Quote from: jhkim;734474I'm not sure we're disagreeing here. Maybe another example would help.

So Madeline asks me "What happened last time in-game?"  I reply, "Well, we fought our way through a bunch of abominations in the pyramid, and Taylor got to level 4, but Mike's character died so he introduced a new PC - a ranger."

Does that sound like something you might hear? Or is your usage contrary to this?

That isn't how i would use that word. I am sure this varies a bit from place to place, Your answer would possibly be how someone in my group would respond to the question "what happened last game?" but not "what happened last time in-game". In-game to me means the stuff that happens in the setting, not the stuff that happens at the table. Now, we wouldn't slap someone on the face for using levels or metagame language to talk about in-game events. But in-game to me, suggests in the game itself, what the player characters are doing, not what the players do. If i ask you what happened in-game, i am not asking how many levels you obtained or what have you.

That said, i think your example isn't egregious. It just feels like a somewhat casual response, without concern for precision. I would understand what the person was telling me and would just assume they find it easier to speak about game setting events by drawing on metagame language. Not saying your useage is wrong. This is just how i would interpret at my table.

Quote from: Benoist;734424That's cool. The only real question is whether I'm just a blip on the radar, or there are more people like me who think a term like "fiction" to describe "the game world" is needlessly confusing and leads to all sorts of red herrings, like construing role playing games as a story telling medium complete with novel-writing techniques and movie-making tropes. It looks, from the sample we have here, that it is the latter.

I know, I know. The plural of anecdote is not data. But still. I feel entitled to say my piece.

I don't find it confusing, just completely redundant and pseudo-intellectual. Most traditional RPGs have a perfectly serviceable "what is a roleplaying game?"-chapter where the exact same thing is explained in common terms.

Quote from: Endless Flight;734482Don't people usual ask "what happened during the game?".

"What happened in the fiction" sounds strange.

I have never heard any player or gm ever use the word 'fiction' in regards to an rpg (other than on message boards) and I have been playing bucket loads of rpgs for over 30 years.

If my memory is accurate, the word fiction has been exclusively a reference to novels, not rpg's.


I have heard the word 'Story' in the context of 'what happened in the campaign"

Quote from: Old Geezer;734354For THIS old fart's money, pretty much only that in DW, EVERYTHING is "2d6, 2-6 fails, 7-9 success with complication, 10-12 success."

If you watched closer, you'd see that DW doesn't have the skirmish wargame aspect of D&D; if six orcs are chopping on you they only roll once and "extra" orcs only add damage.

Frankly, that's the one thing I do NOT like about DW; for my taste, combat sucks horribly.  I WANT a skirmish wargame.

So ultra rules lite.

Based on that, why do some people seem up in arms over DW?

Quote from: 3rik;734488I don't find it confusing, just completely redundant and pseudo-intellectual.

Quote from: 3rik;734488. . . just completely redundant and pseudo-intellectual.

Quote from: 3rik;734488. . . completely redundant and pseudo-intellectual.

That pretty well covers it for me.

Quote from: Adric;734401Fiction works for me because it's easy for players new to the hobby to understand when you use it, and players who don't frequent internet forums for arguing about RPGs don't have any adverse reaction to it. It has no dissonance for players I have introduced the game to, whether they have experience in made-up bullshit games or not.

"Game world" is a perfectly utilitarian and widely understood term. But it doesn't have the implied sophistication of "fiction."

Quote from: Adric;734401A lot of roleplaying games are written only for people that already play roleplaying games. They don't work on making themselves approachable for players new to the hobby, creating an insular community. I like that dungeon world is written so that you could pick it up and play it without ever hearing about roleplaying games or D&D.

That may be the case. But it's undercut by the fact it's almost impossible to buy the book retail. So in practice Dungeon World is a game that's only going to be played by hardcore RPG internet hipsters.

If "the fiction" comes across as pretentious we screwed up. We're two dudes making a game about going into dangerous places and punching things in the face, pretension is not something we excel in.

I guess because of some of the people we're associated with we should have been more wary of anything that could come across as fancy-shmancy hippie talk. Oh well. If that's a game-breaker for you, no problem, there are a ton of other games out there that use different terminology.

The book shouldn't be impossible to find in retail, though. At the moment we are sold out through one of our suppliers, which may limit what you see on shelves, but in general the game is available anywhere that stocks RPGs. of course there are all kinds of reasons a given game is or isn't on a given store's shelves, but anecdotally we're showing up in a lot of dedicated hobby shops.

Quote from: sage_again;734540If "the fiction" comes across as pretentious we screwed up. We're two dudes making a game about going into dangerous places and punching things in the face, pretension is not something we excel in.

I guess because of some of the people we're associated with we should have been more wary of anything that could come across as fancy-shmancy hippie talk. Oh well. If that's a game-breaker for you, no problem, there are a ton of other games out there that use different terminology.

