Why do we play these games?

[Leitz]

SterlingBlake, have you seen my post on gaming like a wargamer?

I had not, but read it just now. That is how I like to play as well, and when playing AD&D usually choose a fighter or cleric and put my best roll on charisma for exactly the reason you did, especially thinking ahead to making name level, and domain play.

If you're relating this to the discussion about story versus game though, I need a little help to make the connection.

It was more of a note that you and I have some gaming style in common. It does open up the idea that story has at least two aspects; macro, in that we game tactically and that's our character's story, and micro in that my posts contain non-game mechanic information.

[SterlingBlake]

SterlingBlake, have you seen my post on gaming like a wargamer?

I had not, but read it just now. That is how I like to play as well, and when playing AD&D usually choose a fighter or cleric and put my best roll on charisma for exactly the reason you did, especially thinking ahead to making name level, and domain play.

If you're relating this to the discussion about story versus game though, I need a little help to make the connection.

It was more of a note that you and I have some gaming style in common. It does open up the idea that story has at least two aspects; macro, in that we game tactically and that's our character's story, and micro in that my posts contain non-game mechanic information.

Indeed, I think that we think and play in much the same manner. Our extra-game analysis of what we're doing is still perhaps in debate, but in a hands-on way, we're really doing the same thing, while perhaps thinking about it differently.

I want to thank you for continuing to be a foil against which I can sharpen my own thinking on the game. I hope that this has been a pleasant intellectual debate for you rather than anything resembling a personal attack. We've checked in with each other a few times on this point, I know, but I want to be very sure that it does not turn sour. I value your perspective deeply even as I challenge it.

[rpg.veteran]

I didn't read all the posts to the letter, but my answer is

CREATIVITY, CREATIVITY, CREATIVITY!

Playing these games are my primary outlet for my creative energies, both with mood / genre and with logic. Evoking a certain mood in a scene as a GM or by character action as player is what gets my juices flowing. Everything else serves this (for me).

[SterlingBlake]

CREATIVITY, CREATIVITY, CREATIVITY!

Playing these games are my primary outlet for my creative energies, both with mood / genre and with logic. Evoking a certain mood in a scene as a GM or by character action as player is what gets my juices flowing. Everything else serves this (for me).

Great answer!

[mike808]

This is a good question because answers will (and probably should) change over time. I'll try not to let my take get too pretentious here . . .

Structured make-believe is fascinating to me because it seems to contain and call on a lot of emotional and analytical resources. Alan Moore once said that art and magic are basically the same thing. I can't really argue with that, since I've seen some really interesting things happen in the shared immersion of an RPG. The best game sessions feel like you've gone beyond the mechanics into a flow state no different than what you might experience while practicing an art form. And I'm not sure gaming (especially roleplaying gaming) isn't an art on par with other, more established forms.

Roleplaying isn't psychodrama, but they seem closely related. And it's just a short step from that to Van Gennep's Rites of Passage. So, yeah, there seems to be a lot involved in terms of art, ritual, creative permission, collaboration, etc. And that's what keeps a lot of people coming back to it. It's also cool to fight dragons.

[tibbius]

I like to write fantasy stories, but I get bored if I know what the ending will be. So I write-to-find-out, either with some kind of mechanical randomizer (like dice and lookup tables, which I also enjoy writing) or with the random ideas that other people produce. Play by post gaming is ideal for me since it gives me time to really think through the ramifications of whatever ideas other people and I throw at each other.

[SterlingBlake]

I like to write fantasy stories, but I get bored if I know what the ending will be. So I write-to-find-out, either with some kind of mechanical randomizer (like dice and lookup tables, which I also enjoy writing) or with the random ideas that other people produce. Play by post gaming is ideal for me since it gives me time to really think through the ramifications of whatever ideas other people and I throw at each other.

That's a very interesting point. The game is quite different in this format from how it is face-to-face at a table!

[Leitz]

I like to write fantasy stories, but I get bored if I know what the ending will be. So I write-to-find-out, either with some kind of mechanical randomizer (like dice and lookup tables, which I also enjoy writing) or with the random ideas that other people produce. Play by post gaming is ideal for me since it gives me time to really think through the ramifications of whatever ideas other people and I throw at each other.

I do the same. DM's come up with a lot of interesting stuff that gives me story ideas, things I wouldn't even think of! Generally I'm open to different endings with the caveat that it's a "good" one. Maybe my character doesn't become king, but he builds a loyal and capable circle of friends and family then settles down to rule the farmyard. I've had enough tragedy and failure in real life that I have no desire to game them.

