I think I've lost count how many arguments I've wound up in that I enjoy having some game in my role playing. Or at least my RPGs. A fully deterministic system just isn't nearly as interesting to me as one where I have to put something on the line to take an important action, be it failure of my action or getting punted by a troll when it's turn comes around and it's still standing.

So ideally I want a bit of both, some times I want to stare daggers at my dice because they failed me, it's just more fun to me that way.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;789892I just can't get behind this sentiment. It certainly isn't how I play. I really just don't have much fun with kick in the door style games, but people have been doing kick in the door since the early days of the hobby and they've been large in number. To suddenly define them out of the hobby because some of us prefer talking more in character, to me, is sophistry.

Well said.

The ideology behind Wick's post is apparent:
"If you can play a game without Roleplaying, it is not a Roleplaying Game."
Completely and totally missing the point, that when I do something in game that looks to others like roleplaying, I could be doing it for a host of reasons, that have nothing to do with "what my character would do" and no one will know the difference, because the act of immersing in a character is a mental state, only you know if you're really doing it.

Wick's point is similar to, but not the same thing as...
"If the mechanics force you to make decisions while not Roleplaying, it is not the same type of Roleplaying Game as those which do not."

Now, for those with memory, this is basically what I say differentiates games with strong narrative mechanics from those without.  As you also know if you have a good memory, this simple concept spawns more drive-bys and mattress go-tos on this site then just about anything else.  The same people, of course, will properly accept Wick's statement as an Article of Faith.

So it's ironic.  The guy who says D&D is not roleplaying because the mechanics can be engaged without roleplaying, also belongs to a school of design that stresses mechanics which encourage "roleplaying" by which they really mean "narrative authorship of your character and his story from a 3rd person perspective".

It's like saying "The Sun is not Yellow, in fact the Moon is Blue."  It's incorrect on so many levels, there is no place to start.

Wick's post:

Typical storygamer one-true-wayism, built on a tottering foundation of assumptions that simply aren't true for 90 per cent of people who have played roleplaying games.

People play RPGs to emulate literary or movie genres? Bzzzt. Wrong. Some people do. Many don't. I'm old enough that when I grew up kids didn't spend 30+ hours a week watching movies, TV, and videogames. I read voraciously, but I started playing D&D at 10 years old, and I played more hours in a week than I read. Same with my buddies. So D&D was its own genre. We weren't trying to make our sessions mimic a book or a movie. We didn't have any literary genre expectations. We just felt making up cool characters and exploring dungeons, ruins, and crypts while taking on the role of those characters was awesome fun.

Oh, and two of my buddies from my original D&D group went on to get degrees in literature, and I myself have pretty high-brow taste in fiction and drama. So it's not as though we don't enjoy or understand narrative and themes and all that jazz. We simply don't expect or want that stuff in our RPGs.

I don't know why these clowns want to whittle down the definition of RPGs so narrowly that it's a hobby enjoyed only by a few thousand people. Actually, I know bloody well why they do - so they can console themselves that they are in fact a very big deal in a very small pond. And to place themselves in the esteemed literary academic camp rather than the far larger pool of mouth-breathing gamers. Their pretensions are almost comically transparent.

Beonist's post:

I don't remember him being that long-winded, or that even-handed, when he posted here. I do remember him being a relentlessly belligerent thread-crapper.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;789892I just can't get behind this sentiment. It certainly isn't how I play. I really just don't have much fun with kick in the door style games, but people have been doing kick in the door since the early days of the hobby and they've been large in number. To suddenly define them out of the hobby because some of us prefer talking more in character, to me, is sophistry.

I don't define anyone out of the hobby. I don't say they are not roleplaying. And I don't say every player plays it like I just described it. D&D is just more geared towards being played as a roleplaying miniatures game with a lot of focus on the tactical combat aspect of the game. That's just what it is. I can't help it. Don't shoot the messenger. Just stating facts here.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;789902I don't define anyone out of the hobby. I don't say they are not roleplaying. And I don't say every player plays it like I just described it. D&D is just more geared towards being played as a roleplaying miniatures game with a lot of focus on the tactical combat aspect of the game. That's just what it is. I can't help it. Don't shoot the messenger. Just stating facts here.