The book shouldn't be impossible to find in retail, though. At the moment we are sold out through one of our suppliers, which may limit what you see on shelves, but in general the game is available anywhere that stocks RPGs. of course there are all kinds of reasons a given game is or isn't on a given store's shelves, but anecdotally we're showing up in a lot of dedicated hobby shops.

I am not familiar with DW; have not had a chance to read it yet. But may I ask why the word fiction was used at all? I personally don't get a fancy pants vibe from the word fiction, but it seems to apply to written novels at least in my head.

We chose it from a bunch of options, mostly based on what we found in our own communications clearest and easiest to use. "In-game," "in-character," "in setting," "in world," "in the current situation," and numerous others were considered. At various points during development we used all of them, but often found they fell short, or were just a pain to use.

Adam and I live in different countries, so we email a lot. That means our emails often are effectively first drafts of new rules, and we found that "in-character" would lead to problems with clarity, for example (there's both "in character" as in talking in silly voices or "in character" as in what your character perceives, plus things that are in the same made up world as your character but which your character has no idea of). We may not be average readers, but this was our process. We ended up referring to "the fiction" a lot, as it encompassed the entire world the characters exist in, both known to the players and unknown, in it's entirety (not just the current moment or current plane or whatever). It made sense to us that the way of talking we had found easiest might work for others, but it may have come across as insider lingo.

That may have been the wrong choice, in which case: sorry to anyone put off by it. We felt it was our best option for clarity and conciseness.

I am just curious why the word seems so 'hot button'
'Fiction' does not really push my buttons as a term.
I guess to me it just means "Didn't actually happen in reality"
Thanks for the reply.

Quote from: Bill;734499So ultra rules lite.

Based on that, why do some people seem up in arms over DW?

Because it's a hack of Apocalypse World, which was written by Vince Baker, one of the Unholy Trinity of the Forge - together with Luke Crane and the Dark Lord Ron Edwards himself.

Quote from: robiswrong;734562Because it's a hack of Apocalypse World, which was written by Vince Baker, one of the Unholy Trinity of the Forge - together with Luke Crane and the Dark Lord Ron Edwards himself.

Which also explains the main issue that some people here have with the  word "fiction", being uncomfortable close to "story".

Quote from: jhkimSo Madeline asks me "What happened last time in-game?" I reply, "Well, we fought our way through a bunch of abominations in the pyramid, and Taylor got to level 4, but Mike's character died so he introduced a new PC - a ranger."

Does that sound like something you might hear? Or is your usage contrary to this?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;734483(...) But in-game to me, suggests in the game itself, what the player characters are doing, not what the players do. If i ask you what happened in-game, i am not asking how many levels you obtained or what have you.

That said, i think your example isn't egregious. It just feels like a somewhat casual response, without concern for precision. I would understand what the person was telling me and would just assume they find it easier to speak about game setting events by drawing on metagame language. Not saying your useage is wrong. This is just how i would interpret at my table.

Fair enough. And I'm not saying this usage is the only way that I use the term "in-game". I'm just saying that in my experience, that usage is pretty common. So when I join a new group, I would not be at all surprised to hear that usage, and I might well use it that way among them.

Quote from: Bill;734560I am just curious why the word seems so 'hot button'
'Fiction' does not really push my buttons as a term.
I guess to me it just means "Didn't actually happen in reality"
Thanks for the reply.

I guess for me, when i hear the words "the fiction", to echo another poster, it reminds me of my brushes with literary criticism and critical studies courses talking about "the text". I hear that, and i immediately associate it with things like postmodernism, and it feels looe a useage that takes the normal meaning of something and almost turns it into a code language. So to me, it feels like that kind of mentality seeping into the discussion.

I have never read or played DW, so not commenting on the language they use in their rules, since it might well not come off as i am describing above. I am just responding to posters in this thread talking about the use of "the fiction" in isolation, which is a term i have come across in places like enworld.

Quote from: sage_again;734558We chose it from a bunch of options, mostly based on what we found in our own communications clearest and easiest to use. "In-game," "in-character," "in setting," "in world," "in the current situation," and numerous others were considered. At various points during development we used all of them, but often found they fell short, or were just a pain to use.

Adam and I live in different countries, so we email a lot. That means our emails often are effectively first drafts of new rules, and we found that "in-character" would lead to problems with clarity, for example (there's both "in character" as in talking in silly voices or "in character" as in what your character perceives, plus things that are in the same made up world as your character but which your character has no idea of). We may not be average readers, but this was our process. We ended up referring to "the fiction" a lot, as it encompassed the entire world the characters exist in, both known to the players and unknown, in it's entirety (not just the current moment or current plane or whatever). It made sense to us that the way of talking we had found easiest might work for others, but it may have come across as insider lingo.

That may have been the wrong choice, in which case: sorry to anyone put off by it. We felt it was our best option for clarity and conciseness.

I am not familiar with your useage of the term in the DW rules, so haven't really been commenting on that specific case. For me, it has more to do with how I have seen it used in online discussions about rpgs in general.