Quote from: DominikSchwager;467537Sorry, I just ignored you because, like you yourself said, you were being a dick.

I don't consider successful and quality mutually exclusive, but I do recognize that in pop culture successful and quality definitely are not one and the same thing. Quite the opposite indeed.
Look at our own hobby. D&D and pathfinder outsell everything and yet for my money they represent everything that is wrong with the hobby (well they and the people who have way more games than they play, but that is a different rant alltogether).

Everything that is wrong with the hobby? So if I enjoy playing Pathfinder, my games are wrong for the hobby?

Quote from: pawsplay;467539Everything that is wrong with the hobby? So if I enjoy playing Pathfinder, my games are wrong for the hobby?

If your games have supplement treadmills, overly complicated rules that achieve nothing simpler rules can't and a way too high entry cost, then yes. If you were talking about your individual campaign, then you either accidentally or intentionally misread what I was writing.

Quote from: joewolz;467517I happen to agree with Salen and Zimmerman's old view (Rules of Play is showing its age). Tabletop RPGs are usually not games in any kind of gameplay theory...because we don't yet have a cohesive vocabulary.  Perhaps some young rhetorician or literary analyst will write the definitive book on the subject and we can stop having discussions about half-baked, mostly useless "theory."

They haven't taken into account newer RPGs that actually have clear agendas baked into them.  

What I mean is, yes, OD&D, Traveller, and all of those are not games out of the box.  They're 'special snowflakes' because they are not games, they're toolboxes, like the Unreal Engine 3.0 is a toolbox.  It's a legacy thing from the hobbyist days of yore, when it assumed you'd have enough "gaming" experience to create your own procedures for play to overlay on top of the task resolution mechanics.  You'd have to create the game out of the toolkit.  The problem is that not everyone was used to the hobbyist approach (especially with the influx of non-war/hobby gamers), and not everyone was interested in creating their own game, and either gave up after getting bored or stumbling around with "incoherent" play.  The Forge recognized this problem and began to create games with clear play structures/goals rather than assuming the end-user would have to create their own game.

So no, it's not useful if you're trying to make a toolkit.  It's absolutely useful if you're trying to design a game.

As for the theory being useless, it's objectively improved my play, and gels with my first-hand observations, so that's all I have to go on.  I really don't think game-theory needs rigorous academic regimens to be considered useful.  This isn't rocket-science, nor is it cognitive science.  They're games.

(Also, what newer works do you recommend of RoP is showing it's age?  Most game-design texts date back older than that.)

Quote from: Peregrin;467551What I mean is, yes, OD&D, Traveller, and all of those are not games out of the box.  

You have just rendered your theory useless. A theory of RPGs that claim D&D is not a role-playing game fails.

Quote from: DominikSchwager;467543If your games have supplement treadmills, overly complicated rules that achieve nothing simpler rules can't and a way too high entry cost, then yes. If you were talking about your individual campaign, then you either accidentally or intentionally misread what I was writing.

I don't feel like I'm on a "treadmill," I don't think the rules are intrinsically overly complicted (particularly compared to stuff like Spirit of the Century) and the entry cost is $20. I am sure you have valid reasons for feeling as you do, but your view of the facts does not align with mine.

Quote from: Peregrin;467551As for the theory being useless, it's objectively improved my play, and gels with my first-hand observations, so that's all I have to go on.  

That's part of the issue, the lack of real evidence.  No one has real evidence, just anecdotes.

Quote from: Peregrin;467551I really don't think game-theory needs rigorous academic regimens to be considered useful.  This isn't rocket-science, nor is it cognitive science.  They're games.

We disagree on that.  I do think it needs rigorous academic study in order to be a real theory.  Most importantly, it needs not be evaluated by a science at all:  it's a whole lot closer to improvisational acting or the analysis of interpersonal communication.  The fact that folks trying to be (or really are) scientists, attempting to evaluate something that is most likely way outside their normal purview is a recipe for the kind of disaster we've seen in the online community.  Until we see some kind of decent analysis backed up with some evidence (qualitative as it must be) then just about everything written on game theory is just so much bullshitting amongst amateurs.

On a related note, science tends to define theory by whoever "wins" in publishing first, while folks in the humanities tend to have a longer, more protracted dialog on the subject.

Quote from: Peregrin;467551(Also, what newer works do you recommend of RoP is showing it's age?  Most game-design texts date back older than that.)

I'll get you some articles when I get home, all the text books are out of date.

Quote from: pawsplay;467577You have just rendered your theory useless. A theory of RPGs that claim D&D is not a role-playing game fails.

*facepalming, hardcore*

I said OD&D, not D&D.  Frex, I think Basic D&D and Tunnels & Trolls do a pretty good job of laying out what you're supposed to do during play, and don't muddle up the text with lots of bits that don't mesh well with the rest of the rules.  Games like 4e are even more clear about how procedures are supposed to work, and what play encompasses.

