It came up again in Non-electric Interactive Written Solo Entertainment, and it's been discussed before: is it still role playing if you're doing it alone, such as with Choose Your Own Adventure books or CRPGs or Solo Adventures? Jack says no, it isn't; there's no social contract (because there's only you), and there's no interactivity (because the creator of the unit does not react to what you do).

I have stated before that I'm not persuaded this interactivity is necessary to role playing, and that the social contract may exist in some sense without the parties having met. I'd like to pursue that. I should recognize that Walt's post on that thread is along these lines, but I was thinking of this before I got that far, and am taking it in a different direction.

Let's start with a PbEM campaign, Jack; I'm the referee, and you're the player. I send you a starting position and ask what you're going to do, and you respond, and we interact like this and create our adventure.

Now, let's change it a bit. I'm going to continue to ask what you're doing, but I'm going to limit you to specific choices. That's not really so egregious--I'm going to make it a significant list of choices, covering everything you might reasonably do, but it's still my list. Clearly, it's still interactive.

Now, I'm going to change it again. I tell you at the outset that what I'm really doing is writing a book, but I want you to help me write it by providing your choice of several possible directions for the main character to take at each juncture. Otherwise, play is pretty much the same.

Next I'm going to remove your blinders. I'm interested in writing a good book, and I think you'll be able to help me better if you can see where the story might be going from your choices. Thus when I write to you, I send not only the choices, but the outcomes from those choices, and the choices to which each leads, and the outcomes from there--several steps in each direction. I still want you to write back and tell me which way the character should go. Is it still interactive?

What if I send you the entire package, give you every major choice that will happen in the entire story no matter which way it goes, and let you write back to me to give my your choice for the best selections from these? This has the advantage that you can look at the early choices in light of how to reach the later objectives, so you can make sure you're not eliminating potentially good endings early on. Is this still interactive?

What if when you send me that e-mail, I don't read it?

What if I die before you send me the e-mail?

What if I don't ask you to send me the e-mail, but merely suggest that you take that material and create the story for your own enjoyment?

I maintain that if one person created the framework for the story and another made the choices, it is interactive. It is sufficiently so that it might be role playing--at least to the degree that role playing games require interactivity.

I further maintain that there is a social contract between us. When you agreed to look at the story, you inherently agreed to make choices within the confines dictated, or give up the book entirely. You might break the social contract and write your own ending, but that was not that to which I agreed when I offered you the material.

Now, there might be some other reason why this is not roleplaying; but I don't see the real-time interactivity as an issue.

And your sex analogy does not change my opinion.

--M. J. Young

M. J. Young wrote: I have stated before that I'm not persuaded this interactivity is necessary to role playing, and that the social contract may exist in some sense without the parties having met.

Speaking as one of the first gamers to use the adjective "interactive" (in 1979, as a part of a required pretentious name for a campus D&D club -- that's right, the name was required to be pretentious in order to get approval), I have this to say about the word:

AAAGH! It's come back from the dead! Kill it! Kill it before it destroys us all!

Sorry, I bear some of the blame for allowing "interactive" into the discourse, on the referenced thread. I thought I was safely containing it in a historical context in a fringe topic (solo non-electronic play), but somebody fed it after midnight and now it's broken out of its cage and gotten into the air vents and we're going to need Ripley with a flamethrower taped to an assault rifle to get rid of it again. It was the most misused and misunderstood word in the English language for a decade-long period, and it's been seeking revenge ever since.

Why is a TV show in which viewers can vote for which of two possible endings takes place hyped as "interactive," but the folks at the hardware store never bother to remind you that the hammers they're selling are "interactive?" The hammer responds to your choices far more than the TV show does. The reason is that "interactive" tends to be used as a comparative term; it often means "more responsive than the normal old version." Normal TV shows don't respond to viewer choices at all, so if one does give you a one-ten-millionth share of a binary decision you might (if you're gullible) think "oooh, interactive." While the far more interactive hammer is still just a normal hammer. Similarly, a choose your own adventure book has some number of choices along the way that link you to a limited number of specific entries, while many nonfiction books have (and have always had) tables of contents, glossaries, indexes, footnotes, and other similar tools for flexible usage and guided random access to all the pages from any point. So which one do we describe as "interactive?" The former, because we're used to indexes and whatnot while mutable storylines in fiction seem (relatively) new and interesting.

