Quote from: Justin Alexander;887496The GM ultimately controls scene framing, though.

Funny, I never see this except in Internet posts by people who use the jargon "scene framing." Neither the term nor the problems have come up in my actual experience of RPGs, which is not surprising since I see no reason they should when they have not in the broader domain of simulation games.

Forget your "scenes" and stick with the referee's job of resolving moves, and maybe you'll find that you don't create the problem you struggle so to solve.

Quote from: SaurondorYup, but a tabletop RPG is not reality and comparing it to reality is as pointless as Manzanaro's fully simulated environment, a truly entertaining intellectual exercise that's totally useless in practice.

To the contrary, it has been repeatedly found useful by people who don't have the problems that other people are complaining about (while utterly ignoring the advice from the former).

There are plenty of things proven to work in real life, and no reason for them not to work in a game except that you are arbitrarily determined to prevent it.

It's common sense that if you want to have an interesting story to tell, then you should go out and do interesting things. It's common experience that people with important personal relationships and strongly held values taking on remarkable challenges are more fascinating than loners who strive for nothing against nothing.

Quote from: SaurondorSo if rules didn't come from a thorough reproduction of reality, where did they come from? They came from narrating a story. Gygax and more so Arneson were first and furthermost telling a story.

That bullshit is familiar from other contexts: "Did life come from pure randomness? No! The only alternative is that Prometheus made the first humans from clay, and Athena breathed life into them. Case closed."

How about what Dave and Gary themselves said, and people who knew them have affirmed: They made up stuff because it was fun for a game?

Quote from: Phillip;887734To the contrary, it has been repeatedly found useful by people who don't have the problems that other people are complaining about (while utterly ignoring the advice from the former).

There are plenty of things proven to work in real life, and no reason for them not to work in a game except that you are arbitrarily determined to prevent it.

It's common sense that if you want to have an interesting story to tell, then you should go out and do interesting things. It's common experience that people with important personal relationships and strongly held values taking on remarkable challenges are more fascinating than loners who strive for nothing against nothing.

Don't quite follow your comment. What had that have to do with my response regarding reality requiring an outside force to set it up?

Quote from: Phillip;887734To the contrary, it has been repeatedly found useful by people who don't have the problems that other people are complaining about (while utterly ignoring the advice from the former).

Damn, right for the jugular. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Although what I wanted to point out to Saurondor is that I wasn't "comparing" RPGs to real life at all. I provided a blatantly obvious counter-example to swat down a bogus theory.

QuoteThere are plenty of things proven to work in real life, and no reason for them not to work in a game except that you are arbitrarily determined to prevent it.

Yes. There are plenty of lessons and even inspirations that can be drawn from the real world.

But there are also parts of reality that cannot be divorced from the RPG. The fact that the game is played by real live people living in the real world carries with it certain baggage of the real world that cannot be countered by any goofy game design or eccentric theories.

So when I said earlier that you can't always predict what will be interesting, therefore the very idea of getting something interesting reliably is not realistic, I could give 14 shits about how realistic or unrealistic the game world or mechanics to the game are. Since it's real live human players that have to take an interest, you still face the same uncertainty no matter what the rules or the game may be.

Quote from: Phillip;887735How about what Dave and Gary themselves said, and people who knew them have affirmed: They made up stuff because it was fun for a game?

Strangely enough you pretty much said the same thing I did. So what's Prometheus and Athena got to do with all this?

Quote from: Saurondor;887742Strangely enough you pretty much said the same thing I did.

Pull the other one, it has bells on. Who do you think you're fooling?

Quote from: Lunamancer;887740The fact that the game is played by real live people living in the real world carries with it certain baggage of the real world that cannot be countered by any goofy game design or eccentric theories.

So when I said earlier that you can't always predict what will be interesting, therefore the very idea of getting something interesting reliably is not realistic, I could give 14 shits about how realistic or unrealistic the game world or mechanics to the game are. Since it's real live human players that have to take an interest, you still face the same uncertainty no matter what the rules or the game may be.

Definitely. Even Stephen King can't please everyone, but he pleases an audience orders of magnitude larger and less known than the GM of even the grandest paper-and-pencil RPG campaign must.

We have the advantage of immediate feedback! So often I see people asking strangers online for advice they really ought to be getting from the people with whom they're actually playing.

Quote from: Phillip;887753Pull the other one, it has bells on. Who do you think you're fooling?

Phillip, spell out your opinion plain and simple instead of pulling these nonsense tactics. First you call my point bullshit with no supporting argument other than the stench of your words. Then you follow it with some bable about gods and what not and close off with a question that strengthens my point more than yours (if there is any). You do have a tendency to close off posts with questions, and I'm beginning to suspect you have no real answers nor even a position to defend.

My opinion is that
"They came from narrating a story. Gygax and more so Arneson were first and furthermost telling a story."
is not the same as
"They made up stuff because it was fun for a game."

Quote from: Phillip;887772My opinion is that
"They came from narrating a story. Gygax and more so Arneson were first and furthermost telling a story."
is not the same as
"They made up stuff because it was fun for a game."

So you don't believe they were telling a story?

Quote from: Saurondor;887773So you don't believe they were telling a story?

Your attempt to equate that with the belief I actually and plainly stated is absurdly clumsy. It is a different proposition, which cannot be answered without a clearer definition of the question. I don't care to get into an argument over the semantics; stipulate yourself what you mean by "they were telling a story" and then we can have an actually informative exchange.

Quote from: Phillip;887774stipulate yourself what you mean by "they were telling a story" and then we can have an actually informative exchange.

Why should I? Haven't you already responded to my post and even had the nerve to call it bullshit and now you come around asking what I meant. What were you replying to then?

Go back to the original post and read it again. It's got more text explaining what I meant than all your replies put together including your not so eloquent usage of the English language.

Quote from: Saurondor;887775Why should I?

Because you were earnestly interested in learning my view, having a real conversation, rather than just being a troll. But I see that I gave you too much credit.

Quote from: Saurondor;887775Haven't you already responded to my post and even had the nerve to call it bullshit and now you come around asking what I meant. What were you replying to then?

Wow. Now you can't even distinguish your own posts? Pro tip: they're in separate, numbered boxes on the page. Also, I quoted that to which I was replying. It's not rocket science, really.