Boundaries of "drifting"

[Tinker Gnome]

Multi-Game Drifting!!

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm not sure I understand this "drifting" concept- is, for example, Dark Sun an example of what you're talking about? What about Oriental Adventures? Is "drifting" supposed to be a bad thing, a good thing, or just a thing?

Hey Jester. Its definitely a thing. Whether its good or bad (and how much is too much malleability and/or how much is not enough or when to draw the line or whether to even start in the first place!) depends on who you ask (and they likely have some granularity to their opinion). I was just asking folks what their general thoughts are.

See Mallus's post 5 (top portion) for a hardy definition and I speak a little to the "genre drift" issue in post 7.

 

[howandwhy99]

There is no drifting a game. You change a game's rules or don't follow them and therefore don't play it. Either way, you're not playing the game anymore.

To your specific questions: All "no" except the last, which is "yes". But your language denotes you are telling stories rather than playing games. There are no "GM techniques" in RPGs.

 

[the Jester]

It kinds of sounds like "drifting" is synonymous with "creative play and/or design"? Or am I misunderstanding things here?

So if my understanding is correct, Dark Sun is a perfect example of a D&D setting with lots of "drift", right?

I don't know, it sounds to me like "drifting" is just... how people play. But I may still be misunderstanding some part of this whole thing here. I dunno.

 

[pemerton]

It kinds of sounds like "drifting" is synonymous with "creative play and/or design"?

"Drifting" is generally used to describe using a game system in a way that changes the relationship between the techniques of play and the outcomes/purposes of play.

Some drifting involves keeping many of the techniques but changing the outcomes/purposes - for instance, Moldvay Basic's rules and techniques are mostly about classic dungeoneering play, but many players used it to play more of a heroic fantasy style.

Some drifting invole changes some of the rules/techniques in order to achieve the game's original outcome/purpose - this often happens because there were some kludges in design. I think that 4e groups who take extended rests of a simple ingame passage-of-time cycle and do things like make them the outcome of skill challenges, or have rules that you can only get an extended rest when you return to civilisation (which tends to make them "once per adventure" - a metagame unit of time - rather than "once per day" - an ingame unit of time) might be seen as an instance of this. They change the rules or methods of play slightly so as to make the game truer to itself.

The aim of "tight" game design - say like what we see in 13th Age - is to minimise the need for the second sort of drifting, by minimising the clash between the game's own methods and goals/outlook. There is nothing to be done to stop the first sort of drifting, though, because people will always use games for their own purposes, whatever the designers had in mind!

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Interesting, I've never heard this slang term before either. Without knowing why 'drift' is relevant, all I have to go on is the word's common definition...

I guess I'd call any deviation at all from a game's explicit setting and/or rules as drifting. And it would be a spectrum; the occasional house rules that pretty much every table has would be minor drift, while playing E6 would be major drift.

If a game has multiple/broad/inchoherent rulesets/genres/styles/settings, like GURPS, I suppose there'd be a lot of room within the game before any drift starts happening. Or maybe there'd be room for a lot of minor drift within the game before it became major drift? I dunno, without knowing why 'drift' matters, it's hard to form an opinion on it.

[sblock="For manbearcat"]So, if you haven't caught those hints...why exactly is drift relevant? [/sblock]

 

[pemerton]

OD&D was meant to cover a huge range of situations. If you look at the three little books, they touch on many, many things. It is just left it to the DM to figure out a lot of the details. This wasn't drifting, it was the point.

Agreed.

Drifting OD&D (or classic D&D more generally) is doing things like dropping XP for gold, dropping earning XP as the goal of play, moving into a style where the aim of play does not involve the players maximising their XP returns by improving their knowledge of the GM's "secret backstory" (eg "We can get that treasure by avoiding the roll in room 1 by taking the secret passage in room 2").

I dont agree with all of @howand why99's views as to what counts as an RPG, but on some of these key points of "skilled" D&D play as articulated by Gygax in his PHB I do agree.

You do have lots of stuff in there for urban games.

My reason for describing social/urban/intrigue play as drift is not to do with setting or the more surface features of the game (guards instead of orcs, bank vaults intead of treasure rooms). It is to do with the role of the GM"s "secret backstory". An urban setting almost never has the same degree of advance prep as a dungeon. Which means that the players' efforts to uncover "secret backstory" become, in practice, triggers for the GM to make up backstory. This is a major change in the dynamics of play - taken in one direction, it gives us the classic 90s-style storyteller railroad. Taken in another direction - conferring power on the players to stipulate elements of that "secret" backstory via successful skill checks - it gives us the system for Wises and Circles in a game like Burning Wheel, and related "say yes to player-suggested content" that we find in very limited doses of 4e's DMG and in large doses in its DMG2.

