Quote from: estar;624197The hit point abstracting the difference in toughness.

This is just trivia, but since you bring it up:

I take it you hold to the Hackmaster / Bruce Willis in Die Hard theory of "toughness." Wherever you got that, it is not laid out in the OD&D booklets.

The explanation presented in the Dungeon Masters Guide came from the designer himself.

Quote from: Phillip;624203This is just trivia, but since you bring it up:

I take it you hold to the Hackmaster / Bruce Willis in Die Hard theory of "toughness." Wherever you got that, it is not laid out in the OD&D booklets.

The explanation presented in the Dungeon Masters Guide came from the designer himself.

Read Chainmail and read OD&D and not the book Gygax wrote five years later.

Again in Chainmail a Hero took four hits to kill, a superhero 8. In OD&D a hero is 4th level and a superhero is 8th level. The assumption is that a hero is worth four warriors and a superhero worth eight warriors. You can see that in OD&D with the Fighting Equivalency column of the level tables. It not guess work or supposition. It laid out in the original rules.

Quote from: estar;624209It laid out in the original rules.

Your view that the relative combat strength has nothing to do with skill and energy is not laid out there, I think.

If memory serves, no "theory" of any sort appears therein.

I've been using those booklets off and on since the 1970s, and I'm pretty sure I would have noticed.

Quote from: CRKrueger;624182Now in a classic RPG am I roleplaying when I am declaring intent?  This could be yes or no.  My choice as to whether to fire or what I am firing at could be due to a lot of things.  For example, my friend's kid might be playing with us for the first time, and even though my character would probably attack a different orc, I'm gonna fire at the one charging the kid's character because I don't want him to die yet.  A completely 100% OOC decision that no one but me can identify as such.  Choosing to fire at that particular Orc was not roleplaying.  IC POV had nothing to do with that decision.

OK, let me take a not-very-hypothetical example.  

Suppose I'm playing Vampire: The Masquerade with some friends.  It follows roughly the same external procedure as D&D.  However, whenever we declare intent for our character, our decision is based on "What will make for the best story?"  This is in line with what the game book itself says.  Our characters still take similar actions to if we were immersed in-character, because a good story has characters who act according to a distinct personality and in their own interests.  

Now, I absolutely agree that this is different than purely in-character play - it's the difference of Threefold Simulationist and Threefold Dramatist.  But if we define this as not role-playing, then I think only a very small percentage of typical tabletop RPG play is actually roleplaying.  

Quote from: CRKrueger;624182A game like Dungeon World, I simply cannot.  The rules actively prevent me from being 100% IC when I fire a bow.  It's really really hard to call such a game a "Roleplaying Game" without qualifier, because the rules have been specifically designed to not be just a Laws of Physics engine, but to provide an additional level of narrative control my character does not have.  It's not a Hero Point system I could use or not, it's baked into the rules for firing a bow.
...
If playing the game I find myself, because of limitations in the rules, not being IC, is it a roleplaying game?

I would say yes, because role-playing games don't have to be 100% in-character.  As I understand it, you already agree that most players are not 100% in-character anyway.  In my experience,

1) It's true that in the Dungeon World games I played, sometimes the rules forced me to make an out-of-character decision.  

2) Despite this, I felt that the overall percentage of the players being in-character was roughly the same as traditional RPGs such as Pathfinder or Vampire: The Masquerade.  

I would say that we should label games based on what typical play is like, not based on the theoretical ideal of what play by the rare case of an extreme simulationist who is trying for 100% in-character play.  

If a typical Pathfinder game has, say, 50% pure in-character play - and a typical Dungeon World game has, say, 50% pure in-character play, then these two should have the same label.

Quote from: Phillip;624210Your view that the relative combat strength has nothing to do with skill and energy is not laid out there, I think.

If memory serves, no "theory" of any sort appears therein.

I've been using those booklets off and on since the 1970s, and I'm pretty sure I would have noticed.

Sure has to do with skill which is represented by the improved ability to hit. I was talking about hit points. On page 30 of Chainmail it says this

QuoteThey have the fighting ability of four figures

Later it says

Quotefour simultaneous kills must be scored against Heroes (or Anti-Heroes) to eliminate them.

On page 6 of Men & Magic it says

QuoteIn addition, they gain more "hit dice" (the score of which determines how points of damage can be taken before a character is killed)

Finally on page 17 we see that the Hero is pegged at level four with 4d6 for the total number of hit points they possess.

You are right that is nothing about "theory". It just a simple expansion of chainmail's declaration that a Hero is worth four figures.

By 1979 the roleplaying hobby has grown sophisticated enough that Gygax felt an explanation was needed especially in light of the criticisms in Alarum & Excursions and other fanzines at the time. So hence the DMG explanation.

I use toughness not because I believe that it represent somebody like Bruce Willis in Die Hard. I use it because it a literal fact. The fourth level fighter is tougher than a 1st level figure by having 3 more dice to roll for hit points.

