytelling elements than e.g. Vampire: The Masquerade.  It has such things as the gizmo and luck advantages.  White Wolf games are in no sense Storygames - indeed Storygames come out of a reaction against White Wolf games as not being able to deliver on their promises.



Saelorn said:


> Sorry, that's what I get for jumping into a 40-page thread without reading it. It really does sound like an extreme deviation from anything like a traditional RPG, though. Like, I don't even have an opinion on it, because it's so far beyond what I understand an RPG to be.




If you were playing Monsterhearts (to take one example) you'd barely know the difference between it and a trad RPG unless you were the MC (GM) - and even then it's subtle.  If you were playing Monstsegur 1244 you'd basically be playing freeform.



> Yeah, that's probably where my confusion came from. The Storyteller in the Storyteller System is the one who has authorial power to decide things, so I use the term "storytelling" to define authorial power that exists outside of actual in-character agency.




Ah.  It might help to know that Storygames have as one of their roots "What Storyteller games promise is great.  It's just a pity they suck at delivering, and we should make games that can actually deliver without removing agency."


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## The Crimson Binome

Neonchameleon said:


> A game with no storytelling mechanics would be one entirely lacking in cause and effect.



Right, back to our mixed-up terms. In this sense, I meant there are many games which do not give non-character authorial agency to the players, rather than ones which lack internal causality. I can see that we're in agreement, in spirit if not in vocabulary.


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## Neonchameleon

Saelorn said:


> Right, back to our mixed-up terms. In this sense, I meant there are many games which do not give non-character authorial agency to the players, rather than ones which lack internal causality. I can see that we're in agreement, in spirit if not in vocabulary.




There are indeed many such games.  GURPS, however, is not one of these games.  See the advantages Super Luck and Gizmo amongst others.  The old Marvel Superheroes (I think) also uses abstract karma points to rewrite dice rolls.  And there are Storygames that don't allow you to.  It's a slightly different thing.


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## Hussar

BTW, Saelorn, Bennies is short for benefits, a fairly common idiomatic expression.  It's not meant as a proper noun name.  

But, you don't get to have it both ways.  If Action Points are a story gaming element, you cannot then claim that 3e has no story gaming elements.


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## Neonchameleon

Bedrockgames said:


> You absolutely can if you want, but people don't have to accept your model or your definitions if they fail to reflect their experience at the table. You yourself point out we know very very little of actual play (we don't know how much char-op boards reflect widespread use at real tables for instance). I don't know what basis there is here for a working model of RPGs (and I personally haven't seen one that I have found useful for design or for play). My concern with models and definitions is they so often seem to be about getting the hobby where folks would like to see it of (don't like min-maxing? make a model of RPGs that excludes that as a valid style of play. don't like story? make a model of roleplaying where story is the antithesis of roleplaying). We can do the same with definitions. Once again this is exactly what Wick is trying to do. Clearly he favors some kind of RP-heavy campaign and is redefining RPG to exclude groups that play differently than him (even though I think most of us know a huge chunk of people play the way he defines as not roleplaying). What is worse, he also clearly doesn't have much love for D&D and so he uses definitions to claim it isn't an RPG---which is an insane claim to make). Stuff like this is exactly why folks are so wary of models and people trying to control definitions in the hobby.
> 
> What I do know is players are pretty diverse and to get a game off the ground you need to please 4-7 people at the same time. Give me a model that allows me to do that, to sell lots of books and make lots of gamers happy, and I would happily use it.






Saelorn said:


> The problem is that none of these terms ever gain traction, so we're stuck going back to the old GNS theory just because that's the only thing that everyone has heard of.




And even Ron Edwards has given up on that.

My take is that it's simple.  Roleplaying games are broader than any model can be (which is where the Big Model failed - it devolved into a theory that explained the presence of invisible pink hippomen and square circles).  And as such models will not actually cover the spectrum of games; all they can do is highlight things and lead to a better understanding of a subset.  (And from this perspective GNS was a success - the S part was a failure, but G was useful as a pushback against the "Rollplaying not Roleplaying" crowd and a focus on N (which was most of what Edwards and the Forge were interested in) lead to interesting things).

A contour map is a very useful thing as long as I don't confuse it for the whole territory.



> but, I don't see why that's any better than using 'Roleplaying Game' for only pure roleplaying games with no storytelling elements, and 'Storytelling Game' for roleplaying games which include such things.
> 
> It's not as though there are any pure Storytelling Games out there, devoid of roleplaying elements. (Are there?)





Mishihari Lord said:


> I'm pretty sure collaborative writing qualifies, and there are probably more people doing that than RPGs.




And that's what's wrong with trying to use Storytelling Game for Roleplaying Games that also involve at least some author stance.  That collaborative writing is numerically a much bigger field than tabletop RPGs.  And Polaris and Kingdom from within the RPG community I've both heard described as storytelling without roleplaying per se.   (I really must get round to reading Kingdom/Microscope).

Using "storytelling game" for a subset of tabletop RPGs is like using "Football" for a hockey rules variant in which everyone is also allowed to kick the ball.  To me this is ridiculous, and the only purpose it appears to serve is to attempt to exclude people.



Mishihari Lord said:


> That's how I'd define it to.  The degree to which a game is a storytelling game is the degree to which players have out of character authorial control.  The extreme is collaborative writing, where all parties have authorial control, and which, contrary to an assertion above, can be done as a game.  If there's another way it's used, I haven't seen it.




Possibly so   And as you point out this is actually an independent factor from whether or not something's an RPG.



