Improvisation vs "code-breaking" in D&D

[Balesir]

Read references online on what Game Studies is and how Game Theory "has nothing whatsoever to do with games".

I found this entire post quite bizarre, but I want to comment on this specific bit as Game Theory is something that I have studied to some degree as part of a Masters in Economics and Finance. The idea that Game theory is part of some sort of "attack" on a pre-existing culture of gaming is, I'm afraid, preposterous.

Game Theory is a theory of economics concerned with analysing the way that people behave when trying to optimise outcomes for themselves. Specifically, it looks at situations where several people make decisions all at once and the outcome relies on the combination of decisions made by all "players". This analysis is obviously applicable to games that involve more than one player making simultaneous decisions that combine to determine an outcome, as well as applying to the behaviour of economic agents. A couple of interesting observations arise from this:

1) The main reason that Game Theory applies to several games is precisely that many games work on the conceit that they represent or simulate a "real life" situation. Since their earliest inception as training for adult life - a role they still fulfil among immature animals, including humans - games have commonly been based on the "fiction" that the actors in the games are pursuing "adult" activities.

2) Game theory is not really applicable to D&D as [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] would have it, since the players are playing cooperatively and the GM is not a player in the Game Theory sense that (s)he is not making decisions...

Game Theory, just to be clear, has nothing whatsoever to do with stories or storytelling. Its relationship to games is also quite incidental.

 

[Balesir]

With these, on the other hand, I want to counter-nitpick.

That seems only fair

At this point, "code-breaking" seems to have just become a synonym for "reasoning".

I don't agree, because I think there is a key element required for "code-breaking" that is a hidden pattern or set of "facts". There is reasoning required in situations where all of the information on which reasoning is to be based is either clear and open or not amenable to pattern identification. If the dice tables used to generate results were openly displayed (like the weather tables in Formula De, for example), you would have a game requiring reasoning (and with stochastic variables to make the reasoning interesting) but with no discernable "code" capable of being "broken". The code, if there is one, is already "broken" and laid out before the players.

It's still a game, though, and it still requires reasoning.

I agree that the frictionless corridor in WPM assumes that the players have some sort of contextual familiarity with a particular trope/idea. The same is true of all the old chess rooms, the metal/electricity/magnet/lodestone tricks and traps, and so on. Plus many door traps and pit traps (some of the more baroque examples of latter even depend on familiarity with the particular FRPG-ism of the pit trap).

But they still require GM improvisation or non-algorithmic adjudication: for instance, if you write some sort of wacky electricity trap into your dungeon, when the players start trying to circumvent it by wrapping their hands in (hopefully insulating) cloth or using 10' poles or whatever, you are going to have to deal with those efforts.

First off, let me say that I don't think RPGs are feasible without any GM improvisation or judgement calls during play whatsoever. For some styles of play - including most that I enjoy - I think the reduction of GM rules improvisation during play is a worthwhile goal, but that doesn't mean it can be eliminated entirely.

In the case of "whacky electricity traps" and such like, though, I think a rod is made for the GM's back. Trying to say as a sort of shortcut to "rules" that something is "just like the real world, but, y'know, with allowances for magic..." is a recipe for muddle and pain. Leaving aside for a moment that most players and GMs - me included - don't really understand the behaviour of high-voltage electricity half as well as they think they do, the fact that any PC solution is quite likely to involve the interaction of magic with said high-voltage electricity is simply asking for adjudications to be needed that have nothing to go on beyond bias and flawed extrapolation.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] - your comments on game theory are well made. I don't understand what the mathematical theory of payoffs in interactive contexts has to do with The Forge, or D&D.

In the case of "whacky electricity traps" and such like, though, I think a rod is made for the GM's back. Trying to say as a sort of shortcut to "rules" that something is "just like the real world, but, y'know, with allowances for magic..." is a recipe for muddle and pain.