Also a point of interest this path of development from chainmail is also the reason why AD&D fighters can take one attack for ever level they have against creatures with 1-1 HD or lower. This is a holdover from Chainmail's rule that a hero acts as four figure in combat.

Quote from: soviet;624086But note again that games like Vampire have player-generated contacts and allies.

3e D&D, Leadership feat.  A feat, btw, which Monte Cook once said was one of the most popular feats taken by players in his home games.

Quote from: estar;624212I was talking about hit points. On page 30 of Chainmail it says this...

I've used the booklets! They neither confirm nor deny that a Lord 25th can survive literally having, e.g., his thorax and head driven over by a steam roller.

That's simply not what the rules treat, which is outcomes emerging from the fog of war -- a sum of many factors not made explicit but rather subsumed. Who is among the quick, and who among the dead, as of this round? That is the question the toss of dice answers!

The idea that a high-level figure can literally take on the chin a cannon ball that ought to have blown many ranks of men to bits, then stand up (and fight as well as ever!), may mesh better in some minds with the additional survival factor of a saving roll for half damage than does the rationale that hit dice/points themselves represent in part ability to avoid getting the full force.

So, I reckon that playing it either way is about as much "by the books" (of Chainmail and OD&D), even before we get to the final word in the wood-grain box: Do it your way!

Quote from: jhkim;624211But if we define this as not role-playing, then I think only a very small percentage of typical tabletop RPG play is actually roleplaying....  

...role-playing games don't have to be 100% in-character.

If they do, then Arneson, Gygax and friends were not playing an RPG.

Medium Rary, Drawmij, and other wordplay figures survived a world of perils and puzzles with pop-culture referents partly because their players understood those (as well as minutia of the rulesbooks to which their characters presumably had no access).

"But we give special pleading for Gygax" was basically my friends' answer when this subject came up a few weeks ago. Note, however, that they would admit that the one's PC acted pretty much as if he knew he were a D&D game piece, while the other was an outrageous caricature of a woman.

Quote from: Mistwell;6242153e D&D, Leadership feat.  A feat, btw, which Monte Cook once said was one of the most popular feats taken by players in his home games.

I've taken it in every game I've ever played...

Here's the thing: nobody ever said you have to be 100% in character the whole time. It's just not what people are talking about when they're talking about immersion. They are talking about the act of actually listening the GM's words, imagining yourself in the situation as your character, deciding on your actions as though you were your character, speaking as your character during moments of actual role play, and so on.

The "100%" thing is basically a huge strawman argument.

Quote from: CRKrueger;624182Here's the TL;DR version of what's to follow:
You can accept a much smaller percentage of actions that are roleplaying and still call the overall activity roleplaying then I can.

Yes. I'd say a bit smaller rather than much smaller, but yes. I think the difference is probably only about 10% or so though. 'Describing what your character does and acting/speaking from his POV' still represents the vast majority of activity in both sorts of game.

Quote from: Benoist;624273Here's the thing: nobody ever said you have to be 100% in character the whole time. It's just not what people are talking about when they're talking about immersion. They are talking about the act of actually listening the GM's words, imagining yourself in the situation as your character, deciding on your actions as though you were your character, speaking as your character during moments of actual role play, and so on.

The "100%" thing is basically a huge strawman argument.

Well, that's fine, but what you write above describes how I play storygames. I dip out of that occasionally to talk about potential failure stakes or whatever but the vast majority of the time I'm doing what you said.

Quote from: soviet;624279Well, that's fine, but what you write above describes how I play storygames.

For someone who thinks there's little distinction, you still use the distinction.

Nothing wrong with that and i applaud you for it.

Quote from: One Horse Town;624280For someone who thinks there's little distinction, you still use the distinction.

Nothing wrong with that and i applaud you for it.

Thanks. I absolutely accept that storygame RPGs are different from non storygame RPGs. It's a spectrum rather than an absolute, but I still think it's a useful label. Where I disagree with people here is on the notion that storygames aren't also a kind of RPG.

Quote from: Benoist;624273Here's the thing: nobody ever said you have to be 100% in character the whole time. It's just not what people are talking about when they're talking about immersion. They are talking about the act of actually listening the GM's words, imagining yourself in the situation as your character, deciding on your actions as though you were your character, speaking as your character during moments of actual role play, and so on.

The "100%" thing is basically a huge strawman argument.

Sure, but as stated, what you outlined is what many do with known storygames as well, most of the time.  Now we're down to asking "what percentage makes it a story game".  If being ooc is a crucial element to determining what is or is not a story game, and we know 99% in character is an RPG, and 1% ooc is a storygame, then what is the approximate percentage that is the flipping point between the two, or a reasonable range if precision cannot be had?

If we cannot even come up with some reasonable range, then it's possible the distinction isn't that meaningful to begin with.  If it's so amorphous, so vague, so dependent on too many variables, and sometimes how things "feel", then you're probably focusing on the wrong thing.