Vincent Baker on mechanics, system and fiction in RPGs

[Manbearcat]

I'm just going to do a quick post on the lead post's position and how it feeds into both design decisions and player best practices in a game.

The things on my character sheet amounts to the following conclusions:

* I'm James of Split Hoof Cliffs.

* I deserted during the war and have been on the run ever since.

* I'm a bit dull-witted but my big frickin' knife is sharp.

* I've only become a priest to escape my comeuppance.


If the game doesn't center these things as nexus of conflict, then there is a mismatch between design and position. One of those two need to conform to the other or we've got either a game that isn't about the character sheet position or a character sheet position that isn't in-line with the game.

This is a problem that sometimes comes up.

Another problem that comes up is how players' best practices are misaligned with one or both of position or design. If the rules text tells you outright (explicitly via "do this" or "don't do that") or implies/connotes (via incentive structures) to do this (when the going gets tough, go to the knife rather than the mind or watch your back because there is a comeuppance looming), but the actual play of the designed game tells you something else (like going to the knife is impotent and too punishing of a risk profile or the looming comeuppance isn't so looming because its all color/mood and no teeth), then something needs attending to.

Either outright land on (or signal) different best practices for the players, or different position, or different design.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm just going to do a quick post on the lead post's position and how it feeds into both design decisions and player best practices in a game.

The things on my character sheet amounts to the following conclusions:

* I'm James of Split Hoof Cliffs.

* I deserted during the war and have been on the run ever since.

* I'm a bit dull-witted but my big frickin' knife is sharp.

* I've only become a priest to escape my comeuppance.


If the game doesn't center these things as nexus of conflict, then there is a mismatch between design and position. One of those two need to conform to the other or we've got either a game that isn't about the character sheet position or a character sheet position that isn't in-line with the game.

I think that depends on the fiction. Those could be the main thrusts of the 'story' or they could simply be some background to what the 'story' is really about. Neither is the 'right way'.

In D&D those most likely are mostly background elements to ground why you are adventuring - though maybe at some point they get elaborated on, but they don't have to because D&D is explicitly a game about heroic adventurers and not directly about characters resolving their personal issues.

There's design tradeoffs, whichever way we choose to design, but both are fine.

Another problem that comes up is how players' best practices are misaligned with one or both of position or design. If the rules text tells you outright (explicitly via "do this" or "don't do that") or implies/connotes (via incentive structures) to do this (when the going gets tough, go to the knife rather than the mind or watch your back because there is a comeuppance looming), but the actual play of the designed game tells you something else (like going to the knife is impotent and too punishing of a risk profile or the looming comeuppance isn't so looming because its all color/mood and no teeth), then something needs attending to.

Either outright land on (or signal) different best practices for the players, or different position, or different design.

I'd start by asking did the game signal that, or did the player read into what the game was signaling?
Or do the players subjective view of effectiveness or lack thereof, mesh with the games?
Or is it the way this campaign is implemented that is driving the low effectivness instead of the 'game itself'?

I guess what I'm saying is I can tell you with a single play example whether I as a player feel this is happening, but can't suss out whether i'm the issue or the game is, whether it was simply this 1 campaign following those rules, or whether it was the rules themselves. Etc.

Or worst case, some players find the game signals the right things, that they are at the right effectiveness and that they played in the 'right campaign. Other players don't. How do you suss out which players are right?

 

[Deset Gled]

I'm just going to do a quick post on the lead post's position and how it feeds into both design decisions and player best practices in a game.

...

If the game doesn't center these things as nexus of conflict, then there is a mismatch between design and position. One of those two need to conform to the other or we've got either a game that isn't about the character sheet position or a character sheet position that isn't in-line with the game.

This is a problem that sometimes comes up.

Another problem that comes up is how players' best practices are misaligned with one or both of position or design. If the rules text tells you outright (explicitly via "do this" or "don't do that") or implies/connotes (via incentive structures) to do this (when the going gets tough, go to the knife rather than the mind or watch your back because there is a comeuppance looming), but the actual play of the designed game tells you something else (like going to the knife is impotent and too punishing of a risk profile or the looming comeuppance isn't so looming because its all color/mood and no teeth), then something needs attending to.

Either outright land on (or signal) different best practices for the players, or different position, or different design.

I'm not convinced anything you have just said is actually a problem. It seems like you're just trying to pass off your personal preferences as "best practices", but you have provided no actual argument for them. In any case, it has little (if anything) to do with Baker's OP.

 

[FrogReaver]

No, you proved that the people who said these things have designed games. You haven't proven that what they said can actually be used to do so.

Thats why its an argument from authority, as you're counting on pointing at Baker making his games to stand in for you proving your contentions.

