[You can read today's post on Authentic Adventures Inc. here]
I wonder that people have conversations about whether or not D&D is played to get experience and levels. It is precisely the sort of distraction that indicates a human inability to express itself where it comes to abstract things.
Of course we don't play to rack up numbers. Even the people who say they play for that reason don't. No one plays Monopoly to buy properties; no one would say they play baseball because for the sole reason that they like to catch balls or make base hits. We don't play chess to take rooks. We don't play golf to successfully hit out of the rough. These things matter, obviously; they are part of the game's play. But we don't play expressly for those reasons, nor does anyone ever think that we do.
The very fact that this conversation about experience comes up often is indicative of our inability to express why we do play. Barking alien says, "I play to explore an idea, create a personality, and to follow my character's story." Unquestionably, I sincerely do not discredit this. These things are, themselves, facets of the game and not the reason itself. It is an attempt to take something that is essentially inexpressible and put it into some sort of box that we can grasp in our minds. The same happens when we say we play for fun or for the companionship of our friends, or for problem solving or for any of the things we see people on line writing.
There is a condition within that says that until we explain ourselves, we haven't given others a legitimate reason for our obsession or infatuation with a given thing. Sometimes, when we're caught up with something that overwhelms us, or which we understand affects us more greatly than other people, we find ourselves looking for phrases as though we're a lawyer explaining our case in front of a judge. We want others ~ even others like ourselves ~ to understand how deeply we care or think about a thing, and we search around for descriptions that will somehow decode our feelings into hard, concrete evidence.
That's natural. It is also unnecessary.
The largest things in our lives defy description. And they should. We shouldn't ever feel that we need to explain why we do the things we love. We wouldn't expect to be able to explain why we love our partners; or what the country we live in really means to us. We can't hope to explain why we've chosen to believe the things we do ... and no one, ever, expects us to. Unless they have some absurd complex, they're willing to accept these things about us on principle. You love your husband. You love your country. I'm not going to put you through an interrogation asking why. That would be ridiculous.
All right. We love D&D. Who cares why?
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, Adam (B.A.) may have missed my original point...and I will say as much, when I get around to commenting on his post.
[man, I am like a rash all over the blog-o-sphere these days!]
His original post was a little grumbling that his players were inclined to sit around "doing nothing" but role-playing rather than pursuing mission objectives or whatever, and the POINT of my comments (which I guess weren't clear enough) was that reward mechanics...for example, D&D's experience point system...provided focus and impetus for players of an RPG.
As you state, no one plays D&D just to earn "points" (at least, I hope they don't! That would be so sad! In my opinion). But reward systems direct and encourage behavior in a way that "just playing to a theme" or relying on players' genre knowledge does not.
The whole thing's a bit overblown at this point. My bad.