This rant brought to you courtesy of discussion in this thread.


There is a misconception that's become a pet peeve of mine, and that I want to debunk: The idea that "playing a role" and "playing a game" are ever separate parts of playing a roleplaying game. They aren't. They are two different ways of viewing the same underlying activity. And now, let's talk about physics.

By the turn of the 20th century, the evidence was spectacularly strong that light was a wave. Light does all manner of things that you can't explain by treating it as a particle (interference patterns, for a start). Then somebody conducted an experiment and demonstrated the photoelectric effect. The thing is, you can't explain the photoelectric effect by discussing light as a wave. But it makes perfect sense if you imagine that light is a particle.

So what does that mean? To a layman it means "Light is sometimes a wave and sometimes a particle, and you explain some things with one tool and some with another, but never with both." To a physicist it means "Light is neither a wave nor a particle. It is something else we don't (yet) have words for. But it is something that 99.999% of the time exhibits properties that can be adequately understood using either a wave model or a particle model. Both models are flawed, but for the huge majority of cases either one is good enough, so we're not throwing them away until we have something equally simple that works 100%."

My take on RPGs mimics this closely: "Roleplaying games are neither roleplaying nor games. They are something else that we don't (yet) have words for. But it is something that most of the time can be adequately understood using either a roleplaying model or a game model. Both models are flawed, but for the huge majority of cases either one is good enough, so we're not throwing them away until we have something equally simple that works 100%."

Hence the title of this rant: Roleplay/Game Duality. You're doing something you have no good words for... so you put the best model you can manage to slap together onto it, and then you perceive it through that lens. But your lens is not privileged. You are not doing anything that someone using another lens cannot or will not do, if they are pursuing the same agenda. You are playing an RPG. Roleplaying and Gaming, separately, are just mental tools to help you get your head around that.

And yes, by "roleplaying" I mean "telling a story" here too. I'm talking about everything where you contribute your choices and your aesthetic to the SIS. Call it make-believe, creative fiction, whatever. For the purpose of this rant, I'm calling it roleplay, because that's the way that I've heard it brought up as a concern most frequently.

"You," a man will say, with a sneer in his voice, "are not roleplaying. You are simply going through the motions of real roleplaying, in order to abuse the game system. You are, dare I say it, a... rollplayer!" Cue scandalized gasps from the onlookers. Ladies swoon. Smelling-salts are deployed. A slap with an empty glove, a call for satisfaction, pistols at dawn.

Feh. They're both doing exactly the same thing. They're just looking at it so differently that they can't recognize the similarities. Let's parse some examples:

"I could kill this dragon right now, with an arrow of dragon-slaying. But I can probably catch it later if I try with the sword and fail, and I'll get a +20% XP bonus for tracking it down. Sword it is!"

"I could patch up things with Megumi, if I said the right thing right now. But I can probably fix the romance later, even if I say this wonderfully unfortunate thing right now, and it's a much more dramatic story that way. Stupid faux-pas it is!"

"I could kill this dragon right now, with the arrow of dragon-slaying. But I can also let it go, because I have doubts about whether slaying it is the right thing to do, and that makes for a much more dramatic story. Pangs of conscience it is!"

"I could show respect for the King's guard. But I can also attack them, and get a pile of XP, and maybe a pair of their nice shiny Boots of Swift Response will be in my size. Sociopathic attack it is!"

Nice rant, Tony. The light analogy is especially useful, and I'll definitely be using it on some friends (who I've been having this, ahem, discussion with for many years).

I'm not sure about Forge (or similar) games functioning as a clearer lens though. That implies that other games are blurrier lenses, because they don't merge the two kinds of thinking (and the choices that come with that)...but we've also concluded that there is no real dichotomy, which would seem to suggest that there aren't really two separate ways of acting -- just ways to justify/conceive that act. Am I missing some part of the argument?

I'm not so sure about this.

People do things in roleplaying games that are not handled by mechanics. People do things in roleplaying games that are penalized by mechanics.

Player: "I draw my sword and attack the palace guard!"

DM: "This isn't 2e anymore, Joe, you won't get any XP for picking fights at random."

Player: "I don't care, he looked at me funny. I'm fourteenth level, what are they going to do?"

DM: ::sigh:: "Okay, well, you've got surprise... roll initiative..."

The DM thinks, "Why is he doing this? It's neither in keeping with his agenda... he's a PALADIN for Pete's sake... nor is he getting a reward... what the foul?"

Roleplaying games are an exercise that is, at its heart, nearly completely imaginary. We use paper to keep records because our memories aren't good enough to do it on our own, and we use dice because we like the unexpected, but there are games that can be played with no physical representation whatsoever that are still roleplaying games.

When I as a gamemaster, say, "Joe takes fifteen points of damage" I fail to understand what the roleplaying aspect of that is. What is there, besides raw mechanics?

When I as gamemaster say, "The bartender says, 'What'll you have?' He glares at you balefully with his one eye, as if to dare you to order anything weaker than Dwarven distilled spirits." there's NO mechanical context present. Where is the 'game' in color?

Now before you start trying to tell me that it IS there... stop. That's not what I'm asking for, that's not what I'm talking about.

Roleplaying is a thought-based activity, correct? Memory, imagination, communication... hold onto that for a moment.

