Mearls' Chicken or the Egg: Should Fluff Control Crunch, or the Other Way Around?

[innerdude]

More and more I'm beginning to believe that roleplaying game designers have to make the decision up front, before they do anything else, whether the fluff, or setting, or milieu, or whatever you want to call it, should control the mechanics--or whether it should be the other way around.

I'm older than many gamers these days (mid-30s), but I'm also not old enough to have been gaming in the "Dawn of Gygax" Era in the mid-1970s. So if some of my commentary here on the origins of D&D are off, please let me know.

(And since Col. Pladoh isn't around to help out, bless his soul.)

That said, the whole "Mike Mearls/Core of D&D" threads have gotten me thinking.

Based on the things I've read and understood--and again, if I'm wrong, let me know--it seems that E. Gary Gygax had Vancian style magic in mind as the "default magic system" for D&D since basically its inception. The concept of memorization, then "burning" the spell energy out of memory had been Gygax's personal "vision" for magic-use, and every rule mechanic that used, or touched on magic, was based on that paradigm.

But did Gygax's partiality to Vancian "fluff" control the mechanics of the system--or was Vancian simply a mechanic that "made sense" to him, and thus controlled the fluff that surrounded it?

It seems fairly clear (at least to me) that based on the commentary of the designers, the rules themselves, and the massive overhaul that the rules necessitated for the Forgotten Realms, that 4e was created with the mechanics primarily in mind, and fluff only secondarily. For good or ill (probably a little of both), the rules themselves took primacy over trying to shoehorn them into any particular setting.

To a certain degree, I respect that. In essence it was WotC saying, "Here's our game, if you want your worlds to work within this framework, you're going to have to mold them to it." It's a bold, probably necessary statement, based on what 4e was trying to accomplish.

The problem is--and this may be partially why the player base fractured so badly--the mechanical approach to the 4e rules allowed less leeway in changing the core model than prior editions. (Bear in mind I'm not saying it allowed NO leeway, only less leeway than other editions historically.) It's simply harder to deviate from 4e's normative paradigms than other editions, thus narrowing the boundaries on expected gameplay style.

Interestingly, I'm not sure 3.x got completely right either. 3.x, it seems to me, was an attempt to "meet halfway" in the middle. 3.x had 25 years of gameplay, and TONS AND TONS AND TONS of 1e / 2e novelizations (that were frankly TSR's cash cows for much of the '80s and '90s) to keep in balance. Vancian magic was hard coded into the Dragonlance, and Forgotten Realms novels.

3.x seemed to be an attempt to say, "Well, the novels all say magic works this way, so the rules still need to feel that way. We're just going to try and make it, and the rest of the system, more streamlined, elegant, and refined."

Balance was also an obvious core goal of 3.x--though not as rigidly as 4e turned out--but it feels like to me that if a question came down to "balance" versus "maintaining the core trope and feel this mechanic represents," 3.x erred on the side of the trope. In other words, it was more important for it to "feel like D&D" than it was to for it to be the most mechanically superior option.

Unfortunately, this led to a lot of conflicts down the road, as 8 years of gameplay would show. Stuff that had to "feel like D&D" didn't end up working as well in context of balance and in some cases, playability. For many, it was "close enough," but certainly not for all.

4e put its primacy in mechanics; 3.x in "feeling like D&D" (fluff, existing tropes).

The question for me is, how does making that choice manifest itself in the rules of an RPG, and in any settings they are based on?

Does one particular choice support certain types of styles better? If we as players are looking for a particular type of game, is it important to know which paradigm the rules were based on? Does it change our expectations of how a game should and does work, if that distinction is made clear?

I appreciate what Mearls is trying to do with his posts, to an extent, but it seems to me that if you analyze the "Core of D&D," up through 3.x, the mechanical assumptions are based more on the fluff, rather than the other way around.

 

[Crothian]

Why can't we have both? In creating my own things sometimes I start with a cool mechanically ability and create something around that. Other times I start with an idea with no idea how the rules will handle it and that's how it gets created.

 

[rounser]

Thank you for neatly summarising why the article suggests that there's no sign of any paradigm shift in approach to design at WOTC. Laundry listing what mechanics "make the core of D&D" suggests that the point is still being missed.

 

[BriarMonkey]

As you note, fluff and mechanics will show up in how the game "feels". To me, with the mechanics being forefront, 4e does not "feel" the same as 3.xe. And 3.xe, with more fluff, "feels" more like what I think of in D & D.

And that's entirely subjective.

If you go into design mode and say, want to allow for great feats of strength and relegate magic to something more sinister, sorta like Conan, then your design is going to take that fluff and make the rules model it. You will see allowances for huge effects caused by players, and allowances for magic to be dark and evil.

Conversely, if you go into design mode and decide that every class needs to deal an average of 6 points of damage per round, adjusted by level so that all is balanced - you are going to make the fluff fit that mechanic. Thus, you will not see huge effects by players, and magic will be balanced, and neutral, against the sword and fist. It's just the nature of the beast.

