Playing in the Blank Spaces of the System

[Reynard]

But you aren't addressing the question of why the rules would or wouldn't get in the way.

The rules don't really get in the way of combat in the game. In fact, they do the opposite. The rules of combat are more abstract than the combat itself, but they are much less abstract than doing combat as improvisational theater at any level less than combat focused LARPing. The rules of combat are more abstract than combat, but they are much less abstract than having the players talk out the combat. As Brennan put it, he needs some mechanism to tell him about the flight of the arrow. He doesn't want the rules for the flight of the arrow to be abstract because he doesn't care about the combat. He wants the rules about the flight of the arrow because they are more concrete than talking out how the arrow flies. The more rules we add, the less abstract the combat becomes. We might choose a rules light combat game because we don't really care about combat.

But the opposite happens with a social play. The least abstract way to play out a social interaction is to play out the social interaction as improvisational theater. The more rules we would add to that situation the more abstract it becomes and the less like the thing itself it becomes. So for a tabletop roleplaying game that restricts itself to not getting out actual weapons and trying to hit each other with them (and for which that wouldn't be a very good abstraction of a hero fighting a dragon anyway), the least abstract system is one that is crunchy in combat but rules light in social play.

It's not at all arbitrary that you are better off not having rules for social play as compared to combat. If that thing was combat that you wanted to be the focus of the game, you would not be better off without rules - unless well you really wanted to limit yourself to HEMA inspired LARPing with swords and armor and therefore didn't need dice mechanics because those would be more abstract.

There is no reason you couldn't improvise combat as easily as you improvise social encounters. it is just that with most RPGs, because of the descent from D&D, most players would not find that as satisfying. But that is neither here nor there regarding what Brennan is saying.

 

[Celebrim]

There is no reason you couldn't improvise combat as easily as you improvise social encounters.

There are plenty of reasons why! I don't even see why that is controversial. This goes all the way down to pre-RPG "make believe" where the complete lack of rules would support all sorts of social interactions but couldn't resolve two players disagreeing over the relative merit in the story of one of their characters being shot by the other guy.

What you are simulating through tabletop RPG play is not symmetrical. Combat is not equivalent to a social encounter. Again, the more we talk it out the less like combat it's going to actually be, whereas the more we talk it out the more like a reified non-abstract social encounter it becomes. This is exactly what Brennan is saying.

If it were true that you could improvise combat as easily as a social encounter, then we would expect wargamers to have gravitated right from the start to combat as conversation and combat as improvised theater. We would expect that the more an RPG player cared about combat as the focus of play, the less detailed the combat mechanics of the system would become. But historically, the opposite happened. Combat mechanics got less and less abstract through the first 15-20 years of RPGs existing precisely because people were unhappy with the abstractions of the early systems for speed of play and they wanted grittier and less abstract combat that more closely resembled their own understanding of combat.

it is just that with most RPGs, because of the descent from D&D, most players would not find that as satisfying.

Are we locked into the mindset that D&D's mechanics are an arbitrary result of history, a mere accident, and that they persisted only through familiarity? Because I don't think that is remotely the case.

Consider the stealth situation. We could come up with a game that dealt with the issues of stealth in a non-abstract way by applying factors like distance, hard and soft concealment, and multiple types of sensory tells like heat, noise, electromagnetic radiation and odor. We could have a system that hard deals with tests for like can you fit in the locker or the ventilation shaft. I'm not sure I agree with the creator of Mothership that because stealth is important you don't need rules for it, but I do fully understand as someone who has thought about why getting a more concrete and less abstract stealth and evasion system working is hard why they want to avoid single highly abstract roles if stealth is important to the game, and why they would throw up their hands at making a system detailed enough to be both concrete and useable in play and so be motivated in what sounds like a fairly non-crunching system to leave it up to GM fiat.

But again, this has to do with the fact that the various things you are trying to simulate in a tabletop RPG aren't symmetrical and interchangeable but are in fact minigames with their own very different characteristics because the reality is that combat, stealth and conversation in the real world all work in different ways and so a single system that treats them all as just abstract tests is going to be bad at all of them.