Anything that I am not aware of in my conscious mind DOES NOT EXIST in my conscious mind. You can tell me that I am having a particular thought, if you like, and your thought-model for what is going on in my mind may require that I be having it... but if I'm not having it, I'm not having it, no matter what your model says.

At its core, your rant seems to devolve into semantics, redefining what "game" and "roleplaying" mean in the context of a roleplaying game. Putting peanut butter on one slice, and jelly on the other, does in fact, make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but it doesn't make the peanut butter into jelly.

Jasper: No, you've got it exactly. Two different ways of justifying and conceiving of actions. If the models are so divergent that it is hard to conceive of actions in one that can be justified in another then you get into a state where you can only use either of them by assuring that everyone is in agreement on which is being used. So, for example: "We'll roll dice for combat, but just roleplay for conversations."


Fred: Uh... if you don't want an answer to the question, why did you ask it? In fact, if you don't want to hear anything back from me, why bother posting at all?

My post isn't asking a question, it's a response to your rant.

"I disagree, and here's why."

I enjoined you from telling me that I don't, in fact, disagree, not that you shouldn't respond at all.

Edit: One of the problems I have with Capes, is that the roleplaying can be entirely driven out of it. You could remove all of the power descriptions, narration, etc. and be left with a game that was entirely playable. It's easy... TOO easy, to get caught up in the mechanics, and lose sight of the fact that stuff needs to be justified and narrated. If the narration part and the mechanics is all equal, then that shouldn't matter... but it does. This is what leads me to understand that there IS a real difference, a real dichotomy.

Okay, you disagree. That's nice.

I like your point about games with no props and no dice, however, because it brings up an issue that I didn't raise.

Freeform games, where there is no rules system, no mechanics, nothing but people socially interacting, are still roleplaying games. The Gaming-only model is perfectly serviceable in such cases: the rules of the game are the social interactions of the people involved.

Honestly, once you view such things as a game, and take some serious time to figure out what the rules are, it becomes almost criminally easy to do anything you want. People are so easy to beat when they don't realize what game they're playing.

Okay, Tony, good to know. And maybe you won't mind me jumping in here either:

Vaxalon wrote: When I as a gamemaster, say, "Joe takes fifteen points of damage" I fail to understand what the roleplaying aspect of that is. What is there, besides raw mechanics?

Tony wrote: Freeform games, where there is no rules system, no mechanics, nothing but people socially interacting, are still roleplaying games. The Gaming-only model is perfectly serviceable in such cases: the rules of the game are the social interactions of the people involved.

Vaxalon wrote: "Game" in that sense is used as a metaphor.

No, the word "game" in the context of roleplaying games is NOT used as a metaphor. It's used in the same sense as, say, a gambling game, or a "train" game, or a strategy game. Poker is as much like chess as Capes is like chess. They all have an essential 'gameness' to them that interpersonal interactions do not, even though interpersonal interactions can be analyzed with a game metaphor.

Vaxalon wrote: They all have an essential 'gameness' to them that interpersonal interactions do not, even though interpersonal interactions can be analyzed with a game metaphor.

So, if I'm reading this right (always a dangerous assumption!) then:

Roleplaying games are about roleplaying (group contributions to a Shared Imagined Space) and gaming (which means that there are rules and strategies involved). If you take either of these elements out, you no longer have a roleplaying game.

Good roleplaying games make sure that each element supports the other (which can mean removing as much as possible of one element, while still retaining functionality as a roleplaying game*)

Now this seems a bit, well... obvious to me. Which means that either this rant isn't aimed at me, or I have willfully misinterpreted you...again. Which one is it this time?

* I think this is where a lot of Fred's disagreement is coming from - it's possible to make a roleplaying game so rules-light, or roleplay-light for that matter, that it's hard to see where borders are. This is usually the point where we start diagreeing about definitions, though.

PS I don't think I'm going to be able to get anything into this thread without crossposting someone, so apologies, I'm just going to jump right in!

Doug: Exactly!

In order for it to be a roleplaying GAME, rather than just roleplaying, there have to be FORMAL rules that the players are adhering to. If there aren't any, then it's freeform roleplaying, and not a game. Social rules are not formal rules. The existence of a social contract is not enough to qualify roleplaying as a roleplaying game. There's a social contract in poker, for example. "We don't deal from the bottom of the deck. We don't try to look at each other's hands. We don't play with marked cards." If a social contract and interaction were all that was required to make a roleplaying game, then poker would be a roleplaying game, and it clearly isn't.

In order for it to be a ROLEPLAYING game, then there has to be an element of narration, even if it's not the focus of the game, or else it becomes some other kind of game. Go watch some folks playing the DnD miniatures game. It uses a combat ruleset that is basically cut-down DND rules; you could easily use them for a roleplaying game just as easily as for the strategy game. The difference is that there's no aspect of narration to it.

In short:

In order to be a roleplaying game, three things must be true:

1> There must be a formal ruleset. It does not need to be lengthy, and it doesn't need to be written, but it must be formal and it must be agreed to by the participants.

2> There must be an element of narration that is a recognized PART of the game. For those of you who ascribe to it, this would be the "shared imagined space".

3> The two elements of the game must mutually interact with each other. If you're playing DnD miniatures, and as your Aasimar Paladin moves forward, you say, "Telgar the Pure marches forward, sword in hand!" that's not a roleplaying game. Your declaration is not part of the game, it's ancillary, and as such is just a play-by-play tacked onto the miniatures game; the fact that you moved your miniature forward twelve inches is part of the game; the narration is not.