No disagreement with that, but surely you agree that the muddle and pain you describe is pretty core to a whole swathe of classic D&D tropes? The point I was trying to make was a descriptive one, not a normative one - namely, whether it's good or bad that RPGing involve that sort of improvisation, classic D&D certainly did, and hence it's simply wrong to assert that an absence of improvisation is of the essence of D&D.

Were the Simulationist essays incomplete or unfair? I have an opinion

So do I. They're spot on. I've GMed hundreds (probably thousands) of hours of Rolemaster. I've played plenty of Cthulhu and Runequest. Edwards gets those games, both in his account of purist-for-system (= process) sim, and in his account of high concept (= "play through the GM"s story") sim. He captures what's good about them, and also what the limits are on the sort of play experience that they offer.

 

[Zak S]

"This assumption about all gaming ever is accurate because it holds for all gaming I've been present during and all anecdotes about games I choose to believe" is not real scientific.

The problem with Forge theory isn't the theory so much (it's wrong but so are lots of others)--it's the tradition of really unrigorous anti-debate it spawned in the clique around it. The willingness to go along with any idea so long as it was expressed nicely by the right people without ever like watching other people's actual play vids to check if it made sense.

 

[Aenghus]

I can sometimes find the process of discerning a DM's style and biases as analogous to code-breaking, especially when the DM is opaque and refuses to discuss the game or how s/he runs it. DMs often exhibit patterns in their decision making and players can sometimes gain an advantage in the game by discerning those patterns.

For instance, a game where the DM will likely fudge the saving throws of save or die-type spells cast at significant enemies in the first round or two of combat. Such spells are best used at the start of a fight, assuming they have a chance of working, but not if they don't They also tend to be significant daily resources, which become wasted resources in such circumstances.l

Another is where the DM likes using monster types who happen to have a predictable weak saving throw. Loading up on spells targeting the weak save can be an effective choice.

It's no accident that both my examples above use spellcasters. Spellcasters can quickly change spell loadout to take advantage of changing circumstances, and making wise or fortuitous choices can produce big payoffs.

Conversely, players of spellcasters who don't look for patterns or anticipate weak saves, vulnerabilities, resistances and immunities could end up casting spells effectively at random, and be much less efficient.

Players who are starved of information on which to make choices often resort to such tactics. Some DMs don't like such code breaking - the best way I've found to do this is to reduce the payoff by giving the players more information so they can make informed choices.

 

[innerdude]

A story is a fiction storytellers make up

Who are these eponymous "storytellers" of which you speak, who clearly should never participate in an RPG session lest they sully the purity of your gaming experience?

Oh wait....that would be me. And you. And [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], and [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION], and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], and every single player who's ever sat down at a game table.

We are a race of storytellers. Story (the sequential arrival of events in their course) and narrative (the assignment of meaning and purpose to a given story) are so deeply ingrained into our human psychology we don't even have an alternative, rational way of expressing ideas with value-based meanings. It's like metaphors. Human language simply cannot exist without metaphor (and I know this because these really smart guys said so).

Do you really not want your players to give any consideration to fiction, story, narrative, during an RPG session? At the end of a session, you want their sum total thought process to be nothing more than, "Dang, we played that game well tonight, and I feel successful as a result"? That's it? That's all you EVER want your players to get out of it? It almost sounds as if one of your own players were to say ANYTHING about "how cool the story of Drew the Fictional Paladin is" in one of your games, you'd cut him off at the knees and force him into another group.

I think you're going to be repeatedly and terribly disappointed that the vast, vast majority of the people you associate with in this hobby are going to utterly reject your view outright. If you don't want people to inject story and narrative into your precious roleplaying games, maybe you'd better stop doing it with, you know, REAL PEOPLE and stick to doing it on a computer. Because doing it with REAL PEOPLE is always, always going to involve story and narrative. Not because it's some kind of affront to RPGs as an entertainment genre, but because we simply can't help ourselves.

 

[Manbearcat]

So do I. They're spot on. I've GMed hundreds (probably thousands) of hours of Rolemaster. I've played plenty of Cthulhu and Runequest. Edwards gets those games, both in his account of purist-for-system (= process) sim, and in his account of high concept (= "play through the GM"s story") sim. He captures what's good about them, and also what the limits are on the sort of play experience that they offer.

