What do you mean? That sounds so cryptic to me. Can you explain?
Right, so let's separate the roleplaying from the game. If you're playing D&D, you could be in the Demiplane of Dread, Sigil, Faerun, what have you. You might be a bulky fighter, a frail wizard, a clever thief, and so on. This is all just the wrapper. At the core you have the mechanics that manage the objective consequences of player choice. With D&D, most of that is in combat. However, the thing is that there's a statistical expectation that players will generally win at combat. Especially if you use the challenge rating system of WotC's D&D, it functions like a reverse casino model. In other words, casinos have a slight house advantage on almost all games to slowly bleed people dry. Makes sense as if it feels like you're just throwing all your money away quickly, then almost nobody would gamble. But, if you have little peaks and dips and seem to be constantly on the edge of a big win, you're more likely to keep going for it. D&D is the same way, except it's a player advantage instead of a house advantage. Overall, the odds are in your favor, but you'll have little dips once in a while to give the illusion that you actually are in a dangerous situation and could lose big. Obviously, characters do die in D&D, but even death is a minor setback in a world with raise dead spells.
If the system is going to work out in your favor on a long enough time frame, then it's basically just an idle game where you progress to "ultimate power". There's no win-lose element because you really can't lose (unless the GM blocks you from some of the resources that can keep you going). So the game is not about whether or not you will "win" (however you define it). Instead, it's about what it's going to cost you to get that win and what resources you still have at the end of it.
Of course, this is just referring to the game side of it. I'm not saying the roleplay side is not important. If it wasn't, we would all just play chess. However, I would suggest that the game side of it should be at the forefront for a designer because no matter how compelling or evocative one's world is, if the game of it is crap, then a good world won't save it. I've seen cases where people like a setting, but hate the system, so they just drop the system and move the setting into a better system.
A very philosophical comment, extremely Hegelian. I don't know if I'd use the term "objective stuff", though. What do you mean by that? BTW I'm not a Hegelian.
That's an interesting comment. I never considered that. I've never been a big fan of Hegel or Marx (I always felt Marx's economic theory was incomplete) and have always considered myself more of a Weberian.
The objective stuff is just the game of it all. I'm kind of an underdog power gamer with some games. I played a character once in 3e D&D. It was a halfling druid with a riding dog animal companion. I had a whole backstory and motivation for the character to substantiate it (the roleplay side), but as far as the build (game) went, I focused on mounted combat and combat casting feats. The thing was that mounted combat in D&D can be awkward as hell on a horse, what with it being a large creature. However, a riding dog is medium, like a regular character, and it can maneuver and fit anywhere a regular character can. He was able to toss a javelin at the start of combat while the real fighters rushed in to form the line. Then he could follow up with a hard hitting charge attack to get into the fray. The charge attack bonuses would get in a solid hit (and having a good first couple rounds really pays off in a fight). I took a character who had some notable weaknesses with the combat game (halflings with their small weapons and druids with their middle of the road combat) and found a way to make him solid through my understanding of the rules.
But, in retrospect, I question if those choices were even meaningful. I think that, with all my analysis, all I really accomplished was slightly lowering the resource toll that came with our heroic destiny. Like, let's simplify the combat game a little down to it's essential components. So, instead of rolling for initiative, then attack, then damage, then repeating until someone wins the hit point attrition game, you simplify the equation. If the mini-game is just a roll off anyway, you do a single roll where you describe your approach and make a check of the relevant ability that lets you know what that approach cost you for success (and it can potentially cost you your life). There's nothing meaningful to choose here. Like, if you're a fighter with cleave and a massive two-handed sword, you
could say that you're going to attempt a diplomacy check against the mindless horde of zombies to convince them to piss off. But, it's practically a foregone conclusion that you're going to do the smart thing, draw your sword, and get to swinging. There isn't really a choice or strategy when the optimal choice is obvious.
So, back to my druid example, I knew I wasn't making the "right" choice with that character. There are surely better ways to build a druid. However, I took a "bad" choice and made it "good enough". The "game" stopped when the character was created. At the table, it was just roleplay and seeing the build I whipped up delivering as statistically promised. And that's kind of the thing that irks me. When I'm actually playing the game, I'm not really playing a "game". But, I digress.
And that's why we, hardcore Fantasy people, have been losing readers, fans and customers to the Science Fiction genre, and to a lesser extent, the Horror genre (and Romance Novels, Detective Stories, etc.). It's the hard magic vs soft magic debate, IMHO.
I think it's only part of it. I think some designers get lazy with their magic design in fantasy and so it makes magic (and likely the setting at large) some bullshit contrived thing meant to sell a particular narrative. It comes off as plastic and inorganic, which is not something you want in the fantasy genre. Genres like science fiction generally don't have the same luxury. When you have your bullshit futuristic science bits, they generally at least need to feel plausible. If fantasy designers considered the metaphysics more, they would land in a better place.
Additionally, I think fantasy suffers from the problem of power fantasy consumption. I can't tell you how many rpgers I've met who have the attitude that they don't want a setting or world with any real challenge. (Their words) Life sucks enough and they game to escape. It makes it difficult to push the envelope if the players are looking for a padded playground. Generally speaking, players in other genres know the risk when they took the job and signed up for it anyway.
So you would have to argue, -this is just me thinking-, that sorcerers and bards get their charismatic magic from Lord Ao himself, or, in the case of Sigil, from the Lady of Pain.
I'm not so sure about that. The nature of The Weave is pretty ambiguous and could very well be something independent of Ao. I also think the Lady of Pain is far too paradoxical to be considered a source of magic for spellcasters.
In case someone hasn't noticed, this game (Philosophical Musings: A Forum Game) is my Love Letter to the Planescape setting.
lol...yeah, I read between the lines on that one. Part of the reason I'm really diving into this is that one of my current creations is heavily inspired by Planescape (and Neverwhere, and possibly Inception) and this conversation is helping me process my ideas there.
But, I'm not sure I could answer it unless we can define the relationship between philosophy and reality, and that's a real can of worms.
