Quote from: mcbobbo;674500I meant this one...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeroQuest

It actually has a GM who adjudicates the pre-published scenarios, runs the bad guys, etc.

But it's probably still just a board game, if not a hybrid.

HeroQuest is a board game. It could be played as an RPG, however. Kinda like you can use an RPG to play a story game.

Quote from: mcbobbo;674500I meant this one...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeroQuest

It actually has a GM who adjudicates the pre-published scenarios, runs the bad guys, etc.

But it's probably still just a board game, if not a hybrid.

That was an awesome game. Basically a dungeon board game.

On page 173 of my 1st Edition AD&D book there is a section entitled Random Dungeon Generation for Solo Play. If I were to follow those random tables and run a character through that dungeon, on my own, without a DM (hence Solo Play), am I still playing a tabletop rpg? Am I still playing D&D?

At what point does the game transition from being a tabletop rpg into being a computer rpg, storygame, boardgame, or whatever other subtype?

Quote from: Jacob Marley;674566On page 173 of my 1st Edition AD&D book there is a section entitled Random Dungeon Generation for Solo Play. If I were to follow those random tables and run a character through that dungeon, on my own, without a DM (hence Solo Play), am I still playing a tabletop rpg? Am I still playing D&D?

At what point does the game transition from being a tabletop rpg into being a computer rpg, storygame, boardgame, or whatever other subtype?

I would argue that there is still a DM involved, that being you.  You are playing the role of the DM and the player.

Quote from: estar;674444Mythic: Game Master Emulators turns tabletop roleplaying games into Computer Roleplaying Games.

No, not even remotely.

Quote from: Jacob Marley;674459Unlike Computer Roleplaying Games there is still a human element, capable of disregarding the algorithm's output and making a sensible ruling.

There's that, but more importantly, the nature of the questions put to the Fate Chart are hugely important to the results. A computer game can only have as many possible responses as the programmers allow; the Fate Chart allows the players to ask to do any damn thing they can think of and determine the likelihood of it happening before the dice are thrown.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;674513Polaris pisses the sheets - file under 'bears wet, water wears rings, and pope shits in woods.'

I'm just glad this "offense collector" gave me a heads up to ignore list him before he starts taking issue with my posts at TBP.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;674513Polaris pisses the sheets - file under 'bears wet, water wears rings, and pope shits in woods.'

I remember Polaris on the official WotC forums and her being a pretty level-headed 3e/Pathfinder player.  Wonder what happened.

Quote from: Archangel Fascist;674757I remember Polaris on the official WotC forums and her being a pretty level-headed 3e/Pathfinder player.  Wonder what happened.

Is it the same person?  There are at least three mcbobbo's these days, for example.

Quote from: estar;674388For tabletop roleplaying games the human referee is one of the elements that sets it apart from its wargame progenitors.

If you standing in the mid 70s and looking at what tabletop roleplaying gamers were doing different than wargamer one element that would leap out is universal use of a referee.

Absolutely, totally, completely, and in every other way wrong.

The original 19th century military wargames used referees from the beginning.  Further, the use of referees in historical miniatures wargames was virtually universal; go actually read any wargame rules from before about 1980.  In point of fact, I can't think of any really popular miniatures wargames that did not have referees.

The entire original argument is total arse gravy, but not for the reason you state.

In England, especially in the Society of Ancients, they were called "judges" rather than referees.  If a dispute arose over interpretation of a rule, each team would appoint one knowledgeable member to present that team's case to the judge.

This person was the "rules lawyer."

So now you know.

I was not discussing how board games were played by XIX century Prussian generals (the original wargames were designed as a theoretical military exercise, so of course they had arbiters), but how 99% of board games (and I mean board games in general, not just war games) are played today. That was the frame of reference, not the wargaming hobby around the beginnings of D&D.

From what I can say giving wargames I own (late 90s Polish publications), by the 90s the referee was relegated to tournament events even in relation to them. Yes, there are tournament rules there, but that's pretty much it.

