Improvisation vs "code-breaking" in D&D

Campbell said:

We tend to think about what constitutes system in different ways. To you system is all about the artifacts of play (character sheets, dice, and numerical representations of stuff).

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I think you are slightly misreading me here. I'm not sure it matters too much to this conversation, but that's not the way I think about system, and I'm telling you that now in case it comes up later.

For me it includes directives on how to play the game, and I think those directives are the most crucial area of design because it has the biggest impact.

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Ok, my first response to that is, "Yes, you are absolutely right. That's a direct consequence of Celebrim's Second Law. Even if you present a complete rules set, if you don't tell players how to play, and if you don't show and tell GMs what to prepare and what to do during play, at best you've actually produced multiple parallel games that will be played in many different ways as groups improvise techniques. And at worst, you haven't produced a game at all, and no one will play it because even if everyone knows the rules, no one will know how."

However, my second response is, "Strictly speaking, those directives regarding how to prepare for play, and how to think about playing your game, aren't actually part of the system of the game. The system is a complete game without those directives. The system of the game is the part of the game that describes mechanical process resolution." Ultimately, those directives are just suggestions by the designer how to approach the game if you want to play the same game that they intend. It's not however wrong to take the same system and repurpose it to a completely different game by ignoring the suggestions. This is a concept Edwards never fully grasped.

What's very important and so often overlooked is just how well Gygax understood that D&D was more than its system, and just how well D&D - particularly 1e D&D - defined by example how the game could be played. Note, not the way the game would or should be played which Gygax left up to the group, but the way that it could be played. (Let's leave aside for now Gygax's vacillation on this topic and sometimes difficulty in expressing his preference for moderation leading to him simultaneously expressing two extreme dichotomies as if they didn't contradict each other.) More so than any other early game system, D&D created those examples of play. "Here is a module. You can use this to play D&D in a functional manner." Or consider the very lengthy example of play in the 1e DMG which remains relevant to this day.

Basically, we have different ideas as to what counts as playing a particular game as designed.

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Again, I'm not sure that we do. I'm just insisting that the definition of the game's system be kept distinct from these other things, so that we can note how system differs from these directives about how to think about the game precisely because I think they are different and that difference is not appreciated as much as it should be.

The same is true of Ars Magica and Vampire. They had successfully captured a different way people had already been playing role playing games.

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I am very glad you brought these two up, because here we very much disagree and in a way that gets down to the heart of what I'm saying.

The V:tM original rulebook is a work of art in its presentation. And it's in many ways a very original work with what could potentially be a functional and innovative rules system. But when you closely examine it, what you discover is that there is an almost complete disconnect between the examples of play, and what the system provides for and how the system is likely to be used. The author does an absolutely terrible job telling the player how to use the system to create the game that the gamebook seems to provide for. On obvious way that it goes horribly wrong is that the examples of play all involve a single character. But presumably, we aren't intended or expected to play the game with only a GM and a single character (which would be about the only way to play the game the book describes). So the real terrible failure of the V:tM rules is it creates a game that no one played in the manner described by the book. People invented for themselves ways of playing the game and ways of thinking about the game, and were often innovative and had a lot of fun. They played gothic super heroes. They played magical mafia lords. They played D&D or Top Secret with vampires. But none of those were game described by the book or the game the author seemed to intend to create, which ostensibly was a game about exploring the loss of humanity, dealing with ones inner monsters, the descent into madness and depravity, and the possibility of redemption. And to the extent that the game was supposed to be about that, the system didn't naturally support it and lead people in that direction so without lots and lots of examples of play, it was never going to get where it said it was going for.

People captivated by the game described by the book, were likely going to be rudely disappointed by what most people actually played.

Wraith is even a stronger and more extreme example.

No Myth isn't about prep. It's a fancy way to say: "I'm not going to commit to anything until it sees play". It's not really anymore complicated than that. It's about allowing the course of the game to take the lead over your prep. It's also not really binary. We might have different sorts of prep that have varying levels of myth. Some prep could be definitely true, some prep could be true unless something happens. Some prep might be true. There are varying levels of myth you could prep to. Saying you run a No Myth game is saying most of your prep falls into one level. This can change throughout a game. A given piece of prep might gain more mythiness as the result of what happens in play. Prep is ongoing. It doesn't just happen outside of play, but also during play. As we're resolving a scene I'm adjusting my prep and prepping for the next scene or constructing a mental map as it were. It's about setting a place for play - defining what's in question.