[SterlingBlake]

Generally I'm open to different endings with the caveat that it's a "good" one. Maybe my character doesn't become king, but he builds a loyal and capable circle of friends and family then settles down to rule the farmyard. I've had enough tragedy and failure in real life that I have no desire to game them.

This comes back to where I think we disagree on the definition of a game. To my way of thinking, if I can't fail, if I'm assured to get to one happy ending or another, then I'm not playing a game. To my way of thinking, if I have an insufficiently active role in the playing of the game to lose the game, then I'm a passive audience being told a story, not a player in a game.

[Leitz]

Generally I'm open to different endings with the caveat that it's a "good" one. Maybe my character doesn't become king, but he builds a loyal and capable circle of friends and family then settles down to rule the farmyard. I've had enough tragedy and failure in real life that I have no desire to game them.

This comes back to where I think we disagree on the definition of a game. To my way of thinking, if I can't fail, if I'm assured to get to one happy ending or another, then I'm not playing a game. To my way of thinking, if I have an insufficiently active role in the playing of the game to lose the game, then I'm a passive audience being told a story, not a player in a game.

You can fail, that's what the story is about. However, failure isn't the end of the story. I use Chris Vogler's story structure when I write stories, and take ideas from it for the games I run. If you look at the "Stages of the Journey" section, half of the "story" is spent in stages 6-8. The first quarter of the story is getting the characters into the main flow, and the last quarter is either the final fight or the return home as a changed person, to see how they impact there place of origin. The middle part, the meat of the story, is the struggle to overcome challenges and continue the fight.

Think of the game like a sports event. Both sides act and react, they succeed and fail multiple times during the course of the event. We only have a winner because of time or maximum score limits; the players don't (usually) die if they don't have the high score. In that sense their career is a series of stories and what they do to influence their chances. The best athletes are transformed by their journey and at the end they return home.

The story is about overcoming huge challenges. You can fail if you quit, otherwise if you are bested by a challenge you find another path to move forward. If I understand the fiction market correctly, many of us readers want a hard earned success more than we want another tragedy. My guess is that gamers are readers and follow the trends.

[Inferno]

Generally I'm open to different endings with the caveat that it's a "good" one. Maybe my character doesn't become king, but he builds a loyal and capable circle of friends and family then settles down to rule the farmyard. I've had enough tragedy and failure in real life that I have no desire to game them.

This comes back to where I think we disagree on the definition of a game. To my way of thinking, if I can't fail, if I'm assured to get to one happy ending or another, then I'm not playing a game. To my way of thinking, if I have an insufficiently active role in the playing of the game to lose the game, then I'm a passive audience being told a story, not a player in a game.

You can fail, that's what the story is about. However, failure isn't the end of the story.

But what if it's not a story? What if it's a game?

If it's a game, we can lose the game at any time. For example, our PC could die in the 7th stage of Campbell's journey of the hero. If our PC can't die until stage 12 or later then we're not playing a game. We're a passive audience being told a story, to Sterling's point.

I use death as an example because anything less than life and death stakes in an adventure game is kind of boring to me. To paraphrase Leitz, I get enough low stakes stuff in real life, I have no desire to game them.

If I understand the fiction market correctly, many of us readers want a hard earned success more than we want another tragedy. My guess is that gamers are readers and follow the trends.

A comparison to the fiction market is valid if this is a story we're being told. But if its a game, does the public only want to play games where they can never lose (i.e. have a PC die)?

Thanks.

[SterlingBlake]

The story is about overcoming huge challenges. You can fail if you quit, otherwise if you are bested by a challenge you find another path to move forward. If I understand the fiction market correctly, many of us readers want a hard earned success more than we want another tragedy. My guess is that gamers are readers and follow the trends.

What I strive for as a player and what I get are not always the same thing. When I play a game of chess, I stand a very good chance of losing, but I'm trying to win, and I want to win. I imagine everyone wants to win such games when playing them.

The tragedy of losing at chess does not ruin the game for me. The loss of my character doesn't ruin an RPG for me either. In fact, if there isn't a pretty good chance that I'm going to lose that character, I'm not interested in playing. The character's survival is empty if it's handed to me by the referee instead of won by skill and luck.

[SterlingBlake]

If it's a game, we can lose the game at any time. For example, our PC could die in the 7th stage of Campbell's journey of the hero. If our PC can't die until stage 12 or later then we're not playing a game. We're a passive audience being told a story, to Sterling's point.

I use death as an example because anything less than life and death stakes in an adventure game is kind of boring to me. To paraphrase Leitz, I get enough low stakes stuff in real life, I have no desire to game them.