Monopoly or Ticket to Ride does not need a GM as much (or even at all) as D&D or Warhammer does, because everything you want to do is covered by the rules precisely. And a lot of board games have about as much in common with RPGs as a cuckoo clock. Even in vastly complicated games such as Twilight Imperium, ruleset and FAQ are all the arbiters that were needed for dozens of games.

We'll be calling chess a GMless RPG by the end of this thread, at this pace. One could say, if one needs to be so pedantic (I know that's coming from me it's rich), that the necessity of a human arbiter, in place of common usage (for wargames at least apparently, for as I said, outside of tournament play I have not seen a single refereed board game in my life), is what sets RPGs apart from other tabletop games.

Of course, all that said - I am not denying that RPGs came out of wargames rather than say, chess, for a very good reason apparently. But there are many wargames and vast, vast majority of board games that needn't require a referee, and I have yet to see "packaged" hex wargame that left up matters of rules for an interpretation or freeform.

D&D without a GM is not an RPG IMO. You can still roleplay whilst playing it, but you can do that playing Monopoly or even Chess if you wanted to.

The removal of a GM means that the essential element of cooperation between players in RPGs is removed and you end up with some form of competition between the players or with the rules to compensate and adjudicate what happens. The goal of the rules necessarily stop being simply a measure of the characters and the world they are in and become a way to deal with that competition.

That isn't to say some form of round robin GMing is not RPGing, but that clearly has a GM, just one that moves.

Quote from: Old Geezer;674768Absolutely, totally, completely, and in every other way wrong.

The original 19th century military wargames used referees from the beginning.  Further, the use of referees in historical miniatures wargames was virtually universal; go actually read any wargame rules from before about 1980.  In point of fact, I can't think of any really popular miniatures wargames that did not have referees.

The entire original argument is total arse gravy, but not for the reason you state.

In England, especially in the Society of Ancients, they were called "judges" rather than referees.  If a dispute arose over interpretation of a rule, each team would appoint one knowledgeable member to present that team's case to the judge.

This person was the "rules lawyer."

So now you know.

What you are missing from my statement is the following

QuoteFor tabletop roleplaying games the human referee is one of the elements that sets it apart from its wargame progenitors.

Having lived through the tail end of the time period, having read books on the topic as well as old newsletters I am well aware of the history of wargames both board and miniatures.

Also understand while you were immersed the miniature wargame community of the Upper Midwest in my neck of the woods, Northwest PA, the first exposure to wargames was through the hex and counter games published by Avalon Hill and SPI. Then D&D swept through and changed everything as far as gaming went. So the human referee was a very obvious difference to those of us used to playing chess, boardgames, and hex and counter wargames.

Again I do not claim that it was the only element that make tabletop RPGs different. As you well know Dave Arneson combined a bunch of things to make Blackmoor work the way it did.

I think this is awesome. It means I can be a player next session!

Quote from: The_Rooster;674789I think this is awesome. It means I can be a player next session!

haha, touche.  I suppose I should be excited too, since I'm almost always the DM.

We played a campaign for about a year where we all ran armies using 2e Battlesystem. The armies occupied a continent and we founght each other in battles. In between battles we ran roleplay sessions where one player in the next day's battle woudl run a session for the other players who played pcs fromteh other army on a mission.

So examples were 3 goblins that had to break into a human camp and get the battle plans for the next day, 3 humans that had to try and weakend the undead hordes by retrieving an artefact, 3 elves that had to kidnap the human general, that sort of stuff.

The setting was copperative, the GM role rotated around the group.

I don't think its a big step from there to everyone DMs at teh same time.

I also think you could use a DM "deck"  to make some generic rulings and then use human intervention from the group to resolve other stuff.

I think it would still be like D&D my figther woudl still have HP and a level, and weild a sword, ther ewoudl be an adventure, probably a prebuilt scenario that came with cards for description rather than a book.

One of the players draws the card for room 1, "The room is dark with a strong smell of rotting meat or something equally unpleasant....blah blah," " each round the party spend in this room roll a D6 if you roll a 6 then draw card 2...
run the dungeon like that kind of a choose your own adventure group RPG...

I still think it would be D&D a slightly different take on it but it woudl still be D&D I think