Here's an example. Let's say I'm running a game of D&D. I decide the dragon Fersyxavan wants to take over the Goderlands. This is relatively firm prep. I also decide that he'll offer something one of the PCs want if they'll help him unless they are immediately hostile. I also decide if that happens Fersyxavan will respond with some sort of violence directed towards someone they care about. I also decide Fersyxavan might be pliable to working with the Goderlands if they provide tribute. I also decide Fersyxavan might have an army of kobold followers. I'm not committed to either though. There's also a lot I'm not saying yet. Where did this dragon come from? What exactly is he capable of? Is he willing to commit mass murder to get what he wants? Why does he want to rule the Goderlands? This are questions that will impact the scope of play. I probably have some ideas, but I commit to them in various degrees.

Zak S said:

Point is Edwards theories are irrelevant dross, not Newtonian "useful approximations"

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Actually, the point is that you feel Edwards' theories are irrelevant dross...

Let us be clear - with, say, Newtonian mechanics, we can do an experiment with something approaching objective measurements, and test whether the theory matches the real world. That mechanism is not readily available for RPGs at reasonable cost. So, we are left with opinions. I *agree* with you that GNS has significant shortcomings. However, we cannot say with any level of confidence how close to reality GNS (or any other paradigm) is, because *nobody* has the data. It is all *opinions*. It would be wondrous if you spoke as if you recognized that fact.

But, here's the thing you may be missing - the utility of GNS is not necessarily driven by it being particularly accurate.

I will turn to tarot cards as an example. As a physicist, I know darned well that the random draw of cards from a deck has no relation to how a person's life will turn out - as a model for the universe and the future, there's nothing accurate about a tarot deck. However, it is also demonstrable that a tarot reading can be an effective problem-solving tool. How is that possible?

It proves useful by taking you outside of your own head, and, for a time, allowing your thoughts to be driven by an outside logic and framework. Tarot cards can assist you in thinking outside the box, taking you outside your mental ruts, and forcing you to think about interactions and interrelations you wouldn't consider on your own. Sometimes, to generate ideas, it does not matter much what framework of approach you use, so long as you pick one.

Thus, you get things like FATE. It is pretty clear that the game is *not* really a Forge design. It is similarly clear, however, that considering Narrative as a major force we could bring to the fore *is* part of its design. But, instead of trying to take on narrative alone, as GNS in full would have you do, it takes Narrative and Game and does a pretty good job of aligning them. The Game portion is not particularly deep, but it is formed such that doing the Game-appropriate thing and the Narrative-appropriate thing are not at odds, and is an award-winning design that probably would not have arisen had the Forge and GNS theory never happened.

Celebrim said:

pemerton is not actually describing techniques that correspond in any tight way to the terminology as Forge defined it.

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What I think actually happened is that reading some Forge essays revolutionized how pemerton thought about playing and preparing to play a game and set him off in new directions. I don't know much about his pre-Forge preparation or style (but the fact that he played RM for 20 years tells you a lot), but his post Forge preparation and scene adjudication sounds remarkably familiar to a lot of things I've seen done going back to at least the early 90's. However, rather than describing his normal play in the normal terms that ought to characterize it, he stays stuck in Forge-isms because it was those things that caused him to question his earlier techniques and develop new largely system independent approaches.

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It's not a secret, and I've posted about it often enough.

I discovered my preferred approach to GMing and play more generally around 1986, GMing Oriental Adventures. The Forge didn't revolutionise my play. It did give me useful tools for analysing my play. And, as I've posted in this thread, it was helpful for resolving some practical issues in running Rolemaster. Some of those techniques are what informs the design of Burning Wheel, which combines 80s-style heavy process sim (infinitely long skill lists, lots of derived attributes playing various baroque mechanical roles, a combat system with active defences, hit location, wound penalties, etc) with indie-style system elements to help drive character-and-situation based play.

Rolemaster has the process sim elements that breathe life into character and situation, but lacks the system elements. Which, in my experience, can cause some problems. (Eg when following the mechanical details of framing and resolving a situation starts to lead the experience at the table away from what was significant about the characters and situation into mere minutiae.) The Forge essays helped me identify in a clear way what was going on with some of this, and then to handle it.

Celebrim said:

I've heard him describe the process of creating a dungeon backstory while preparing for play as "no myth", and call linear process-sim resolution as "Story First" drama techniques.

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I don't really know what you're talking about here. I certainly don't know what you have in mind by a "dungeon backstory". I don't use many dungeons, and the backstory beyond some initial framing is generally developed during play.

But even in this thread I've made it clear that my game is not fully no-myth. Eg in my BW game we have the GH maps.