This comparative usage-convention conflicts with all attempts to establish any absolute definitions for what is and is not interactive. It's fairly universally agreed that you can interact with a person because a person can think. A set of building blocks can't think, but it can exhibit complex and unexpected behavior which makes it worth playing with for quite a long time, at least if you're a child for whom gravity, mass, balance, torque, friction, and other key principles of the behavior of building blocks are new and interesting. So are the blocks "interactive?" How about a computer simulation of building blocks? Many cat toys are labelled "Interactive!" on their packaging. Are they? If they are, then do they remain so when the cat is ignoring them?

The other huge pitfall of interactivity is that examining whether something is interactive or not, or assessing "how interactive" something is, can become a huge distraction from what you should be examining, which is how well the thing serves its purpose. This, of course, is so obvious that it's often completely overlooked. The quality of being "interactive," no matter how defined or how well defined, has no intrinsic value.

So, in the end I have to agree that real-time interactivity is not an issue, because it cannot be an issue, because it cannot be clearly defined. The thought experiments (M. J.'s here, and mine on the previous referenced thread) help to establish that. So why even ask whether something like a branching solo game text is interactive or not? Isn't it more important to decide whether or not it gives you a worthwhile playing experience? If someone thinks it does, then saying "but it's not interactive!" isn't going to change their mind about it, even if you could prove that to their satisfaction. The reverse doesn't work either.

I feel pretty much the same about the questions "is it really role playing?" and "is there a social contract?"

- Walt

I don't think we're using the term the same way, Walt. I'm talking about two or more people doing stuff together.

Textbook talking past eachother, although I agree with your take on measuring the interactivity of the game itself.

Hi Jack,

You're right, we're not. I was responding to M. J.'s (and my own, on the previous thread) attempts to break down whether processes, systems, game play, or story-contents do or do not have this slippery quality called "interactive." Whereas you speak only, and unambiguously, about whether the proceedings involve people interacting. Not the same thing at all. (Furthermore, we were talking past each other literally; my post crossed yours and I didn't notice because it was so late at night.)

However, the idea that role playing definitionally requires such interaction between people can only be addressed on an axiomatic level. We can ask, if we make that a requirement, what conclusions does it lead to? How about if we don't? Based on which set of conclusions we prefer, we can decide whether to accept the axiom. But it's all just a matter of opinion. Whether you or I like it or not, if we ask a solo-module player "what are you doing?" he's far more likely to answer "playing a role playing game" than "playing a game that one might describe as a role playing game, save for its present lack of immediate social interaction with another person." Furthermore, that person would have no difficulty perceiving strong differences between the game he's playing using the solo module and other solo games and activites that he could be doing instead that are clearly (to him) not role playing games.

Hence, the temptation to try to draw a useful line somewhere else, by attempting to characterize the activity (or its texts, or its story-content, or its story-outcome) as "interactive" or not. Which is a quagmire. Since you set the bar higher by limiting what you consider role playing to social interaction between people, an understandable position, you avoid the quagmire. But as you've said, not everone will agree.

- Walt

I'm still laughing about the air-vents. We need Apone!

Actually I dunno if it's cannonical or not but: If the Lumpely principle can aportion credibility to the game-designer (who presumably isn't at the table) then there's a case to be made for a person following a roll-your-own-adveture ... erm ... choose that is--is in some kind of a social contract.

That's really the hell tenuous. And *I* don't buy it--but it's kind of the same scenario when everyone at the table gets a rule wrong and they look it up in the book and then play it that way.

Kind of.

-Marco

Is it Sex if you do it by yourself? Who cares?

The only question that I think is relevant is whether or not we can talk about solo games here on The Forge. I think we'll probably agree that they're close enough that we can.

Are solo games the same as games with multiple participants? No. Is the difference hard to define? No. So when discussing all we have to do is keep in mind the differences, and all is well, no? I'm not seeing what we're gaining out of this discussion. We all agree that they're not the same thing precisely, but that they're close relatives. Isn't that good enough to proceed?

Mike

I consider the time I spend between sessions visualizing future plans for my characters and events that happened in game playing. I even get that bit of feeling (sad, happy, whatever) from identifying with the character.