In your post you said they were playing D&D as a board game, not a roleplaying game. Wick pretty explicitly stated that 4E is not an RPG but a tactical board game. I just can't get behind that line of reasoning where people take their preferences then build a definition of RPG around it, usually with the intention of eliminating something from the hobby they dislike.

And I say that as someone who can't stand 4E.

Wick seems to be making two points, the first being his answer to the question of "what is a role-playing game?" and the second being "on the importance of 'game balance.'" He then tries to present them as being interrelated points.

Benoist's response seems to disagree with the first point, and offer a "yes, but..." to the second one.

Personally, I think they have some good points between them, but I think that they're only tangentially mentioning the salient issues that are at the core of these questions.

Insofar as "what really constitutes a role-playing game" is concerned, I prefer Jon Peterson's analysis (in Playing at the World). While he identifies several strong themes in what role-playing games offered that, at least initially, made them different from other games (such as playing a singular character, rather than an abstract piece or single unit of nameless characters; or having a character that not only existed across multiple games, but improved over time), the single feature he defines as being at the core of RPGs is that they're games that allow your character to attempt to do anything.

Insofar as "balance" goes, I agree with Wick, but I'd phrase it differently. To me, balance is found in the execution of a game (that is, running a session), rather than in a game's design. Having characters with lopsided options and abilities isn't a big deal if the GM can tailor the game so as to give everyone some time in the proverbial spotlight. Benoist, by contrast, seems to acknowledge that and then starts talking about how balance is only important if it serves your sense of fun, which isn't quite the same issue.

So yeah, good points all around, but the overall messages seemed rather garbled.

I glanced at both, neither interested me past the first paragraph. Living in Hollywood I learned a very important saying about entertainment: "Be good or be bad, don't be boring", which is something that I think people miss. I hate to see the 100 page exegesis of rationalizations of why something failed, who cares? If you had put that much work in on the front end, maybe it wouldn't have failed. Move on.

Quote from: ”John Wick”And so, again, I ask you, what weapon do you choose for Riddick?
It’s a trick question, of course. It doesn’t matter what weapon you give Riddick, he’s going to kick your ass with it.

Of course he is. Because Riddick is the protagonist in a movie and the writer decided that Riddick kicks your ass. So, based solely on author fiat, he does. Contrast that with a game where people roll some dice to find out whether or not Riddick kicks your ass and if he does kick your ass, how many times Riddick needs to kick it before you are wearing your dumb ass around your ears.

Quote from: ”John Wick”roleplaying game: a game in which the players are rewarded for making choices
that are consistent with the character’s motivations [strike]or further the plot of the story[/strike].

I’ve improved John Wick's definition by removing the extraneous and unparsimonious story clap trap that he has tacked onto the end of his definition about roleplaying games. But an even better definition would be the following.

Quote from: Brenroleplaying game: a game in which the players make choices that are consistent with their character’s motivations.

Notice that in neither definition is furthering a plot or story a requirement of a roleplaying game. Because roleplaying games don't actually need a plot or a story.
 
Some of the most entertaining sessions of roleplaying that I have experienced are sessions where the players go off in some totally surprising direction unrelated to any plot or where the combination of the player choices, character actions, and random die rolls makes for a thrilling, dramatic, or just plain hilarious series of events.

Case in Point: Our last session of Honor+Intrigue was a masquerade ball that had a series of mistaken identities that were generated because of player choices and actions and random events. For example, a player chose the costume of Death. He then tricked the Spanish Ambassador, whose aide happened to also be dressed as Death, into thinking that the PC was the Ambassador’s aide. Meanwhile another player who chose to dress as a Bear, fooled some NPCs into thinking he was an ally of theirs but they are confused why he is dressed in the same costume as one of their other allies (who was also dressed as a Bear). The fact that all the NPC costumes were randomly generated as they were encountered made the confusion way funnier than if I had tried to plot it that way or force a “story” out of the confusion. And that is not even getting into the player who had their lumbering, unsettling looking giant male brute dress up as a veiled (to hide his perpetual 5 o'clock shadow) princess who talked in a falsetto voice during the masquerade. The player had us all laughing in stitches. Didn't have a damn thing to do with plot or story though. The giant wants to become a stage actor and he (the giant) thought this would be good practice...and so chaos ensues.

