Semi-RPGs?

[quozl]

First, a lot of these games are very close to the line between RPG and something else - something like a boardgame. That is, sure one can narrate events for the results indicated, but one can do that in monopoly as well. I think that structure is a fine thing, but it can be taken to the point where the primary act of roleplaying - selecting actions from amongst all those potentially viable for a character - is made moot, or eliminated as an option. This is potentially very problematic in some ways. I think a lot can be blamed on the success of My Life With Master, which might seem to some to be so rigidly structured, but which in play actually leads to a lot of "role-playing."

In other ways, I think we have here just a whole new category of games. Semi-RPGs? I mean, some of these games are going to be a lot of fun to play for what they are.

I'm sure there are some interesting things to say about this, which is why I'm starting this thread, but I really don't understand what Mike was trying to say in the above quotation.  He differentiates RPGs from semi-RPGs by saying:

the primary act of roleplaying - selecting actions from amongst all those potentially viable for a character

Isn't that the primary act of boardgaming too or any other type of gaming for that matter? How does "selecting actions from amongst all those potentially viable for a character" relate to RPGs and how does that differentiate an RPG from a semi-RPG?

[Jack Aidley]

I think the key words are 'potentially viable'. For example, in Dynasty Warriors (the computer game) I can hit stuff, I can jump, I can ride horses - but I can't set up a rope trap, demand my opponents surrender, or simply run away from battle despite the fact all three are potentially viable options for a warrior such as the one depicted in the game. Wheras in any normal RPG all these options, and many more, would be open to me.

[quozl]

But are they really?  I know lots of RPGs that have no mechanics for rope traps or surrendering.

[orbsmatt]

The biggest difference is the fact that any kind of action can be added at the GMs discretion, even if they aren't in the rulebook.  That's what makes full-RPGs so much fun - you aren't completely limited to game mechanics.

[Walt Freitag]

I think what Mike is referring to is the difference between selecting actions from an essentially infinite set of options constrained only by plausibility, which is characteristic of RPG play, versus selecting actions from a finite set of options. The latter is characteristic of board games and CRPGs.

We must also consider that in this context, "option" has to mean more than "exactly what you narrate your character doing," it has to have a meaning closer to "ways your character's action can change the game state." The hypothetical ability to narrate, from an open-ended range of possibilities, the exact reason your "character" is sent to Jail or the luxurious features of your newly-built hotel in a Monopoly game doesn't make Monoopoly any less a game of finite options, because such narration has no effect on the possibilities open in subsequent play.

Further clarification: the game state includes all significant facts about the world and about the characters. For example, in My Life With Master, the number of different results a a player's action can have on the character state in game mechanical terms is finite (gain SL, gain Love, etc.) is finite, but actions also have an open-ended range of effect on the shared imagined space (such as, alter an NPCs physical well-being in ways that will have to be taken into account in any future imagining of events involving that NPC). Yet further clarification: "significant" means "affecting the system-legality or the plausibility of future potential player actions."

I assume that Arabian Nights On Ice, my Iron Game Chef entry, is one of those Mike is referring to, because designing a (by that definition) "near RPG" was and is exactly my goal. I prefer the term "finite rpg" -- keeping in mind that just as with computer rpgs, it's irrelevant to me whether people want to regard finite rpgs as "real rpgs" or not.

This concept arose for me out of three posts from last fall about 1st edition AD&D as a de facto finite game, for some players and for some short-lived span of time. See: Post #1, Post #2, and Post #3. What I've decided I want to do is design a game that's as complex but as finite as early D&D (when it was still close to its "wargaming roots" so that there was a sense that the rules enumerate everything a character can do). But instead of the "roots" being wargames based on figures moving on maps, it will be based on card games in which the card tableau in front of a player displays the player's current progress, problems, and resources. This might bring to mind CCGs, but what I'm really thinking is Mille Bournes.

The Arabian Nights On Ice Iron Game Chef game isn't there yet. I wouldn't even call it a first draft. It's half of the mechanics, the half that covers the external handling of the Conflict cards (which helps combine disparate Conflict elements into the semblance of a coherent plot), but it omits the mechanics I'm planning for within the Conflict card content. I replaced those with some freeform narration rules, both to patch over the omission and to make it superficially more rpg-like. In the Iron Game Chef version the Conflict cards look like Once Upon A Time cards, with only a sentence or two of text, but Conflict cards in the real game will look more like pages torn out of role playing adventure modules. Each "card" will delineate multiple character options and the situational rules needed to resolve their outcomes.

