what sort of game is an RPG?
hello! I've done that thing where I get a bug to write a really long series again. this time it's about RPGs. been reading lots about game design and philosophy and, well, I wanted to see how these ideas stack up against my fave kind of game, which tends to present a particularly tricky edge case.
we'll particularly be picking apart the subject of the Suitsian game, which is to say, the idea of what a game is that Bernard Suits devised in The Grasshopper. last year I watched a video that said RPGs aren't that thing, and it inspired me to write a whole lot about RPGs. well, now I've actually read Bernard Suits. and Salen & Zimmerman. and The Elusive Shift by Jon Peterson, so I know all sorts of shit people said about RPGs in the 70s. (turns out, most of what we argue about today has been going since then.)
sooner or later I was gonna start trying to poke these ideas together like action figures and see what comes out...
at around the 17,000 word mark, I realised (read: was told by my friends on discord) this needed to be a series. so here are the first few parts of my fucking... treatise on RPG design! there will be even more!
Cracking open my books of philosophy and game design theory in the hope of figuring out how they square with that strange species of game, t
Zeroing in on Bernard Suits, I consider the various types of enjoyment pursued by RPG players, and whether they qualify as prelusory goals.
Continuing the inquiry into how RPGs function as games, I examine how Stephen Sniderman’s unwritten rules factor into the procedures of RPGs
I return to Bernard Suits, and consider how voluntary restrictions manifest as rules to shape narration.
have at!!! thoughts appreciated lol
