Is the Burning Wheel "how to play" advice useful for D&D?

[Crazy Jerome]

On the whole I lean slightly more towards "system doesn't matter" than that it does--even in the broad definition of "system" associated with that statement, where system is everything that happens by convention (rule, social, etc.) at the table. This is primarily because I have such a strong preference for playing with people that I truly enjoy being around. I'd rather have a substandard RPG experience with friends than a better RPG experience with dedicated gamers. The former ends up being a better "play" experience.

Despite that, I consider BW to be an example of a system that proves the rule that "system matters". Not many systems do exactly what they promise, when you play them the way they say to play--and then also stop doing it when you tweak them.

 

[Ratskinner]

<snip some really good stuff>
There is a gamist inclination in many (most?) gamers that inclines them toward being pro-active when their engaging and interacting with the various facet of games will reward them with a legitimate, codified contest and transparent resolution to that contest based on their own acumen/merits. D&D has wargame roots and a corresponding evolution, has always had robust combat mechanics and PC build tools centered primarily on combat resolution, especially with respect to other resolution mechanics. I suspect that if its cultural genesis and evolution involved much more robust humanity and ethos testing and non-combat resolution mechanics (and corresponding PC build tools and progression paths) that D&D (and its overarching culture) would be a different beast than it is today.

I suspect that all of tabletop rpgs would be different through inheritance. Assuming that that kind of game has as much appeal, anyway.

 

[Manbearcat]

I suspect that all of tabletop rpgs would be different through inheritance. Assuming that that kind of game has as much appeal, anyway.

To be sure. Mini-games are...erm...game-changers. If D&D in its primordial ooze had a truly awesome (fun) social interaction resolution system/mini-game (with corresponding player progression/advancement as a result of victory), we might be complaining about Strength as a dump stat rather than Charisma!

 

[Celebrim]

To be sure. Mini-games are...erm...game-changers. If D&D in its primordial ooze had a truly awesome (fun) social interaction resolution system/mini-game (with corresponding player progression/advancement as a result of victory), we might be complaining about Strength as a dump stat rather than Charisma!

The problem with that theory, on really any theory that depends on claiming that it was just random chance that lead to something being invented first, is that methodologies tend to be invented first because they are natural, powerful, and successful.

People have been trying to make social interaction as compeling mechanically as tactical combat for decades now. It's practically a Holy Grail in cRPGs. If you can come up with a system for making dialogue as compelling tactically as it is important for advancing a story, you are going to be famous. The guy that popularizes that system is going to be a household name, at least among households with a certain geekiness score.

On the social resolution front, its just not clear that it is out there. It's not clear that the elements that make social interaction engaging map well to any sort of tactical mini-game. It's entirely possible that the thing that is most compelling and engaging about social interaction just isn't wired up the same in the human mind as the thing that makes combat mini-games compelling. Combat mini-games, even in abstract form say chess or some bubble popping puzzle game, are pretty clearly wired to that human core firmware that is about running from lions, throwing sticks, and bringing home dinner. It's all those spatial reasoning centers that let us predict where the antalope is going to be so that when we throw the pointy stick it performs a ballistic trajectory those third order differential equations intersect at food. It's all beating down the leopard in a bloody visceral gut spill battle stuff so that the tribe is safe. That's where most games go, and that's the natural ticklable pleasure center for gaming.

But its not at all clear that the whole, forge bonds with the tribe and improve my social standing firmware is tickled by the same things. It's not clear that we want to use our brains to solve those problems in the same way. It's not at all obvious that the way to engage that part of our brain in a social setting like an RPG isn't just to engage that part of our brain directly and let that firmware run. It's not at all clear that the direct and most powerful way to engage or social fantasy isn't just to engage in a social fantasy with as little of the rock-papper-scissors metagame for determining who 'wins' getting in the way as possible.

One of the reasons I think that is that its the way 3 year olds, or 5 year olds, or 7 year olds engage in fantasy social play. If they play 'war' or anything else in the genera, they start figuring out the rules to determine who really wins. They make up some sort of system of arbitration. But if they play 'house' or anything like that, they don't. They just talk it out. And that tells me that we may have hit upon that system not because of some arbitrary accidental heritage of wargames, but rather because that is what largely what we want and need.

