The stuff you describe is the sort of way that (2) starts to drift towards (1). Over time, in my own GMing, I've tended to increase this degree of drift.
Improvisation vs "code-breaking" in D&D
Balesir
Adventurer
OK. It wasn't meant to be; if you have that much invested in attacking a thing I genuinely hope that you get something positive out of it. Maybe the archaic phrasing spooked you - I may have been reading too much Aubrey and Maturin, recently?
Well, you would know better than I what I have and haven't read, but I'm pretty sure I read it all the way through. More than once. (And, for the avoidance of doubt, yes, that was meant sarcastically).
What I took away from it was that the possible "agendas" or "sources of fun" were worth considering in an RPG. These include the glee of winning a gamble, game or puzzle, the glee of pushing a character agenda and seeing if it "sticks" and the glee of exploring a brand new world that is unknown to you. Maybe there are more - though I have seen none claimed as yet with much real force. Systems tend to support these agendas differentially.
I don't see how this specific statement of "what Edwards said" to be provably inaccurate at all, actually. The phrasing "equally satisfy" is inherently unprovable without massive assumtions and investment in measurement technology.
This statement, on the other hand, is provably false. I would think it is most likely false, in fact, although I am not at all sure that Ron ever said it and I have never seen any real "proof" for myself. But, if you want to claim that this is wrong, go ahead - I'll happily acquiesce.
For what it's worth, the reason I haven't seen any "proof of wrongness" of this stuff is that I haven't looked for it, since I don't consider the GNS stuff to have the status of a hypothesis, let alone a "theory", as such. I hadn't put the words together, but [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s calling it "criticism" seems entirely apposite, to me. As such, it is useful and contains tools that help when I consider a system element or instance of actual play, but I wouldn't give it any predictive or normative authority. As a descriptive system, it's useful, but as a proscriptive system it's not.
howandwhy99
Adventurer
The game uses labels referring to an actual design. There are actual pieces and a grid in the pattern which is the chessboard and pieces. Maybe a chess king may resemble a person who's king , but it's not what is being referred to. It's to the piece in a game. Same as a troll in D&D.
Treating a shoe as a flower pot or a door stop gets us treating the shoe as something else. Games are a recognizable culture of ideas. Treating a design in the world as a game, namely a pattern we attempt to manipulate to achieve objectives -inherently already existing in that pattern - is playing that real world element as a game.
A design of a game is like a mathematical model. That it is playable as a game means it has a pattern underlying its design.
These patterns actually are taken to exist. Whether outside our minds on football fields or inside our minds (what I call fantasy) when we imagine the chess game we play.
As an aside, I take D&D to be a fantasy RPG because it is meant to largely challenge players' ability to imagine the referee described design which they need to remember and master.
This was first to say, "If we treat it as a puzzle, we engage in puzzling out an underlying pattern". The following sentence of my previous post (quoted below) was how we treat these same codes as games. When we play games like Chess we are discerning the pattern of possible moves and locations on the board. We are thinking about future outcomes based upon understood movements of the pieces. That's deciphering what possible outcomes lie ahead given the current state the game. That's only possible in a pattern.
Randomness is about expressing a variable pattern. This is what dice do in D&D. They are randomizers within which the pattern of odds can be predicted. Fair dice have the prescribed distribution pattern for the game they are design for. We can judge can attempt to judge how difficult a foe is in D&D combat by seeing how regularly they hit, their average damage, and so on. Even though these are random results, the die rolls are bulit to be predictable.
Personally, I use an algorithm like in Conway's game of life. Only it's multidimensional rather than 2D. That algorithm is a code and generates a function map just like any game map. When I say pattern I mean all the possible outcomes of that algorithm that constitutes the possible game design generated. The algorithm is not all encompassing, but it is ongoing as long as it is progressed forward. (an Infinite Game)
For all games, I mean the term simply mean deciphering the repeating code of the game so I can manipulate pieces of it to achieve objectives within it. That this is often a spatial pattern is more obvious, but it isn't solely one game state or another.
Exactly. A game is deciphering/manipulating a pattern to achieve an objective, aka a goal. If we treat the garden maze as a game, then we are gaming.