Feels like roleplaying to me. I wouldn't call it interactive though. That is, until I talk to someone else in the group about it.

Walt Freitag wrote: However, the idea that role playing definitionally requires such interaction between people can only be addressed on an axiomatic level. We can ask, if we make that a requirement, what conclusions does it lead to? How about if we don't? Based on which set of conclusions we prefer, we can decide whether to accept the axiom. But it's all just a matter of opinion. Whether you or I like it or not, if we ask a solo-module player "what are you doing?" he's far more likely to answer "playing a role playing game" than "playing a game that one might describe as a role playing game, save for its present lack of immediate social interaction with another person." Furthermore, that person would have no difficulty perceiving strong differences between the game he's playing using the solo module and other solo games and activites that he could be doing instead that are clearly (to him) not role playing games.

M. J. Young wrote:
Let's start with a PbEM campaign, Jack; I'm the referee, and you're the player. I send you a starting position and ask what you're going to do, and you respond, and we interact like this and create our adventure.

Now, let's change it a bit. I'm going to continue to ask what you're doing, but I'm going to limit you to specific choices. That's not really so egregious--I'm going to make it a significant list of choices, covering everything you might reasonably do, but it's still my list. Clearly, it's still interactive.

The problem with narrow criteria here Jack, the legal idea that we only include something if it fits the criteria precisely (as opposed to broad, in which you assume something fits the criteria unless it can be shown difinititvely not to be the case), the problem is that so many things with contradictory parts claim to be RPGs that they all would fail a narrow test of some sort. So there we have the problem. If we go narrow, nothing is an RPG. If we go broad, then, because of the same attributes of the games that are considered RPGs, everything is an RPG.

So we can't use either standard, and have to look at each subdivision as just that; a subdivision with it's own unique qualities.

Mike

I may be channeling Ron here - I think he's alluded to "solo Narrativism" before - so let's just talk about Nar. Which is defined as something like shared during-play creation of a story with a Premise.

So, if a designer embeds Premise-stuff in a solo-adventure, and the during-play choices of a player develop/illuminate that Premise for the player . . . we have Nar happening. Some parameters are put in place by the designer, some choices are made by the player ("sharing"), play occurs, and Premise results. Nar. Maybe not satisfying to some folks, because choices are restricted rather than infinite - but so is Trollbabe. Or MLwM.

But - maybe this puts us in a wierd place where Nar happens without "roleplaying" (under some definition) happening. Huh. Is "roleplaying" actually a seperate phenomena than G/N/S? And some definitions of it make a solo game incompatible, while others don't. Again, huh.

I think my response to Walt over in that other thread makes my position clear - solo play can be "roleplaying", or not, depending on how "good" the design and play are.

Gordon

Mike.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by subdivisions. Can you illustrate?

Gordon C. Landis wrote:

But - maybe this puts us in a wierd place where Nar happens without "roleplaying" (under some definition) happening. Huh. Is "roleplaying" actually a seperate phenomena than G/N/S? And some definitions of it make a solo game incompatible, while others don't. Again, huh.


Gordon

pete_darby wrote: I still say the social contract, social interaction axis is vital to making it RPG.

Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
I'm not quite sure what you mean by subdivisions. Can you illustrate?

Gordon C. Landis wrote: I don't think anyone can "prove" that it is or isn't possible to get that social interaction element from a pre-established text, so Jack's agree-to-disagree may be all there is to say here. But I thought it was worth pointing out that no one was disagreeing that a social interaction is needed, they just disagree about whether it is or isn't possible to get that interaction from the already-written work of another human.

Gordon C. Landis wrote: I don't think anyone can "prove" that it is or isn't possible to get that social interaction element from a pre-established text, so Jack's agree-to-disagree may be all there is to say here. But I thought it was worth pointing out that no one was disagreeing that a social interaction is needed, they just disagree about whether it is or isn't possible to get that interaction from the already-written work of another human.

Jack -

Your first statement confuses me a bit - I, too, am mostly (though definitely not exclusively) talking about the person/people who design(s) the solo. My analysis is that if they do it well, and the player constructively engages with it (complex feedback here - good design lends itself to being engaged with, and a willingness to engage can compensate for some weakness of design) - that looks like a social interaction to me.

Not the same as if there was a person/people acoss the table from me in all ways, of course - but the same in some ways.

