The first basic question - RPG??

[andy]

Hi all, I figure it's time for my first basic question (as discussed, I know nothing!), and I don't think you can get much more basic than this.

The term Role Play Game. Is that really accurate? It seems like it's a "Role Play Story" rather than an actual game.

I've heard talk in the metacasts about people trying to "power game" their characters in order to "win", but I don't understand how people can win. As far as I can tell, James' main objective is to try and work in as many puns as he can into the story (one pun in particular standing out).

I would say that a lose condition would be your character dying, but there's been multiple mentions of back-up characters, so it seems like as soon as one is dead then you just work your backup character into the story and pick up (but presumably back at level 0?).

Alex as GM can't lose (even if the allegedly masterful boss characters go down in just one hit....), but is he trying to "win" by beating the players? 

So, should this podcast be more accurately referred to as a "Role Play Story" not RPG?

[Brave Sir Robin]

Hi Andy,

That's a really interesting question. In some senses it is clearly a game, there are rules which we play by, but you have hit on a really important point. In some games, there is a much more antagonistic relationship between GM and players. The GM sets encounters as difficult as able (under the rules) whilst the players make characters as powerful as possible to beat them - this may be even more the case if using a prepublished adventure. To me at least, this seems strange as ultimately, as you say, there isn't really a win or lose condition within the game itself.

RPGs can be played in multiple ways, and one of the best terms for the type of game we tend to play is "collaborative storytelling". It doesn't go nearly as far as some games on the market, which are truly pure storytelling which many many fewer rules and a much weaker distinction between individual players and individual characters.

[theoverlord]

Brave Sir Robin has pretty much summed up what I was going to say, there's a set of rules which all people follow, GM makes the encounters and players must beat them, etc, and good RPG players have them to be tending towards more collaborative stories rather than actual games.
I do see what you say about there being no lose condition, but i would say that the players 'win' but completing the campaign, and the players 'lose' by not wanting to play the campaign any more. I played with one GM who would only allow us to play one character per campaign and we ended up just saying that we didn't want to play.
In terms of powergaming, some people just don't want there characters to be killed, or want there characters to be as powerful as they can possibly be for that particular level and so will attempt to do that, some people will also only play certain classes for that reason, and only do certain things with those classes. That is why there are people online who just hate particular classes or races to use in there games.
I hope that this helps

[Oneiros]

Following on from what the others have said, it can be difficult to see what a "win con" looks like in a story-driven RPG - it's a lot easier when it's a one-shot (e.g. a published scenario) where you can see that winning involves surviving the dangers and getting away with the treasure, for example. It's probably easier to think about winning in terms of achieving goals - be it for the character, for the individual components of a scenario or even just yourself. The key thing for a game, in my mind at least, is that it's fun - if you're having fun playing, then you're 'winning' :-)

Power gaming is a term often bandied around to denote trying to get the maximum benefit out of the rules/mechanics as possible, often sacrificing other elements of the character or aiming to be the best at something as quickly as possible. This isn't always a bad thing, but it tends to have a somewhat a derogatory meaning in many gaming circles as it may end up 'breaking' the game or being unfun for other people. This is why it's a good idea when starting a game that everyone is on the same page, more or less, as to how they want to play.

As for new/back-up characters, a lot of people take the death or loss of their Player Character very hard, particularly if they've invested a lot of time and effort in playing them, so bringing in a new character isn't necessarily a simple thing. As for whether they start at L1 again, that will vary by group and game - often it isn't a good idea to have a party that is widely level-imbalanced, so the new character will often come in at the same or just below their previous level. I'm not sure how Alex is intending to run it for this game.

[Alex Newall]

Long story short your first question is actually really, REALLY good. I'd say that back in the depths of RPGs history as a medium it was much more of a "game." But as time goes by the shift has been away from mechanics and towards story so there has been a bit of a schism. a lot of RPGs like ours are more storytelling as you say But other systems are far more "game" based.

What I would say is don't treat our game as typical. I deliberately make it more story heavy as it makes for better listening. If the party were playing more "gamey" version I would include more in the way of puzzles, mazes and combat etc. but I haven't done so yet as they don't translate to audio well.

So to summarise: Yes, our current game is more Role Play Storytelling but that doesn't mean ALL RPGs are the same.

[103percent]

My two cents:

The RPG is a competitive co-op game. The individual agents can choose how much they wish to balance their own personal desires against the preferences of the whole group.

The players can push and pull the game as they choose to maximise their own personal utility function, but the game is ultimately lost if the collective utility of the game to the whole group becomes so low that the game is either discontinued, or so awful to play that it becomes torture for the group.

[zora]

It's an old threat but I would just try to revive it^^ And sorry for the whole essay I wrote O.O
As I already said in the "hello" Thread, I am currently writing my master thesis in sociology about pen & paper rpgs and since every sociological work needs to define everything it talks about, the question tortured me for a long time. That and my professor
The first thing I found was that the word "game" is superproblematic in itself, since it 1. has not been subject to scientific research for very long, about a 100 years at least, and 2. there are a lot of competing definitions.
the one with the "winning or losing" or "competetive gaming" aspect is probably the oldest, since most things called "games" have been the old board games - chess, dame, that stuff. And the role playing aspect of the people sitting together at a table playing d&d has previously been mostly categorized as "child's games", like playing family or playing police or something, that have the specific function that children learn how to play different roles in society (Mead, play & game).
Since a p&p is played mostly by teenagers or adults - this aspect doesn't fit! And Roleplayers don't fill roles that are typical for their society.

Since there are different types of players, like the ones that only care to have fun experiencing a story, the main part cannot be to win or to lose in a strict sense, meaning that competetive powergaming against the GM is not the whole heart of the game, just one possibility. So I decided to take the widest definition I could get: that it is a modulation (Goffman), meaning that it is not "serious" in the sense that the situation in the game is not serious and has no real world consequence in a narrow sense (since friendships can really break over an rpg). Meaning: in the world of the game we can act out things we ususally couldn't, the games aspect being "not serious, not real". So if one wants to break in every house in the village - they just do. If the character gets caught, it doesn't really matter in the normal life. One can be the super good looking, super powerful elf, playing out the possibilities. That being the "game" aspect.
Sorry for writing so much I hope it makes sense - if not, I would really appreciate it to be challenged on my opinion (since it is NOT funny if my prof does it T-T)