Game or Roleplaying, Which is More Important?

[mythusmage]

Over in a thread I started on the G/N/S forum the question was asked, Which is central to the experience, the game or the roleplaying?

Neither. What's central to the experience is the adventure. Without the adventure you have naught but an empty shell. The RPG has no purpose and so becomes an empty exercise in die rolling and emoting.

It is adventure that gives any RPG meaning, imparting to it a life beyond rule book or setting. Beyond the dramatics, well or ill done.

This is why I am an adventurist. All, game, narrative, and simulation come together in the adventure. Without the adventure there is no reason to play.

Alan

[Bruce Baugh]

I'm tempted to say that this is not a meaningful question, or at least that in many cases it is - that what makes gaming interesting for players is precisely the combination of elements.

You can extract any subset of them and get something different, after all. Pull out some pieces and you get tactical wargaming, a well-established field. Pull out others and you get simming and shared fanfic. Pull out others and you get traditional storytelling. And so forth and so on. Gaming is a hybrid art form. There are people who really really strongly prefer some parts of it over others - heck, including me - but gaming "as such" is precisely about the amalgamation.

Any question about specific priorities can make sense only when referring to individuals. The diversity of games exists because folks want various mixtures and priorities.

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Mr. Baugh,

Isn't it great to take a break from all that writing for Gamma World and just shoot the breeze?

I'm tempted to say that this is not a meaningful question, or at least that in many cases it is - that what makes gaming interesting for players is precisely the combination of elements.

You can extract any subset of them and get something different, after all. Pull out some pieces and you get tactical wargaming, a well-established field. Pull out others and you get simming and shared fanfic. Pull out others and you get traditional storytelling. And so forth and so on. Gaming is a hybrid art form. There are people who really really strongly prefer some parts of it over others - heck, including me - but gaming "as such" is precisely about the amalgamation.

Exactly.  Which, from a Devil's advocate point of view, is why neither the Threefold Model or the GNS Theory seem (for some) to fully work.

Why?

Because they are trying to use them to extrapolate the meaning of GAME, IMO, when that isn't, precisely, what they are about.

But, as you say, it's "about the amalgamation".  Thus, for some, what they want of such theorys is something that will explain to them how the diverse elements come together to create a game.  In this regard we would have to remove the premise of Gamist/Gamism from such models and replace it with something else, let us call it "Focus".  Thus the model being sough becomes one of: N, S, F; with G (for Game) being at the center of the equation.

Or something like that.

Any question about specific priorities can make sense only when referring to individuals. The diversity of games exists because folks want various mixtures and priorities.

Exactly.  Even if 'role-playing' may not be synonomous with 'game', it is one style of game.  Albeit a style of game that can also be multifaceted, witness the use of cards, dice, chits, no-dice, an etcetera in various systems.  But you're quite right, it's as much a matter of perspective and priority as anything else.


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Without the adventure you have naught but an empty shell.

Naught but an empty shell? Who talks like that?

Hahaha. Alan, I kid. I kid because I love.

What was the question?

[Bruce Baugh]

Greetings Mr. Baugh,

Isn't it great to take a break from all that writing for Gamma World and just shoot the breeze?

Man, you have no idea. I really ought to be at work right now, but my allergies are acting up and my thinking's a little slow. What a time to theorize! :)

[Kester Pelagius]

Howdy,

Greetings Mr. Baugh,

Isn't it great to take a break from all that writing for Gamma World and just shoot the breeze?

Man, you have no idea. I really ought to be at work right now, but my allergies are acting up and my thinking's a little slow. What a time to theorize! :)

Don't you hate that about allergy meds?

Then again what better time to theorize than when on meds?  ;)


Kind Regards,

Kester "Crown Prince of Vagueness" Pelagius

[Mike Holmes]

I think it's safe to say that we're looking for a little clarification on what the issue is, here, Alan.

BTW, good to hear from you.

Mike

[ADGBoss]

Over in a thread I started on the G/N/S forum the question was asked, Which is central to the experience, the game or the roleplaying?

Neither. What's central to the experience is the adventure. Without the adventure you have naught but an empty shell. The RPG has no purpose and so becomes an empty exercise in die rolling and emoting.

It is adventure that gives any RPG meaning, imparting to it a life beyond rule book or setting. Beyond the dramatics, well or ill done.

This is why I am an adventurist. All, game, narrative, and simulation come together in the adventure. Without the adventure there is no reason to play.

Alan

Ok I am game :) Define for me adventure? What is an "Adventure"? What does being an "Adventurist" do differently when designng a game then say a Narratavist or a Sumlationist or just a generic designer? How does it affect your Game Design per se?

Or are you just renaiming "Story" or perhaps "Plot"?  Is it the "sense" of Adventure? The Journey?

