What is worldbuilding for?

pemerton · Jun 21, 2018

Campbell said:
Story as seen as something the GM provides.

This goes right back to the OP!

Campbell said:
mainstream games have a highly specific culture of play, expectations, and set of play techniques

<snip>

I never meant to imply that mainstream games were less fun than OSR and Indie games. I only meant to convey that they are not somehow contained within and represent a narrowing of the basic experience of playing a role playing game. Difference of kind. Not a narrowing of experience.

Absolutely. I don't get this idea that "different" = "narrower", or that "GM curated experience" = "caters to/generates a wide range of experiences".

For instance: if player X wants to play Fate, and player Y wants to play Moldvay Basic, a game in which the GM curates Ideals/Bonds/Flaws for X, while rolling wandering monsters for Y, isn't giving either of them the experience they wanted.

Perhaps it will still be fun, but it won't play much like Fate if the rest of the table is not doing the "aspect" thing; and the Moldvay Basic aspects will be tanked if most of the table is not playing with an eye to skilled dungeoneering. (In practice, I suspect that this game will turn into fairly traditional mid-to-late 80s D&D play, but perhaps that's just me!)

EDIT: [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]: [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION]'s "mainstream" is not just that mid-to-late 80s D&D; it would also include most GURPS and HERO play, I reckon, and - judging from when I used to hang out on the ICE boards - most RM/MERP/HARP play as well.

AbdulAlhazred · Jun 21, 2018

Tony Vargas said:
Foul!

The description only said that you /could/ draw on your inspiration in those thematically appropriate way. You could instead draw on the compassion you RP'd when negotiating with the beggar king to assassinate him later that evening, sure, but that doesn't make you dissociative (mechanically)...

Sure it does. It is everything that 4e powers were accused of. The mechanical effects of the rule are divorced (dissociated) from narrative logic! Nothing could clearer.

You know if there were some players'd just horde it until they drowned in one.

So what?

Wouldn't that be 'good RP' in the absence of any incentive?

How would it be accomplished? The incentive is simply one side of a mechanical economy. It isn't about the player getting ahead, so it is hard to even call it an incentive.

Neither the current ed of D&D nor Fate really lend themselves to casual play. Fate Accelerated, maybe, but FATE, with it's session 0 story-braiding (I don't know if that's fair, but it's hard to describe succinctly, and harder to do casually/quickly), requires a fairly high up-front buy-in. It seems like a 'serious gamers' product. D&D (basic pdf, perhaps), also maybe, if you do pre-gens, and pre-pick spells or just eschew casters, entirely.

Not sure why you couldn't do pre-gens and casual FATE. I'd think you could basically make a party game out of it. Each player takes up one of the stock roles and you play through a one-shot murder mystery or something. I'd probably provide some evocative color for the mechanics to give players who weren't experienced with RPGs a quick leg up on what to do. Maybe use cards to represent FATE points, or something along those lines.

Because Roll v Role, I guess. RP & tactical combat are incompatible, except when they aren't, then they are again.
Seriously, though, all you'd need to play a combat specialist in FATE is a character concept - 'story' - that screams combat specialist, like IDK, Casca the Eternal Mercenary or just about anyone ever played by Arnold Schwarzenegger...

Right! However, this sort of IS why I am using 4e as a base for a Story Now game. You can play a FIGHTER, and have specific moves, then you can invoke your 'aspects' to drive those.

IDK if 'saddles' is fair, but, while you'll get hps and proficiency bonuses like everyone else, you could dump CON, go about unarmed & unarmored, and choose all support & utility spells, and still be a contributing party member and a 'non-combatant' - only because you /choose/ never to prepare Spirit Guardians or Flame Strike or what-have-you, but, still, you could do it. Pacifist Cleric was a thing in both 3.5 (variety of pacifist builds, but cleric was the most practical) & 4e (which could also do a 'lazy warlord' who was great to have in combat, but, y'know, not actually doin' it himself).