By the way: This is where I feel Capes is weak.

Doug: Roleplaying games are not about roleplaying. Roleplaying games are not about games.

TonyLB wrote: Roleplaying games are neither roleplaying nor games. They are something else that we don't (yet) have words for. But it is something that most of the time can be adequately understood using either a roleplaying model or a game model. Both models are flawed, but for the huge majority of cases either one is good enough, so we're not throwing them away until we have something equally simple that works 100%

TonyLB wrote: Your phrasing seems to imply that you think that roleplaying and gaming are two great tastes that taste great together. Is that what you were saying?

Let's split the topic of Capes off into another thread... explaining it will get involved. I'll start that thread momentarily in the MOF forum.

Doug Ruff wrote: But that doesn't mean that a "roleplaying" game is just a game with roleplaying chucked in (or the other way around.)

TonyLB wrote: Roleplaying games are not about roleplaying. Roleplaying games are not about games.

Vaxalon wrote: In order for it to be a roleplaying GAME, rather than just roleplaying, there have to be FORMAL rules that the players are adhering to. If there aren't any, then it's freeform roleplaying, and not a game.

Writing something down doesn't make something formal, just as not writing it down doesn't mean it isn't formal.

okay- if a PB&J sandwich isn't such withou PB or J, does it really matter what the PB is, or the J is?

i think i see Fred's argument that roleplaying is a game about roleplaying-whether the roleplay is oriented towards 'munchkin' style kill the dragon in a way that maximizes my reward, or release the dragon because my 'role' believes that is right, or ally w/ the dragon because that would be interesting...it doesn't matter, really, as long as everyone at the table is considering things in a similar fashion (assuming that everyone wants ot have the most fun possible)

i must be missing something, because i see and agree w/ both Tony and Fred here- 'roleplaying game' is something that neither word alone describes, but it is just a 'game'- something done willingly, leisurely, for fun...

what am i missing? is there something deeper that you both are getting at? is it purpose of design? of play?

I'm denying Tony's assertion that Roleplaying games aren't games, that the word "game" is used metaphorically. I'm saying that "game" is actual, not metaphorical.

Vaxalon wrote: Writing something down doesn't make something formal

In this case, I mean it in the sense of being a structural framework, something that gives form, something that is essential. The rule you posit is not formal because it does not provide form. You can substitute the word "formative" for "formal" in this instance.

I think it might be terribly simple, if I propose it this way.

There are simply two games being played at the same time. One is entirely rules based. The other is entirely freeform imagination. And there are interconnections between the two.

Think about the gamist essay and the hardcore gamist.

The Hard Core occurs when Gamist play transmogrifies into pure metagame: Exploration becomes minimal or absent, such that System and Social Contract contact one another directly, and, essentially, all the mechanics become metagame mechanics.

Callan: This sounds an awful lot like "Roleplaying games are sometimes games and sometimes roleplaying. You do some parts of the activity by playing a role, and some parts by playing a game but you never do both at once." Was that your intent?

Hi Tony,

Quoting myself and adding emphasis:

When they are connected, you can't actually say either one is THE game, just like you couldn't say chess or monopoly was THE game in my other example.

You wrote: There is a misconception that's become a pet peeve of mine, and that I want to debunk: The idea that "playing a role" and "playing a game" are ever separate parts of playing a roleplaying game.

Do you think that players can really remove roleplaying from (say) D&D while playing according to the rules? Or if they ignore the imaginative elements are they just roleplaying poorly?

I believe the latter. "I take my sword and kill the orc" is roleplaying. Uninspired, perhaps, but still roleplaying. Even "I use my sword and roll 17, hitting AC5 and doing 12 points of damage" is roleplaying. Yet more inspired, but still roleplaying (as well as, of course, gaming).

Yes, you can remove the roleplaying from DnD. It's called the DND miniatures game. I think I already made this point?

Vaxalon wrote:
I suppose that fits in with the "Games People Play" school of interpersonal relationships. Sometimes, interactions ARE described in terms of "games"... but I don't think those are games in the same sense of the word. There are games one is conscious of playing, and ones you are not conscious of. "Game" in that sense is used as a metaphor.

You see, I'm of the opinion that a true game requires formal rules, to which all of the players consciously assent. The "game" theory of human interaction doesn't have formal rules. To me, it's an "as if" construct.

Vaxalon wrote: You see, I'm of the opinion that a true game requires formal rules, to which all of the players consciously assent. The "game" theory of human interaction doesn't have formal rules. To me, it's an "as if" construct.

Something that can be modeled as a game is not necessarily a game.

In the words of René Magritte, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe."

Vaxalon wrote: You see, I'm of the opinion that a true game requires formal rules, to which all of the players consciously assent. The "game" theory of human interaction doesn't have formal rules. To me, it's an "as if" construct.

I would be willing to accept the position, that:

interpersonal games + one or more roleplaying games =A System

Doug, I think that the theory of Roleplay/Game Duality and the Lumpley principle are probably two different ways of looking at the same underlying reality. I suspect that each will have circumstances in which it is the more easily applicable model than the other.

If you look at Social Contract + Lumpley Principle + Creative Agenda it seems to me that any question of a Roleplay/Game Duality goes out the window.

I was going to go on about our natural tendency to break complex phenomena up into overy simple and often non-functional pieces. Instead I'm just going to point at the Big Model like some sad fanboy and say "It's all integrated, yet brilliantly categorized, for your viewing pleasure."

