Last few years, I've been feeling that @megueyb + @lumpley's Apocalypse World and Avery's most recent half-dozen games (since Quiet Year) -- plus everything released since -- have left me thinking a lot about "responding to a prompt" as the micro-foundation of TRPG play.
I don't know if I can fully articulate it, or put it into a clouds-and-arrows diagram. And, in the end, it's not particularly complicated or insightful. But I think it helps reframe TRPGs (and all play?) in useful ways.
Part of it is what this approach leaves out: it doesn't assume a GM, or dice, or more than 1 player, or any other of the "standard" TRPG trappings that often come with some RPG theories and perspectives.
It also doesn't specify much about what can be a prompt (anything can be a prompt) or how people respond to any given prompt (they can respond in countless different ways). But it allows for snowballing in the sense that one player's response is often a prompt that invokes additional responses.
It's also, I think, broadly inclusive of everything that TRPGs have become and will continue to expand to be, at least for a while. And it works as a framework to bridge TRPGs and other types of games, since it's possible to view all play as responding to prompts.
It also doesn't necessarily require that accurate or deep communication is happening between different players, or between players and game materials. That can happen, but it's not required or assumed.
It also potentially reframes the work of game designers and players in ways that I find useful.
There is nothing about "responding to a prompt" that requires a game designer. Players can just do it by themselves. But both game designers and players are engaged in the work of figuring out how to generate interesting & appropriate prompts + interesting & appropriate responses (for whatever "interesting" and "appropriate" mean for their play goals).
These structures & processes can take the form of designed objects, certainly, but they can also be more abstract, like methods, procedures, perspectives, patterns.
Often a prompt built into the mechanics is not so much a direct provocation -- though it can be that -- as much as it is an opportunity or an affordance. Frex: drawing a card & answering one question in Quiet Year is a pretty direct prompt. But an MC or player-side move in AW is more like an opportunity -- inviting you to pick it.
Thinking more about it, I feel like the "responding to a prompt" stuff was perhaps initially made clear by stuff like Baron Munchausen, Breaking the Ice, @megueyb's 1001 Nights, etc. -- early games that avoided standard RPG design tropes in favor of structuring narrative in other ways. And that came full circle with card larps, Companion's Tale, Quiet Year, For the Queen, keepsake & solo games, etc.
@ludopolitics I'm looking at this vis-a-vis In This World, where a major part of the process is effectively having the players generate prompts (aka statements) from real world knowledge to ease the transition into creation
@ludopolitics Exactly. Which leads to the question, what's the starting point? Is this latest prompt just the last thing another player said or static text from the rules or a table (like Quiet Year cards)?
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