Right, but what about fighters and such in classic D&D? I mean rangers, barbarians, and paladins have SOME stuff they can do, but its fairly thin in most editions. pre-2e or unless you play with one of the various supplements for 1e that gives NWPs, you get NOTHING as a fighter.

AbdulAlhazred · Jun 21, 2018

Tony Vargas said:
I tossed in the 2e S&P reference, just in case, since I barely glanced at it, having given up on 2e bloat by then. 3.0 was the main point.

Ah, OK. I stopped buying 2e products a while before S&P showed up. The newest ones I have are various 'complete' books and the nonhumans book, etc. Everyone I played with considered the stuff coming after that to be basically crap.

AbdulAlhazred · Jun 21, 2018

Aldarc said:
That's my point. The source of inspiration is dissasociated from how that Inspiration is spent. This is discussed in Angry DM's article "11 Ways to Take the Suck Out of Inspiration in D&D." In particular check out the part Where the System Falls Apart:

Angry DM even uses some of the language that I have used to describe the Inspiration in this thread, particularly in this last paragraph: e.g., vestigial, tacked on, afterthought, etc. Naturally, I don't exactly disagree with his assessment here.

HoML's implementation of Inspiration is virtually stolen from this article, though I think I changed one or two minor things (its been a good while since I read it, so I'm not sure). It works rather well.

And yet we don't see this in Fate? So are you suggesting that D&D players are just stingy?

Of course what they are is simply not driven to engage with a system that is entirely secondary to the main thrust of play. I played in a fairly long 5e campaign. Nobody ever used their inspiration. I actually remember one PC died and then the next week someone pointed out that she could have at least burned her inspiration point to get advantage on the check she failed. Nobody even thought about it. I think once or twice in the whole campaign after that someone burned their inspiration. It is just so secondary to the whole process of 5e play that nobody seemed to bother with it. It was a forgettable mechanic.

Fate Core does have a skill list, but it is expected that GMs are free to do whatever they want with them. Combine them. Replace them. Toss them out entirely. Use Approaches, Aspects, Professions instead. A lot of official publications from Evil Hat show the different things that other settings/campaigns do with the skill system.

Fate may have started out as a custom mod of Fudge, then that is no longer the case as of 2015. As you say, it is now an Aspect-driven system that uses some Fudge mechanics. Reading the Fudge rules reads like a completely separate beast than the Fate Core Rulebook or Fate Accelerated Rulebook.

I don't recall that FATE was ever 'just' 'Fudge with aspects' though. I didn't recall the core game having a real skill list. I know FUDGE has some EXAMPLE skill lists, and I think FATE 2.0 book probably had some too. In any case they aren't necessarily a core part of the game. FATE is a toolkit, so its impossible to be unequivocal about that however unless you talk about specific games or derived systems like SotC.

pemerton · Jun 21, 2018

AbdulAlhazred said:
I don't recall that FATE was ever 'just' 'Fudge with aspects' though. I didn't recall the core game having a real skill list.

I don't know much aboug FUDGE, but I can report that Fate Core (at least the version I have - blue cover with a superhero/cyborg ape and (I think) someone in a white/grey overcoat) does have a skill list. It's a pretty generic one.

AbdulAlhazred · Jun 21, 2018

Bedrockgames said:
I think if you feel this way, you should at least give NWPs a try again and see how they play. Folks should draw their own conclusions as well, rather than take anyone's word for it. I went back to 2E around 2007-2008 for a while and in all honesty, expected to laugh at many of the mechanics in action. To my surprise things like NWPs worked a heck of a lot better for my style of play, than the skills in 3E every did. In fact, my campaigns noticeably changed after I adopted 3E, and I always figured it was more me getting older and some of the magic fading. But it turned out, the skill system was a large part of the change. Once I went back to 2E, things played much more like I remembered them. The feel at the table was totally different.

I dunno. I played 1e and 2e for their entire runs, pretty extensively. While we did USE NWPs they only really played any significant role in one OA based campaign, which was a system where they were first introduced and intended to fill a significant role in a game that was supposed to be more social and political and focused more on the character's relationship with society.