 

[Ratskinner]

To be sure. Mini-games are...erm...game-changers. If D&D in its primordial ooze had a truly awesome (fun) social interaction resolution system/mini-game (with corresponding player progression/advancement as a result of victory), we might be complaining about Strength as a dump stat rather than Charisma!

There's actually an interesting discussion on the FATE Yahoo group right now about the utility of social skills in forcing an end to a (physical) conflict and examples in cinema and fiction.

 

[Balesir]

People have been trying to make social interaction as compeling mechanically as tactical combat for decades now. It's practically a Holy Grail in cRPGs. If you can come up with a system for making dialogue as compelling tactically as it is important for advancing a story, you are going to be famous. The guy that popularizes that system is going to be a household name, at least among households with a certain geekiness score.

I'm not sure cRPGs is the place the progress is being made. Take a look at Paradox Interactive's "Crusader Kings 2" - it's getting a fair number of rave reviews around now. It doesn't extend the mechanisms to a "conversational" interface - you just select actions that are abstractions of the conversations that are assumed to happen, in a similar way to "taking actions" in RPG combat - but it has a rather sophisticated system of influence, popularity, plots, factions and such like in its medieval courts. As an added bonus, it's a very fun game

On the social resolution front, its just not clear that it is out there. It's not clear that the elements that make social interaction engaging map well to any sort of tactical mini-game. It's entirely possible that the thing that is most compelling and engaging about social interaction just isn't wired up the same in the human mind as the thing that makes combat mini-games compelling.

For the everyday interactions within the "tribe" I think you may well be right. I am much less sure, however, when it comes to dealing with other "circles", leadership of the "tribe" and diplomacy between "tribes". I hear so much of "games of intrigue", "machinations of his plots" and "pulling the strings" of power that I am pretty convinced that there is (at least) one good mini-game in there. Give some rules for societal structures ('circles', say, each with its own leader and allowing for circles within circles and rivalries for leadership) and abilities associated with perceiving and manipulating these constructs and I think you could find a very fine mini-game.

 

[Ratskinner]

The problem with that theory, on really any theory that depends on claiming that it was just random chance that lead to something being invented first, is that methodologies tend to be invented first because they are natural, powerful, and successful.

I'd say that that doesn't match my experiences...at all. I wouldn't say its "random chance" either, there's history involved, of course. IME, "natural, powerful, and successful" don't hold a candle to other factors like profitable, traditional (in a very broad sense including backwards-compatible), and...how to put this...psychologically rewarding for the decision makers. I've always been amazed at how much of the human world is built upon the accumulated methodological band-aids, bailing wire, and duct tape of previous generations.

Do rpgs fall into that category? Hard to say definitively. However, I think there's quite a bit to that "network externalities" talk. And that's the kind of thing that feeds into crusty human behavior, rather than

People have been trying to make social interaction as compeling mechanically as tactical combat for decades now. It's practically a Holy Grail in cRPGs. If you can come up with a system for making dialogue as compelling tactically as it is important for advancing a story, you are going to be famous. The guy that popularizes that system is going to be a household name, at least among households with a certain geekiness score.

On the social resolution front, its just not clear that it is out there. It's not clear that the elements that make social interaction engaging map well to any sort of tactical mini-game. It's entirely possible that the thing that is most compelling and engaging about social interaction just isn't wired up the same in the human mind as the thing that makes combat mini-games compelling. Combat mini-games, even in abstract form say chess or some bubble popping puzzle game, are pretty clearly wired to that human core firmware that is about running from lions, throwing sticks, and bringing home dinner. It's all those spatial reasoning centers that let us predict where the antalope is going to be so that when we throw the pointy stick it performs a ballistic trajectory those third order differential equations intersect at food. It's all beating down the leopard in a bloody visceral gut spill battle stuff so that the tribe is safe. That's where most games go, and that's the natural ticklable pleasure center for gaming.

I actually think its a lot more subtle reason than that. Considering how much and how many people engage in Soap Operas and the like I'd say we are easily fascinated by such interpersonal action. (I'm also willing to bet that audience is bigger than the fantasy rpg audience....) The real problem mechanizing it for cRPGs, and to some extent TTRPGS is that it is so varied, subtle, and emotionally creative by comparison. None of which are strong points for computers or logic mechanics. The most successful rpgs to handle this all involve heavy human interpretations of the narrative. It just not something that computers or objective mechanics handle very well.