While my time running sim-oriented games isn't insignificant (more than a little high concept with Cthulu and Dread - which is something of a tweener to be honest - and a chunk of PfS with Classic Traveler), I don't remotely have your experience GMing them. Nonetheless, that is my takeaway from the essays as well. However, as I noted, my relative disinterest in the subject leads me to gladly defer to someone with a more informed and impassioned perspective than my own.

We are a race of storytellers. Story (the sequential arrival of events in their course) and narrative (the assignment of meaning and purpose to a given story) are so deeply ingrained into our human psychology we don't even have an alternative, rational way of expressing ideas with value-based meanings.

Great post and this is amusing. Every time this topic comes up for debate, this point you've written above manifest in my head in one iteration or another.

Here's a statement to mull over. A GM can be a referee, a game designer, and a player. He cannot be any more than one at a given time. Also try replacing cannot with should not.

I've done a moment or two of mulling. I think replacing should be wary ofwith cannot is the way to go here. Again, this goes back to competing priorities (agenda and aesthetics), conflict of interest, and agency. The abridged version:

Game Designer: The part where the GM has to bridge a minor gap in, or open-ended portion of, the resolution mechanics or make an exception-based call (hopefully informed by robust guidance - specific beats general or a principle like "drive play toward conflict" - or templates). The top priority here is likely to ensure expeditious table handling time, the minimization of cognitive workload for the GM (now and for the future as the precedence has been established), the preservation of pacing, and seamlessness and intuitiveness with the rest of the ruleset (machinery, aesthetics, and agenda).

Referee: Faithfully observe the fictional positioning, be aware of tendencies toward confirmation bias and work to mitigate them, aim for neutrality, and (whenever possible) endeavor to expand options for action declarations rather than contract them.

Player: Push hard/advocate for your guy/gal/monster/thing. Promote the having of a good time by all participants while experiencing maximal agency in the achievement of a sought objective.

 

[howandwhy99]

For me this is another non sequitur moment.

What makes you think that I am talking about collaboratively inventing a story? I have never said that that is what I do when I play D&D. You are projecting that onto me.

---SNIP

Sometime I use maps. Sometimes not. My players occasionally draw maps, but not very often. In my Burning Wheel campaign, for instance, I just lay out my GH maps on the table and we all look at them, to work out where the players are, and where they might want to go to. This may not be the sort of game you want to play, but it is a game in the sense of an amusement or pastime. It involves dice, and character sheets, and pretty intricate action resolution mechanics.

As I said, you started this thread. We can talk about how D&D was designed. What games are. Why all the elements of D&D came from wargames meant to enable, not disable strategic thinking by players. What I am not here to do is tell anyone they should or should not have fun for themselves. You don't want a game? Where players are tested for their own personal abilities? That they themselves must think and discover what is the underlying game design? Well okay. You want an amusing pastime for "telling or retelling imagined events", as you put it. Alright, but why talk about it if you simply disagree? It is not a game and it's only interfering with fixing the RPG hobby.

Except the Forge was not "all narrative, all the time". The Forge allows that gamism is an entirely fair agenda. It even advocates making sure you focus on a particular agenda. Game for sake of game is fine. Game for sake of simulation is fine. Game for sake of narrative is fine. After the Forge came up with this, some folks found that narrative was under-served in game culture. Chess, backgammon, dominoes, and pretty much every other game produced before the 1970s serves the game agenda. Some folks merely decided to build some things that served other agendas.

They embraced the power of "and". You do not. I think most of us fail to see how this makes *them* myopic.

As I demonstrated before, how we treat something matters for what we are actually doing with it. When games are not treated as games, but narratives, then that person is not playing a game. No matter how many rules others may be perceiving them as following.