If the only difference we have is if the some ways in which it is the same are "enough" to qualify for the category RPG . . . well, I'd want to know where and how, for you, "touching the life" of someone seperates from "interacting" with them. Which may just another way of getting to that we disagree about what constitutes a social interaction, and what doesn't.

That said, I *think* my answer to your "is anticipating every possible action interaction?" question is also "well, no." But for me, the reason why is related to Walt's post over in the thread that MJ references at the start of this one. "Every possible action" is just data, and the real key is the process. Interaction is (mostly) a process - one that does not, for me, require that two people sit down at the same table and talk to each other in real time.

Gordon

Gordon C. Landis wrote: "Every possible action" is just data, and the real key is the process. Interaction is (mostly) a process - one that does not, for me, require that two people sit down at the same table and talk to each other in real time.

Sorry. Double post.

Hi Jack,

So - let me check where we're at. We agree that solo play and group play are the same in some ways, but not in all ways. Your claim is that "social interaction" is one of/the main distinguishing feature of group play, and that that difference really puts solo's outside the RPG envelope.

My thought is that that depends upon how you think about social interaction. The claim isn't that the meal with the mother attending is the same as the meal with the mother absent, but rather that the mother has an impact on the meal in either case - that the person consuming the meal may well respond to the foods by thinking of the mother, having emotional reactions ("ah, mom's potato recipe is the BEST!"), and etc. Or even if they don't know or think of the mother, they may connect the food flavors and etc. (play) to other experiences in their life. And a good cook will know how to make that more likely to happen. And a receptive diner will be more likely to do so.

You grant that the absent mother is "touching the lives" of the diner(s). I'm willing to call that "social interaction," though I'll happily grant that it is a different kind of interaction than if the mother was there. Having her able to immediately respond to what the diner(s) say instead of, maybe, imagining what they might say and preparing the food appropiately for that, provides a different experience. But I see them as different flavors of the same thing, rather than two entirely different things.

Let me try something - here's what you posted about what a solo designer does:
"When a designer writes a solo, do they ask their fans what choice they want? No. They attempt to imagine what choices a player would want to make. Who is this player the designer is imagining making these choices? It is themselves."

Here's my rewrite for a conventional GM preparing for live, see-you-across-the-table play:
"When a GM prepares for play, do they ask their players what choices they want? No. They attempt to imagine what choices their players would want to make. Who are these players the designer is imagining making these choices? It is their understanding, their "imagining" of those players."
(Note that the GM *could* specifically ask their players what choices they specifically want, whereas the solo designer can not (though general feedback might inform how they design their NEXT solo adventure). But most GM's I've played with don't ask, at least not bluntly and not often.)

Again, the claim isn't that these are the same in all ways, or that it's bad/wrong to want/like the immediate feedback of live play (hell, I haven't played a solo P&P game in a decade, and only rarely play computer games nowadays). I just don't see "social interaction" as entirely absent from solo play. The social interaction with a solo game designer(s) is less flexible, reliable and diverse than that with a (skilled and known by the player) live GM/group, but that doesn't mean it is absent.

Gordon

Jack, it suddenly occurs to me (and I think Gordon was on the edge of this) that by your definition, you've almost certainly excluded Trailblazing from role playing games, and probably also Illusionism and Participationism.

If I sit down with module, whether one I bought or one I created myself, there's a tacit assumption that everything that might happen is covered in those pages. My reaction as referee is to reveal what happens, based on my understanding of what's in those pages. If you wander from the trail, all I can do (if I'm true to my Trailblazing technique) is let you wander out of the story and into nothing, or possibly into another module. If you were supposed to save the world, and you missed it, oh well--the world's lost. At no point does what the players do cause the referee to adjust things; he's only revealing them. In that sense, we could indeed replace him with a computer, provided we've got a program that can understand all the actions players might take and produce appropriate responses. If it's one player and a module, with Trailblazing play, the referee's role is little more than to ensure that the player is given the information he has earned, and he's not more relevant than a choose your own adventure book or CRPG, but that we assume he understands your information requests a bit better.

Similarly, with Participationism and Illusionism we accept that the referee is revealing the story, and it doesn't matter what the players do, beyond that they lend color to it.