 

[Reynard]

Consider the stealth situation. We could come up with a game that dealt with the issues of stealth in a non-abstract way by applying factors like distance, hard and concealment, multiple types of sensory tells like heat, noise, electromagnetic radiation and odor. We could have a system that hard deals with tests for like can you fit in the locker or the ventilation shaft. I'm not sure I agree with the creator of Mothership that because stealth is important you don't need rules for it, but I do fully understand as someone who has thought about why getting a more concrete and less abstract stealth and evasion system working is hard why they want to avoid single highly abstract roles if stealth is important to the game, and why they would throw up their hands at making a system detailed enough to be both concrete and usuable in play and so be motivated in what sounds like a fairly non-crunching system to leave it up to GM fiat.

I don't think it is about throwing up their hands so much as realizing that the permutations don't lend themselves well to calculating probabilities.

Upthread, someone (I'm sorry, i don't remember who) discussed how they did all the talking bits and then called for a roll at the end. That is a perfectly reasonable way to handle it. it is equally reasonable to not call for a roll and just make a judgement based upon the argument that the player in question made. That is applicable to any aspect of the game.

"I wait for the guard to wander off to take a leak and when his pants are down and his hands are occupied, i come up behind and slit his throat."

You could ask for a half dozen rolls in that situation, or you could consider the fiction as defined and the player's intent and just declare a result. That is stealth and combat rolled into one. It still works fine.

It seems strange to me how some folks seem so allergic to GM fiat in one aspect of play (combat, stealth) and then embrace it in another (social interactions, the weather).

 

[Celebrim]

I don't think it is about throwing up their hands so much as realizing that the permutations don't lend themselves well to calculating probabilities.

I don't think that's true. I think that maybe it's true consulting a lot of tables and making a lot of calculations repeatedly might detract from the intended narrative goal of a thriller/horror RPG and so you have to weigh speed of play and the mood killing effects of long mechanical digression against the utility of helping GMs arbitrate the scene without fiat. My guess (without playing it) is that Mothership considers the experience of tension and worry much more important than winning and arbitrating fair solutions to the presented problems.

It seems strange to me how some folks seem so allergic to GM fiat in one aspect of play (combat, stealth) and then embrace it in another (social interactions, the weather).

And it's utterly baffling to me that you would think all of those things are symmetrical in the real world and so would be symmetrical in game. You can't imagine why people react differently to the idea that the weather is not in their control than they do to the outcome of a players actions not being in their control, at least to the level of rigging the odds in their favor? What's more obvious about people's natural experience of the weather than it's not something they can control, while so much else that is of smaller scale and personal is at least partially (but not totally) within their control? So of course they want more control over how their actions are ruled on than they generally do about what the weather is.

That being said, you're also assuming hypocrisy where none is actually found. My opposition to GM fiat is pretty extreme. And that true because I am almost always the GM in my play. Regardless of whether it is combat, stealth, or social interaction the sort of conversations that the maker of "Mothership" says he wants are what I want and demand at my tables. I just at the end of that want that to inform the odds in a rational manner so that it isn't just down to GM fiat. But I can understand how GM fiat is still better than bad rules.

 

[Reynard]

I don't think that's true. I think that maybe it's true consulting a lot of tables and making a lot of calculations repeatedly might detract from the intended narrative goal of a thriller/horror RPG and so you have to weigh speed of play and the mood killing effects of long mechanical digression against the utility of helping GMs arbitrate the scene without fiat. My guess (without playing it) is that Mothership considers the experience of tension and worry much more important than winning and arbitrating fair solutions to the presented problems.

But there is a "but" right?

And it's utterly baffling to me that you would think all of those things are symmetrical in the real world and so would be symmetrical in game.

These aren't really related, though. Players know they are playing a game.

You can't imagine why people react differently to the idea that the weather is not in their control than they do to the outcome of a players actions not being in their control, at least to the level of rigging the odds in their favor? What's more obvious about people's natural experience of the weather than it's not something they can control, while so much else that is of smaller scale and personal is at least partially (but not totally) within their control? So of course they want more control over how their actions are ruled on than they generally do about what the weather is.

Mechanics don't inherently grant players control.