> "Pawn stance" vs "actor stance" is another sometimes disputed term.  For me it's just 3rd person vs 1st person play.  If I think and act in terms of "I do this" rather than "my guy does this" that's actor rather than pawn.




It's a bit more than that.  In Pawn Stance play, following the logic of your character's characterisation into making what you know to be bad choices is simply bad play.  In Actor Stance play picking good choices against the logic of your character's characterisation is known as metagaming.


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## trystero

Hussar said:


> If Action Points are a story gaming element, you cannot then claim that 3e has no story gaming elements.



Minor nit-pick: Action Points are not present in the core 3e or 3.5e rulebooks; they were an option added (as far as I know) in the 3.5e _Unearthed Arcana_ supplement. So it depends on whether we take "3e" to mean "core 3rd edition" or "3rd edition with all the available options".


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## The Crimson Binome

trystero said:


> Minor nit-pick: Action Points are not present in the core 3e or 3.5e rulebooks; they were an option added (as far as I know) in the 3.5e _Unearthed Arcana_ supplement. So it depends on whether we take "3e" to mean "core 3rd edition" or "3rd edition with all the available options".



There's a whole spectrum of inclusiveness on what "counts" for an edition. While _Unearthed Arcana_ would suggest that Action Points are no more core than either generic classes or complex skill checks, Eberron ensured that Action Points were fairly popular in terms of actual play. At a practical level, the existence of Action Points would vary from table to table, much like Critical Hits in earlier editions.


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## trystero

Saelorn said:


> There's a whole spectrum of inclusiveness on what "counts" for an edition. While _Unearthed Arcana_ would suggest that Action Points are no more core than either generic classes or complex skill checks, Eberron ensured that Action Points were fairly popular in terms of actual play. At a practical level, the existence of Action Points would vary from table to table, much like Critical Hits in earlier editions.



I never played anything in Eberron, so I wasn't aware that it used Action Points. (Myself, I never saw them used in play in 3e or 3.5e.)


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## Hussar

Additionally, Action Points were part of the SRD, which meant they had pretty widespread use, IMO.


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## prosfilaes

Hussar said:


> Additionally, Action Points were part of the SRD, which meant they had pretty widespread use, IMO.




They weren't; if you look through http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwiki.php?title=d20:Revised-d20-System-Reference-Document , you won't find them. They're at http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/actionPoints.htm , but that's text from Unearthed Arcana, not the SRD.


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## Hussar

The Unearthed Arcana was added to the SRD Prosfilaes.  It would be be hard for them to add them to the original SRD, considering they hadn't been written yet.  It's the same way that Epic rules are also part of the SRD.


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## Umbran

Here's a thought I think nobody has come upon...

Just about every RPG has a section at the front - "What is an RPG?"  This is to explain to the really new, uninformed player what the thing is about.  Why aren't we referencing those in this discussion?


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## Hussar

Umbran said:


> Here's a thought I think nobody has come upon...
> 
> Just about every RPG has a section at the front - "What is an RPG?"  This is to explain to the really new, uninformed player what the thing is about.  Why aren't we referencing those in this discussion?




I referred to this several times upthread and got told by [MENTION=40166]prosfilaes[/MENTION] that the forewords to RPG's are meaningless.


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## prosfilaes

Hussar said:


> The Unearthed Arcana was added to the SRD Prosfilaes.




Not as far as I know. The Epic rules and the Psionic rules were both added to the SRD and show up in downloads of the original RTF files. Unearthed Arcana wasn't; it was released under the OGL. 



> It's the same way that Epic rules are also part of the SRD.




If you open a copy of the Epic Level Handbook, you'll see that it says there is no Open Gaming Content inside. If you open a copy of Unearthed Arcana, you'll see that it makes pretty much the entire book OGC. That, and not being part of the SRD, is what made it available to other publishers.



Hussar said:


> I referred to this several times upthread and got told by [MENTION=40166]prosfilaes[/MENTION] that the forewords to RPG's are meaningless.




That is not what I said, nor is the context remotely similar.


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## Hussar

Umm, that is precisely what you said.  



			
				Prosfilaes said:
			
		

> I don't trust forewords to accurately reflect how the game is being played, or even necessarily how the game is designed to be played. I'm curious if WoD authors ever had that explicit contrast put to them, the need to sell the game as dramatic, angsty art and yet write stuff that appeals to the group of people who just wanted to play vampires and werewolfs for maximum carnage.
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Illusion-of-Game-Balance/page38#ixzz3HvOqCsjO






> Yes, what the creator thought of his creation does have to factor in. But I don't get what that has to do with the second part; it's possible the self-definition is unachievable in the game system or that the fullest design potential is more then what the designers dreamed of. I'd pull out Starcraft and probably OD&D for the second, and any number of failed games for the first.
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Illusion-of-Game-Balance/page39#ixzz3HvP7vneU






> And who really cares how the game is supposed to be played? We're gamers, and good games are ones that play well in practice, and frequently even if the developer is there to explain how it's supposed to be played, maybe people like it better this way! Nothing really matters but the game in play.
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Illusion-of-Game-Balance/page40#ixzz3HvPcgJTW






> hussar said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I care about what the game says it's trying to do.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That's useless. Utterly and incredibly so.
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...Illusion-of-Game-Balance/page42#ixzz3HvQ5NYf7
Click to expand...



So, what exactly do you mean if it wasn't that the text of the game is pointless and everything develops from how the game is being played at the table?


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## Mystic Lemur

I got as far as "D&D isn't a roleplaying game because you can play it successfully without roleplaying, but _Vampire_ and _Call of Cthulhu_ are true roleplaying games because if you play without roleplaying you're doing it wrong."


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