On the other other hand, you can strike a balance. If you have a over-arching story that you want to allow for in the game, you can have the mechanics and fluff shape each other. I would think this approach would take more effort, and thus, be more difficult to pull off well.

Of course, I'm speaking at a high level and looking at a design from scratch.

Looking at a lower level, like your individual GM, I think most take that last approach and use both mechanics and fluff. It is because of this type of treatment that you have house rules. If I don't like the designer's fluff or mechanic, I change it to suit my style instead. And this happens a lot, otherwise you wouldn't see so many posts about house rules.

Um... I think I got kinda rambly there, so I'm not sure I actually answered anything. But, those are my opinions.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I think there is something to what you say, but there was another dynamic in play that affected the decision making as much, if not more: Risk Analysis. You see this especially when you look at the 3E design. The designers did not always go with the fluff. They sometimes went one way and sometimes the other. But when push came to shove, they were risk adverse. Since they were changing the rules a lot, and since they did care about the tradition, this meant that any risky change tended to edge towards going with fluff as the driver. But when the risk wasn't too severe, they were willing to buck the trend. (And I'm sure part of this was due to the team being not entirely in sync on this issue, too.)

Also, don't discount that the 4E team had a different flavor in mind. For better or worse, the 4E team was less risk adverse. You take chances, sometimes you get a fast touchdown, sometimes you throw an interception, and sometimes the QB gets carted off the field. They were just as wiling to take risks with the fluff as with the mechanics.

As for an ideal, I don't think you must priortize one over the other, but I do think you must at each decision point in a given design pass. The way to keep one side from dominating is therefore to have an iterative design, with many passes. You have fluff goals and mechanics goals, and you keep refining until both are reasonably satisfied. If you hit a brick wall, rather than sacrifice one entirely for the other, you revise both goals to something else that might work. That doesn't mean that people will like your goals for either or both, though. And it certainly is time consuming.

 

[Bluenose]

More and more I'm beginning to believe that roleplaying game designers have to make the decision up front, before they do anything else, whether the fluff, or setting, or milieu, or whatever you want to call it, should control the mechanics--or whether it should be the other way around.

I'm older than many gamers these days (mid-30s), but I'm also not old enough to have been gaming in the "Dawn of Gygax" Era in the mid-1970s. So if some of my commentary here on the origins of D&D are off, please let me know.

I'm nearer fifty than forty, and was around in the "Dawn"-era, and one thing I don't remember there being was "the fluff, or setting, or milieu". There was "my fluff, my setting, my milieu" which might sometimes be based on Vance's fluff or Tolkein's fluff or Leiber's fluff but usually wasn't. But the one thing I'd say about D&D was that it wasn't written with an idea of one particular setting in mind. As such, I don't think it could be written with mechanics designed to work around that setting. Which may or may not be a good thing in terms of how versatile the game is and in terms of how much it can give a sense of immersion into one particular setting. I think it's probably telling that nearly ever time I see a serious survey on which settings people play, homebrew games come out with around 50% of the answers with any game that doesn't specifically include The Setting in the rulebook. With D&D, people want to do their own thing and adapt the rules to suit it, and it's clearly going to be hard for the rules to be written setting-first when that's the case.

 

[Windjammer]

But did Gygax's partiality to Vancian "fluff" control the mechanics of the system--or was Vancian simply a mechanic that "made sense" to him, and thus controlled the fluff that surrounded it?

Well, Gygax is on record for really really admiring Vance's work (and who wouldn't?). For instance, there's the anagram homage in Vecna. But Gygax is also on record for saying that he introduced memorization by way of balancing spells vis a vis non-magic users (source: interview in the DVD's "Extras" section of the second D&D film). - The point though is this: the mechanics have to synch up with what's portrayed in the world. Vancian memorization is not just a bland balancing device, it's got awesome flavour. 4E frequently missed that, ime. See also Justin Alexander on 'dissociated mechanics'. You can't just say 'hey, know what, we got one first level power which gets an extra dice on damage - let's make that a daily'. There's a piece of honest work missing here.

The problem is--and this may be partially why the player base fractured so badly--the mechanical approach to the 4e rules allowed less leeway in changing the core model than prior editions. (Bear in mind I'm not saying it allowed NO leeway, only less leeway than other editions historically.) It's simply harder to deviate from 4e's normative paradigms than other editions, thus narrowing the boundaries on expected gameplay style.

Actually, 4E is radically deceptive in that regard. It's the easiest edition I've yet found to houserule. If you think about it, the numbers (which don't work) are easy enough to understand, and certainly easy enough to adjust to whichever direction you want to take your game. It's dead easy to create your own monsters or traps, dead easy to winge the game and run things on the fly.

It's the bloody vibe of the 4E books which are so irritating, and which you here rightly reference under 'expected gameplay style', because they try to tell you that ease of houseruling is exactly not the case (is not possible, and is not a desideratum). It's really schizophrenic - WotC gave us one of the best rulesets ever to customize, and then went off a screed how you're better off not touching the rules (DMG 1) and better off not even creating a dungeon but downloading them from DDI (DM Kit, 2010 - seriously, they cut all sections which explain how to create monsters, traps, or dungeons).

