When I was a kid, I used to play with my GI Joe and Rambo and He-Man and Thundercats and Incredible Hulk action figures. There wasn't any formal rules in the activity, but me and my friends used to respect some "qualities" of those characters (like Hulk being the strongest, no one argued about that), and some implicit rules about how the adventures/stories would unfold: no character could die (because we never saw anyone of those dying in the respective animation/comics/movies), we called each play session an "episode" ( because this was it was structured in the animated series we watched ), and each player would have its moments in the spotlight in a given episode (or through various episodes).

And thinking back, the feeling I had while playing with those action figures is very similar (if not the same) to the one I have while playing a D&D-like roleplaying game these days. So, can we say that:

1. I was already playing a "roleplaying game" with my friends when I was a kid, even if we didn't know what da fuck was a "roleplaying-game" by then ?

2. the activity of engaging in roleplaying transcends, and works independently of, any specific kind of game or system created, allowing one to roleplay even during.. say.. a game of chess ? In other words, can we say its more of a state of mind instead of an experience produced by an specific game/system/ruleset ?

Rules are a good thing to have to ensure that everybody's on the same page.  They also (ideally) provide a consistent and fair framework that emulates the kind of game meant to be played.

Rules-free improvisation can work, but it's highly arbitrary.  Arguments between people need to be resolved differently, as there's no "correct" answer.

Freeform gaming works better for others, while some prefer the backdrop of rules.  To each their own.

There is no need of anything but adhoc rules in a role-playing game (even cops & robbers, or 'army men' have rules- but they are informal, unwritten, fleeting and changeable upon whim).

Rules are added for one primary reason:

-To replace subjective resolution with objective resolution.

Beyond this base requirement, there another highly important reason:

-To provide methods and constraints such that skilled play of the game (i.e. decisions made within the limits of the rules) proves advantageous to the player.

Before I went off to college, I played a *lot* of card games and board games and did a lot of make-believe play with action figures, toy cars, Lego, and just pretending to be someone else.  Games I played ranged from highly random passtime card games like Hearts and Mille Bournes and abstract board games like Masterpiece and the Columbo board game to more tactical and strategic board games like Stratego, Risk, Dogfight, Broadsides, and so on.  I also ultimately played some light war games like Car Wars and GDW's Asteroid.

When I first asked for Dungeons and Dragons (I had seen an article about Gary Gygax in People Magazine), I assumed it was an advanced sort of board game.  When I finally got D&D and Traveller (learned from the books, not someone else) and started to actually play them, I saw them as less like a board game and more like the make-believe play I was doing with action figures, toy cars, Lego, and just pretending to be someone else.  In fact, some of my earliest Traveller games had no GM.  We simply applied the Traveller rules to the sort of make-believe play we'd been doing with action figures for years to add consistent resolution, record keeping, and randomness/surprise.

So for me, personally, I don't associate the role-playing hobby so much with board games, war games, and other competitive games of player skill. I associate the role-playing hobby with those games of make-believe. But because I know what I was doing and made that transition, I've got a very good idea of how role-playing rules and the traditional GM/player role-playing game structure improves on what I did without rules as a child:

• Objective rules solve the "Shot him!"/"Did not!" difference of opinion that inevitably plagues childhood imaginative games and helps provide consistency in resolution from situation to situation and session to session.
• Dice generate results that are a surprise to everyone at the table, both when used for things like skill resolution and attribute checks as well as when used for random tables and character generation.
• Character creation rules that provide lists of skills, powers, spells, and other things can help spark character ideas for the players and GMs.
• Attributes, defined skills, defined powers, and other mechanical shorthand provides a convenient way to define characters and record what they can or can't do.
• A GM (or GMs) allows the setting to live outside of the knowledge of the players or their characters because the GM can create, track, and coordinate the actions of NPCs and elements of the setting that happen outside the knowledge of the characters without the players having to create or manage those details and firewall the rest of the world from their character.
• Well designed "realistic" rules can fill in for an absence of GM and player knowledge about how things work, in essence giving the players and GM a rough understanding of what factors in to certain outcomes and how certain things happen in real life.  For example, if a GM has no idea how long it takes for someone to drown, rules can give them that information.  Even if the system is wrong, it's better than everyone at the table offering their own guess.

So when I asked in an earlier thread why we need rules at all, I know why I prefer rules and the traditional RPG structure with a GM and players to rule-free make-believe play with no GM.

Nope, we need great players and great DMs.  They should hold tryouts on an annual basis and only the top 1% of gamers should be allowed to play at all.  Because gaming is the privilege of the elite and anyone who can't totally immerse themselves in the story without a framework should surely go back to playing WoW.

Incidentally for the sake of TrueGygaxFan, THAT was sarcasm.

I like rules.

Doesn't feel like a game unless there's some kind of rules.

Quote from: David Johansen;571836Nope, we need great players and great DMs.  They should hold tryouts on an annual basis and only the top 1% of gamers should be allowed to play at all.  Because gaming is the privilege of the elite and anyone who can't totally immerse themselves in the story without a framework should surely go back to playing WoW.

Incidentally for the sake of TrueGygaxFan, THAT was sarcasm.

I've been in a few games where we should have had try outs for players first, hehe.

Wasn't there a thread about this same subject or dealing with this subject matter just a week or two back?

No, we don't, but it's not much of a "game" without them.

Quote from: The Butcher;571891No, we don't, but it's not much of a "game" without them.

This.

I was mistaken. It just got brought up in another thread.

I don't know about "we", but I do.

There's a very big difference between the act of role-playing itself, and a role-playing game.  The former is an activity that as the OP points out can be used in a great number of contexts; from childhood games (cops-and-robbers, action figures, barbies, etc), to corporate or therapeutic exercises, to kinky sex games, etc.  The latter is a specific kind of game which is about more than just roleplaying itself, part of the point is the specific framework around which the roleplaying is exercised.

RPGPundit

Quote from: gleichman;571761There is no need of anything but adhoc rules in a role-playing game (even cops & robbers, or 'army men' have rules- but they are informal, unwritten, fleeting and changeable upon whim).

Rules are added for one primary reason:

-To replace subjective resolution with objective resolution.

Beyond this base requirement, there another highly important reason:

-To provide methods and constraints such that skilled play of the game (i.e. decisions made within the limits of the rules) proves advantageous to the player.

This seems to me to answer the question fairly well.

There are ALWAYS rules at play.