So I'm with you that VB designing a game doesn't necessarily indicate he used his proposed design framework to do so, but
1. I don't think that's an appeal to authority - I think if you were to give that a name it would be a non sequitur. *Not that naming logical fallacies is particularly useful or productive.

2. This isn't a rigorous academic discussion and as such I think citing compelling evidence, even if it lacks the nuance of rigorous proof is what I'd much rather spend my leisure time doing. I find the evidence that VB proposed a design framework and then designed games and that without rigorously proving it - they appear to line up with many of the quoted design frameworks he worked through at the theoretical level. That's plenty enough for me, unless you have a specific example where they do not.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think that depends on the fiction. Those could be the main thrusts of the 'story' or they could simply be some background to what the 'story' is really about. Neither is the 'right way'.

In D&D those most likely are mostly background elements to ground why you are adventuring - though maybe at some point they get elaborated on, but they don't have to because D&D is explicitly a game about heroic adventurers and not directly about characters resolving their personal issues.

There's design tradeoffs, whichever way we choose to design, but both are fine.

But why are these things on the character sheet (position) if they're mostly irrelevant to play?

* Split Hoof Cliffs isn't on the map and won't see the map (or whatever stand-in reference point).

* The war and my desertion of my unit isn't relevant or central.

* The priesthood, matters of faith, conversion, and comeuppance (from your desertion, from your false doctrine or fraudulence, from your faltering conscience) aren't relevant or central.


Why would any of these be on the character sheet if they aren't relevant or central to play? I mean, sure, offload them elsewhere if one likes (draw a picture of this character you're imagining or write some fan-fic or a backstory on a sheet of paper). But why are they on the character sheet?

I'd start by asking did the game signal that, or did the player read into what the game was signaling?
Or do the players subjective view of effectiveness or lack thereof, mesh with the games?
Or is it the way this campaign is implemented that is driving the low effectivness instead of the 'game itself'?

I guess what I'm saying is I can tell you with a single play example whether I as a player feel this is happening, but can't suss out whether i'm the issue or the game is, whether it was simply this 1 campaign following those rules, or whether it was the rules themselves. Etc.

Or worst case, some players find the game signals the right things, that they are at the right effectiveness and that they played in the 'right campaign. Other players don't. How do you suss out which players are right?

Let's imagine the player of James from Split Hoof Cliffs looks at the rulebook and knives appear to be mega mortal threats at first glance. However, in play, any or all of the following is true:

* The game treats physical conflicts with a serious advancement penalty vs engaging in and resolving alternative types of conflicts (convincing folks, convincing other folks to do your dirty work, running away and disappearing, etc).

* The bigness of knives and a honed edge have little to no actual impact on resolution, but you spend PC build budget points (or whatever) on "Big" and "Sharp."

* Getting in melee combat is extraordinarily dangerous when contrasted with convincing folks or running away or whatever ranged combat there is. The "die-out" rate or "irrevocably maimed" rate is punishingly high.


Now imagine that the game says somewhere for players to read "go boldly into danger."

That stuff seems like a problem.

EDIT: Cross-posted.

I'm not convinced anything you have just said is actually a problem. It seems like you're just trying to pass off your personal preferences as "best practices", but you have provided no actual argument for them. In any case, it has little (if anything) to do with Baker's OP.

What are my personal preferences?

Frogreaver, you xp'd this so I'll ask you the same question?

 

[FrogReaver]

But why are these things on the character sheet (position) if they're mostly irrelevant to play?

* Split Hoof Cliffs isn't on the map and won't see the map (or whatever stand-in reference point).

* The war and my desertion of my unit isn't relevant or central.

* The priesthood, matters of faith, conversion, and comeuppance (from your desertion, from your false doctrine or fraudulence, from your faltering conscience) aren't relevant or central.


Why would any of these be on the character sheet if they aren't relevant or central to play? I mean, sure, offload them elsewhere if one likes (draw a picture of this character you're imagining or write some fan-fic or a backstory on a sheet of paper). But why are they on the character sheet?

...Because they are relevant to roleplay. One could easily start with the fact that they are 'relevant to roleplay' and end up with 'central to play' in a way that is true and makes sense - though that may or may not line up with your intended definition of 'central to play'. I mean ultimately we aren't going to claim roleplay isn't central to play are we?

Let's imagine the player of James from Split Hoof Cliffs looks at the rulebook and knives appear to be mega mortal threats at first glance. However, in play, any or all of the following is true:

* The game treats physical conflicts with a serious advancement penalty vs engaging in and resolving alternative types of conflicts (convincing folks, convincing other folks to do your dirty work, running away and disappearing, etc).

