09-12-2026, 08:14 PM
I agree with Misha: I don't think Montola's definitions care about the distinction between PCs and the rest of the game world, and I certainly agree that I think much much much of what happens at a given game table during a session of an RPG [as we colloquially know it, as distinct from "roleplaying game" in isolation] is not roleplaying.
This still just sounds like two (or more) different games. We've hinted towards it this episode (and others) and I've made this point in various other media, but I think if you take Suits's definitions to the extremes, nobody is ever fully playing the precise, exact same game. The minute differences between our goals and constraints—plus all the unstated rules we can't fit in the book and thus just kind of have to go on gut instinct (cf. Sniderman's "Unwritten Rules")—mean that while we can get very close to our proverbial Venn diagrams forming a circle, we can never quite get there.
I think in general, it's more accurate to describe most RPG sessions as a series of overlapping and interlinked games, rather than one strictly distinct game that we can clearly define. That's true of all games, as I said, but I think if you compare an ordinary RPG session to a match of, say, chess, the latter is far more well-defined and well-understood than an RPG. That doesn't mean we can't play RPGs together, and it certainly doesn't mean that our own individual games don't interact with each other, but rather just that we are all not playing the exact same game. This Player–Designer overlap seems similar: it's still multiple distinct games, they just happen to influence and intersect each other.
In that light, I stand by what I said in the episode about Bill Murray in The Man Who Knew Too Little or The Truman Show: voluntary action requires at least some degree of foreknowledge and awareness, and so if you aren't aware there's a game you cannot play it. The actions of non-players can still influence play, even unconsciously: think about maintenance work on the playground influencing the bounds of our game of tag.
I do quite like the distinction between "imaginary" worlds and "imagined" worlds, it's very elegant.
Quote:If the Designer has gamified the game of the Player, who is playing their own game in which the Designer unknowingly takes part, who is the player and what is the game?
This still just sounds like two (or more) different games. We've hinted towards it this episode (and others) and I've made this point in various other media, but I think if you take Suits's definitions to the extremes, nobody is ever fully playing the precise, exact same game. The minute differences between our goals and constraints—plus all the unstated rules we can't fit in the book and thus just kind of have to go on gut instinct (cf. Sniderman's "Unwritten Rules")—mean that while we can get very close to our proverbial Venn diagrams forming a circle, we can never quite get there.
I think in general, it's more accurate to describe most RPG sessions as a series of overlapping and interlinked games, rather than one strictly distinct game that we can clearly define. That's true of all games, as I said, but I think if you compare an ordinary RPG session to a match of, say, chess, the latter is far more well-defined and well-understood than an RPG. That doesn't mean we can't play RPGs together, and it certainly doesn't mean that our own individual games don't interact with each other, but rather just that we are all not playing the exact same game. This Player–Designer overlap seems similar: it's still multiple distinct games, they just happen to influence and intersect each other.
In that light, I stand by what I said in the episode about Bill Murray in The Man Who Knew Too Little or The Truman Show: voluntary action requires at least some degree of foreknowledge and awareness, and so if you aren't aware there's a game you cannot play it. The actions of non-players can still influence play, even unconsciously: think about maintenance work on the playground influencing the bounds of our game of tag.
I do quite like the distinction between "imaginary" worlds and "imagined" worlds, it's very elegant.