(And yeah, the On Ice part was tacked on for the contest. But even so, it actually did help me work out some focus issues.)

- Walt

[quozl]

I prefer the term "finite rpg" -- keeping in mind that just as with computer rpgs, it's irrelevant to me whether people want to regard finite rpgs as "real rpgs" or not.

...

What I've decided I want to do is design a game that's as complex but as finite as early D&D (when it was still close to its "wargaming roots" so that there was a sense that the rules enumerate everything a character can do).

- Walt

Thanks Walt; that does help.  Mike, does "finite RPG" cover what you meant by semi-RPG?

My own entry for the Iron Chef contest (the fantasy icebreaker) was my attempt to design an RPG as much unlike an RPG as possible and still be recognized as an RPG.   Is it a finite RPG or something else?

[Mike Holmes]

Walt's got it right on the head.

To some extent, the division is illusory. That is, all games are "finite" in some ways. They define limited sets of characters to start, and then limited worlds in which they can interact.

Everyone familiar with the concept of larger and smaller infinities (everyone know what a half-space is?) RPGs represent games with small infinities of potential actions, some subset of the actual infinite that the game represents.  Non-RPGs could be seen that way. I mean, one could say that each buy of a property was performed at a meeting of the principles of the transaction and that each happened in a different way. Making the potential results infinite. But the problem is that the mechanics don't alter to represent the described events at all. So what actually ends up happening is that the player is informed that his input doesn't matter, and so he focuses on the mechanic itself.

This is Pawn stance. Treating your in-game representation as just that, and not trying to describe it as if it had an objectively real existence in another place. To the extent that, say, early D&D had very limited options, it promoted more pawn stance. If there's an implied entire world outside of the dungeon (which the Tolkien source material would suggest, and the text's nebulous mention of "town" as where you go to rest up between adventures), then why can't the characters interact with that larger world - even if only to use the only extant mechanics to kill it? It's these "artificial" seeming limits that cause a game to become something less than a full RPG.

BTW, all of this theory comes from the threads with Jack Spencer trying to define RPGs. As such, my definitions are far from commonly accepted. But I think that we can all see that the boardgame dungeon, while having more RPG-like elements, is not a RPG. Well, if you design a game that's likely to promote that sort of pawn stance, then I think that what you have is something between RPG and boardgame. It's in the fuzzy zone that I'm calling semi-rpgs.

Obviously it's a spectrum. Note that by this definition, yes, all CRPGs that are not MMORPGS or MUDS or the like, are very much semi-rpgs.

I don't want the name to become something that has a bad connotation. Any more than I'd say that any well designed game that was intentionally made to promote some sort of fun Pawn stance, was a bad game. It's just different, and I think deserving of an apellation. Note that The Dance and the Dawn got second, and showed a lot of these characteristics. The problem with many of the others was that they weren't interesting as strategy games or basic simulations - which sans promoting characterization seems to be all that's left to have fun with in these games.

Note that I think that some of the posters created these by accident, simply by making a very rigid and limited (though potentially very fun) set of choices for the players, and just not realizing that they were making the rules feel as though Pawn stance was the way that it would read to be played. Sure, if you put some of these in front of RPG players, they might see a way to play them as RPGs. But as someone once said, System Does Matter, and I think these games would make most groups move to Pawn stance in their play.

Mike

P.S. the icebreaker actually had less of this than some games, because there were periods where only narration could advance the in-game situation. That is, there's no mechanical set of options that the player must pick from to defeat a monster, he just narrates any of the myriad ways that it could happen. If you'd limited it to Attack or Bold Attack, or somesuch, then this would indicate more pawn stance, because, while one could describe either one in infinite ways, the mechanic again tells the player that the description doesn't matter. That said, the infinity involved in Dragon's Lair is orders of magnitude smaller than most RPGs, so it's, perhaps, a nearly semi-rpg? ::shrug::

As for Walt's game, if he loses the ice and tightens it up, including some more interactivity, I think he'll have an excellent example of what this sort of game can be in terms of entertainment value.

Mike

[quozl]

Thanks Mike for the clarification.  

You did add a bit to Walt's definition in that you also mentioned pawn stance.  Is pawn stance another criterion for a semi-RPG because it doesn't seem to be necessary for a finite RPG to also have pawn stance.  Therefore, I'm guessing that an infinite RPG (or just RPG as commonly defined) with only pawn stance available would also be a semi-RPG.  Am I reading you right?

