But It’s Fiction All the Way Down!

One of the responses to Free Kriegsspiel-inspired adventure gaming that I see often is the idea that anything occurring in a tabletop game came about from individuals creating fiction. Either through pure fiat, or interpreted from prompts and random results, or directly from an author publishing pre-determined elements in the form of a module or like material.

Since this is obviously true, the argument is that it does not matter if the content is created via the Referee, or Players, or anyone else. And while this is true of some players, its extremely reductive of many players’ drive to game. This is not to disparage any particular playstyle, but I know for myself included I largely look to gaming as a method of participating in fictional exploration – either through the lens of a character discovering things, or as a Referee presenting a world and situation to the players and seeing how those worlds collide. Ben L. has a fantastic post going over this in detail. I like the “traditional” setup (although I think that term is a bit misleading) – a Referee communicates the world and adjudicates situations with input from whatever rules they feel like using, and the conversation at the table. The Players take on Characters to respond to this situation and interact with the present world, driving for their own goals.

Given this, saying “well why have the Referee be in charge of the world, what does it matter if Ref Sarah or Player Bob decides what’s in the treasure chest or what the villain’s plot is” to me reads a little bit like if an author of a novel stopped midway through, gave the reader a prompt, and said “ok you pen the next chapter.” Writing is a fun activity, I love to do it – but 99% of the time when I pick up a novel I’m looking to lose myself in a tale, not tell one myself.

The specific roles and responsibilities we take on while gaming can certainly vary, but reducing the whole experience down to an isolated look at the end result greatly diminishes the various joys one may find in the process of a particular style of play.