-
The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
"The term 'GNS' is moronic and annoying" – well this should be an interesting interview
- Thread starter niklinna
- Start date
I tried, they didn't want to actually talk and just wanted more content to argue at me with. My point was that the only reason something is "cursed" is because of a stubborn refusal to explore something new that combines the desired elements.
It doesn't matter if two or more ideas appear mutually incompatible on a surface level unless you stubbornly insist as a designer on only rendering the ideas in narrow, specific ways.
Take tactical combat vs quick combat. On a surface level, these appear contradictory, but that isn't actually true and they can be reconciled.
There is no design problem that can't be reconciled. But it takes imagination and an open and willing mind to go for it.
Hence why I pointed to Practical Creativity.
To add something substantive, since I found the video in post #177 interesting, I understood the presenter's arguments are mostly this:
"A cursed problem is an unsolvable design problem, rooted in a conflict between core player promises." Essentially, a game will explicitly or implicitly promise things to a player that find themselves in tension such that you cannot fulfill both at the same time. He gives some compelling examples in the video.
By unsolvable design problem he means one that you cannot simply use creativity or tweaks to fix; that would be solvable. If the designer wishes to truly address it, they must compromise on one of the promises to some degree.
He then lays out some potential mechanisms to design around the "cursed problem" and enumerates the sacrifices this may entail. They can be very minor, or so significant it fundamentally changes the game being designed.
A TTRPG example that sprung to mind was the tension between promises to a DM for significant control over a plot, and promises to player that they'd have significant narrative input. AW addressed this cursed problem by sacrificing the GM freedom to design plot via explicit constraints and admonishments, and explicit player action -> resolution mechanics with direct implications.
"A cursed problem is an unsolvable design problem, rooted in a conflict between core player promises." Essentially, a game will explicitly or implicitly promise things to a player that find themselves in tension such that you cannot fulfill both at the same time. He gives some compelling examples in the video.
By unsolvable design problem he means one that you cannot simply use creativity or tweaks to fix; that would be solvable. If the designer wishes to truly address it, they must compromise on one of the promises to some degree.
He then lays out some potential mechanisms to design around the "cursed problem" and enumerates the sacrifices this may entail. They can be very minor, or so significant it fundamentally changes the game being designed.
A TTRPG example that sprung to mind was the tension between promises to a DM for significant control over a plot, and promises to player that they'd have significant narrative input. AW addressed this cursed problem by sacrificing the GM freedom to design plot via explicit constraints and admonishments, and explicit player action -> resolution mechanics with direct implications.
Mod Note:
@Emberashh and @zakael19 - Please move on from your head-butting argument, please.
@Emberashh and @zakael19 - Please move on from your head-butting argument, please.
Thomas Shey
Legend
It at least wasn't more "GM Story Hour" than most trad games. Some people may have run it that way because WW tended to present metaplot so hard, but there was nothing in the system that especially rewarded that more than most trad games.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
That may be true, and at that point I'm not familiar enough, especially 30 years later, to say. Though I would point out that the meta-plot and all the setting elements that go with it, is so central to their idea of the play of the game that saying the core rules don't say X, especially after they told everyone to basically ignore those rules, says a lot about how it was played. It was a performative sort of game, as WW represented it, and the performance was meant to correspond with the meta-plot and setting, not the rules!
So, yeah, I think it was explicitly 'story hour' in a sense, in a way that even Dragonlance is not quite (though you could certainly get there with little trouble). Even 2e's advice about story (which is pure GM Story, there's no hint of the players having anything to do with it) still falls short of 'completely ditch the rules and just use them for color'. So, I don't quite disagree with you, but it is just so blatant in V:tM's presentation.
loverdrive
Prophet of the profane (She/Her)
You don't think there are mutually exclusive priorities?
No, they don't? There's nothing about tacticality that fundamentally requires it being slow. It's a difficult problem in tabletop space (although, no, it's not particularly difficult either, it's just TTRPGs consistently find the slowest solutions for some reason), but certainly not a cursed one.
Tactical combat vs, say, combat that evokes feelings of chaos and randomness like you gamble your life in a casino, though, is cursed, because one inherently excludes the other.
I don't have the time at this stage to watch the video, but the idea of "cursed problems" = irreconcilable game priorities seems highly applicable to RPGs.
For instance, as someone who has done a lot of purist-for-system RPGing, I think there is a tension that is very hard to reconcile between the desire for the mechanics to reveal, emergently/organically, the fiction and the desire to have interesting fiction. For me, this is the great breakthrough in the design of Burning Wheel and Torchbearer: they keep the purist-for-system just up to the point where it doesn't undercut the interesting character of the fiction. After that point, instead of purist-for-system it's fortune-in-the-middle and participant decision-making.
I've read posts that complain about that sort of resolution being "gamey" or "artificial" - but I think it's really not possible to have consistently interesting fiction without some degree of artifice.
For instance, as someone who has done a lot of purist-for-system RPGing, I think there is a tension that is very hard to reconcile between the desire for the mechanics to reveal, emergently/organically, the fiction and the desire to have interesting fiction. For me, this is the great breakthrough in the design of Burning Wheel and Torchbearer: they keep the purist-for-system just up to the point where it doesn't undercut the interesting character of the fiction. After that point, instead of purist-for-system it's fortune-in-the-middle and participant decision-making.
I've read posts that complain about that sort of resolution being "gamey" or "artificial" - but I think it's really not possible to have consistently interesting fiction without some degree of artifice.
thefutilist
Adventurer
Can you write out an example or two to illustrate what you mean? I’m interested specifically in how the attempt at organic mechanics fails.
Similar Threads