All of which directly goes against definitions that games are collaborative creations. That definition loses almost everything built up over centuries of ideas constituting game culture. Gaming and puzzling are acts of discovery, not invention.
I disagree. The design outside ourselves is the game to be played. It doesn't matter where it came from.
Culture: A common set of thoughts and/or behaviors shared by a group of creatures.
The history of playing games has accumulated a culture of common ideas and practices. A culture that is highly unique in comparison to storytelling. When we treat a pattern in the world as a game as understood within the culture of ideas I am calling game culture we are treating that pattern as a game.
But I understand you to be treating games as existent without people's understanding of them as part of the design.
That's one of the wonderful things about D&D. It treats *everything* as a game. It understands that a forest is maze. So is a barren field. The sky. That these can be measured, statted for difficulty depending on objective, and put in a game is just like any maze.
What the first game should have included is a way to balance whatever map the DM drew for difficulty. That came later with advanced.
B2's keep is a perfect example of how terrain matters as design. That entire map can be used in a wargame where the Chaotic PCs the chaos horde against the "lawful dungeon" of the humans. It is a maze with walls and floors and ceilings and rooms, pathways, all sorts of stuff. Wargames treat all elements of the map / board / table very seriously. They are usually competitive, so all those elements are balanced as well as possible. In D&D they are balanced by power level in the world.
In truth play did stop when the pieces were taken off the board. I'm running Greyhawk now so this I know. Stories about the Castle talk about how Gary started with just ruins and 1 level, then 2, 3, and so on as people joined and delved deeper going back tothe top to get fresh supplies, 10' poles, "dungeon carts" and the like. A relatively safe place compared to the danger of the dungeons. Later wilderness was added. Then Greyhawk City was drawn (in multiple sizes). Then the surrounding territory. And yes, even the world roughly.
And story goes the few PCs who went "down the chute to China" (Cathay?) had to use Outdoor Survival to travel back overland to return to Greyhawk. But do people handwave stuff? I'm not blind. I handwave checkmate all the time.
...makes that game easier.Have you played many wargames? Everything is balanced out before play. The game board, what the pieces are worth, how fast they are, their damage ability, reach, vision, etc. etc.
D&D is not like that, D&D is that. We are not here to improvise a situation, but to fit all the pieces in the pre-existing design that we are to repeat so the players might treat it like a game (code to decipher) rather than a story.
If you remember AD&D and the 80s you remember that new spells had to be balanced to the system. That magic items were balanced to the dungeon level, monsters and traps too. That rules existed for how creatures treated each other when they encountered each other, whether PC vs NPC during a session or NPc vs NPC during prep. It may not have been how you did it, but generating a scenario prior to each session wasn't an unknown activity in SE WI.
It isn't decision making, it's pattern recognition. Do we as players see those forces building up on our flank? Can we determine a reliable number of troops and what type in order to cross the Atlantic and gain a foothold in Europe? That stuff is the code breaking of play.
D&D is a wargame, only with more roles that can be played. And cooperatively, a design predating most co-op boardgames. Roleplaying in D&D comes from Wargame Simulations done post-WWII in the U.S. military. Live action wargame simulations were called roleplaying. (They took it from the highly successful German program of training kids into battlefield officers during the war)
Rules are what lead to patterns. In the case of people, the patterns of behavior performed during the game.
For movement to be a game, it must have a map. And that map is being treated as an actual maze because it is treated as a pattern in a mathematical model. This happens in miniature too, but I know few people zoom down past 5' scale. All of which helps greatly when you want to game the game design rather than engage in "fictional positioning".
That's what I said. The "map" is a game board and weighted and statted accordingly. Like any decent module should be.
Some modules are campaign starter modules, like B2. That contains both lawful, neutral, and chaotic areas - all roughly in balance with each other. And players can travel between them all. B1 on the other hand is a pure chaotic dungeon. The players need a place to retreat back to or it is too dangerous/difficult to play as is.
That is simply the map key. The key to each room. With elements inside each which refer to their own maps.