Thus the question is, if the referee does not alter anything he intended or expected to do based on player choices, is it still role playing by your understanding? You seem to require that there be mutual interaction between the player and the referee, and you exclude solo play based entirely on the fact that the referee in that case (author of the scenario) does not and cannot react to the player. Yet if (as in Trailblazing, Illusionism, and Participationism) the referee is already committed to non-reactive presentation of prescripted information, how is that different?

--M. J. Young

Just to muddy the water a little bit.

When reading a newspaper, or a work of fiction, or a biography, there is an unspoken and unstated compact between the author and the reader which is also refered to as a Social Contract. It covers, among other things, what specific literary techniques and genre conventions are being used.

The reader and the author never meet, never know each other, just as in a Solo RPG situation.

Communication, however, has occured. One way, to be sure (Author to Reader). But communication is still a kind of social interaction. In a Computer RPG the communication is exactly the same, from the author(s) to the players, but instead of being mediated in the form of a book or module, it's on a CD-Rom (or floppy, for us oldsters). Still a one way communication, a social interaction governed by social rules, concepts, and contracts.

The biggest difference between a Solo RPG, a CRPG, and a Tabletop (or IRC/Online) RPG is one of feedback. In the Solo RPG, there is a preprogrammed feedback loop, based upon the options the designer provided. With early CRPG, it was the same. Currently, though, there can be a local feedback loop, but it's still limited in what sorts of choices it can understand and respond to. Finally, there's having a human GM (either in person or through e-mail/post/chat/videoconference) who can excercise dynamic and variable feedback between the planned game information, the rules, and the players.

It's a spectrum, a continuum, not a set of discrete states.

I think, anyway. In the solo case, it's largely preprogrammed (although there are ways to randomize it -- see the Dungeon generation system in the back of the 1st ed DMG). In the computer RPG, you have the same penumbra of options as you do with solo RPG play, except that you don't have to worry about making it tedious, because the computer is good at doing tedious stuff, so you can really do elaborate preprogrammed feedback loops if you want, with lots of randomizing and clever decision trees. Finally, with human-mediated play, you can have the full gamut from completely programmed play (ie, tournament scenario play or having a GM mediate a solo module (TFT did some of this explicitely, IIRC), to completely spontaneous play (winging it off the cuff completely).

Another obscuring data point.

Waaay back in the mists of time, my brother and I got our first computer,, an Apple IIe. We saved up our allowance, and spent a week deciding which computer game to buy. We settled on Wizardry I because, well, it was like D&D.

When we played (and when we played with friends, too) we would generate our own characters and 'own' them. We'd put our party together, go down into the dungeon, and then we'd discuss where to go (using the maps we'd drawn out) and when we got into combat we'd individually decide what our characters would do and what spells they'd cast based on who 'owned' the character. And we'd split up magic items exactly like we did when playing D&D -- who can make the best use out of what.

It was pretty Gam/Sim rpg play with explicit Pawn stance, and with the computer and it's feedback loops standing in for a person doing the GMing. There was even explicit face to face social interaction between the various players. All of us playing were D&D players, and we'd take turns 'driving' and doing the keyboard entry. It was effectively group D&D where nobody had to do the prep work of being the DM.

Where does that fit?

I'm going to be honest, I am thoroughly frustated with this thread. I am frustrated and yet I still keep coming back, and not just because my name's in the subject line.

I had said that this would have to be a matter of disagreeing to disagree on the first page, but no one, especially me, is doing so. It has unfortunately become attempting to convert the other to your way of thinking. I am twice as guilty as anyone else.

But I am most frustrated because I not only had been stating my position, but also my reasons why. I have a purpose. It's not just a matter of "this is the way I think so everyone else must think the same way Har Har Ho Ho" It more about this is the way I see it and I had to make myself see it this way because this perspective allows for this, this, this and this.

To put it another way, were we discussing the English language and someone had piped in "Hery the language is composed of words and some words are nouns and some are verbs. And they are different because of this and this." And then someone else says "But are they both made up of syllables and spelled out with letters? They are basically the same." Cornered by these undenible facts, the first person must concede and the language remains a jumble of words and no knowledge is gained.

I mean, sure social interation or whatever is not completely absent in solos but to point it out is a stretch. As big a stretch as it is to point out the social aspect of having an heirloom acquired by a long dead and forgotten ancester. As big a stretch as it is to note how by turning on a light bulb allows Thomas Edison to touch our lives.