The biggest gripe I have with Wick's column is the insistence that computer-based RPGs aren't RPGs at all. Seriously? It's like he's trying to retroactively change the meaning to something that suits him better, some sort of narrativist model that excludes anyone who doesn't give a fuck about funny voices and "exploring the fiction", or whatever the hell that phrase from Dungeon World is. I can assure Wick that when I played Bard's Tale for countless hours, that was, in fact, a roleplaying game. I'd like an explanation about how World of Warcraft ISN'T an RPG. Just because you don't like something doesn't magically change its nature.

I suppose his next column will be about chess not even being a true boardgame because there's no element of chance; it's just an exercise in combinatoric mathematics, right!?!

Quote from: Brad;789911The biggest gripe I have with Wick's column is the insistence that computer-based RPGs aren't RPGs at all.?!

I agree there are issues with this. Especially something like WoW that is designed to emulate table top RPGs. That really blurs the lines and trying to use that as a stick for what RPGs are not (i.e. anything that can do exactly what WoW does, but fails at story, isn't an RPG) just doesn't work for me.

It is sour grapes in that computer rpg's sell at the 1000x rate of table top rpg's.

I find myself in the "Who Cares?" camp more and more on topics like this.

  'Roleplaying game' is a broad category that can encompass a whole lot of things, and RPG may not even be the best term for some of its variations. (I always kind of liked the "Dramatic Adventure Game" title TSR used for the Dragonlance: Fifth Age game.) But while there may be things that fall on the edges, I don't see any particular benefit in defining them as 'not RPGs' or 'swine games' or the like.

   The bit about chess and RPGs actually resonated with me because it reminded me of a passage from one of my favorite books, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, where he discusses Lucy and Reepicheep the Mouse playing chess (Chapter 5)

Quote from: C.S. Lewis[Reepicheep] was a good player and when he remembered what he was doing he usually won. But every now and then Lucy won because the Mouse did something quite ridiculous like sending a knight into the danger of a queen and castle combined. This happened because he had momentarily forgotten it was a game of chess and was thinking of a real battle and making the knight do what he would certainly have done in its place. For his mind was full of forlorn hopes, death-or-glory charges, and last stands.

  Of course, in that case, the problem isn't that you can't roleplay during chess--it's that roleplaying in certain ways during chess is contrary to the victory conditions. RPGs have more flexibility in victory conditions and in character types, leaving a lot more room for harmonization of roleplaying and game.

  And I do care about balance, since I like games to support as broad a range of options without any being dramatically out of line with others. A good chunk of that, however, requires clarity about what the game is trying to do and making sure it does it--and the fact that a lot of people didn't understand the former (especially with *D&D) or couldn't do the latter well is the source of a great deal of sturm und drang in this hobby.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;789914I agree there are issues with this. Especially something like WoW that is designed to emulate table top RPGs. That really blurs the lines and trying to use that as a stick for what RPGs are not (i.e. anything that can do exactly what WoW does, but fails at story, isn't an RPG) just doesn't work for me.

It's basicly an anti grind statement. I did the same with Baldur's Gate years ago. It's all about the sword +1 and making sure you have enough antidotes and cure disease potions on you to survive every battle. I clicked through every dialogue because that was so cliche and generic. I had plenty of fun with all the min-maxing of those games, but over the years I grew tired of it. Been there, done that. It's very meta those games. It really reminds me of playing magic the gathering. Everything you do is calculated. It's very rational.

All in all I think there are two styles of roleplaying. Both are called roleplaying, but they are very different indeed.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;789921It's basicly an anti grind statement. I did the same with Baldur's Gate years ago. It's all about the sword +1 and making sure you have enough antidotes and cure disease potions on you to survive every battle. I clicked through every dialogue because that was so cliche and generic. I had plenty of fun with all the min-maxing of those games, but over the years I grew tired of it. Been there, done that. It's very meta those games. It really reminds me of playing magic the gathering. Everything you do is calculated. It's very rational.

All in all I think there are two styles of roleplaying. Both are called roleplaying, but they are very different indeed.

I am not into the grind either. That doesn't make it not roleplaying. It is just one of many play styles for RPGs.