If I understand the fiction market correctly, many of us readers want a hard earned success more than we want another tragedy. My guess is that gamers are readers and follow the trends.

A comparison to the fiction market is valid if this is a story we're being told. But if its a game, does the public only want to play games where they can never lose (i.e. have a PC die)?

Thanks.

This is precisely my point! Exactly the distinction I've been trying to delineate.

[Leitz]

The character's survival is empty if it's handed to me by the referee instead of won by skill and luck.

That makes perfect sense if your only goal is survival. You could go home, make some tea, and win. If you want a purely random dungeon, as I think we've discussed before, more power to you!

What if the goal were changed to something more difficult, like usurping the evil tyrant off the throne? Destroying the goblinoid horde that outnumbers the peasant farmers by a thousand to one? Being beaten over and over again yet coming back to the fight takes courage and heart. Skill and luck play a supporting role, but thought and passion dominate the decision.

Those sorts of games take time for the DM to prepare, time to set the scene and reveal the first few clues. It takes time for the players to "get into" their characters and to weave their character's story into the fabric of the tale. Few people want to put that much work into a story just to have it ended by a bad dice roll.

Dying is easy. Living a life worthy of a tale is much harder, and the same is true in games.

[SterlingBlake]

The character's survival is empty if it's handed to me by the referee instead of won by skill and luck.

That makes perfect sense if your only goal is survival. You could go home, make some tea, and win. If you want a purely random dungeon, as I think we've discussed before, more power to you!

What if the goal were changed to something more difficult, like usurping the evil tyrant off the throne? Destroying the goblinoid horde that outnumbers the peasant farmers by a thousand to one? Being beaten over and over again yet coming back to the fight takes courage and heart. Skill and luck play a supporting role, but thought and passion dominate the decision.

Those sorts of games take time for the DM to prepare, time to set the scene and reveal the first few clues. It takes time for the players to "get into" their characters and to weave their character's story into the fabric of the tale. Few people want to put that much work into a story just to have it ended by a bad dice roll.

Dying is easy. Living a life worthy of a tale is much harder, and the same is true in games.

Survival without risk is just as worthless as certain victory, of course. I'd call it giving up, just another version of losing. I don't recall discussing a purely random dungeon before. That's not really my idea of a good game either.

Mere survival isn't the objective for any the games I've participated in; the sorts of goals you have suggested are much more the norm for me as well.

As a referee, the setting goes on past the deaths of a few characters, and the work I've put into that setting 1) is its own reward because I like developing it and 2) continues to be useful even if some particular characters don't survive it.

As a player, I am invested in the characters I play and finding their place in the setting, absolutely. If I can't lose it all, though, I suppose it's somewhat paradoxical that I feel less invested in the character.

Regardless of whether we think the time and effort put into the game is wasted if the characters die, my assertion is that it's simply not a game if the object of the game is achieved as a matter of course, with only the moves to get there, or the specific victory conditions varying.

Anyway, I think we've gone around this block before. We're not going to agree on the game vs. story distinction that I see and that's OK, we don't have to.

[Rex]

I am a gamer not a story teller. Thus I agree with Inferno and SterlingBlake on this one. They are doing a much better job explaining it then I can.

[hedgeknight]

Guaranteed success is boring to me.
A chance of dying while attempting something great? Well, let's do it!

Inferno is not only a great storyteller, but he's a master of putting PC's in situations where they need to be smart (or incredibly lucky) with their actions. Death is very real in his games > just ask two of my characters!

[atpollard]

Do level 3 Adventurers have a chance of encountering an Ancient Red Dragon? Why or why not?

[Inferno]

Thanks for the kind words, hedge. Those were good characters and good deaths.

Do level 3 Adventurers have a chance of encountering an Ancient Red Dragon? Why or why not?

Sure: viewtopic.php?p=520513#p520513

This was an experimental one-shot game set in an alternative reality Middle Earth, so the 3rd level PCs could be the primary heroes. I think I had Smaug as Very Old, not Ancient.

[rredmond]

Thanks for the kind words, hedge. Those were good characters and good deaths.

Do level 3 Adventurers have a chance of encountering an Ancient Red Dragon? Why or why not?

Sure: viewtopic.php?p=520513#p520513

This was an experimental one-shot game set in an alternative reality Middle Earth, so the 3rd level PCs could be the primary heroes. I think I had Smaug as Very Old, not Ancient.

I mean, "of course" would be the answer in an Inferno game

Plus the OG D&D guys did as much running away as they did fighting