Sean

[Bankuei]

Hi Alan,

I confused as to what you're saying here.  The question as to what is more
"central", I think you're going to get a lot of answers that are very close to your own, just in different words.  That is, you can't have a roleplaying game without some form of roleplaying, and system working in combo.

This is why I am an adventurist. All, game, narrative, and simulation come together in the adventure. Without the adventure there is no reason to play.

This is where I think you're misreading GNS completely(let me know if I'm reading too much into what you're saying here).  GNS says you must have System, Setting, Character, Color, and Situation, and that these have to be Explored.  The GNS part is basically saying "Where do you focus it?"  

What it sounds like you are saying is that "there is no focus"...to which I can't possibly see it happening.  You can switch focuses during play, for different decisions, but that doesn't mean a focus isn't happening at all.  

Am I on track here? or are you saying something else?

Chris

[mythusmage]

Adventure: Something dangerous you do because you're bored to tears.

Seriously, in RPGs an adventure is what the party goes on to see what they can see. Might be strange lands, to find a treasure, rescue somebody or something from some bad guy, or any number of reasons. Any good adventure has places to see, villains to defeat, and goodies to collect. Without an adventure to go on, why play?

Why do you think they're called adventurers?

Story has nothing to do with it. Story is what comes out of an adventure. The fixation on story leads to plotting out an adventure to a ludicrous degree, and so to blatant railroading and great player dissatisfaction.

Look at it this way. The goal is to prepare for the adventure. Whatever you do as GM or player is geared towards getting ready to adventure. Whether it's a whole world, or a starting character, preparing for the adventure is the goal.

The trick is not to plot out an adventure, the trick is to prepare for the adventure.

Prepare?

Get things ready. What is most likely to happen if the PCs don't show up? How are people going to react should the PCs do this? (Whatever 'this' happens to be.) Who all is involved in the adventure? What are their most likely reactions to the PCs' actions? What are they most likely to do with a change in circumstances?

As Bruce Baught stated in an earlier post, an RPG is an amalgamation of many things. Fiction is one part, but an RPG is not fiction in the traditional sense. Yes, what happens in an adventure is imaginary, but it does not, indeed it cannot, happen as it would in a story. No, events happen more as in real life. In that sense an RPG models reality in a way it never could otherwise.

In other words, anything can, and often does, happen in an RPG, given the limits placed on the possibilities by the rules.

This places a great burden on the GM. He must be able to adapt to a change in circumstances. The Darklord gets his brains blown out by the party archer in the first encounter. Who's his second in command? Would there be a power struggle with the DL's death. How could this affect the immediate area? People tend not to think about stuff like this because they're thinking 'story'. Darklords don't get killed in the first scene because it would 'ruin' the 'story'.

But in real life (assuming there were any Dark Lords in real life) it is very possible for the main villain to 'buy the farm' at most any moment.

My point? Forget story. Story has no part in actual play. Story comes after the adventure, when the participants recount what happened. The goal is to be prepared enough, adaptable enough to adjust to most any eventuality. A fixation on 'story' can make that rather hard.

What do I mean by 'adventure'? What you run every time you hold an RPG session. What you have when you, as your character, go off to rescue, rob, set right, overturn whatever the goal happens to be. It's why you play.

Amalgam? Bruce is mostly right, the RPG is a blend of disparate elements, but I would have to call it more a 'fusion', though that is inadequate itself to describe what the RPG is. The RPG is unique in that nothing like it has ever existed before. It is new. It is made up of elements that have been around for every long times, but the RPG is the first time those elements have been combined in this manner. By concentrating on those elements we ignore the whole, and to understand RPGs we must consider the whole.

This is a paradigm shift folks. How the world is viewed is changing. When I am done how you see RPGs, how you handle roleplaying in game and out will change, I hope for the better.

Alan

[Fade Manley]

Adventure: Something dangerous you do because you're bored to tears.

Seriously, in RPGs an adventure is what the party goes on to see what they can see. Might be strange lands, to find a treasure, rescue somebody or something from some bad guy, or any number of reasons. Any good adventure has places to see, villains to defeat, and goodies to collect. Without an adventure to go on, why play?

Why do you think they're called adventurers?

I think I'd have to disagree with this definition as what RPGs are all about. This is actually something I had serious problems with when I began GMing because I tend to avoid things which are obviously 'adventures'. My most successful sessions involved working out personal relationships and my least successful were the ones where, in order to appease certain players, I put in some sort of 'bad guy' or 'villain to defeat'. The best session I ever ran had three people sitting in a car talking about why they'd done what they did; they didn't go any place, they didn't defeat anyone, and they certainly didn't collect goodies.