Also, you'll note I said "out of the box", referring to the rules text.  That says nothing about whether or not someone molds it into a game on their own.  You can make a game using the Unreal Engine, but that doesn't mean the Unreal Engine itself is a game.  Basically, a task-resolution system != a game.

I mean, you do realize Gygax once said the same thing about OD&D that I just did, right?

Quote from: joewolzThat's part of the issue, the lack of real evidence. No one has real evidence, just anecdotes.

Can there ever be any hard evidence in a hobby that generally concerns itself with fictional events that we envision in our head?  I mean, prettymuch all of our experiences are subjective, and you've got multiple layers of subjectivity.  Not to mention that this hobby in particular has a shitton of baggage and is extremely insular.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;466667It's worth pointing out that the Forge consistently gives at least one piece of terrible advice due to GNS theory, which is to focus on a singular "creative agenda" - one of G, N or S - and create games that are "coherent", whereas any sort of empirical examination of the most popular and beloved games in all of roleplaying shows that they are "incoherent".

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;466878That's why I mentioned people loving incoherent games, not just purchasing them. Even within the Forge community, the more "incoherent" a game, the more people seem to like it. DitV and Burning Wheel excite and interest people far more than the Shab Al-Hiri Roach or other Forge microgames do.

Yup.

Quote from: Peregrin;467607*facepalming, hardcore*

I said OD&D, not D&D.  

You're claiming the first RPG is not an RPG. Seriously.

Quote from: Peregrin;467607*facepalming, hardcore*

I said OD&D, not D&D.

OD&D and Traveller are not role playing games because they don't have a focus out of the box?

Riiiiiiiiight. :rolleyes:

Leaving the "toolboxes are not RPGs" nonsense alone for a moment, how do you call "The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures", the concept of exploration of the dungeon and unexplored territories? It's not a focus for the game, I presume?

Quote from: Benoist;467614OD&D and Traveller are not role playing games because they don't have a focus out of the box?

Riiiiiiiiight. :rolleyes:

Leaving the "toolboxes are not RPGs" nonsense alone for a moment, how do you call "The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures", the concept of exploration of the dungeon and unexplored territories? It's not a focus for the game, I presume?

"That's all well and good in practice, but how does it work in theory?"

Quote from: pawsplay;467613You're claiming the first RPG is not an RPG. Seriously.

I'm claiming that the word "game", while it may describe what happens at the table, was not was what was contained in the booklets.  A game was not presented in the text, even if what was going on at Gygax' table was a game.  A toolkit was written, which was then used by GMs to create games.  Sorta like legos.

Quote from: BenoistLeaving the "toolboxes are not RPGs" nonsense alone for a moment, how do you call "The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures", the concept of exploration of the dungeon and unexplored territories? It's not a focus for the game, I presume?

It's an attempt.  OD&D's faults lie more with never actually describing the procedures of play (hence AD&D and Basic as attempts to rectify this).

*edit*

Anyway, I should've cut out a page ago when I said I would after answering Dom's question.  Suffice it to say my gaming has improved because of certain insights surrounding game-theory.  Maybe it hasn't for you, and maybe you don't need it.  Good on you.  As long as you're having fun, I don't care.  I'm not going to force you to put cream in your coffee if you take it black.

An "attempt"? "Rectify"?

And mate, please, spare me the "you're having fun so it's awesome" justification. I know you're not a douchebag. I know.

I'm not trying to change your way of gaming either, just to be clear.

When you are getting WAY into nonsense territory like this, however, just for the sake of defending the game theory you think brought you some great insights, you deserve to be called out. And that's some nonsense, let me tell you.

Quote from: Peregrin;467617I'm claiming that the word "game", while it may describe what happens at the table, was not was what was contained in the booklets.  A game was not presented in the text, even if what was going on at Gygax' table was a game.  A toolkit was written, which was then used by GMs to create games.  Sorta like legos.

So OD&D was a roleplaying "game" and Dogs in the Vinyard is a role-playing GAME. I get you.

That's crazy. Sorry!

Quote from: Benoist;467619When you are getting WAY into nonsense territory like this, however, just for the sake of defending the game theory you think brought you some great insights, you deserve to be called out. And that's some nonsense, let me tell you.

I don't know what to tell you.  I don't think it's nonsense.

Quote from: pawsplaySo OD&D was a roleplaying "game" and Dogs in the Vinyard is a role-playing GAME. I get you.

Textually, yes.  But OD&D can be played as a game at the table, it just requires some foreknowledge and implementation of procedures by the GM, not all of which are made clear by the text, some even going unmentioned.  Which is why you ended up with a bajillion different versions of OD&D being played all over the country, why you ended up with Tunnels & Trolls and Runequest, and why TSR finally decided to create AD&D to "standardize" play.

Remember, we're talking about the game it took Tim Kask two weeks of solid reading to "figure out", even with the advantage of having played it.