One of the reasons I think that is that its the way 3 year olds, or 5 year olds, or 7 year olds engage in fantasy social play. If they play 'war' or anything else in the genera, they start figuring out the rules to determine who really wins. They make up some sort of system of arbitration. But if they play 'house' or anything like that, they don't. They just talk it out. And that tells me that we may have hit upon that system not because of some arbitrary accidental heritage of wargames, but rather because that is what largely what we want and need.

I don't recall figuring out any rules to my "war" play as a child, nor witnessing any with my kids. I haven't seen any particular difference in playground negotiations about war, house, cops-and-robbers, or cowboys-and-indians. They have always seemed more like improv troupes negotiating a "script" (and in a very social manner). I suppose it could happen, but...I've never seen playground kids doing rock-paper-scissors or breaking out dice to make any combat decisions. I think there is a bit of gap there. I don't see a continuum between playground fantasy and tabletop fantasy.


All that being said. I think you may be right, there may be a fundamental difference in popularity or appeal between narrative and non-narrative systems. I just don't think there's much definitive evidence for the case one way or another.

 

[Nytmare]

There's actually an interesting discussion on the FATE Yahoo group right now about the utility of social skills in forcing an end to a (physical) conflict and examples in cinema and fiction.

Is there a link or Cliff's Notes version you can give us?

 

[Celebrim]

I'd say that that doesn't match my experiences...at all. I wouldn't say its "random chance" either, there's history involved, of course. IME, "natural, powerful, and successful" don't hold a candle to other factors like profitable, traditional (in a very broad sense including backwards-compatible), and...how to put this...psychologically rewarding for the decision makers. I've always been amazed at how much of the human world is built upon the accumulated methodological band-aids, bailing wire, and duct tape of previous generations.

There is some truth to that, but I think it is like evaluating 'common sense'. For things that humans have ordinary experience with, common sense tends to be fairly accurate. For things that they've never experienced or which aren't part of daily experience, common sense tends to be wildly inaccurate. I think a lot of human methodologies, especially the less formalized ones, end up subject to that. Much of reality is just counter-intuitive and actually paradoxical.

You'll hear people arguing that the procedural programing paradigm won out over oop, functional, etc. simply by accident. I think that that ignores that describing what you want to do tends to naturally take the form of a procedure accept in special cases. I remember taking early classes in oop, where the instructor - true to the thought of the day - was arguing that it was natural to think of everything as a noun. Well, that's true until you have a verb, in which case you end up with nouns are data and verbs are procedures. It's not natural to think of a sort as a noun. And then don't get into how we were supposed to create these elaborate multi-tier object hierarchies implementing multiple inheritance and this was just going to automatically lead to good design.

Do rpgs fall into that category? Hard to say definitively.

Yeah, it gets hard to say anything definitively without ways to make measurements and apply math.

I don't recall figuring out any rules to my "war" play as a child, nor witnessing any with my kids. I haven't seen any particular difference in playground negotiations about war, house, cops-and-robbers, or cowboys-and-indians.

Maybe I'm wierd, but since I played 'war' well into high school, I can remember all sorts of evolutions in how we handled the game negotiations begin from the simple, "I shot you. No you missed.", conflict that started to derail early games. One early example was that you had to take turns. If I missed you last time, you couldn't declare I missed the second time. That ended up turning into complex negoitated fairness rules that I won't even try to understand childish logic around. But around that time we discovered we could play 'swords' with cane sticks and solve the arbitration problem - it was obvious who hit who. A bit later on we came up with a 'no miss' rule. All guns were infinitely accurate as long as you were in line of sight and shouting range, which turned 'war' in to a game of pure stealth. It was like playing hide and seek where everyone was it.

That game survived at least between me and my brother from about age 7 until high school, as did the 'stick fighting' game until we got strong enough to really hurt each other and started worrying about putting out eyes (which turned into fencing once we got helmets). On the gun front, we early on had evaluated 'snow ball fight' as a general way of arbitrating guns, but since snow was not reliable any light weight ammunition would do - pine cones, hickory nuts, etc. On occasion, this was played with sling shots. By college, paintball guns were added to the possibilities.

The thing to keep in mind is that while these games became highly gamist in the long run in that they could be played without the RP and still be fun, initially there was a lot of blur between the fantasy RPG and the increasingly gamist resolution mechanics. And to some extent, when you see guys playing paintball, there are often many that are still playing at soldier/warrior and still fundamentally playing war - especially when played competively (especially early in the paintball era). And that's even more true of the guys using airsoft guns.