-Chris

Under that system, wouldn't narrative description, rolling dice, consulting tables, assigning resources, etc. fall under the category of techniques?

If you mean under the Big Model, then yeah, the particulars and variations of those things fall under Techniques or Ephemera.

-Chris

TonyLB wrote: Do you think that players can really remove roleplaying from (say) D&D while playing according to the rules? Or if they ignore the imaginative elements are they just roleplaying poorly?

I believe the latter. "I take my sword and kill the orc" is roleplaying. Uninspired, perhaps, but still roleplaying. Even "I use my sword and roll 17, hitting AC5 and doing 12 points of damage" is roleplaying. Yet more inspired, but still roleplaying (as well as, of course, gaming).

Well, actually, John I don't really know the limits of "What is an RPG?" So I have no idea how to categorize those three. They might all be RPGs. I'm still trying to figure it out.

For those who are pointing me to the Big Model and Lumpley... yeah, you're right. This isn't saying anything that isn't said there. It's saying it in a slightly different way.

Why do I bother? Well it's a rant after all. I'm just sick of having people who profess to understand the Big Model in its entirety coming up to me and saying nonsensical things like "Well, I play freeform, so of course we don't have a game system, we just have roleplaying."

I'm with John here. This is all one big quibble over definitions. To make any sense of this, we need formal defintions of 'roleplaying' and 'game' (or perhaps devise more formal jargon for these terms as they apply to RPGs).

The definition of 'game' that Tony is using seems to make every activity ever undertaken in to a game. Going to the store with your girlfriend and buying milk is game. Anything at all is a game. Ditto the definition of 'roleplaying.' These seem to me as definitions that are less than functional for our purposes. But they certainly make it easy to say that 'roleplaying' and 'game' are really just two different words for the same activity.

OK,that's a caricature. But I do think that the very loose definitions being used here are responsible for the slipperiness of the conversation, and Tony and Fred are talking past each other.

What Fred was trying to say in the original thread was that there are often times in RPGs when he stops thinking about the SIS and completely focuses on the game mechanics. And vice versa.

I fail to see how this conflicts with the Lumpley Principle. So I don't see how the Lumpley Principle supports your point at all, Tony. Care to explain?

I'm sorry, Lee... what's the question? I honestly can't parse what you want me to explain.

John Kim wrote: Your approach is to say the #2 is really the same activity as #3, and different than #1. i.e. In #2, they're really role-playing, but doing so poorly. I think it is doing a disservice to #2. The only reason they're doing it "poorly" is because you've defined their activity to have a different standard.

TonyLB wrote: I'm sorry, Lee... what's the question? I honestly can't parse what you want me to explain.

Oh, okay. I didn't mean to say that (although without a comprehensive review of the thread I hesitate to claim with any certainty that I didn't, in fact, mis-speak and say exactly that at some point).

I agree with Fred about the perception. There are times when I stop thinking about roleplaying. There are times when I stop thinking about mechanics.

What I'm saying is that's just perception. There are no times when you stop using the mechanics, just times that you stop thinking about it. There are no times when you stop affecting the SIS, just times that you stop thinking about it.

Does that make more sense?

TonyLB wrote: Do you think that players can really remove roleplaying from (say) D&D while playing according to the rules? Or if they ignore the imaginative elements are they just roleplaying poorly?

I believe the latter. "I take my sword and kill the orc" is roleplaying. Uninspired, perhaps, but still roleplaying. Even "I use my sword and roll 17, hitting AC5 and doing 12 points of damage" is roleplaying. Yet more inspired, but still roleplaying (as well as, of course, gaming).

Vaxalon wrote: Yes, you can remove the roleplaying from DnD. It's called the DND miniatures game. I think I already made this point?

"I use my sword and roll 17, hitting AC5 and doing 12 points of damage"

Noon wrote:
Rules can't magically remove roleplay from my mind.

And if you make a game-choice due to the narrative color you're projecting onto the pieces in your imagination?

If you make a game choice based on narrative color, you're PROBABLY going to lose...

And it won't matter to your opponnent, because there's no shared imagined space.

In a miniatures game, the board IS the shared space. It's a shared ACTUAL space.

So I'll probably lose. Let's say I do it anyway. Am I still playing a game with all roleplaying removed?

Yep.

Because the other player doesn't care. He isn't sharing your imaginary space... and that's what makes it roleplaying.

You can ADD roleplaying to the minis game... if you start sharing that imagination... but you can play the whole game without ever sharing anything imaginary.

The other player doesn't care about the decision I just made, which probably gives him the game?

He doesn't care why. He's just looking at what you're doing on the table. If he's thinking about what you're thinking, he's thinking in purely strategic terms. "What advantage is he seeking? Is that a bluff? Is that a feint?"

But he's not going to share those thoughts with you, surely. Any ideas he has about what you're thinking, he's going to keep to himself, because he's playing a STRATEGY game, not a roleplaying game.

I don't get the distinction you're making. Maybe I shoud give a more specific example. It'll be rough-and-ready, because I have zero idea how D&D miniatures works.

I've got two paladins, one in red and one in blue. I decide that the blue one is braver, but the red one is smarter. They are attacked by a minotaur. The blue paladin immediately counter-attacks, while the red tries to flank.