What I expect from 5E is to return to a more eye leveled approach between authors and readers. Why not return to taking your customer seriously, as a person with a creative capacity in their own right?

 

[Pentius]

Well, Gygax is on record for really really admiring Vance's work (and who wouldn't?). For instance, there's the anagram homage in Vecna. But Gygax is also on record for saying that he introduced memorization by way of balancing spells vis a vis non-magic users (source: interview in the DVD's "Extras" section of the second D&D film). - The point though is this: the mechanics have to synch up with what's portrayed in the world. Vancian memorization is not just a bland balancing device, it's got awesome flavour. 4E frequently missed that, ime.

Vancian mechanics flavor is flavor, I agree, but my opinion varies from yours on how awesome it is. I'm not going to try and say 4e doesn't have areas where mechanics are not fully described. What I will say is that other games and editions had these moments, too. However, it seems that when a person likes an edition, they're pretty willing to pave over these rough spots. As for me, I still find it baffling that you can take a player who lovingly crafts their own worlds from scratch, willing to take on all sorts of mechanics-integration challenges with things like how magic affects the world, but then when you ask them to provide their own fluff on a few things, they balk.

See also Justin Alexander on 'dissociated mechanics'.

I did. I probably shouldn't have. I'm probably going to spend more time than is wise arguing against his article in my head today.

You can't just say 'hey, know what, we got one first level power which gets an extra dice on damage - let's make that a daily'. There's a piece of honest work missing here.

You may be right. But it never seems to be an issue if you change 'power' to 'spell' and then change 'let's make it a daily' to 'let's make it a higher level spell' or 'let's add some costly material components'. That's what gets me.

Actually, 4E is radically deceptive in that regard. It's the easiest edition I've yet found to houserule. If you think about it, the numbers (which don't work) are easy enough to understand, and certainly easy enough to adjust to whichever direction you want to take your game. It's dead easy to create your own monsters or traps, dead easy to winge the game and run things on the fly.

It's the bloody vibe of the 4E books which are so irritating, and which you here rightly reference under 'expected gameplay style', because they try to tell you that ease of houseruling is exactly not the case (is not possible, and is not a desideratum). It's really schizophrenic - WotC gave us one of the best rulesets ever to customize, and then went off a screed how you're better off not touching the rules (DMG 1) and better off not even creating a dungeon but downloading them from DDI (DM Kit, 2010 - seriously, they cut all sections which explain how to create monsters, traps, or dungeons).

What I expect from 5E is to return to a more eye leveled approach between authors and readers. Why not return to taking your customer seriously, as a person with a creative capacity in their own right?

Vibe is a really subjective thing, obviously, but I really didn't get that vibe from DMG1 at all(I don't own the DM kit, so I can't speak to that). I look at the house ruling section in the DMG and what stands out to me are phrases like "They add fun to your D&D game by making it unique," and "If you disagree with how the rules handle something, changing them is within your rights." I do see a good half page or so telling you to think about the house rule before adding it. But, I mean, shouldn't you? I'm fairly sure most of us could recall a houserule or two in years past that, in retrospect, really wasn't that great and could've been a lot better had it been thought out.

 

[MacMathan]

I may have a hazy memory here but I seem to remember some of the research done before 4e came out that said basically people wanted to be free of built in fluff so they could make their own and not feel restricted by it.

Perhaps 4e went too far in that regard but I can see it as a rock and a hard place as a designer. I think what they need to do is bend the system more when they make specific settings and leave the core as fluff light as possible.

So fluff modifies mechanics when setting sepecific but for core, mechanics are first.

 

[KidSnide]

More and more I'm beginning to believe that roleplaying game designers have to make the decision up front, before they do anything else, whether the fluff, or setting, or milieu, or whatever you want to call it, should control the mechanics--or whether it should be the other way around.

I don't think this characterization is quite accurate. Certainly, the mechanics received a great deal more attention than the fluff in 4e. That much is true. However, the critical change from 3e to 4e is not that the mechanics began controlling the fluff, it's that the mechanics became separate from the fluff. That is what Mearls means when he says that 3e is closer to immersion ("simulation" would be a much better word) and 4e is closer to abstraction.

In 4e, the fluff of a power is almost immaterial. With shockingly few exceptions there is no mechanical difference between an arcane power and a martial power that has the same effect. That gives players and GMs tremendous flexibility in the type of world that the rules represent. It can also produce bizarre results like the power "Shape Magic" where the name has absolutely nothing to do with the effect (which lets you regain an arcane power).

What it costs is the ability to reason about a world mechanically. In 3.x, everyone knows the list of standard spell effects. So, (except for custom spells), if you're facing an enemy wizard, you know the mechanical effects to which you might be subjected. Furthermore, there are defenses (e.g. spell resistance, but there are many others) that are specifically designed to counter certain types of enemies and attacks. Of course, the disadvantage of 3.x is that these mechanical effects are heavily tied into the world. If you want a game where magic doesn't work that way, it is difficult to refluff without doing a lot of mechanical work as well.

-KS