Worlds of Design: “Old School” in RPGs and other Games – Part 1 Failure and Story

The Crimson Binome · Jan 9, 2019

hawkeyefan said:
However, this tangent of the conversation was about advocacy and how it is being viewed here. Advocating for your character is a part of character creation, and it is a part of play. I mean advocate in the strongest sense possible. I don't think that my definition is functionally any different than your "being the character" definition. Mine just acknowledges that "I am John, not Ragnar, and John will do everything he can for Ragnar to succeed at what he wants." Yours is "I am Ragnar and I will do everything I can to succeed."

Do you consider advocacy to be part of your job, during character generation, when choosing to play an elf rogue rather than an elf barbarian or dwarf rogue? Because I don't, really. I don't feel any obligation to the character, that I should use my discretion during character generation to set him up for success. I might feel obligation to the other players, to make a character that can help them succeed at our shared goals, but my only obligation to the character is that I do my best to role-play them accurately (whoever that character ends up being). The net effect is probably similar, in most cases.

hawkeyefan said:
There is a difference, but it's really not significant. My level of immersion is, I don't think, any less then yours because I don't think that you're delusional and have actually forgotten that you're someone playing a game rather than a being in the game.

On some level, I'm always aware that I'm the player at the table rather than the wizard in the game world; but part of the role-playing process is to try and suppress those details. I shouldn't let any out-of-game information cloud my judgment, when I'm making decisions from the perspective of the character.

hawkeyefan said:
So I don't think that these two definitions are really at odds. Nor do I think that many of the mechanics in modern games will somehow interfere with such immersion. Or, if so, it is entirely subjective and will vary by person, which would also be true of OS methods of character creation and play.

Sure, different players will have their immersion challenged by different mechanics, and the specifics will vary based on how the individual understands the concept of immersion. Essentially, during play, we want to avoid triggering certain thought processes; but awareness of those processes can make them harder to avoid. It's like the pink elephant experiment. (Although, there's no guarantee that the issue would have passed without remark, if someone was previously ignorant of it; and acknowledging an issue is always the first step toward fixing it.)

Not to keep dragging the topic back to FATE, but some players may never notice an issue with Fate points; and some players may feel like something is weird, but be unable to pinpoint why it feels off. A player who has read this thread, meanwhile, will be forced to consider how they feel about that mechanic. If they never noticed an issue in the first place, then they probably won't decide that it's suddenly a deal-breaker for them, but they might be slightly annoyed once it's brought to their attention. If they thought something was off, then confronting the issue directly will either allow them to accept it for what it is, or convince them to play some other game entirely.

Lanefan · Jan 9, 2019

Aldarc said:
(1) Simply reducing the nature of the Fate Point (and Trouble Compels) economy to a metagame bargain seems overly reductionistic, almost done for the sake of being able to dismiss the system on the sole basis of the taboo "metagame" word. It seems orthogonal to any actual debate of substance regarding the merits of the system.

Except the debate from my perspective isn't so much the merits of the system but whether those merits are built on a foundation of metagaming - which it seems they are.

As a roleplaying game, which Fate most definitely is, Fate wants to push the characters (and players) during play to make choices and lean into the drama of the fiction. The game is not only interested in what in-game complications you accept, but also the complications during play that you pay to reject. It's interested in what moments you find important enough to spend Fate points on in-game to push your character to succeed. When do you reroll? When do you push yourself a bit more (+2)? As such, Fate points are meant to highlight moments of heightened dramatic play.

In the fiction, does the character know she has these 'Fate points' available? If not, then the whole thing is purely a metagame mechanic; and this holds true whether one likes the mechanic or does not.

And I have to ask, not being familiar with the specific system: do NPCs and-or the opposition also have access to Fate points using the same criteria as the PCs? If yes, then great! But if not, there goes internal game-world consistency in that PCs are running on different mechanics than NPCs. For me this is a bigger red flag than even the metagame aspect.

Furthermore, part of the problem with pre-bought "flaws" in other systems is that players often pick maginally significant flaws or drawbacks without guarantee in play to rack up points for better benefits. Your character's arachnophobia may never show up in-game, but you were after the Super Strength perk you bought with that flaw anyway.

True. It's on the GM to make sure your flaw rears its head on a somewhat regular basis - picking a flaw of arachnophobia, for example, should result in a few more spiders being encountered during play than pure random chance would dictate.

========================

As for the dual questions of whether the GM is also a player and whether a GM can or should or must metagame:

1. When RPing an NPC the GM is acting as a player, but otherwise she is not a player: her role in the game is quite different.

2. A GM not only must metagame, the GM in many ways IS the metagame. The GM metagames so the players don't have to.

Umbran · Jan 9, 2019

5ekyu said:
I dont need to drop a new fridgevon my hand every couple of years to know that i wont like it any more than i did in 1981.