Many things are matters of degree. The default approach to GMing on ENworld is heavy world-building. (Perhaps by proxy - using a published campaign setting.) The default assumption is that the richer and more developed the GM's world is in advance of play, the better the game.

My best experiences come from the opposite approach: very light worldbuilding (eg in my BW game we have the GH maps, and not much else prior to play), and developing the world through play.

Maxperson said:

If the plot goes on without them, by definition it cannot be a railroad since the PCs are not on it and have not been forced onto it.

I run a living, breathing world. The rest of the world does not cease to exist just because the PCs cannot see it. Things put into motion play out as they will. Only PC intervention will alter those things. If they choose to intervene, things play out differently. If they choose not to intervene in the assassination attempt on the king's life, the assassination attempt goes forward without them. That's not railroading. It's the opposite of railroading.

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All a sandbox is, is a game where the PCs decide what they do and just go.

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Yes. I know all this. I'm not confused about how you run your game. All I'm saying is that that is not my preferred approach, because of the way it prioritises the GM's concerns and preferences in respect of the fiction.

For me, the key concern in play is not so much the freedom or power enjoyed by the PCs, as the freedom and power enjoyed by the players. In your game the PCs are free to do what they want, but subject to what exists in the gameworld. What I am talking about is the way the gameworld is created.

Now if your sandbox is in fact a game in which the GM generates content more-or-less in the course of play, in response to player-expressed cues and interests, it's probably no different from how I run my game. But that doesn't seem to me to be what you're describing (eg because you're describing a gameworld which has a whole lot of stuff going on that is not part of the actual events of playing the game).

Campbell said:

the indie RPG community didn't invent a new way to play role playing games. They attempted to capture a way to play role playing games people had been using since role playing games were like a thing and create a set of games that were more suited to that way of playing.

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This sort of thing is important to acknowledge. The indie community totally did a poor job of communicating this from the start, and tried to appear way to avant garde. We were like making a statement man!

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I've never thought of myself as part of an "indie community". To the extent that I have observed such a community from the outside (eg reading Forge threads, reading some rpg.net threads) I think my gaming would be regarded as pretty banal by many or most members of that community.

But I've always regarded as obvious that the Forge wasn't about inventing new ways to play, but rather about describing, in a certain abstract and systematised way, various ways in which RPGs are played, and trying to design some games to suit that.

In my own case, I've always made it clear that the Forge helped me make sense of what I was doing, and thereby to do it better. It didn't teach me how to frame scenes, but it did teach me the vocabulary to describe "scene-framing" as a technique.

Campbell said:

No Myth isn't about prep. It's a fancy way to say: "I'm not going to commit to anything until it sees play".

<snip>

It's also not really binary.

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Yes. I assume all this is obvious.

In some other threads discussing some issues similar to this one I've made clear my dislike of "secret backstory" - ie backstory known only by the GM, and not accessible to the players in the course of resolution - having a bearing on action resolution. To me that comes very close to the GM roleplaying with him-/herself.

Whereas in [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game that sort of secret backstory - eg the assassination plot - seems pretty important.

I think my game is better for me. I hope that Maxperson is playing a game that is good for Maxperson.

The point of distinguishing between them isn't to establish that one is better than the other in some non-relativised sense. It's to make it clear that advice or rules or techniques that work for Maxperson won't work for everyone (and likewise for me).

In the context of threads about GMing advice, which are fairly common on ENworld, it's also about making it clear what range of approaches is available. So it's also about saying "Hey, I'm doing this thing and it works for me. If you're having trouble with what you're doing or something's not working for you, maybe this will be some help."

pemerton said:

I've never thought of myself as part of an "indie community". To the extent that I have observed such a community from the outside (eg reading Forge threads, reading some rpg.net threads) I think my gaming would be regarded as pretty banal by many or most members of that community.

But I've always regarded as obvious that the Forge wasn't about inventing new ways to play, but rather about describing, in a certain abstract and systematised way, various ways in which RPGs are played, and trying to design some games to suit that.

In my own case, I've always made it clear that the Forge helped me make sense of what I was doing, and thereby to do it better. It didn't teach me how to frame scenes, but it did teach me the vocabulary to describe "scene-framing" as a technique.

Yes. I assume all this is obvious.

In some other threads discussing some issues similar to this one I've made clear my dislike of "secret backstory" - ie backstory known only by the GM, and not accessible to the players in the course of resolution - having a bearing on action resolution. To me that comes very close to the GM roleplaying with him-/herself.

Whereas in [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game that sort of secret backstory - eg the assassination plot - seems pretty important.

