What Value Does The Game Bring?

[Campbell]

Here's my question: Why do you play roleplaying games over simply roleplaying? How does the game bring unique value that you cannot get from simply roleplaying with your group?

 

[KahlessNestor]

I suppose fairness is one thing, the dice as neutral arbiter of actions.

Sent from my SM-G900P using EN World mobile app

 

[Tony Vargas]

Because rules are limiting.

 

[SunGold]

Structure & limitations. Without limitations there is no challenge, and without challenge there's no fun (IMO).

 

[MNblockhead]

I approach it two ways.

Some RPGs are rules with role playing. D&D fits in this camp. It is fun for the same reason any table-top games are fun. The rules create challenge, tension, and fairness.

Others are more role-playing or group story telling with rules. Inspectres comes to mind. Dread, Grim, Thousand and One Nights, etc. In these the focus is on immersing yourself in and/or telling a story. The rules tend to be light are exist mainly to create a shared setting and to provide limitations to help immersion. Immersion requires something not entirely in players' control and some chance for failure, for there to be consequences.

Simply playing pretend can be fun and rewarding. But even in the most unstructured pretend play by young children, you'll see some negotiation of settings and rules and fairness. So perhaps I should throw the question back at you. What is "simply roleplaying" and how does it differ from roleplaying games beyond the formality and complexity of the negotiated parameters used during the roleplay sessions?

 

[aramis erak]

Sufficient limitation to encourage creativity.

It's a known quantity† that creative endeavours absolutely NEED limitations of some form. The hardest thing about creativity is focusing it to a usefully narrow field.

The point of the rules is muti-fold -
1 - to avoid the arguments over who has narrative authority
2 - to limit the creative environment such that participants can create within it without breaking verisimilitude for others.
3 - to provide inspiration with the setting materials, monsters, and character generation
4 - to provide scaffolding which helps keep verisimilitude by consistent processes.


-=-=-=-=-=-
† At least, it's commonly taught in Education coursework.

 

[pemerton]

I was discussing this with one of the players in my Burning Wheel game this afternoon.

When the "crunch" is on, you (the player) can't get what you (the PC, as played by the player) want for free. You have to roll the dice. It's a ritual, and it's that chance of failure (however small, in a dice pool game like BW it's always there).

So the game - the rules for determing success and failure, which take as their input the output of the rules for PC build and development - determines whether, at the moment of crunch, the protagonists succeeds or fails.

There's other stuff too - eg rules for sending signals between players and GM - but the resolution rules are at the centre of it.

 

[ccs]

Because the dice resolve the age old argument of: "Bang! I shot him. Nyugh, you missed. No he's dead! NO HE'S NOT!"

And structure, limitations & stuff.

 

[Campbell]

I approach it two ways.

Some RPGs are rules with role playing. D&D fits in this camp. It is fun for the same reason any table-top games are fun. The rules create challenge, tension, and fairness.

Others are more role-playing or group story telling with rules. Inspectres comes to mind. Dread, Grim, Thousand and One Nights, etc. In these the focus is on immersing yourself in and/or telling a story. The rules tend to be light are exist mainly to create a shared setting and to provide limitations to help immersion. Immersion requires something not entirely in players' control and some chance for failure, for there to be consequences.

Simply playing pretend can be fun and rewarding. But even in the most unstructured pretend play by young children, you'll see some negotiation of settings and rules and fairness. So perhaps I should throw the question back at you. What is "simply roleplaying" and how does it differ from roleplaying games beyond the formality and complexity of the negotiated parameters used during the roleplay sessions?

Here's my take: We can totally just sit around with a group of friends, create a fiction we want to explore and some characters we want to explore it with. We then just roleplay through this stuff, and like decide what happens through consensus. I mean tons of people do this kind of stuff online in communities that do not even touch our hobby. This is totally a thing we can do. It's a social situation so of course there are going to be all sorts of informal rules sitting beneath the surface. We just do what comes natural to us as a group. We get to step outside ourselves and explore fictional stuff, step outside our normal social roles a bit, but ultimately we are constrained by consensus and what we would normally do.

Sometimes we do not want to do what comes naturally. I think the value of games is that they encourage us to step outside our normal social roles and encourage us to do things we would not do otherwise. In the interests of the game we all supplement our own interests with those of the game. This helps provide unity of purpose and allows us to get away from things like consensus, negotiation, and compromise in areas where it might not be helpful. They provide us with a social experience we would not normally get. Consensus can be good, but sometimes we do not want consensus. Sometimes we want challenge. Sometimes we want uncertainty. Sometimes we want tension. Sometimes we want to reward or punish behaviors certain behaviors and see where that leads us.

This passage sums up some of my thoughts.

Why We Do This

What’s the point of this shift into a mechanic, anyway? Why not just talk it out?

The main reason is this: when we just talk things out, we tend to build consensus. This is usually a good thing. It helps the group bond, get on the same page, set expectations, all that stuff. But when it comes to action-adventure stories like Blades in the Dark, we don’t want consensus when the characters go into danger. We want to be surprised, or thwarted, or driven to bigger risks, or inspired to create a twist or complication. We want to raise our hands over our heads and ride the roller coaster over the drop.

When the mechanic is triggered, the group first dips into being authors for a moment as they suss out the position, the threats, and the details of the action. Then, author mode switches off and everyone becomes the audience. What will happen next? We hold our breath, lean forward in our seats, and let the dice fall.

I'll have more later. I really want to explore what value this stuff brings.

 

[redrick]

1 - to avoid the arguments over who has narrative authority

"Narrative authority" feels like a very grownup way to describe the playground arguments of my early gradeschool days.

Let's set aside the fact that, for many people playing Roleplaying Games, particularly, though not exclusively, D&D, the game is the point, with the role-playing as the pleasant addition.

When comparing a roleplaying game to a roleplaying activity, the game provides a much broader mechanism for conflict, and conflict is at the center of most fiction. This isn't to say that we can't have conflict in an unstructured roleplaying activity — conflict resolution courses are built around roleplay. But conflict resolution activities are limited to verbal conflict, and they rely upon the ability of the participants to sustain and resolve that verbal conflict, which, for some people, could be difficult. That being said, they can be quite fun. I quite enjoy conflict resolution workshops. Roleplay a conflict between on the condominium board about putting in a ductless air conditioning system. It's a blast, honestly!

Still, the game allows us to bring in mechanics for dealing with all sorts of conflicts that we can't directly act out. Role playing a fist fight stops being role play, unless you plan to actually hit each other; otherwise, you need to be stepping outside of your characters constantly to choreograph a fight.

And, of course, the mechanical imperatives of the game provide plenty of inspiration off of which to build ones role-play. This is why I enjoy building characters by rolling offer a series of charts — the unexpected inputs I get from the dice help me to think outside the box a little bit and rationalize something I would never have come up with on my own.