Which part of my characters actions fail to make it into the shared imaginary space? The player across the table from me knows that one of them attacked and one of them flanked, right?

Both actions happen in the actual space, there on the table, not in the imaginary space. If there is any representation in your imagination, your opponnent knows nothing of it. You didn't SAY that the blue one is braver. You just took the action. The action only exists in the actual space on the table. The representation of the actions that appears in your opponnent's mind is not based on your communication with him, but rather of what he sees on the table.

How is what he sees on the table not communication?

It's observation.

As far as he's concerned, you're not expressing an idea, you are making a direct change in the real world. You may, in fact, be expressing an idea (blue is brave) but he doesn't need to understand that expression to play the game.

If you were playing chess, you wouldn't need to speak the same language in order to play... in fact, many people play without ever uttering a word. The only thing that matters is the arrangement of the pieces on the board, both at the moment of play, and historically speaking.

That's why chess games are always recorded, just in terms of where the pieces are, from move to move. What the players are doing, or saying, or thinking... none of that matters. It's not part of the game.

Well, there are a great many games which have an imaginary reality of sorts. This is true of most wargames and miniature games, for example. Star Fleet Battles, say, has a purely imaginary material but nevertheless is greatly concerned over the reality of how ships move, firing arcs, and so forth. So in that case most moves in the game contribute to a picture of the imaginary reality. It could even be the case that the player takes actions on the basis of how he imagines the situation or how his starship captain would act. i.e. Honorably not firing on a crippled enemy ship, for example.

I'm not sure how this disputes the role-playing vs game concepts, though. If someone takes an action in SFB based on how his starship captain would act instead of the mechanics -- we're back to a clash (or at least potential clash) between the "game" approach and the "role-playing" approach. I think a skillful game design can make these two often, or even primarily, congruent. For example, in the miniatures game, if the player has goals similar to the character's goals and has similar information and intelligence, then we'll see some congruence.

Still, I think it's useful to distinguish between type of behaviors/agendas.

The difference between a roleplaying game and a strategy game, ultimately, is the agenda. Roleplaying games have creative agendas; strategy games do not.

Fred: Okay... it's observation on Player B's part. So I do something, he observes it. Again, how is this not communication between us?

I understand that you would like to define communication and imagination as only pertaining to things that have no reflection in the game system... but given that I'm talking about how imagination and the game system are one and the same, surely you don't think I'm going to allow you to start your chain of logic from that point. You don't get to assume your conclusion.

Okay, let's take another tack on this...

Do you agree, that in order for there to be a roleplaying game, there needs to be a shared imaginary space?

The provisional glossary defines the shared imaginary space as "The fictional content of play as it is established among participants through role-playing interactions."

A strategy game does not have any intrinsic fictional content. You can give it some fictional content, but that doesn't do it all by itself, because you're not establishing it among the participants.

If you DO establish fictional content between you and your opponnent, then you have transformed the game, to some extent, into a roleplaying game by doing so. But since you don't NEED to establish any fictional content in order to play, the game itself (considered separately from any particular instance of play) is not a roleplaying game.

If ALL games are roleplaying games, then the term "roleplaying game" is meaningless, and we should start talking about games. All games. Checkers, World of Warcraft, Minesweeper, hockey, "Let's you and him fight", The stock market, and marriage.

Something makes roleplaying games unique, qualitatively different from strategy games, and interpersonal games, and financial games, and sports, and all the other kinds of games there are out there. Whatever that unique thing is, if you add it to a game, then you get a roleplaying game; when you take it out, it's not a roleplaying game anymore.

To me, a good candidate for what that thing is, is the shared imagined space.

How about let's not take another tack on it. I'm not done with the first tack yet. We were just getting to the point where we had a common understanding of that example, and could use it to seriously investigate where our opinions differed.

If I move my paladin on the board, and attack your minotaur, how have I not communicated to you the notion that a paladin is attacking a minotaur?

I hate to keep repeating this question. If you'll just answer it then maybe I'll offer something more interesting.

Hey, :)

Tony, I'm very much on your side with regard to your standard rant, but I really don't see how you don't get Fred's point.

If you move your paladin on the board and attack his minotaur, all you are communicating is the notion that that paladin figure on the board is now in the position to execute the procedure outlined in rule A7.2 (or whatever) and you are going to execute it.

You did not communicate the notion that it is an imagined paladin that is bravely attacking an imagined minotaur. The paladin is not your character and the minotaur is not his character, simply because neither the paladin nor the minotaur are characters at all. They are nothing but figures on a game board.

Now, you may be imagining the brave Sir Anselmo facing down the hideous beast, but really, that's about as productive as having your knight capture an opposing chess player's rook and you imagining the brave Sir Anselmo storming into Dread Roberts' keep.

Unless you share it. And if you share it and it is accepted by the other player, then suddenly, the Lumpley principle pops into action, you get system, and you have a roleplaying game.

And now your rant applies in full. Because you're not playing DnD Miniatures anymore, your playing something larger, something that the word 'game' doesn't fully define anymore.

Suddenly, you and your opponent have discovered the photoelectric effect.

Cheers,

J.

TonyLB wrote:
If I move my paladin on the board, and attack your minotaur, how have I not communicated to you the notion that a paladin is attacking a minotaur?

Well, actually, the paladin and the minotaur are fictional, as is their fight.