I think my game is better for me. I hope that Maxperson is playing a game that is good for Maxperson.

The point of distinguishing between them isn't to establish that one is better than the other in some non-relativised sense. It's to make it clear that advice or rules or techniques that work for Maxperson won't work for everyone (and likewise for me).

In the context of threads about GMing advice, which are fairly common on ENworld, it's also about making it clear what range of approaches is available. So it's also about saying "Hey, I'm doing this thing and it works for me. If you're having trouble with what you're doing or something's not working for you, maybe this will be some help."

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I just want to chime in with, everything in my game is knowable and accessible. I'm just not always going to stuff a card in the pocket of a PC that says, "The king is going to be killed at midnight. Beware the owls three." If they don't talk to people and/or miss the clues, they aren't going to know about the attempt.

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION],

What follows is entirely my own perspective on what mechanics bring to the table. It's totally cool to see things differently. I'm simply laying out biases - where I come from. We probably agree in more areas than we disagree, but I'm still going to lay the whole thing out on the table.

I think there is more than a difference in mental models going on here. I think the way we talk about these things matters. When you give the mechanical bits and pieces as separate things you give them independent value and consideration that I don't believe they should have. They only have value in a particular context. Something like them might have value in other contexts, but not independently of them. Here that context is the game we are sitting down to play. Outside of play they have no value. I don't believe mechanics can be judged independently of a particular game. They might be judged based on some other game you have in mind and their possible fitness for that game, but not independently.

Consider the layout of a book. You might value the artistry of the layout. You might take ideas from it how to lay out your own book, but from a design standpoint the layout only has value in communicating the content of the book and should be judged in that context. A layout does not have an independent existence. It exists to serve its content. Similar layouts might serve the needs of different books, but they also totally belong to their books and should be celebrated for what they are.

There's a reason why I refer to the mechanical bits and bobs as artifacts of play. First, they are the tools we use to play the game and the vestigial remains of playing the game. Also, they are not the game, and should not be mistaken for it. They represent things and help us communicate about things, but they are not those things. Your character sheet is not your character. Your prep is not the world, fiction, play space, whatever, etc. The mechanics are not the game. They are tools used to play the game. Their value is entirely contextual.

Their contextual value is however tremendous. A character sheet helps us to say things about our characters in a concise way. It aids us in the play of the particular game we are playing right now, and serves as a helpful reminder after play how things have changed for the character. Experience points serve as a way to communicate to a player that they are playing the game well however we choose to define it. After play they serve as evidence of how well a given player played their character. The moves in Apocalypse World serve as a way to quickly communicate what happens when a player has their character do a thing. The stuff I write down away from the table serves as a reminder and prompt for what situations to present in play, and afterwards I can look at it and reflect on what actually happened.

This is huge because it helps to make play functional. It provides a way to talk about the things that are actually involved in playing the game - presenting situations, having our characters do things in response to those things, finding out what happens and how the world is changed. Like an effective layout they help us do the things we were going to do anyway in the process of playing the game. They tell us nothing about the what and the how. Don't get this twisted - I think they should be developed in tandem with the rest of the game to ensure they effectively communicate what the game is about and serve as useful tools for doing so. I'm just saying they derive their value from the rest of the game, not as a thing unto itself.

Play procedures and directives tell us the what and the how. Play procedures are the how and directives are the what, but the conceptual bleed here is pretty high. When your character does something that corresponds to a skill, roll 1d20+ skill and succeed if you beat the TN is an obvious play procedure. To do it - you have to do it is also a play procedure, although less obviously so. Play your character as if they were a real person is an obvious directive. Introduce your character by name, look, and outlook going around one at a time bleeds at the edges because it involves both how and what.

Together these form the meat of any game. This is where we get to things that shape the game and get us to do things we would not do if left to our own devices. That's crucial to me. If I just wanted to role play and not play a role playing game I wouldn't need this stuff. I want an experience where I have actual stuff to go after from either side of the GM's seat, where I get to subvert the stuff I as a person value and instead value other things. I also want to be told how to go about it so that with different games I can go about it in different ways. I want play to represent a skill we can improve at so we're not just doing a thing to do it. Sometimes that's deciphering puzzles and managing resources in a dungeon bash. Other times its finding a place in the world, playing a character as a person who wants things and goes after them with vigor in Apocalypse World while trying to outsmart the people who have what I want as played by a semi-adversarial MC.