No. The rules of a game are the pattern. Players can't move pieces around the gameboard without the gameboard in place. Players cannot take actions within the pattern of the rules without rules in place.
Think of why we have game boards in the first place. They allow the designer to balance the game by game elements. Go down a dungeon level and the game gets harder.
Same thing with wilderness exploration. The difficulties are already on the map. Go through the forest and it is likey to be much harder. Don't follow a path and you are likely to get lost. If you actually want to find a swamp rat, than you'll need to actually go to a swamp on the map. If there aren't any on the map, then it currently isn't an option. "There's no swamps around for days of walking."
If you were to improvise this, then you haven't been tracking movement, time, food and water expenses, general wear and tear on travelling items like a wagon. And on and on. That's the game, man. Faster horses means something in the game. It's not handwaved.
In part you will need to generate a lower scale map. That's understood. 30 miles per inch is very far zoomed out. Zooming in scale is exactly reversing how you generated the area. You there is a specific density of trees here. A slope level to the terrain. What the climate is. What trees are in the area. Flora & Fauna. Wandering monster checks from those. Including density of Encounter-level creatures. And non-encounter level ones for food too. It adds up, but once practiced for awhile interesting rules are found for a balanced game. When I zoom in the terrain the results are random by preset elements (so many trees in this size area). There are different methods to maintain the design.
I use different designs. But space is still space. Positioning exists and is tracked even if it's just the PCs and their exit "pools?"
Lairs are rooms in the maze. They are made up beforehand if they are on the map. Many creatures have their own unique cultures which speaks to what they use as a lair, even build as lairs.
The DM has the fog of war covering the whole design generated out. Players only experience the portion as per their abilities. You could call this secret keeping, but it's more information revealing IMO. This is to be done impartially as a referee. They aren't manipulating the game on their own behalf, only on behalf of the players.
And yes, while a screen is highly useful to hide all this information, something or anything that is ultimately -- the removal of the players from being able to access the hidden information, is necessary. Call it a proverbial "screen" then.
Dungeon levels are continually changing as the timeline is progressed down. In part by the players, in part due to the design of the game. Modules are those levels. They change the entire length the campaign is played.
You got me. IMG, if you disintegrate stuff, it's gone. And there are other means too. I guess an entire module could ultimately be "completed" this way.
Wargame modules.
Booklet 3 Underworld & Wilderness Adventures p6
Moldvay/Cook B/X under dungeon mastering
AD&D Appendix C for generating monsters in dungeons and outdoors
A referee must follow the rules. And like any code behind the screen, all rules are selected prior to play, that's a given. The basic scheme for D&D is the rule for increasing difficulty, like how dangerous a 1st level area vs. a 2nd one, just like with monsters, or traps, or...
Arbitrary - "based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system."
I'm right there with ya.
I mean the key to the map in the old modules. It could cover both time and location.
It's not much of one, but yes. There's not much, but reactivity there. Being a tomb and all there's no wandering monsters to a future timeline with.
You need to generate more of course. The DM Generates the map in scale, depth, and timeline to an extent the players shouldn't reach an end in that session. Pragmatically judged really.
Seconds in psionics, minutes in combat, 10 minutes in dungeon exploration, also hours, days, weeks, months, years. Oh hell yeah the game clock is being tracked. Time is the #1 resource the players use. And they choose how much or little to use throughout the game. And time occurs elsewhere in the game too. Generating a scenario of possible future events if the PCs don't interact with them is also map content they can later explore.
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It was not meant to be confusing. To be clear, there are no checks in games because "Checks" are not game mechanics in any way. They don't refer to any actual game design. The results, the number required, it's all completely arbitrary in the moment. There's no code to decipher. There's no game there.
It isn't a pattern, it can't be gamed. It's a person arbitrarily making up a rule on the fly. "Roll X number or higher on.... This die, because I just made that up". At best that's gaming the DM which would make them a player. This is why games have consistent rules in the first place, to keep crap like that from happening.
It's not discovery, it's invention. Let's make stuff up! That's not deciphering a code which game rules are designed to enable. No one is engaged in game play there.