The paladin and the minotaur are understood imaginatively by both players because of the groundwork that they have done in learning the game. To the extent that both players are seeing the pieces in terms of that imaginative construct, and seeing a capture as a fight, they are using the rules to structure a shared imaginary space.

Aside to JMendes: Yeah, if you wanted to achieve that in chess you'd have to communicate outside the rules, to notify a person that these imaginary tags ("knight", "castle" and "attack") were being applied. It's not communicated by the standard rules of chess. Is it communicated by, say, a Lord of the Rings chess-set? Maybe, maybe not. Does that make sense of what I'm saying?

Now people could play a structurally identical game without projecting any of those images onto the pieces. You could replace the miniatures with colored coins, and rename them something undescriptive, and rewrite all the rules to reflect that. And then you would have a game where the mechanics probably would not help the players to established shared imaginary space (I say "probably" because the structure itself has certain patterns that people might perceive, even absent other cues, but that's another discussion).

But the original statement, way back on page 2, was:

Vaxalon wrote: Yes, you can remove the roleplaying from DnD. It's called the DND miniatures game. I think I already made this point?

I guess that gets down to the fundamental disagreement, then... while there may be imaginative content in the DND miniatures game, I don't believe that sharing it is part of the game, while (if I understand your position correctly) you believe that it is. This probably has more to do with our definitions of what a "game" is. You seem to have a much broader definition of "game", one that could arguably include a marriage, a job, crossing the street, et multiple cetera.

TonyLB wrote:
I just don't think that DND miniatures avoids creating a shared imaginary space. On the contrary, I suspect it's a very good example of exactly what I'm talking about: you can look at the activity from the point of view of gaming and strategy, and you can look at the activity from the point of view of roleplaying and exploring the shared imaginary space.

I'd be hard pressed to think of a miniatures game that doesn't create an SIS. The whole concept of minis is that they represent something.

Now that doesn't mean that it's an RPG. As I've said, I don't have a hard definition of what an RPG is. But it does mean that there is exploration of a shared-imaginary-space going on by way of those rules, even if the players never exchange a single word, play from separate rooms, and are carefully shielded from any information that isn't reflected on the board.

I honestly don't see how this has gotten so confusing: If I go into a WWII game with the question in my head "What would have happened if Eisenhower gave Montgomery the go-ahead for his plan to drive to Berlin with surgical strikes?" and I play the Allies accordingly then the guy on the other side must be dealing with the question "How would the Germans respond if Allied forces drove toward Berlin with surgical strikes?"

That's why I just can't get my head around Fred's position:

Vaxalon wrote: [W]hile there may be imaginative content in the DND miniatures game, I don't believe that sharing it is part of the game

TonyLB wrote: Well, actually, the paladin and the minotaur are fictional, as is their fight.

The paladin and the minotaur are understood imaginatively by both players because of the groundwork that they have done in learning the game. To the extent that both players are seeing the pieces in terms of that imaginative construct, and seeing a capture as a fight, they are using the rules to structure a shared imaginary space.

Wow, maybe I'm misunderstanding these games.

Do the little pieces of lead actually physically attack each other? Do they get wounded? If the system has morale checks, do the lead figures physically express fear?

Because if they don't (as I rather suspect they don't, unless minis have come a long way since my day) then you're still working on a shared imaginary space. Do you disagree?

I disagree with 1.

The paladin miniature is actual. You can play the game without ever thinking about it as a representation of an imaginary creature, and believe me many people do. They're just stats and pewter or plastic, to some people. If you and I were to play.. yeah... what you describe would probably be true... but that's not an attribute of the game, its an attribute of you and I.

I played Warhammer Fantasy Battles miniatures wargames for years... believe me, some of these people do NOT get it. There's no imagination there at all. Is it possible that you can't imagine playing the game, and not participating in the imaginary world that it evokes for you?

I disagree with 2.

Manipulating the pieces does not introduce any imaginary content, because any imaginary content was there to begin with.

Leaving aside the whole "what is an RPG" thing (I've never really cared), let's talk about "there is no duality between roleplay and rules."

I think that many objections to this come from synecdoche: take "roleplay" here to mean "satisfying roleplay" or "play that fulfills my Creative Agenda," and you can definitely have a problem, since well-designed rules can inhibit some styles of play or CAs and badly designed ones can be even worse. Players often react to this problem by Drifting or ignoring rules, seldom by altering the content of the SIS (although I think that there are cases where game rules, particularly those of D&D, have made lasting changes to the SIS).

Most gamers come into a game with a very clear idea of what kind of imaginative engagement they want, and in my experience at least they seldom alter this, regardless of what game they're playing. This can create disjunction in the SIS -- for instance, I had an NPC try to hold a PC at gunpoint in a Skull & Bones game. A perfectly reasonable thing to do from a rules standpoint would be to just let the guy shoot you, since the chances that a pistol ball could kill you are incredibly slight for a mid-level PC, and then whup the guy's ass. But the players all balked at this as being an unacceptable contribution to the SIS.

Now, all this means is "inappropriate system for desired fictional content" or, if you like, "System Does Matter." But I suspect it's what most people mean when they talk about a difference between "roleplay" and "rules," although presumably not Vaxalon.

TonyLB wrote:
Do the little pieces of lead actually physically attack each other? Do they get wounded? If the system has morale checks, do the lead figures physically express fear?

What I'm trying to do, is distill down what it is about a roleplaying game that makes it different from other kinds of games, and indeed what makes them different from other kinds of human interaction.