Separate post because I wanted to address this separately. When I talk about playing a game, but not like playing it I'm not making a negative value judgement on the game being played. Quite the opposite. Changing softer play procedures and directives is as much an act of game design as creating a new playbook for Apocalypse World, making long rests take a week in a safe place in 4e, creating a new character sheet, or even rewriting skill resolution. People should be proud of these games they have designed and value the work they have put in to do so.

This is probably not the most popular thing to say, but I believe Rein-Hagen simply made a game that had a compelling premise that utilized a set of play procedures that I believe make for poor play and do not live up to what the game sold itself as. He gets credit for the things he got right, but does not deserve credit for the design work of people who liked the conceptual underpinnings that designed or hacked if you prefer compelling games out of it. The credit for those endeavors should go to the people who did so, and I would love to hear about their games. The credit for Apocalypse World belongs to Vincent Baker. The credit for Dungeon World belongs to Sage Latorra and Adam Koebel for the design work that took them from Apocalypse D&D to what Dungeon World has become. The prior work is important to the endeavor, but the end result is due to their creativity, ingenuity, and labor. All design is iterative, but the actual game should be judged on its own in its specific context.


[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION],

This is an area where I get a little sketchy about my D&D 4e games. I like the games I used material from it to play, but I'm not entirely sold on it as a game. When I played it I utilized a set of very deliberate hacks. Some involved the artifacts of play (changing the rest cycle, cutting out vast swathes of assumed content, using skill challenge hacks, hacking in a set of relationship mechanics). I also used a set of play procedures and goals for play that dramatically shaped the result of play. I enjoyed those games, but I don't know how much credit I can give them for it. I also don't see the tweaks I made to play procedures as fundamentally different in scope to those I made to the mechanics. They were all game design, not professional game design, but game design none the less.

Sorry for the wall of text, folks. What I was trying to say was mechanics are like contextually useful, but should not be mistaken for the thing we are doing in play and how we go about doing it. I believe that this is fertile design space and bears equal if not more consideration, and it's a good thing to have games that approach this from different angles. I do have a personal bugaboo about taking what I call the artifacts of play as a fetish and making play about them instead of the things they represent. I believe play happens in the conversation we have about the play space (fiction or mental model depending on who you talk to).

I also have a little bit of hate in my heart for Vampire: The Masquerade. Luckily, I now have the 2nd Edition of Vampire - The Requiem which does everything I ever wanted out of V:tM. I'm overly strident about this in a way I probably shouldn't be, in the same way I'm often more competitive than I should be.

I want to clarify something here: My opinions on Vampire - The Masquerade are strong, but I don't think by any stretch that it is a bad thing that it was written. I'm not a fan of the pervasive effect it had in the community, but don't mistake my criticism for the idea that I can impose the things I value on the community as a whole. The idea that we need to serve as gatekeepers as to what games people are allowed to design or like or play is totally not something I want to say. Our hobby is diverse, and I view that in a positive light.

I think criticism of that style of play is useful and was sorely needed. It was taken too far at times, and is part of the reason I'm glad that my corner of the hobby moved on from The Forge. The point of that criticism should be to understand why certain games don't work for us and encourage new games that we can totally jam out on, and not to deny a part of the hobby the sort of play they like or attempt to excommunicate them because they like different things.

Where the OSR has been effective it's because of celebration of this thing they really like and think other people would like too if they gave it a shot. We really need more of that in general. Here's why more people should play Apocalypse World - you can get together with friends and play a game where you are all dangerous, capable people trying to carve out your own piece of a world that's gone to . You get to be a vital part of a community that needs to reestablish itself after society just hit the reset button. Do you push it towards oblivion or build something new? Let's play to find out.

As an aside for [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION]: Have you taken a look at Stars Without Number? It's a totally cool space exploration RPG that is designed for the sort of play experience it sounds like your after. In between sessions part of GM prep involves a phase where you use random charts to figure out what's going on in the galaxy. It's a cool little game.

pemerton said:

In some other threads discussing some issues similar to this one I've made clear my dislike of "secret backstory" - ie backstory known only by the GM, and not accessible to the players in the course of resolution - having a bearing on action resolution. To me that comes very close to the GM roleplaying with him-/herself.

Whereas in [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game that sort of secret backstory - eg the assassination plot - seems pretty important.

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Maxperson said:

I just want to chime in with, everything in my game is knowable and accessible. I'm just not always going to stuff a card in the pocket of a PC that says, "The king is going to be killed at midnight. Beware the owls three." If they don't talk to people and/or miss the clues, they aren't going to know about the attempt.

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Unless I'm misunderstanding pretty badly, though, in your game that backstory may not be accessible in the course of the resolution to which it matters.