As you define adventures--or at least as I read it--I can see a lot of gaming fitting into this definition. Many RPGs I've played in have followed that particular formula. But it seems very limiting to try to define RPGs as necessarily being about this, as if sessions that didn't involve the villains/new places/goodies dynamic were somehow less true roleplaying than those that did. I've been in games where the PCs never left a single city, and barely even went outside a given neighborhood, and certainly didn't accrue much in the way of loot. And they were more likely to deal with communication errors than defeat villains. They weren't adventures by your definition--I even went out of my way to make clear to players that I avoided traditional 'adventure' style plots--but I don't think what I had was "naught but an empty shell" instead of roleplaying.

[mythusmage]

Hi Alan,

I confused as to what you're saying here.  The question as to what is more
"central", I think you're going to get a lot of answers that are very close to your own, just in different words.  That is, you can't have a roleplaying game without some form of roleplaying, and system working in combo.

Chris

Hi Chris,

The adventure is the focus. It is the adventure that is central. It is why you play. It is why the GM spends numerous man hours preparing every week. It is (approximating the French as best I can on a messageboard), the raison d'etre. By focusing on the 'game', 'narrative', or 'simulation' one tend's to slight 'adventure'. This resulting in dissatisfying sessions.

Consider 'game', 'narrative', and 'simulation' as tools in the presentation of the adventure. Among many other tools as well. You have the rules that lay out what could or could not happen in the adventure. You have the basic plot of the adventure (which could end up on the junk pile), and a series of events that might happen, assuming the PCs don't mess things up. Finally, you have that subset of the rules that tries to simulate whatever it is they're trying to simulate. All are tools, and only tools. Each is important in play, but none outweighs the others.

The adventure is key, anything else is only there to make the adventure better than it would be otherwise. Forget that and you're in the wrong hobby.

(A few weeks past over on the Pyramid newsgroups somebody asked what it was that Pyramidians did best. My reply was something along the lines of, "Nitpick inconsequential details to the point the original poster is ready to go postal."  Here I would have the say the main talent would appear to be focusing on the inconsequential or the irrelevant to the point one is about ready to whack people upside the head with rubber chickens. Either that, or missing the point. The jury's still out.)

Alan

[Bankuei]

Hi Alan,

Thanks for some level of clarification, although I think you'll find a lot of people have been saying similar, if not identical things to what you are saying now.  Your enthusiasm is great, but a lot of what you are saying doesn't contradict, nor shed light on too much of what folks have been, or are saying.

Story=Railroading?

Nope.  Sorry.  That's just one possible way of doing things, and its definitely NOT what Narrativism is about.  Narrativism is very much against railroading, and, in fact, advocates the flexible GM game plan that you're talking about.

Adventure?

We've got a word for this: Situation.  Situation is "What's going on that's interesting?"  Is a demon king taking over the land?  Has your wife turned into a vampire?  Situation.

This is a paradigm shift folks. How the world is viewed is changing. When I am done how you see RPGs, how you handle roleplaying in game and out will change, I hope for the better

I really hope that this does occur.  But...Alan, not to burst your bubble, but you haven't said anything that is "new" for folks here.  Please, please, and please, take a second and digest the GNS essay.  Yes, it is written like Ron had to explain the concepts to a lawyeristic Satan with his soul in the balance, yes, it is dry as hell.  But, everything you've said, so far, has been stated in that.  Really.

Looking forward to the paradigm shift,

Chris

[mythusmage]

I think I'd have to disagree with this definition as what RPGs are all about. This is actually something I had serious problems with when I began GMing because I tend to avoid things which are obviously 'adventures'. My most successful sessions involved working out personal relationships and my least successful were the ones where, in order to appease certain players, I put in some sort of 'bad guy' or 'villain to defeat'. The best session I ever ran had three people sitting in a car talking about why they'd done what they did; they didn't go any place, they didn't defeat anyone, and they certainly didn't collect goodies.

Methinks you're using too narrow a definition of adventure. (So was I, so thanks for the opportunity to expand.)

Adventure: What occurs when interesting things happen to people, and those people take steps to correct the consequeces of said interesting things, forestall their occurence in the first place, and/or work out things.

By this description of adventure you do run them. Not the traditional adventure where a villain gets his, but adventures.

Young mother to small child at a closed down Heathrow Airport (bad weather): Dear, we're having an adventure.

Think about it.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Alan, I'm afraid I'm going to be harsher than I would to most people. You are patronizing the people reading this thread.

Preparing a reactive situation, rather than a fixed plotline, is the oldest form of role-playing and thus is well-known to many of us.

In terms of my theorizing, this is a "technique" which may be practiced throughout the three GNS modes. It's not specific to any particular one of them, nor prohibited to any one of them.

You've paraphrased the GNS modes most clearly in your latest post ... and thereby demonstrated a pretty common initial-reading misunderstanding of them. Chris has identified your "story" misapprehension already; my Simulationist essay has a whole section about the verb "to simulate" and how it relates, or doesn't, to the mode of play termed from it.

Anyway. Thanks for your input. But the target is oh, about 94 degrees to your right, and canted a fair angle upwards from the horizontal plane you're looking at.

Best,
Ron