And that isn't even to get into the discussion of the early minitures wargaming being invented with plastic army men and gi joe figures, well before I got exposed to the notion that you could dice for those things, or even the paper transfer 'tie fighters and x-wings' games where you'd close your eyes and make a dot, and then overlay to the sheets of paper to see if you blew up the units in the other guys drawings.

I don't see a continuum between playground fantasy and tabletop fantasy.

I came to tabletop fantasy at age 8. So it was a pretty natural progression for me, especially as someone playing house with the girls and then going outside and whacking each other with sticks (including a few of the girls) or hiding in the woods waiting to scream, "Bang I shot you" (and then trying to work out who had died when if 6 boys screamed in quick succession).

 

[Ratskinner]

Is there a link or Cliff's Notes version you can give us?

The topic is "Mental to Physical Combat transition"

At http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/FateRPG/messages.

FATE is a very different game from D&D (at least in the relevant mechanics), so if you're not familiar with the mechanics, it might not make much sense. (The group's top-posting ways won't help, either.)

A Cliff Notes version....hmmm I'll give it a go.

It starts with a (I think) new GM's question about stress & consequences so:

<Background: can be skipped, if you are familiar with FATE>
In FATE, characters have multiple tracks of stress boxes (usually Physical and Mental, sometimes a Mana, Psychic, or Social box depending on setting.) Usually these lines are only a few boxes long, but they are (for the most part) like non-injury HPs. If you cannot absorb the stress dealt by an attack, you take a consequence. Characters have only one consequence track. Consequences represent wounds, loss of mental cool, social status or other repercussions from losing which don't vanish immediately. In most FATE games, you can only take 3 consequences of increasing severity. After that, you are "taken out" which means "at the mercy of your opponent"...very bad.

Unlike typical D&D injuries, these consequences matter for future conflicts....they can matter a lot. Much like an aspect in FATE, consequences can be tagged. So if you've taken a "sprained ankle" consequence, your enemies can use it to gain a bonus against you.

The trick is...the type of conflict from which a consequence derived is irrelevant. So, if you have an "upset over losing the girl" or a "quaking in my boots" consequence, it can be used against you in a physical fight to represent distraction or anything else the other players might come up with. Similarly, a physical consequence can be used against you in a social conflict, provided your enemies can justify it narratively.

It should also be noted that, in FATE, conflicts go to the bitter end far less often than in D&D (unless you're intentionally playing a D&Dish world, of course.) Instead, the players or GM (not the characters) may offer a concession to end the conflict.
</Background>

So, the thread started with a new GM not quite getting that FATE makes no real distinction between forms of combat (mental, social, psychological, etc.). There's some mechanical discussion about the above-stuff. He asked for examples of what that would look like (mixing social and physical combat). Then folks started chiming in with examples from games and movies. Including:

Just spinning your guns wouldn't make a lot of sense, sure - but imagine this:

GM: "Billy gets tired of talking, pulls his gun, and fires." <rolls happen>

Ted: "Okay, I'm going to take a moderate consequence - 'bullet hole through my arm'. Now, though... I'm tagging Michael's 'Toughest Guy Around' and 'Eyes of Steel', and the 'Doubts He Can Take Me' I inflicted on Billy. He doesn't react. Doesn't flinch, just acts like he wasn't hit at all, with the blood running from the wound. Takes a drag on his cigarette, then flicks it to the side. 'Son,' he says. 'That was stupid. You wanna take me, you're gonna need something a lot heavier than that. And some friends.' Looking Billy in the eyes, he starts to reach for his gun, really slowly, like he's got all the time in the world."

GM: "Nice. Okay, roll your Intimidate. I'm tagging your bullet hole through the arm for Billy, though."

<rolls happen. Ted lucks out, gets enough mental damage to Take Out Billy.>

GM: "Okay, you took him out. What happens?"

Ted: "Billy looks at my arm, looks at his gun, blanches... and then turns and runs, heading around the corner. As soon as he's out of sight, Michael puts his hand on his arm where he was shot and clenches his teeth. 'Oh, <bad word> that hurts.'"

I suppose the takeaway for D&D discussions is that this kind of thing is possible in FATE because physical, social, mental, etc. conflicts all follow the same mechanics. (Unless you modify them for a particular kind of conflict for your game.)