If I pick up a Rubic's Cube and use it as a puppet before a child saying, "Here comes Mr. Colorful!", I am not solving a puzzle. The entire culture and terminology of puzzles do not need to be redefined to accept this "agenda". Games begin and end as designs to enable players to decipher their underlying pattern in order to achieve objectives within them. That includes D&D as well.

Not that you've even actually established that "game culture" as you describe it is actually declining. Again: CITE PLEASE. Your assertion is not sufficient.

Read what Wikipedia is currently calling a "roleplaying" game

A role-playing game (RPG and sometimes roleplaying game) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting or through a process of structured decision-making or character development.

There are no fictions in games.

I found this entire post quite bizarre, but I want to comment on this specific bit as Game Theory is something that I have studied to some degree as part of a Masters in Economics and Finance. The idea that Game theory is part of some sort of "attack" on a pre-existing culture of gaming is, I'm afraid, preposterous.

That's because I said Game Studies, not Game Theory. And whitewashing due to ignorance is not often understood as an attack by those perpetuating it. Also, I'll revise that to those who typically use the term "Game Studies" rather than others as there are other people like me who are unwilling to treat games as narratives. For me, that especially includes RPGs.

Game Theory is a theory of economics concerned with analysing the way that people behave when trying to optimise outcomes for themselves. Specifically, it looks at situations where several people make decisions all at once and the outcome relies on the combination of decisions made by all "players".

Game Theory is not exclusively studying simultaneous action. Otherwise what you said is a solid definition of game playing - Players attempting to achieve objectives within a pre-existing design. Finite games put a border around this commonly to balance challenges to players and limit interference, but game play as behavior is still possible outside of games too, of course.

2) Game theory is not really applicable to D&D as howandwhy99 would have it, since the players are playing cooperatively and the GM is not a player in the Game Theory sense that (s)he is not making decisions...

The players in D&D game a design hidden behind a screen receiving information about it as relayed by an impartial referee. (very similar to Mastermind). That Game Theory doesn't cover the behaviors of referees is obvious. They aren't playing the games.

Game Theory, just to be clear, has nothing whatsoever to do with stories or storytelling. Its relationship to games is also quite incidental.

That Game Theory may be the only theory referring to actual games and game play is historically rooted.

SNIP

This is what narrative absolutism looks like. A single school of philosophy taken as inevitabilist dogma. He even references Lakoff as if it wasn't a theory. Narrative reductionism may have been started by the French Post-Structuralists (and I like the french, even admire the philosophies there), but narratives should never be understood as dogma in and of themselves. No one is actually, inevitably telling stories. There's no such thing as storytelling. Your whole post seeks to denigrate others. Of course I don't want anyone to treat RPGs or D&D as a story. It's a game and neither gaming nor roleplaying having anything whatsoever to do with stories.

 

[Maxperson]

As I said, you started this thread. We can talk about how D&D was designed. What games are. Why all the elements of D&D came from wargames meant to enable, not disable strategic thinking by players. What I am not here to do is tell anyone they should or should not have fun for themselves. You don't want a game? Where players are tested for their own personal abilities? That they themselves must think and discover what is the underlying game design? Well okay. You want an amusing pastime for "telling or retelling imagined events", as you put it. Alright, but why talk about it if you simply disagree? It is not a game and it's only interfering with fixing the RPG hobby.

D&D played as it was designed to be, a game that tells an interactive story though game play IS all of those things. Well, except for the part about discovering the underlying game design. 35 years of playing board games, card games, RPGs, sports and video games, and I've never once met someone who tries to figure that out.

As I demonstrated before, how we treat something matters for what we are actually doing with it. When games are not treated as games, but narratives, then that person is not playing a game. No matter how many rules others may be perceiving them as following.

False Dichotomy. Those are not the only two alternatives. You can also play a GAME that has a NARRATIVE, such as D&D.

If I pick up a Rubic's Cube and use it as a puppet before a child saying, "Here comes Mr. Colorful!", I am not solving a puzzle.

Correct. You are playing a game that involves roleplaying. Just because it's a Rubic's Cube doesn't mean that the puzzle is the only thing you can do with it.