* The bigness of knives and a honed edge have little to no actual impact on resolution, but you spend PC build budget points (or whatever) on "Big" and "Sharp."

* Getting in melee combat is extraordinarily dangerous when contrasted with convincing folks or running away or whatever ranged combat there is. The "die-out" rate or "irrevocably maimed" rate is punishingly high.


Now imagine that the game says somewhere for players to read "go boldly into danger."

That stuff seems like a problem.

It depends on perspective and your personal preferences. What if the game was really about learning which options were effective and then picking the effective options? Or having the DM scale content to your choices and power level?

 

[FrogReaver]

What are my personal preferences?

Frogreaver, you xp'd this so I'll ask you the same question?

I liked the post because I don't agree that many of the things you are calling problems are actually problems.

As an explicit example, you said: (no forum quote so it shows if you reply)
"If the game doesn't center these things as nexus of conflict, then there is a mismatch between design and position. One of those two need to conform to the other or we've got either a game that isn't about the character sheet position or a character sheet position that isn't in-line with the game.

This is a problem that sometimes comes up."

I don't believe that's actually a problem. To be kind i'd say it's a problem for your personal preferences. To more directly answer your question - You have a concept (preference) that things on the character sheet need to be 'central to the game' - and by that you mean more than in an 'aids roleplay' kind of sense that I spoke of in my previous post. That concept isn't universal. It's a preference. An understandable one, but still a preference.

 

[Emberashh]

How do you suss out which players are right?

Thats an issue that I believe reveals a drawback in asserting RPGs as being limitlessly capable.

Pretty much any other kind of game, people will readily accept as part of the premise that not everything is going to match up with personal preferences, and most will in turn modify their expectations accordingly. Its not foolproof of course, as a game can still be pretty abrasive even if a players attempted to embrace it, but you don't really see these kinds of issues popping up unless something is really, really bad.

But in RPGs, so many of them try to sell themselves on this idea of being limitlessly capable when they aren't. In fact, apropos to the topic, Bakers games and the many derivatives that followed embody exactly that.

There's no shortage of people that will tell you a given a PBTA game has to be played to its premise, and not doing so will break the game. If you try to play Masks as anything other than what it is, it will break.

And yet, when the zeitgeist collectively insists on RPGs being limitless, people get funnelled towards Masks as its considered one of the better supers games, and unless they're able to buy into its specific premise, they're almost assuredly going to bounce right off of it.

I don't think that's an appeal to authority

Id say it is in the context of what pemerton was saying. I don't have any doubt that Baker himself would say he used his ideas to design his game, and he probably could explain exactly how he did so.

But thats not any different than me doing the same thing from my perspective when I talk about synchronicity, and I can point to a few different examples in my game that follows that approach.

But what pemerton is doing is simply quoting Baker and leaving it at that. There's no logical "arrow" from A to B that reveals any sort of practical design method. While my alternative might be esoteric to someone who hasn't read the book I've been referencing, it doesn't lack the logic arrow. Ie, you abstract the mechanics in such a way that you can directly examine the effects they generate.

This meanwhile, is a handy diagram that breaksdown the overall process and why its valuable:

Handy indeed, given it basically makes a feedback loop out of making games, which is the precise thing we're aiming for to keep gameplay going mechanically. The problems outlined in the OP are things that can be identified through simulation (typically playtesting, or if applicable through an abstract simulation of the loop itself; the "Tool" in the diagram), and you can break them down into a diagram so you can then make controlled adjustments to the mechanic.

This was how I ended up figuring out how to refine my combat system so that it was both easier to explain and grokk, as the resulting diagram I was working with was sound, meaning it should have been producing the effect I wanted, and so the fact that it wasn't is qhat pointed me towards the aesthetic issue of what the Actions were called.

Simply calling them Actions instead of two different terms dramatically simplified the entire system, and it took minimal adjustments to the overall pattern to account for the change. And as fortune had it, the change also ended up being an overall boon for gameplay as it made it easier to justify a second Action source for players, which in turn meant I didn't have to upend my entire combat system, and now players have a lot more room to do things.

And now Im in the process of using this technique to finish building my Exploration system, as well as to set up my Social system.

 

[clearstream]

I'm a hobbyist, and not particularly glorified.

Vincent Baker is one of the most important RPG designers ever. It would be completely misguided to describe him as a "hobbyist".

I don't know what you mean by this. Maybe you mean that Apocalypse World and its offshoots are a hugely influential collection of RPGs?

What important RPGs have been designed using this book? What are its principles about the relationship between mechanics and fiction in the context of RPGing, a game form in which most participants play the game by declaring actions for a character in an imagined situation?