And there are grey areas. Of course there are. These things simply are and we are trying to understand them. But what is the purpose of pointing out the grey area to poke holes the whole structure of understanding?

This is how I feel about this whole thing. I sorry if I was getting defensive, but I feel like I had been put on the defensive. I would also feel better if it was for some purpose that the line between group and solo roleplay is being discredited. Is there a purpose that will lead to better understanding of roleplaying?

Jack,

For what it's worth, there's no reason to be frustrated from where I sit - this forum interaction can be darn inconvienent, but I've slowly seen more details get teased out here and I consider that very productive. I will admit, I'm not clear exactly what you see as the purpose behind excluding solo play from the "RPG" category, so I'd love to see you clarify that a bit.

But for me, the main purpose for a while in posting specifically to you (as opposed to the general thread auduence) has been to be sure we know what it is that we agree to disagree about. I think it's "social interaction" - I do NOT think the social aspect involved in solo play is the same as the social aspect of having an heirloom acquired by a long dead and forgotten ancestor. Not even close.

I find this important because I think there is much about the generic category "creating stories" that can be applied to RPG play, and P&P solo games are an interesting mid-step between a normal, solo-authored book and standard group RPG play. I think we can learn interesting things by looking at the way an imaginitive space is built when reading a book, compared to what happens in solo play, compared to what happens in group play. They have differences, but they also have simularities - and for me, the introduction a new form/level of social interaction in solo play (as can also happen in what I'll blithely and probably inaccurately label post-modern experimental fiction) makes 'em particularly interesting.

Does that make sense?

Gordon

I agree with Gordon.

There isn't any reason to be frustrated by this. Since there isn't a real solid agreed-upon definition of RPG, it's inevitable that it has to get brought up and hashed out again every once in awhile.

I think part of what is frustrating you is terminology. I think you need to let go of saying solo games are not RPG, and simply say that they are a different kind of RPG, a kind that does not interest you, and a lot fewer people would take issue with your division.

I certainly don't directly equate solo play with face-to-face play. But I see them as related (as I think you are willing to admit). Solo play is distinct from, but not entirely alien to, cooperative 'real-time two-way interactive' group play.

I, for one, am glad this thread popped up. I'm fairly new to the Forge, and this is the first thread about these topics that I've taken part in.

OK, Jack, we've got: "according to my definition of RPGs, solo games are uncontroversially not RPGs, because they are not social, and RPGs must be social." That's fine.

Even if we grant that, to me, it remains an interesting question to ask: why have at least some gamers considered it uncontroversially true that solo games like the T&T solos *are* rpgs?

It's kind of like with grammatical "errors" -- I often find it interesting to explore the reasons people consistently make certain sorts of grammatical "errors" while others are never made. It is usually an illuminating exercise.

In that spirit, I find it interesting, to say "if it seems patently, axiomatically obvious to you that solos aren't RPGs, then why has it historically been so inobvious to others? What implicit criteria about what an RPG is and isn't might justify some people in listing solos as RPGs?"

I think the answer is this, and it does touch on the Lumpley Principle --

One thing that is unique to an RPG is that it involves a movement back and forth between explicit rules that involve explicit tokens (e.g. attributes, skills, points of damage, and so on), and "freeform" rules which involve a world which is defined verbally.

When we talk Lumpley principle, we usually discuss the "consensus" which underlies that verbal definition, but I'd like to step back a pace from that and simply examine the fact that it's a freeform verbal stipulation of a situation.

In a solo gamebook, as in a face-to-face RPG, you have that movement back and forth between resolving things with explicit rules and tokens ("Make a third level saving roll on luck; if you fail, go to 14F") and resolving things by verbal definition ("if you ask the ogre for a light, go to 16B; if you insult his girlfriend, go to 23D").

It is this symbiotic alternation between freeform verbal definition and rules-based simulation which exists equally in solo gamebooks and in face to face play.

If we were to take that as criterial for a roleplaying game, we would find that solo RPGs are indeed RPGs, and perhaps "ruleless" freeform games are not RPGs anymore (because they *only* have the freeform definition of what happens; nothing is articulated by explicit rules and tokens).