Even then the mechanics were poor. The success rate for using them was terrible. Even if you simply ignored the idea of making a check in most situations, the dangerous situations where they might be somewhat defining, were exactly where you'd only use an NWP in uttermost desperation, since the chance of success was rarely 40% and usually much worse! I never understood what was the concept behind this. It was literally as if the design was intended to make you NOT want to use them!

It has been a few years since I played 2E, so I am rusty and not here to defend NWPs point by point. But I think they had a few things working in their favor. One they were tied to abilities, so they were generally a lot easier to use in practice than skills in 3E (where the expanding DCs could make many tasks nearly impossible unless you were very high level). I liked things being weighted more toward success based on your ability score (and because it was roll under, rather than a bonus against a DC, your ability score result mattered a heck of a lot more at a granular level). Also, NWPs generally, at least in the first PHB (latter options for them moved more in a 3E direction), were largely intended not to interfere with players roleplaying or interacting with the environment and exploring. Etiquette for instance, was effectively a knowledge skill. You didn't roll etiquette to talk to the duke, you rolled to see if you knew what was appropriate to do and say before the duke.

Which is why I don't understand the whole fascination with checks. They should have simply been things you DID, or knew, not things you had to make a roll for.

I had a similar experience with many of the mechanics in 2nd edition.

Again, this stuff is totally subjective. But definitely try a game on its own terms if you haven't before rendering a judgment (not suggesting you are doing this AA, just see a lot of people form judgments based on what other posters say rather than their own experience in play).

As I said, I have a LOT of experience with 2e, and 1e as well. My experience was that the skill systems in these games were marginal at best, and designed to be so deliberately. I think a lot of the problem was that, even in 1989, there wasn't a very coherent idea of what RPGs really SHOULD be doing. I guess by then we thought we knew a lot, but by today's standards it was actually very little.

AbdulAlhazred · Jun 21, 2018

Bedrockgames said:
Mostly I play my own system now (and it does have skills, though I use them somewhat different than most people). I think I just like lighter skill systems and I find I prefer skill systems that interfere the least with RP or environmental interaction. That said, skills are popular with most players I game with, and I've learned to adapt how I use them to get the best result for my campaigns. Generally, since a large number of systems do have things that could potentially be used as buttons or interfere with RP/exploration, I use them as a fail safe. I ask for rolls when it is unclear to me what the outcome of something would be. If a player says "I pull the rock out and look behind it" I don't ask for a Detect roll, for example. If they have high ranks in something like Command, and say something that would make a new recruit quake in his boots, I don't ask for a roll. I usually ask for rolls when the results are hard to gauge, when I think a highly aware person should get a passive roll to see/sense something, or when there is a disparity between what the player wants to do, and what their character is realistically capable of doing.

Also I've just taken to ignoring skills more as a requirement to do something. I am a lot more interested in what the character should be able to do. If a player character has been tending horses for the past six months, I don't care if he or she doesn't have a relevant skill rank, I'll let them use the next most appropriate skill in the list, or just simply let them do what they are trying to do if it sounds reasonable.

Ultimately what I want to avoid is skills feeling like 'buttons' in play. If players are investigating a murder, I much prefer that they experience the solving of the crime directly, not that their skills simulate them solving the crime. So it is a lot more important to me that the player feels like they are there, finding the clues, asking the questions, and putting the evidence together, than rolling skills in a way that removes them from the direct experience of the investigation.

Now, see, in some sense I think you would LIKE my homebrew game! Skills there are more like 'knacks' or 'propensities'. You have ability scores which define what you CAN do in raw terms, and skills which define how you like to operate. The two are usually related, but not entirely the same.

Also, knowledge can exist in specific areas, if you want to create a descriptor for a character, then a 'minor boon' would exist, and boons are tied totally to the character's narrative history. So if he took care of horses for 6 months then he DOES HAVE a skill which reflects that, or at least he will be rateable as a horseman.