Read what Wikipedia is currently calling a "roleplaying" game
There are no fictions in games.

So the answer is no, you are not going to provide any sort of evidence to back up your claims.

 

[Campbell]

"This assumption about all gaming ever is accurate because it holds for all gaming I've been present during and all anecdotes about games I choose to believe" is not real scientific.

The problem with Forge theory isn't the theory so much (it's wrong but so are lots of others)--it's the tradition of really unrigorous anti-debate it spawned in the clique around it. The willingness to go along with any idea so long as it was expressed nicely by the right people without ever like watching other people's actual play vids to check if it made sense.

I have some of my own issues, but most of it comes down to both boosters and detractors taking the Essays too seriously and not placing them in the particular context they were born out of.

The Forge was born in a very particular environment. There was a community of indie game designers that were deeply deeply unsatisfied with the role playing games of the 1990's. When Vampire came out it took the tabletop role playing game culture by storm. It basically defined the new normal. Metaplot, illusionism, and GMs telling their players a story became what tabletop role playing games were about. Shadowrun, Deadlands, Lengend of the 5 Rings, Planescape, Ravenloft, You Name It - they were all basically trying to out Vampire Vampire. Role playing not roll playing was the clarion call of RPGdom.

It's with that particular environment in mind that The Essays should be read. The Forge was a movement to produce games that were games, but still covered much of the same ground. The purpose of The Essays was to provide a basis of discussion for designing new games, and they had a particular audience. They were biased as hell, but they really weren't meant for general consumption. It was meant to be a given that most of the audience didn't like Vampire and its effect on the hobby. The Essays also weren't meant to cover games like AD&D played in a Gygaxian fashion. It wasn't really the purpose of the discussion that was going on. The interest was all in designing new games with a particular bent. The whole enterprise was very punk rock. Independently created, independently published, reactionary and dismissive of the then current mainstream.

The Forge was also very formative. The Big Model came about in an environment where game designers were making the games that proved they could totally design a game. It was very much a moment in history where people were writing stuff to figure out what this thing could be. Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard, and Life With Master were very much experimental and the result of inexperienced designers starting to find their footing. They were good games, but not like mature games.

A lot of time was spent defining what things were and what things were not. Unfortunately this has a really chilling effect. The way the agendas were presented made it appear like they were mutually exclusive, rather than a matter of priority. It could have really done with agile programming style "These are the things we value more. We still value these other things - we just value them less." rhetoric. Some of terminology used was also deeply unfortunate. Labeling "Step on Up" as gamism totally makes it seem like you're not interested in games as games. Likewise Narrativism and Story Now are too closely associated with the language of a play style that most indie RPGs were a reaction against. Antagonism towards different sorts of games also closed off a lot of discussion and possible design space. It took a lot for me to realize that Vampire - The Requiem 2nd Edition was totally my jam.

Historical context is important here. The Forge was what it was. We got a lot out of it, but it's a good thing it's not really a thing anymore. There's a time and place for movements and identity politics. A lot of what the Forge brought to our culture is still important though - focusing on actual play, being able to identify and verbalize what we want out of games, demanding functional and questioning assumptions are all very important things. Most importantly, we got some very good games out of it. That's the biggest thing.

I think what gets lost in a lot of these discussions both in my crowd and outside of it is that at the end of the day we are talking about games and stuff. They games I play and the way I play them affects the people I play them with. It shouldn't directly impact you. I'm not telling people what they should do. I'm just talking about a thing I do that I sometimes take way too seriously.
[MENTION=90370]Zak S[/MENTION], I want to thank you for your perspective. I totally appreciate that you are sharing your perspective and not negating other people's experiences. This thread has been really weird for me. I personally feel a kinship with you OSR folks. I like the independence, the advocacy for an overlooked play style, and the willingness to question assumptions. At the end of the day I appreciate the opportunity to clarify and reflect on why I like the games I like, and also a chance to step outside of my own bubble a little.






It was also formative.