You have what we in the business would call a "confidence level" that you won't like it. But, you don't actually *know*.

Sorry, but the difference between "I am confident that... " and, "I *know* that..." is vast.

Now, the dropping of a refrigerator is a thing governed by physical law. So, yes, you can have a high confidence level about what it does to you. The impact of a game session... not so much with the physical law.

Thus - unless you can honestly say that playing a game session with such a mechanic *sent you to the hospital* then I kind of have to classify this comparison as emotional hyperbole. It isn't really constructive.

by all means, its not unusual or even odd to think the current niche fad is something new and revolutionary that those "others" dont get... Thats an old scene, man.

It is also not unusual to completely misinterpret people's opinions on things.

I didn't say that the mechanic was new. Go, look - I never said anything of the sort about its newness. I never said it was revolutionary. So... STRAWMAN!

How about we don't bother with this until you respond to what I actually say, hm?

Lanefan · Jan 9, 2019

Saelorn said:
Building a character is not playing the game.

Sadly, starting some time ago but becoming most noticeable with the advent of 3e, for some people not only is building a character playing the game, it IS the game. Just look at any char-ops board...

The game is everything that happens, after you meet at the tavern.

Agreed, plus maybe a 20-word backstory for each character to determine what brought them to said tavern.

Character creation is player homework that takes place long before the game ever starts.

In modern games, maybe. In OS games character creation takes place during the half-hour before puck drop, over the first beer of the night.

Aldarc · Jan 9, 2019

Lanefan said:
Except the debate from my perspective isn't so much the merits of the system but whether those merits are built on a foundation of metagaming - which it seems they are.

Whether it is metagaming or not seems more like a red herring discussion. It's a discursive framing meant to marginalize and dismiss the merits of the game as a roleplaying game and to present it as a flaw. So I don't think that this discussion of Fate is entirely being performed in good faith by all participants, particularly since the whole "Fate is not an RPG" is a recurring pet issue for at least one individual. :erm:

In the fiction, does the character know she has these 'Fate points' available? If not, then the whole thing is purely a metagame mechanic; and this holds true whether one likes the mechanic or does not.

No, but neither do characters know that they have rounds, prescribed limits on bonus actions and reactions per round, square spaces, re-roll mechanics, luck points, and many other game concepts that guide how players play their characters. There are many metagame concepts that exist in play that we often conveniently overlook because it is part and parcel of the game as it has been played so we find ways to rationalize it post hoc.

And I have to ask, not being familiar with the specific system: do NPCs and-or the opposition also have access to Fate points using the same criteria as the PCs? If yes, then great! But if not, there goes internal game-world consistency in that PCs are running on different mechanics than NPCs. For me this is a bigger red flag than even the metagame aspect.

Jein. For starters, NPCs do not necessarily follow player character creation rules. For example, the GM could create a group of minions who are treated as a singular abstract collective rather than five separate characters. It's fairly open-ended as NPCs are as PC-like or abstracted as you need them to be, generally dependent on how important they are for the fiction. Secondly, whenever a new scene starts, the GM gets a number of fate points equal to the number of PCs that they can spend on any NPC in that scene. (This does not include the infinite pool that GMs have for compels and concessions.) The GM can also get more fate points, if the GM accepts compels for the NPCs, since they too can have troubles or aspects in play. The GM's NPC fate point pool refreshes in every scene.

True. It's on the GM to make sure your flaw rears its head on a somewhat regular basis - picking a flaw of arachnophobia, for example, should result in a few more spiders being encountered during play than pure random chance would dictate.

That's the nature of Troubles in Fate. The player is alerting the GM what situations, issues, or complications they want their characters to more frequently "[encounter] during play than pure chance would dictate."

Lanefan said:
In modern games, maybe. In OS games character creation takes place during the half-hour before puck drop, over the first beer of the night.

Modern games are so varied that I don't think that one could generalize either way. Character creation in Blades in the Dark is pretty darn quick. Pick a playbook, such as the Hound. Pick a Heritage, Background, and Vice. You get 4 bonus skill points in addition to the pre-selected ones for your playbook, and no skill can go over 2 points. Choose one of the NPCs to be an ally and one to be a foe. Congratulations, you're done. Now your party picks what sort of Crew you want to be.

Hussar · Jan 9, 2019

Considering FUDGE has been around since '92, and FATE's now 15 years old or a bit more, just how long does a game have to be around before it's not considered new and reactionary?

And, as far as "does it apply to NPC's too" goes, well, that's a particularly D&D thing. Savage Worlds, for example, makes the distinction between PC's (Wild Cards) and everyone else very, very clear at the outset. They are very much not the same thing. Again, in a game that's 15 years old as well. And it's hardly a new thing. The old 007 game from TSR distinguished PC's from NPC's very strongly and that was back in the 80's.