P.S. Thank you again for all the work you put in on the Iron Chef competitions.  I thoroughly enjoy your comments on all the games.

[Mike Holmes]

That's a very tough question - very chicken or egg. I'd say that either enough impetus towards Pawn stance, or a game finite enough to cause Pawn stance because of that, is a semi-rpg.

Or more to the point, we shouldn't adopt the term as a substitte. Just say that the game is "mostly Pawn stance" or that "it has finite options" or something like that. Each is more specific and potentially more important than some secondary label.

Mike

[quozl]

I guess I need to clarify myself since my post got a little convoluted there.  So what we're saying is that an RPG must have infinite character options (as defined above) and not be limited to only pawn stance in order to be considered an RPG.  (Of course, for the people who have not read the previous threads, a shared imaginary space is essential.)

That actually helps my design efforts.  In order for RPG players to recognize my game as an RPG, it needs to meet both of the above criteria.

Thanks!

[Mike Holmes]

I guess I need to clarify myself since my post got a little convoluted there.  So what we're saying is that an RPG must have infinite character options (as defined above) and not be limited to only pawn stance in order to be considered an RPG.  (Of course, for the people who have not read the previous threads, a shared imaginary space is essential.)

That actually helps my design efforts.  In order for RPG players to recognize my game as an RPG, it needs to meet both of the above criteria.

No, I wouldn't say this. My postulation is that limited options lead to Pawn stance. Pawn stance isn't a cause, it's an effect. Which means that it's symptomatic of a potential semi-rpg, but the real cause is the limited options.

Any clearer? I fear we're getting very semantic here for no reason. Again, I don't think of this as a binary where people will go "yes!" or "no!" based on what the game is like. I think it'll be more like "that's a lot like what I expect" vs. "that's not quite what I expect." See the difference? You have to set some level of finity to your subset in the game. It's merely a question of how large your infinity is. At some point, you start to trigger Pawn stance, and that's an indication of people's perception of what's worthwhile to do in the game.

Let's remember that Pawn stance is, by definition, not bothering to ensure that an action is completely plausible within the definitions of the world. Players do it in this case because they feel informed that being plausible in certain ways isn't within the purview of the game. That's not to say that they will have their character do implausible things - be careful here. It means that they won't bother to ensure that they're not, which will end up with something implausible at some point, likely (though not neccessarily).

Mike

[Sean]

Hi, Mike -

As a corollary to what you're saying, I think that it was a sense of infinite options in 'early D&D' (reference period '75-'78, say) that gradually led people away from pawn stance. That is, you might have started in pawn stance, but then once you got a DM who would let you use your creativity open-endedly, actor, author, and director stances all start popping up in interesting ways. That was a major cognitive shift for a lot of the other grade-schoolers I was playing with back in those days, anyway.

So maybe there's a kind of mutual reinforcement here, or at least a tendency towards one. That is, limited options push you towards pawn stance even if you might be initially inclined towards some other, and unlimited (functional, not just hypothetical) options push you away from it in certain respects. Or at least they can. Especially if suddenly you undergo a G -> S shift at the same time: to put constraints on the outbreak of raw creativity that infinite options seem to allow, you start focusing on in-game cause to restrain it; which in turn encourages everyone to stop staying in pawn stance and instead try to render their actions plausible using one of the other three stances instead.

[quozl]

Let's remember that Pawn stance is, by definition, not bothering to ensure that an action is completely plausible within the definitions of the world.

I'm a little confused.  Are you saying that pawn stance is when the player doesn't care if the characters actions are plausible?  And that if a player does care, then it's not pawn stance?

[Mike Holmes]

I'm a little confused.  Are you saying that pawn stance is when the player doesn't care if the characters actions are plausible?  And that if a player does care, then it's not pawn stance?

Pawn stance is defined as using a character (or other in-game tool, one would assume) in order to achieve a player, not character, goal, and then not retroactively going back and ensuring that it was plausible for the character.

As opposed to author stance which is doing the same thing, but then remembering to ensure that it's a plausible action as well.

Does that help?

Just because somebody doesn't ensure that their character's action seems plausible doesn't mean that it won't seem plausible. Just that if it does, it's by accident.

Mike

[quozl]

OK, got it.  And you're saying that the perceived lack of infinite options in a game causes pawn stance and that if a game causes pawn stance in 99% of the people who play it, then it will not be considered an RPG.  Right?