So the rules work WITH you here. Also, if there's no conflict, or no interesting consequence for failure (IE you can just keep trying), then there's no roll needed. So you really only make checks for stuff that matters. You can simply say "yes, I know how to cook, and I have proficiency in Nature, I gather what is needed for a healthy stew!" and it happens, assuming narrative coherence is sufficient that nobody objects.

Tony Vargas · Jun 21, 2018

pemerton said:
This goes right back to the OP!

Absolutely. I don't get this idea that "different" = "narrower",

I get being accustomed to one paradigm, and having trouble acknowledging the things another does better or that yours doesn't do at all, while being hyper-aware of the things the other doesn't do.

That'd make you perceive the other as 'narrower.'

or that "GM curated experience" = "caters to/generates a wide range of experiences".

Similarly, if you're used to expecting DM + system to deliver/define the experience, and the system half of that is very limited and constraining, then it's natural to conclude that it's the GM that makes the game, and puting more on the DM and less on the system can only make the experience better.

For instance: if player X wants to play Fate, and player Y wants to play Moldvay Basic, a game in which the GM curates Ideals/Bonds/Flaws for X, while rolling wandering monsters for Y, isn't giving either of them the experience they wanted.

And that sounds like focusing on system artifacts, again, rather on what they deliver.

]Campbell]'s "mainstream" is not just that mid-to-late 80s D&D; it would also include most GURPS and HERO play, I reckon, and - judging from when I used to hang out on the ICE boards - most RM/MERP/HARP play as well.

I can't see any grouping, other than TTRPGs, that all those would fit in, and would have any value or meaning.

pemerton · Jun 21, 2018

Tony Vargas said:
I can't see any grouping, other than TTRPGs, that all those would fit in, and would have any value or meaning.

They all tend to define the character in terms of mechanically-rated abilities to perform certain tasks. They all tend to approach resolution in a fairly granular, "Did my attempt to do that work?" fashion. (D&D hp-attrition combat is an exception, but (i) it tends not to be generalised by D&D players to other spheres of action, except in 4e - skill challenges - which seem to have been rather controversial, and (ii) every time some change is made or new thing added on to that system, it drifts it towards granularity and task-orientations - eg grapple rules, disarm rules, rules for facing and movement/positionin in combat, etc.)

None makes *the scene* the unit of resolution (4e is an exception: see above for its controversy). And all assume that the GM is the principal deliverer of content for the fiction. (There are hints to the contrary in HERO - eg the Hunted disadvantage and similar stuff - but that stuff tends to be marginal rather than core, and is treated as a disadvantage for the GM to use against the player, rather than a player-side resource to be leveraged as an opportunity to shape the content of the fiction.)

A D&D player who comes to a HERO or RM table will have to learn how to read and apply the numbers on the sheet, and will have to learn some new resolution mechanics, but probably isn't going to have to relearn what it means to be a RPG player. Whereas if that player comes to the games [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] is referring to, it's not just about learning which dice to roll to make an attack and whether spells are on a "slot" system or a spell point system.

Lanefan · Jun 21, 2018

AbdulAlhazred said:
Right, but what about fighters and such in classic D&D? I mean rangers, barbarians, and paladins have SOME stuff they can do, but its fairly thin in most editions. pre-2e or unless you play with one of the various supplements for 1e that gives NWPs, you get NOTHING as a fighter.

So what?

A 1e Fighter can still think, plan, talk, negotiate, explore, and do all sorts of other fun stuff; and it can have a memorable personality, goals, ideals, flaws, a background and history - and oh yeah, it can bend your nose into your face all night long. What more do you need?

The main thing is that the player of a 1e Fighter has to come up with ideas as to what it's going to (try to) do outside of combat and then just (try to) do it, as opposed to all the other classes that have some of those ideas baked into the class (e.g. Rangers tracking, Thieves picking pockets, etc.).

Lanefan