Is the conversation of play the world?
In a little post-FKR corner of Discord, the talented Tanya Floaker posed a question based on a post from Aggregate Cognizance:
Is the conversation of play the world?
In that little community we like to think about "the world" as central to our approach to RPG-ing. The question then is about "what is" or "where is" that world - is it the conversation of play, or something else?
I had a gut reaction to that question: "no". But seeing others' responses made me feel that I should examine these a bit more, starting with trying to pick apart the question.
The Conversation
This is a term in RPG-land, that i’ve always found off-putting mostly for the slightly “refined” tone, which has never really accorded with my experience of playing. However, a quick bit of reading got me a bit closer to what the term is really referring to.
[You may have seen this exact discussion 100 times before, but it's like a painting of a rose, you never know when you'll find your favourite].
Conversation is (the medium of) Roleplaying
"Roleplaying is a conversation," Apocalypse World says, to its GM. But what I'd say to someone designing a game is different. To them, I'd say that conversation is the medium in which a roleplaying game plays. -Vincent Baker, Anyway.com Forum Archive
These two linked ideas are the core of what is repeated about The Conversation of RPGs. The general meaning of them is that when we are playing/writing RPGs we should consider how what we are doing affects the flow of communication between players. In Apocalypse World the rules are explained as there to 'mediate the conversation'.
There have been people who have noted the seeming emphasis on verbal communication that the word conversation has, which doesn’t match many types of RPG play (example post). However, conversation seems to refer and is now mostly definitely used in the broader sense of communication. We can see this in the archived forum post in which conversation as a medium is mentioned by Vincent Baker. In this forum P.H.Lee mentions the idea of chess being a conversation - not just between players but also with the history and context (discourse) of the game.
I meant, in Chess, we are both expressing theories about strategy, tactics, geometry, value of pieces. We're having a conversation.
Later, Vincent Baker, agreeing, says:
Indie RPG design is a long, slow conversation between designers that plays out in the medium of published games
In this, these two designers are going even beyond direct communication which makes up all of a play session, such as that discussed in a Stochastic Agency video. They are getting into what is often referred to as Discourse: the "wider conversation".
Discourse
In the RPG world we often equate discourse with "writing about" RPGs as opposed to playing or writing them (example post). However, discourse can refer to specific instances of communication (e.g. "is this a d8?"), that can be understood in a context. This kind of discourse is often the focus of academic primary research on TTRPGs.
A quick aside on RPG blogs
Writing this was my first excuse to look at academic writing on RPGs. It really made me think about how rarely in the Blogosphere we see people actually writing about actual live play. Theorising off generic examples or written game products is common enough, but it's rare for people to actually engage with the play (discourse/conversation) that has actually happened in front of them. Do let me know if I'm wrong about this.
Examples of academic writing on RPGs that look at discourse might be Rewerska and Świdurska (2023, pp.240-244) and Faul (2025). There is a Master's thesis by (Kuusinemi 2018) that gives a good overview of discourse literature in an accessible way that is likely good food for thought for any writer/designer considering a 'conversation as medium' approach to design.
These examine the nature of the conversation at a very detailed level, looking at things like turn taking, overlap, purpose of certain utterances and so forth. In this they are often interpreting the light of the negotiation of identity or the purpose of the action of discourse, as this what most discourse analysis is focused on.
Within that is an idea underlying discourse that: discourse = action. In this we can come back to some of the shared ideas with the initial writings of Apocalypse World et al.: that the play (conversation/discourse) establishes some form of structure that affects future play.
So far, so vague. But there is something in doing this that I realised I had been dismissing - which Apocalypse World exhorted us not to - and that is thinking about the the nature of the flow of the conversation between players as a thing that is linked to RPG writing "as much" as anything else.
My slight dismissal of this term comes from my own education (English Literature), in which I was always prone to ignore historiographical, discourse-oriented models of analysis, in favour of the more (at that time) old-fashioned, individual oriented modes of interpretation of meaning. I still hold that bias and it's one that still sits in my mind as saying the answer to Tanja's question is still no though perhaps that may become closer to a mostly no as I examine this question further.
Let me return to the question as I now understand it:
Is the discourse that happens during play the world?
It's a small change, but it helps me understand the idea better. I'll move on to talking about how it relates to "the world" once I am back from a holiday to Rome!
Please follow along with this blog for more of my RPG musings and my accounts of designing The Wyrd Lands RPG and others.
Contact me on Itch
Email: wyrdrpgs@gmail.com
Instagram: thewyrdlands