Noting this, BTW, helps generate an explanation of why forms of solo RPG-like play *besides* the T&T-style gamebook have never really surfaced.

According to this criterion of what an RPG is, we need to have an ongoing verbal description of what's going on. In face to face play, that verbal description is provided ex tempore, out loud. In a gamebook, that verbal description is written down in the gamebook. But for solo play without a gamebook, what happens? Do you keep a written log of what happens? that's a bit slow and tedious. Do you speak what happens out loud? That's going to get you strange looks on the subway, and it's also fairly ephemeral compared to group speaking, because there's only one person to remember. Do you say it in your head? That's incredibly ephemeral.

Anyway, I'm not trying to convince you to abandon the "social interaction is criterial" definition of RPGs if it's useful to you. I just find it interesting to try to figure out why, historically, people *have* sometimes considered things to be RPGs which do not measure up to that definition, and to figure out what definition must have been involved in that case, whether it's "right" or not.

I will start by apologizing to Jack for singling him out with this thread. I found his stance on this particularly intriguing, and having just recently realized how much I missed his column over at Gaming Outpost knew that he would be quite able to defend his position.

I think he has defended his position admirably. I'm not persuaded, but I do understand it, I think. I would have liked to have seen his consideration of Trailblazing, Participationism, and Illusionism (as forms of role playing in which the feedback to the referee is irrelevant), but he's right--whatever your definition of role playing game you're going to have some things that are gray areas. Jack requires that there be minimally two human beings interacting with each other, such that the decisions of each impact the decisions of the other. I, being rather introverted by nature with a long history of active daydreaming in my youth in which I imagined as much "play" as I've ever done in games with others, think it sufficient if one person is making decisions that create story, with no particular end point in view.

I would perhaps include that as one of my distinguishing factors. When I sit down to right a story as an author, I have a pretty good idea of where the story is going to end--not exact, not in complete detail, but the framework thereof. Further, I build on that ending in my mind even as I create the pieces that will lead to it. My novels are always headed toward the predetermined conclusion. My games never are--I have no idea where my games, or my daydreams, will lead; and thus I equate role playing with daydreaming, in which others may (or may not) be involved.

Neither my definition nor Jack's is going to be fully inclusive of everything put forward as RPG on these forums, nor fullly exclusive of everything that would be refused that designation. So, as Jack said, now perhaps that we've got a better understanding of each other, we can agree to disagree.

I'm happy. Any last words?

--M. J. Young

M. J. Young wrote: I will start by apologizing to Jack for singling him out with this thread.

I would perhaps include that as one of my distinguishing factors. When I sit down to right a story as an author, I have a pretty good idea of where the story is going to end--not exact, not in complete detail, but the framework thereof. Further, I build on that ending in my mind even as I create the pieces that will lead to it. My novels are always headed toward the predetermined conclusion. My games never are--I have no idea where my games, or my daydreams, will lead; and thus I equate role playing with daydreaming, in which others may (or may not) be involved.

I would have liked to have seen his consideration of Trailblazing, Participationism, and Illusionism (as forms of role playing in which the feedback to the referee is irrelevant), but he's right--whatever your definition of role playing game you're going to have some things that are gray areas. Jack requires that there be minimally two human beings interacting with each other, such that the decisions of each impact the decisions of the other. I, being rather introverted by nature with a long history of active daydreaming in my youth in which I imagined as much "play" as I've ever done in games with others, think it sufficient if one person is making decisions that create story, with no particular end point in view.

Hi guys,

Jack and M.J., think this one's ready for closing? Going once ...

Best,
Ron

I'll let MJ decide that. I think I might have hit all the nails put before me with my last post, especially snce I got a clearer picture of where MJ was coming from. Let's see if he needs any further clairification.

No, I'm good. Close it.

As an aside, my first efforts at novel writing were of that sort, and they fizzled because they went nowhere. I realized that not knowing the direction the story was to take crippled it, so my next effort was far too structured--I gave myself timetables for when major events were to happen relative to the calendar in the story world, and then couldn't really make it flow. (Looking back, it strikes me that I was attempting to create realistic time and distance in my characters' travels using what would be highly structured mechanics--which is very odd, considering that I'd never heard of role playing games then.) So I find that if I want a novel to go somewhere, I've got to know where it's going, but to work out the details of how to get there along the way.

--M. J. Young