It's hardly like this notion that the rules have to apply to everyone is an old school thing at all. In fact, it's not. OS NPC's were ad hoc built on whatever rules you wanted to use - want an orc chieftain? Use an ogre's stats. Why? Because...

I'd argue that the notion that the game rules apply equally to everyone is far more of a 3e D&D thing than anything else. It's never really appeared anywhere else in D&D.

Lanefan · Jan 9, 2019

Aldarc said:
Whether it is metagaming or not seems more like a red herring discussion. It's a discursive framing meant to marginalize and dismiss the merits of the game as a roleplaying game and to present it as a flaw. So I don't think that this discussion of Fate is entirely being performed in good faith by all participants, particularly since the whole "Fate is not an RPG" is a recurring pet issue for at least one individual.

I'm not so sure it's a red herring at all. The discussion is regarding OS v NS, and one open-to-argument distinction between them is how they view and-or handle metagaming in general.

No, but neither do characters know that they have rounds, prescribed limits on bonus actions and reactions per round,

It's at least halfway believable, however, that a character would realize there's only so much it can do in a given amount of time...quite reflective of reality.

square spaces, re-roll mechanics, luck points,

All of which are mechanics I neither use nor like; square spaces because they're unrealistic and the others due to their metagame quotient.

and many other game concepts that guide how players play their characters. There are many metagame concepts that exist in play that we often conveniently overlook because it is part and parcel of the game as it has been played so we find ways to rationalize it post hoc.

True, but my immersionist (and simulationist) side says the ideal goal should be to eliminate such things where possible and minimize the rest.

Jein. For starters, NPCs do not necessarily follow player character creation rules. For example, the GM could create a group of minions who are treated as a singular abstract collective rather than five separate characters. It's fairly open-ended as NPCs are as PC-like or abstracted as you need them to be, generally dependent on how important they are for the fiction. Secondly, whenever a new scene starts, the GM gets a number of fate points equal to the number of PCs that they can spend on any NPC in that scene. (This does not include the infinite pool that GMs have for compels and concessions.) The GM can also get more fate points, if the GM accepts compels for the NPCs, since they too can have troubles or aspects in play. The GM's NPC fate point pool refreshes in every scene.

OK, that's cool. Thanks for the explanation.

Hussar said:
Considering FUDGE has been around since '92, and FATE's now 15 years old or a bit more, just how long does a game have to be around before it's not considered new and reactionary?

"New school" does not necessarily equate to "chronologically new". One can argue Dragonlance was in many ways new - or at least newish - school even though it came out in 1984 (or 83?). DCCRPG, on the other hand, is fairly hard-core old school despite its 201x release date.

And, as far as "does it apply to NPC's too" goes, well, that's a particularly D&D thing. Savage Worlds, for example, makes the distinction between PC's (Wild Cards) and everyone else very, very clear at the outset. They are very much not the same thing. Again, in a game that's 15 years old as well. And it's hardly a new thing. The old 007 game from TSR distinguished PC's from NPC's very strongly and that was back in the 80's.

If you want a believable and consistent game world with the PCs as otherwise normal residents within it except they have a player attached, then having PCs follow the same basic rules as everyoen else is requirement number one. Unless you're playing supers, in which case all bets are off; but we're not (I hope!) talking about supers games here.

It's hardly like this notion that the rules have to apply to everyone is an old school thing at all. In fact, it's not. OS NPC's were ad hoc built on whatever rules you wanted to use - want an orc chieftain? Use an ogre's stats. Why? Because...

Want an evil wizard as a foe? Roll it up using the same mechanics a PC wizard uses.

Monster design, using 1e as an example, by hard-defining what a particular monster could and couldn't do and by hard-wiring the hit dice etc. kind of put itself into a box that it then had to use kludges like you note above to try and escape.

I'd argue that the notion that the game rules apply equally to everyone is far more of a 3e D&D thing than anything else. It's never really appeared anywhere else in D&D.

3e got the theory bang-on right in this regard, though the system's mechanical overkill kinda made it all a bit less useful in practice. In doing it this way 3e was, I think, following the masses rather than leading them.

In 1e and 2e there was little enough difference between a 1st-level (or 0th-level) character and a commoner that it didn't matter very much, and one could easily interchange the design rules/guidelines form one to the other and probably not notice the difference. Hence, easier just to make 'em all use the same rules - the ones for PCs - and stop there.

Hussar · Jan 10, 2019

But, here's the trick - they didn't use the same rules. Not at all. My Basic Rules has entries for Man. They certainly didn't have "classes". IIRC, so did the 1e Monster Manual. They all had different HP values depending on whether they were meant to be fought or not though.