That being said, you're also assuming hypocrisy where none is actually found. My opposition to GM fiat is pretty extreme. And that true because I am almost always the GM in my play. Regardless of whether it is combat, stealth, or social interaction the sort of conversations that the maker of "Mothership" says he wants are what I want and demand at my tables. I just at the end of that want that to inform the odds in a rational manner so that it isn't just down to GM fiat. But I can understand how GM fiat is still better than bad rules.

I personally prefer a decent amount of random variability in my GMing, simply because I, myself as GM, like being surprised by outcomes. Those weird outcomes should be tied to the fiction, of course, but they should not be dependent on it. I don't actually think GM fiat is the best way to go most of the time. I probably did not make it clear in this specific exchange, but upthread I said I don't actually agree with Brennan. but I do understand where he is coming from.

 

[Celebrim]

But there is a "but" right?

Is there? You got me there. Tell me what this "but" is.

These aren't really related, though. Players know they are playing a game.

How does the fact that the players know they are playing a game make them unrelated?

Mechanics don't inherently grant players control.

Inherently? No, obviously mechanics don't inherently grant the player's control, but the purpose of mechanics is to share control with the players. If you don't want to do that, you don't need mechanics. They don't inherently accomplish that goal and the extent to which they do in fact share control varies, but that's what mechanics are for.

 

[Reynard]

Inherently? No, obviously mechanics don't inherently grant the player's control, but the purpose of mechanics is to share control with the players. If you don't want to do that, you don't need mechanics. They don't inherently accomplish that goal and the extent to which they do in fact share control varies, but that's what mechanics are for.

Mechanics provide for a sense of fairness, for lack of a better term. They take the decision out of the GM's hands to some degree or another. "Control" may be involved, depending on how much the players understand the probabilities behind those mechanics. But we had a recent very long thread on that subject and it probably isn't worth rehashing it here.

As it relates to the subject of the thread, removing mechanics and relying on GM fiat for things that are supposed to be "the focus" makes sense assuming everyone trusts the GM in that regard. I think that's why it makes sense for Brennan but not necessarily as a general thing, at least from my perspective.

 

[hawkeyefan]

That’s really the point. But you have it flipped around. You, as an experience referee, can come up with ways to handle things on the fly that are just as good as the mechanics in the book. Likely better because what you come up with will naturally more closely match your perspective, preferences, and style as well as the expectations of your table…and be better suited to the actual situation in your game in that moment.

Sure, but don't most games that have mechanics allow for this? Use your judgment and do what makes sense.

And what would be more concerning to me is what if expectations differ? What if my Mothership player declared a hiding spot that he thought was great, and I didn't?

Mechanics can be very handy to avoid decision making when that may not be the best way forward. I don't want to always decide what happens as the GM. I want the dice to have a say, too.

And, in the case of the Mothership stealth example... I didn't set a DC or TN or anything like that. I decided which of the existing mechanics we would use. I had to do so precisely because no specific mechanics exist for it.

Which would seem to go against Brennan's point... he wants mechanics for the things he doesn't want to spend time thinking about (combat), and not for things he wants to spend time thinking about (portrayal). His game doesn't have rules about portraying character, so they are in fact free to do what they like.

But my player wasn't free to just say "I hide" and be successful at it. Mechanics were needed.

As you say, the fairness comes from the fiction. I don’t see why that changes for edge cases or less obvious calls. If the outcome is not obvious from the fiction, make a call on the likelihood and roll.

But how is this different from when there are actual mechanics in place?

That’s the part I don’t get. As a player you’re always leaving it up to the referee anyway. They can declare it auto success or failure. They can decide to adjudicate the situation via conversation or mechanics. They can call for rolls and set the DC/TN, assign modifiers, give dis/advantage, etc. As a referee you always have to make these calls anyway. So all a system gets you is agreement on the dice to use and at best some guidance on setting DCs/TNs…but, ultimately, the decision is still yours.

No, not always. Different systems do different things. Some systems have no target numbers or difficulty classes or similar. There are static thresholds for success or failure. GMs can be limited in the amount of input they have over these elements through design of the rules.

I think it's pretty clear that Brennan and co in WBN and elsewhere have a system for character and social interactions and narrative arcs, it's just that the system is "extensive improv experience, a shared sense of story development and deep seated comfort with each other as performers." In other WBN material, Aabria and Erica talk a lot about their "writer brain" and "director brain" being routinely engaged alongside their decision making as players.