That is drift and its consequences in gameplay and game design.

 

[Manbearcat]

Hey @the Jester and @Tequila Sunrise. How about this thought experiment:

Dark-Sun was mentioned. Consider a system premised upon low fantasy, aftermath. The marriage of system mechanics and tight, thematic content from the setting is meant to produce a table experience of the fantasy version of Mad Max. Themes such as survival of the fittest are central. System components such as punitive resource depletion create a tension between heroism and hopeless desperation. Hard choices are made regularly. Further, the default agenda (and architecture of the system) is that players neither have the means to, nor are the expected to, move out of 1st person perspective (actor stance).

Now, take those fundamentals and consider the implementation of (i) a metagame resource scheme that allows the players to affect setting (trading GM-offered complications for plot tokens that can be cashed in for assets/resources/complications for enemies/establishment of helpful backstory).

Or, instead, take those fundamentals and consider (ii) the movement from the above genre conceits to, say, gonzo high fantasy (while the elements of the system that permeate play which work to engender the genre conceits mentioned above still present).

What problems, if any, do you imagine might arise? Would they be considerable enough for you to consider not doing either i or ii?

As to why I think drift is relevant? Well, that is a very long post and I mostly just wanted to see what people generally thought at large. If it needs to be applied to a present issue, then I think its very relevant to D&D and the big tent approach of 5e. In effect, that effort is to create a generic enough chassis with modular elements that affect wide "drift-capacity" (genre and creative agenda; pawn stance wargamers, 2e storytellers, gritty process simulators, high fantasy narrative players, and more) and cast a vast net. Their hope is that the modules don't either, in and of themselves, fundamentally cross the "drift-boundary" nor as a product of multiple modules interacting with one another (so as to sow dysfunction in play due to discordant system elements or genre conceits interfacing with one another).

 

[the Jester]

"Drifting" is generally used to describe using a game system in a way that changes the relationship between the techniques of play and the outcomes/purposes of play.

Some drifting involves keeping many of the techniques but changing the outcomes/purposes - for instance, Moldvay Basic's rules and techniques are mostly about classic dungeoneering play, but many players used it to play more of a heroic fantasy style.

Some drifting invole changes some of the rules/techniques in order to achieve the game's original outcome/purpose - this often happens because there were some kludges in design. I think that 4e groups who take extended rests of a simple ingame passage-of-time cycle and do things like make them the outcome of skill challenges, or have rules that you can only get an extended rest when you return to civilisation (which tends to make them "once per adventure" - a metagame unit of time - rather than "once per day" - an ingame unit of time) might be seen as an instance of this. They change the rules or methods of play slightly so as to make the game truer to itself.

The aim of "tight" game design - say like what we see in 13th Age - is to minimise the need for the second sort of drifting, by minimising the clash between the game's own methods and goals/outlook. There is nothing to be done to stop the first sort of drifting, though, because people will always use games for their own purposes, whatever the designers had in mind!

Okay, this makes it a bit clearer for me. Thanks!

Hey @the Jester and @Tequila Sunrise. How about this thought experiment:

Dark-Sun was mentioned. Consider a system premised upon low fantasy, aftermath. The marriage of system mechanics and tight, thematic content from the setting is meant to produce a table experience of the fantasy version of Mad Max. Themes such as survival of the fittest are central. System components such as punitive resource depletion create a tension between heroism and hopeless desperation. Hard choices are made regularly. Further, the default agenda (and architecture of the system) is that players neither have the means to, nor are the expected to, move out of 1st person perspective (actor stance).

Now, take those fundamentals and consider the implementation of (i) a metagame resource scheme that allows the players to affect setting (trading GM-offered complications for plot tokens that can be cashed in for assets/resources/complications for enemies/establishment of helpful backstory).

Or, instead, take those fundamentals and consider (ii) the movement from the above genre conceits to, say, gonzo high fantasy (while the elements of the system that permeate play which work to engender the genre conceits mentioned above still present).

What problems, if any, do you imagine might arise? Would they be considerable enough for you to consider not doing either i or ii?

I've got to say that I've long loved deforming, squeezing and chopping game systems to suit my needs, so I'd do any of these things (assuming there was no system that I preferred more for the game) after some judicious tinkering.

 

[Manbearcat]

I've got to say that I've long loved deforming, squeezing and chopping game systems to suit my needs, so I'd do any of these things (assuming there was no system that I preferred more for the game) after some judicious tinkering.

Good deal! That answers the question then. Sounds like your boundaries are wide. My guess is that will be a pretty strong majority opinion.