Sure, if I was going to make a Magic User as an enemy, I'd probably go through the PC rules. Mostly because 1e didn't really have any rules otherwise. Which then brought in all sorts of weirdness. How much XP was a, say, 7th level MU worth as a foe? Can you show your work?

As you said, it was a big kludge. But, that means that there aren't actually rules that apply across the board.

Aldarc · Jan 10, 2019

Lanefan said:
It's at least halfway believable, however, that a character would realize there's only so much it can do in a given amount of time...quite reflective of reality.

Most fate points will be spent by players for re-rolling or a +2 bonus to a character roll, which both express the character exerting extra effort on an important task... also quite reflective of reality.

All of which are mechanics I neither use nor like; square spaces because they're unrealistic and the others due to their metagame quotient.

That's fine, but these are mechanics of various editions of D&D that you likely can recognize do not make D&D less of an RPG or define OS vs. NS.

True, but my immersionist (and simulationist) side says the ideal goal should be to eliminate such things where possible and minimize the rest.

I think the ideal goal should be having fun roleplaying with friends. But I also don't think that "immersion" is an ideal that can be applied with any more pragmatic consistency in design than "fun" can be. IMHO, it's too subjective to personal tastes. I have watched my own players immerse themselves into their characters with greater ease with Fate than I have with D&D. However, I don't necessarily think that one game is more immersive than the other. One of the great gifts of the hobby has been the proliferation of games for people with different proclivities and tastes for what makes a fun and immersive roleplaying game.

OK, that's cool. Thanks for the explanation.

No problem. Glad to clarify things.

If you want a believable and consistent game world with the PCs as otherwise normal residents within it except they have a player attached, then having PCs follow the same basic rules as everyoen else is requirement number one.

That's one approach but not necessarily the One True Way you seem to imply here. Other games seek a believable and consistent game world that rests in the fiction itself rather than notions of PCs and NPCs following the same mechanics.

darkbard · Jan 10, 2019

Lanefan said:
I often get a sense - particularly from the story-now crew* - that the real interest lies in the stories of individual characters, with the story of the party as a whole merely tagging along for the ride.

* - though I suppose these could almost be defined as post-NS.

Aldarc said:
You don't demonstrate that the story is not bigger than any one character in the second case. You merely point out the truism that 35 is a greater value than 5 and the same story content will inevitably be more thinly distributed between 35 than it would be for 5. And you do so in a manner that seems to aggrandize or artificially exaggerate the scope of the story for the former. So I still think that this notion that in OS gaming "the story is bigger than the characters" should be dropped in favor of more satisfactory and accurate explanations. And you seem to approach offering such an explanation: there is on average a higher PC turnover rate. If that is true, then examining that phenomenon would likely be more fruitful.

[...]

It seems like one of the "story-now crew," such as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION], or [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] would be better equipped to elucidate clarification on such matters then, if you are so inclined.

Okay, I have read up through [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]'s post 112 but haven't had time to get any further yet, so please excuse me if I repeat what comes hereafter. And in truth, I have little of consequence to add to what has already been sufficiently developed here by Aldarc, [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION], [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION], and others (even where these folks don't always see eye-to-eye): the original distinctions of the OP are laughingly meaningless, and so the debate it has engendered is loose and amorphous.

But what I can add is some evidential weight that the distinction between OS as centered on party and NS as centered on individual character is as spurious as they come, almost as spurious as the claim that in NS games characters face no true risks unless they want to. I offer the following chapter lead-in from Blades in the Dark, Chapter 3: The Crew, PG. 91, as New-Schooly a NS game as there is, or, in more meaningful and crisper terminology, a Story Now game:

Regardless of how a crew comes to be formed, they all have one thing in common: they exist to create a legacy that will last beyond the founding members. When you start a crew with your partners, you intend to build something that (hopefully) will live on past the scope of your own criminal careers. This is why we have a separate character sheet for the crew--tracking its development, growth, and influence.

In a sense, the crew is the central figure in the stories we're going to tell about the underworld of Doskvol. Scoundrels will come and go--burned out due to TRAUMA, or killed, or forever lost to their vices, or, if they're very lucky, gone to some comfortable retirement--but the crew carries on. New blood come in, new characters with new outlooks and drives, new stories to be told.

I hope to read the remaining posts in the coming days, for, as silly as the initial post is, some of the discussion here has been interesting, even as it is hampered by slippery and ultimately meaningless terminology.

Worlds of Design: “Old School” in RPGs and other Games – Part 1 Failure and Story

Lewis Pulsipher

The Crimson Binome

Hero

Lanefan

Victoria Rules

Umbran

Mod Squad

Lanefan

Victoria Rules

Aldarc

Legend

Hussar

Legend

Lanefan

Victoria Rules

Hussar

Legend

Aldarc

Legend

darkbard

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