Aabria's character in particular in WBN is making painful, self-defeating decisions based on a flawed, imperialistic worldview without the aid of a mechanical system guiding her to make them. That's entirely down to a set of extra-system skills she's deploying as a performer, and it makes complete sense she and the other players would want to retain creative autonomy to make those decisions, instead of handing it over to a game system.

I think this touches on an important part. Their game is a bit different from what is typical for many... they are performing for an audience. They are all very aware of that, and are considering it with every decision they make.

But if that's not the case, would they be so willing to make such poor choices for their characters? Or would another group of players? This is where system can actually help. If play is meant to be about messy characters making poor decisions that complicate their lives... rather than being about a group of hyper competent specialists who have been conditioned to optimize every decision they make and to mitigate any and all risk possible... then why not have rules that actively promote that kind of play? Let's say something as simple as "Gain an XP when your character makes a poor decision that makes things harder for them or their friends".

Again, I think the nature of Brennan's game is somewhat unique in that sense... they are actively trying to make the game dramatic and tense through their choices. Because they are actively doing that, there's no "need" for mechanics that support it.... though I don't really think any such mechanics would have to be a problem. But for less performative minded groups who still want that style of play, mechanics can help guide them and achieve that goal.

If we want to simulate combat whether taking place in the framework of a story or not, we need a lot of props and algorithms to generate that other than conversation.

I mean, you could flip a coin.

 

[Pedantic]

Again, I think the nature of Brennan's game is somewhat unique in that sense... they are actively trying to make the game dramatic and tense through their choices. Because they are actively doing that, there's no "need" for mechanics that support it.... though I don't really think any such mechanics would have to be a problem. But for less performative minded groups who still want that style of play, mechanics can help guide them and achieve that goal.

I don't know that the bolded part is true. Brennan, across all his projects, has a tendency to only throw to the dice when he's interested in doing so and is looking for collaborative input. My sense is that the players at the WBN table would object to being bound by a system in this way.

Definitely a set of mechanics could guide narrative/character outcomes in another group without all of those skills, but I'm skeptical that it's correct to compare the results of those systems and the work here. It's not just the quality of performance, but also the curation of narrative/character as a skill on display here that I don't think can reasonably be compared to the output of a mechanical system.

Ultimately, I think those are just different things serving different purposes.

 

[overgeeked]

Mechanics can be very handy to avoid decision making when that may not be the best way forward. I don't want to always decide what happens as the GM. I want the dice to have a say, too.

Yes, of course. I like being surprised, too. The other part of the equation is the fiction. The fiction generally makes it obvious how things should go. So most of the time you don't have to decide and you don't have to fall back on mechanics. But, importantly, the mechanics you fall back on don't need to be complex. They can be astoundingly simple.

But my player wasn't free to just say "I hide" and be successful at it.

Why not? The player could simply declare they were hiding and based on the fiction you could simply declare they were successful. People run games like this all the time.

Mechanics were needed.

Why? There's almost zero need for mechanics. If you want them, sure. Knock yourself out. But calling it a need is wrong. The fiction can decide the vast majority of situations without mechanics. You as the referee can decide the vast majority of situations not obvious from the fiction. It's only when you want to be surprised by the outcome or when you don't know what the outcome should be that you need some way to decide. And that can be anything, really. Checking a game mechanic is one option among many. You could poll the players, draw a playing card or a tarot card, pull up a random wiki page, pick from a chart or table, roll some dice...legit anything. You could also, I suppose, default to checking the massive tome of overly complicated rules for some mechanic.

No, not always. Different systems do different things. Some systems have no target numbers or difficulty classes or similar. There are static thresholds for success or failure. GMs can be limited in the amount of input they have over these elements through design of the rules.

Those are still target numbers and in almost all cases I can think of the referee has the ability to apply modifiers. The PbtA success ladder is still target numbers. BitD uses number of successes. If you have a specific game in mind that drastically limits the referee's ability to effect the outcomes of rolls, I'm all ears.

I mean, you could flip a coin.

Sure, why not? John Harper made a game called 50/50 all about fictional positioning where a coin flip was the only resolution mechanic. Works a treat.