Vaxalon wrote:
I disagree with 2.

Manipulating the pieces does not introduce any imaginary content, because any imaginary content was there to begin with.

Fred: Yay! Now we're making some progress!

You feel that there is no imaginary content, whatsoever, assigned to any rules entity. And that when that is the case, rules manipulation is not an exercise in imaginative construction. I'd quibble (as you've seen), but sure, fair enough.

So let's back talk about the far more common case where there clearly is imaginary content assigned to the rules entity. Your character has a name. His attributes have imagined counterparts ("18/00 strength... I am strong like Hercules! Woot!")

In this situation, would you still have quibbles with part #2: "Manipulating the game-mechanic introduces imaginary content into the SIS"?

If all I do, all session long, is slog through an off-the-rack dungeon, roll dice, and use the game mechanics to wordlessly kill orcs and take their stuff, is that contributing to the SIS or not?

James: Right with you there. Nicely said.

Vaxalon wrote: What I'm trying to do, is distill down what it is about a roleplaying game that makes it different from other kinds of games, and indeed what makes them different from other kinds of human interaction.

Vaxalon wrote: What I'm trying to do, is distill down what it is about a roleplaying game that makes it different from other kinds of games, and indeed what makes them different from other kinds of human interaction.

TonyLB wrote: Wow, maybe I'm misunderstanding these games.

Do the little pieces of lead actually physically attack each other? Do they get wounded? If the system has morale checks, do the lead figures physically express fear?

Because if they don't (as I rather suspect they don't, unless minis have come a long way since my day) then you're still working on a shared imaginary space. Do you disagree?

TonyLB wrote:
If all I do, all session long, is slog through an off-the-rack dungeon, roll dice, and use the game mechanics to wordlessly kill orcs and take their stuff, is that contributing to the SIS or not?

TonyLB wrote:

Vaxalon wrote: What I'm trying to do, is distill down what it is about a roleplaying game that makes it different from other kinds of games, and indeed what makes them different from other kinds of human interaction.

Fine. Take that to another thread. It doesn't belong here.

James Holloway wrote:

Vaxalon wrote: What I'm trying to do, is distill down what it is about a roleplaying game that makes it different from other kinds of games, and indeed what makes them different from other kinds of human interaction.

Well, it could be that miniatures gaming is a bit of a blind alley then -- of all the games from chess and go to pinochle and Settlers and Pac-Man, miniatures wargaming is one of the most similar to RPGs, really.

Lee: Ah, okay, I get you. And, given the clarification, I agree. "Attack" can be shorthand for "Roll these dice, and if the value is X or above, take the piece off of the board and place it in this area over here," and have no connotations of conflict or bloodshed. Wierd. I couldn't play the game that way. I can't even play chess that way. My knights act out of loyalty to the crown.


Fred: So I'm performing actions by rote? So what? How does that make it not a contribution? Nobody else did it. I did! And the SIS changed because I did it.

I get the impression that, as James said earlier, what you really mean is "Important Contribution." Is that right? Or do you genuinely feel that such actions have zero impact on the SIS?

Vaxalon wrote:
I disagree. I think it's entirely germaine to this discussion. There is something that makes a roleplaying game unique among all types of games. Whatever that thing is, will, I believe, turn out to be the factor which, when removed from a roleplaying game, causes it to cease to be a roleplaying game, and when added to another kind of game, causes it to become a roleplaying game.

James, don't engage him on this point.

Fred, you disagree. That's fine. Luckily, we don't have to debate it. My thread. My call. Discussions of "What is an RPG?" are not on topic.

TonyLB wrote:
I get the impression that, as James said earlier, what you really mean is "Important Contribution." Is that right?

Okay, so we've discovered that we're talking about different things. Cool! Progress, progress, progress.

Do you get what I'm saying now?

Oh, I understand what you're saying. I think I always have... I just don't like the implications.

James Holloway wrote:

Vaxalon wrote: I think it's entirely germaine to this discussion. There is something that makes a roleplaying game unique among all types of games. Whatever that thing is, will, I believe, turn out to be the factor which, when removed from a roleplaying game, causes it to cease to be a roleplaying game, and when added to another kind of game, causes it to become a roleplaying game.

But what does it have to do with the distinction between "roleplay" and "game" within a roleplaying game?

Everyone in THIS community, anyways.

Personally, I play lots of games that aren't roleplaying games, and I have a lot of fun with them. I don't think it's an insult... well, I suppose I would think so, if a game that I had written as a roleplaying game had been described as NOT a roleplaying game.

John Kim wrote: I have a more narrow view of role-playing, but it is also a different distinction from Vaxalon. I identify role-playing with deciding by picturing oneself in the place (or role) of a character.

John Kim wrote:
That said, though, "role-playing game" is such a laden term that I hesitate to dissect it in theoretical discussion. (i.e. Everyone identifies with "role-playing" and it is generally considered an insult for something to be "not a role-playing game".)

Is the nub of the issue, that my definition of "game" encompasses RPG's, whereas Tony's definition of "RPG" encompasses games?

I'm not sure that a site that professes to analyze roleplaying games can go very far without a working definition of what a roleplaying game IS.

Vaxalon wrote: I'm not sure that a site that professes to analyze roleplaying games can go very far without a working definition of what a roleplaying game IS.