Communicated fantasies of the pattern which is Chess. That's exactly what I'm saying. They are only able to play because they share the same pattern in their minds. It still exists, but in the fantasy space of the mind. Because it is in the mind doesn't mean it has anything to do with creating a story.
Same pattern? Same game. That is the game itself in both cases.
I don't count puzzles as games, but they are very, very close. In puzzle solving advancement towards discovering the final solution of the puzzle could be tracked pragmatically. That would be scoring in a puzzle tournament.
I'm thinking you're right here. Scoring for a puzzle until it is solved doesn't make sense. It isn't changing the puzzle to a predetermined outcome. It's discovering the underlying pattern, solving the code, of the design which is really what puzzle solving is after. Scoring is better for tracking accomplishments in games. In a cooperative game like D&D scoring can be for advancement in understanding its design. In competitive games players compete against each other within a finite, bounded contest where it is the final score that matters, but the current score which shows current progress.
It's not a fiction in Ender's Game either because it isn't about creating a story, but winning a game. It's not even a fantasy game like D&D where it must be imagined in the mind by the players, but a computer simulation, which a lot of guys at the Forge refused to believe were games for several years, all computer games I mean.
Finding a common definition for the word game is something of a dead end road. Candyland has no decision making, but does include pattern recognition about colors, location, and numbers. Shoots & Ladders includes pattern recognition in order to finish it as well.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
At this point we understand what your personal definition of game is. However, you have yet to show evidence that your definition is the only or true definition of game and not just your personal belief. We on the other hand have shown much evidence that there are different ways to define what a game is and some of them don't match up to your view and have existed for far longer than RPGs have.
When I play D&D, I make the decisions for my character based on who my PC is, not necessarily what the best tactical move is. I also usually don't make my move based on what I think the other people in the fight are going to do next or as a result. There are too many variables in D&D to both with that most of the time.
But what do they predict? Hell of the players can ever figure that out. It's not like they know which tables I'm using or if I'm even using a table at all. A player trying to figure that out is wasting his time, which is probably why in over 30 years of playing, I've never seen it tried.
That's one type of game, yes.
I've used hundreds of fields over the decades and statted out 0 of them. Why? Because they don't have or need stats. It's a field. You walk through it.
You can use it as a wargame, or you can use it for other purposes. So what. Being able to play it one way doesn't make it that way for every purpose. You can also use B2 to create a mutual story and it would still be a game.
This is simply not true as a universal fact. YOU use D&D like that, but I do not. We both are playing the game of D&D. D&D is flexible in that as a game, it can be played in multiple different ways. Your way is not better or worse, nor is it the only way to be playing D&D as a game.
Spells were never balanced. They were just less imbalanced in 1e and 2e. And yes, while there were rules for creatures and encounters, they were not used in all situations. The DM had the leeway to alter the rules as he saw fit and use or not use them at his desire.
It isn't decision making, it's pattern recognition. Do we as players see those forces building up on our flank? Can we determine a reliable number of troops and what type in order to cross the Atlantic and gain a foothold in Europe? That stuff is the code breaking of play.
D&D, despite its roots, has never been a wargame. You can use it that way, but that has never been its sole role or function. Saying D&D is a wargame is like saying people are monkeys. Roots =/= current function.
D&D has worked without maps and gameboards since it came out. Theater of the Mind is a real way to play the game.
I haven't bothered to track food, water and general expenses in years. As for your swamp rat example, that's also wrong. Just because there isn't a swamp on the map that is large enough to be mapped, doesn't mean that there aren't small bog areas not on the map, but close by that contain swamp rats. I improvise places like that all the time.
I don't need to generate lower scale maps, and those few times when I do, I usually just pick terrain features. I don't use preset random tables.
I don't have the whole design generated out. I usually just create an outline and fill in the details as I go. We're still playing a game.
I'm not a referee. I'm a DM, and DMs can alter, add or remove rules as they see fit. There is not a single rule that I "must" follow. Nor am I prevented from altering, adding or removing rules after game play begins. The rules say I can play that way.
Yes there is. It may not be your style of game, but your style of game is not the only type of game in the world. What's more check DCs are not arbitrary at all. While they happen in the moment, they are based on reason, which prevents them from being arbitrary.