Ernest Adams was primarily writing for videogame design. He authored a series of articles on the subject and the book brings together many important ideas. Currencies as a tool of game design had been well explored by videogame designers, so that element of what Vincent was writing was not new (though neither was it misleading or unhelpful!)

I think Vincent's most important contributions have been in the direction of "how to relate the fictional and the mechanical" which he accurately characterised in the piece you quoted as "one of the ongoing and outstanding crises in rpg design." You might recall for example that we debated awhile back the prospect of games like chess as engines of fiction. Through long contemplation of your and Vincent's arguments I now think it is right that although a game of chess produces a history, and although one can have conceits in mind for the pieces, the moves, and the board, when one plays chess one is not involved in manipulating fiction. One plays chess in the real world, as it were.

One of the unique challenges of TTRPG design is crafting rules that manipulate - are informed by and have effect in - fiction. Ernest Adams is emphatically not addressing that problem. @Emberashh I would draw this point to your attention as I think you might see that while TTRPGs are certainly games and there are many commonalities between them and other games - they are easily recognisable members of the family - it is better to think in terms of incomplete overlaps. Meaning that there are design problems to solve for them that don't arise in other kinds of games.

It's possible that there are ways to see the neurological representation of fiction in a similar light to the mechanical representation of game world in CRPG, so that to say that TTRPG mechanics have fictional effect is actually to say they have neurological effect just as much as CRPG mechanics have mechanical effect (e.g. updating a game state and calculating and rendering the current scene.) I don't think Ernest Adams was making such an argument, although I admit I haven't read his book cover to cover. Even if it were, practical differences between brains (or future AIs) and current silicon computers would raise unique design problems... that are of the kind Vincent is illuminating! How do we craft mechanics when the results are uncertain yet intended to fall within certain norms? What norms do we make appeal to, and what is the ideal way to make that appeal? How can we constrain it? What purposes might we conceive for such mechanics? Vincent is writing on all of these important questions.

 

[FrogReaver]

Ernest Adams was primarily writing for videogame design. He authored a series of articles on the subject and the book brings together many important ideas. Currencies as a tool of game design had been well explored by videogame designers, so that element of what Vincent was writing was not new (though neither was it misleading or unhelpful!)

I think Vincent's most important contributions have been in the direction of "how to relate the fictional and the mechanical" which he accurately characterised in the piece you quoted as "one of the ongoing and outstanding crises in rpg design." You might recall for example that we debated awhile back the prospect of games like chess as engines of fiction. Through long contemplation of your and Vincent's arguments I now think it is right that although a game of chess produces a history, and although one can have conceits in mind for the pieces, the moves, and the board, when one plays chess one is not involved in manipulating fiction. One plays chess in the real world, as it were.

One of the unique challenges of TTRPG design is crafting rules that manipulate - are informed by and have effect in - fiction. Ernest Adams is emphatically not addressing that problem. @Emberashh I would draw this point to your attention as I think you might see that while TTRPGs are certainly games and there are many commonalities between them and other games - they are easily recognisable members of the family - it is better to think in terms of incomplete overlaps. Meaning that there are design problems to solve for them that don't arise in other kinds of games.

It's possible that there are ways to see the neurological representation of fiction in a similar light to the mechanical representation of game world in CRPG, so that to say that TTRPG mechanics have fictional effect is actually to say they have neurological effect just as much as CRPG mechanics have mechanical effect (e.g. updating a game state and calculating and rendering the current scene.) I don't think Ernest Adams was making such an argument, although I admit I haven't read his book cover to cover. Even if it were, practical differences between brains (or future AIs) and current silicon computers would raise unique design problems... that are of the kind Vincent is illuminating! How do we craft mechanics when the results are uncertain yet intended to fall within certain norms? What norms do we make appeal to, and what is the ideal way to make that appeal? How can we constrain it? What purposes might we conceive for such mechanics? Vincent is writing on all of these important questions.

All elements considered in their proper context, i'm not sure rpg design and video game design are substantially different.

RPG's are more open ended - or at least can be. Video games aren't, or at least not yet - though that's more due to technical limitations than aspirations.

Part of it is that video game design includes not just what RPG designers do but also what the DM does at the table. The video game designer is fulfilling all of those roles. So if the game isn't playing right, it's really either something they did or the game they designed is just not for that particular player. They try to cast a wide net for players - but not every video game is for every video gamer.

And then there's mods - many great video games have been great primarily because of community mods. The individual DM/Group often feeds this dynamic for an RPG.

Also Note video games typically concern themselves with story quite a bit. Compared to an RPG it's usually alot more railroady, but the basics of having the mechanics and story work together are all there.

What substantial difference is left?