John Kim wrote: At the same time, I think there are real distinctions between behaviors which people engage in within RPGs -- and people sometimes try to express these distinctions by separating the terms "role-playing" and "game". This makes it a single-axis dichotomy...

Vaxalon wrote: No it doesn't... it's dual axis.

There are things that are games, and there are things that are not games.

THere are things that involve roleplaying, and there are things that do not.

Gentlemen, I respectfully suggest that you take this to a separate thread with a new, clearly stated, topic. If you think it is important commentary on the mission of the Forge as a whole then it really shouldn't be buried under seven pages of discussion of Roleplay/Game Duality, should it?

Sorry, Tony. I'm content to drop it, actually. I don't consider such line-drawing very important. Do you have any place you want this thread to go? Or should we consider it closed?

I think I've made my position pretty abundantly clear. Not everyone agrees with it, but I think we've worked the differences down to the point where we understand that they arise from different first principles in our respective philosophies.

If nobody's got other questions about the Roleplay/Game Duality idea then I am perfectly content that I have been well and thoroughly understood, and that I have in turn gotten a chance to better understand others. Thank you all for a stimulating conversation!

You're welcome.

Sorry to come in a little late. I just have to say that I don't read Tony's posts as saying that all games are roleplaying. I read them as saying that within the union of things that are both roleplaying and games, the acts of 'roleplaying' and 'playing a game' are inseperable.

With that statement I can definitely agree. I may be completely off in reading it that way, though. When participating in an RPG, every roleplaying action intertwines with the game aspect of it. When using the game mechanics, it necessarily has an effect on the SIS and the roleplaying. Any game in which both of these things don't interact fall outside what I personally would call an RPG. Any roleplaying activity in which both of these things don't interact would fall outside RPGs as well. That leaves me, personally, with RP activities, game activities, and activities called RPGs in which the RP and the game interact in both directions.

Tony and everyone else in the thread may think that sounds crazy, but it's what seems right to me. I'm open to discussing it in a new thread if anyone else wants to do so.

Vaxalon wrote:

Noon wrote:
Rules can't magically remove roleplay from my mind.

Ah, but roleplaying isn't just in your mind! The contents of your mind have NO impact on the DnD miniatures game. If you express it, it's ancillary, if you don't, it might as well not exist as far as the game is concerned.

I wrote: However, what they can do is not care a jot about my imagination. When I describe how the spy dies in my fortress in "Before I kill you Mr Bond", I get nothing from it system wise (though myself and my partner both enjoy saying these things anyway...separate to the game: social feedback).

Heya Tony,

Sorry for the late look in, but I'm not understanding your pitch (while once again, agreeing with large amounts of the foundation).

It seems to me like your talking about chemical A and chemical B being put into a beaker and electricity run through them so they bond and become chemical C. Then your saying 'LOOK, they are inseperable!!'

Well, yeah, I totally agree. C cannot be seperated out to A or B now. C has to contain both A and B.

But whats the point of saying that? It seems the main problems with the understanding of that, come from people looking at the D&D minatures game or chess. How are you going to address that by just saying they are inseperable? Instead of showing the process of how they became inseparable and the components needed during that process?

I'm wondering if you don't see them as ever having being being seperate, and thus nothing has been bonded together. I agree that chess or D&D minatures involves 'roleplay' during play. That RP always seems to be there in play. But that is in no way evidence that the roleplay wasn't derived from the bonding of two seperate components/games.

I'll just add one more shitty analogy and say that if you swap 'play' for the forward movement of a car, then the explosions in each cylinder of the car don't just happen. Forward movement only happens when fuel and air are injected and sparked. I think you may be looking at forward movement only and not what happened before movement/play began. Look at the moment before play/movement, and you see the components before they are injected into the same chamber, so to speak. This is the point where you can convince someone that that explosion just can't be fuel or air, and it has to be both and they are inseperable.

Probably.

Noon wrote: I'm wondering if you don't see them as ever having being being seperate, and thus nothing has been bonded together.

Yeah, dead on (each of us using our own wording, of course)! Yay! :)

That contemplation is the point where the two fuels are already together and are sparked. I might liken the RPG book to the cylinder and fuel/air injection system from my car analogy, while the users contemplation of that material is the spark plug igniting it into an explosion.

I'm thinking that before you contemplate them, there is no play. Contemplation creates the play. Even when your by yourself watching TV and reading the RPG, it's damn hard to look at a roleplay book and not contemplate it...thus only seeing the explosion rather than the two seperate fuels involved.

I think that basically all board games in the past have provoked the imagination by naming game pieces Knights, or having monopoly money, or whatever. I think what is key here about RPG's, is that they go both ways. The mechanical texts provoke the imagination but also the imagination is mechanically facilitated to significantly effect the mechanics of the game.

On a side note: This is sort of possible in D&D minatures. One could say "Fall back!? My Palladin would never fall back from such dogs!" and your imagination is mechanically facilitated to have an effect on play because you don't fall back (it's even gamist to do so, since you've prioritised the idea of honour as a resource not to give up). Since it's possible here, it's possible in many other board games too. But I think it's very, very much like using a wrench to bang in a nail. RPG's are hammers, board games are wrenches. And I've used too many analogies.

Yeah, we've got a seriously deep layer of analogy buildup.

Hi folks,

Private discussion or new threads.

This one's closed.

Best,
Ron

EDIT: GAH! I thought I was in private messaging. Sorry, sorry....