I use checks all the time and have never once use them arbitrarily. I consider about how hard the check is based on all the circumstances involved, then based on the check rules I will assign a non-arbitrary well-reasoned number to it. Then you have to roll equal to or higher than that number.
Zak S
Guest
Like everyone else here including you, I am saying what I think to be the truth about games in a forum committed to discussion of games. So quit it with the creepy pop psychology tangent.
Great, so I am right, and you are wrong and GNS is wrong and everyone who has ever promoted it should apologize for slowing down human progress.
He's said it many times, it's the whole main point of GNS theory, it's the only things that makes it not identical to every other typology of playstyles gamers come up with, here's an example:
(rest of the conversation available on request.)
So you're publicly promoting ideas you haven't actually vetted to see if they're true--that seems profoundly irresponsible if you care as much about a conversation about what works and doesn't in games as going to
all the trouble to register on a forum and type about it would indicate. @Ranes @chaochou
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Ranes
Adventurer
Zak, I'm not sure why you're calling me out but, for what it's worth, I gave Balesir XP not because of anything he said that you might think took issue with you, per se, but for his reasoning. For what it's worth, I agree with 99.999 (recurring) of what I have read in terms of your truck with Edwards/Forge/GNS but that isn't entirely incompatible with my appreciation of the rigour Balesir applied in the post to which I responded or indeed those aspects of his post with which I was familiar and do concur.
Meanwhile, great discussion. As you were...
Meanwhile, great discussion. As you were...
Balesir
Adventurer
If I knew what you were on about I'd promise to avoid it in future, but since I don't know, I can't promise. If it helps, I'll retract my wishing you joy of your campaign against Forgeist ideas, or whatever.
Well, that doesn't follow from what I said at all, but if Forge/GNS ideas offend you I suggest you ignore them. They are not about to go away, since some folk (like me and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], I think) find them useful, but no-one is making them mandatory.
I would be interested to see the next bit of the conversation, since you offer it, since you seem to have inadvertently cut off the most interesting and possibly relevant part of Edwards' answer, in that shot.
Good grief, if I felt the need to "vet" every idea or concept for roleplaying games I ever discussed, I daresay I would never discuss any at all! And I'm not "promoting" GNS, merely saying that I found it thought provoking and useful. Any "proof" to the contrary that there might be of the veracity of every claim ever made on the Forge is not going to change the fact that I found GNS to be thought provoking, to relate to my own RPG experience and to be useful in thinking about systems for roelplaying games. When I pick a system to use for a game I run, I now give some thought to how that system might help (or hinder) the sorts of fun I have in mind to be generated in that game. It's not the only consideration, but its one that I find useful to consider. No amount of "proof" that GNS is "wrong" will change that usefulness.
Zak S
Guest
When you say what you think I don't call it a "campaign" or say "Oh I see you seem to have an IDEA I hope you have FUN with that" I just respond to the idea. That's what people should do. Expect people to post ideas and then respond to them rationally. What you believe is what you believe, not a "campaign". It's really gross to try to set up a rhetorical frame where you're just talkin' on the webz when you say your ideas and the other guy is somehow engaging in some kind of inexplicably strident project when they say their idea. Kind of a passive-aggressive version of "You mad bro?"
If you can admit that this is kind of not an ok thing to do and just be like "Ok, I'll stop, I'll just respond to your ideas and not try to toss in random needling psychobabble" then I would be happy to respond to the rest of your comments.
If you can't, then basically it looks like each comment you make will simply escalate until this is a pointless internet fight that goes nowhere and doesn't illuminate ideas.
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Oh, the irony.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
You have yet to show anything close to you being right. Just because one claim is false, that does not mean the entire theory is false. There have been errors with the theory of evolution, but if we extend your logic, just because there was a single error at some point in the theory, the entire theory of evolution is wrong and everyone who has every promoted it should apologize for slowing down human progress.
Your rabid anti-GNS rhetoric doesn't help you at all, and in fact it hurts your arguments since your rhetoric just taints any points that you make. Rein it back a bit and just argue with evidence of your claims.
