D&D 5E A case where the 'can try everything' dogma could be a problem

[pemerton]

Maybe by the precise, seeming-intentionally divisive definitions the Forge hammered out. But, RQ succeeds at being a playable game just fine.

Of course RQ is playable - it's one of the best RPGs ever published!

But that doesn't change the fact that it's not very well suited for non-sim play.

On divisiveness - I personally don't understand why classification is regarded as divisive. Look at this thread and you'll see different play preferences around (i) who has authority to introduce new content into the shared fiction, and (ii) what methods are used to introduce that content, and (iii) what the proper orientation of the various game participants towards the shared fiction should be. Those differences of preference aren't objectionable, and using terminology to try and describe and analyse them doesn't strike me as objectionable either.

You can use it's resolution systems to play through challenging, interesting scenarios, be they on the scale of single skirmish, or a broad campaign, or solving a mystery, or whatever. BRP is a fairly straightforward moderately flexible system that way, and it 'balances' by the simple expedient of leaving all choices open to all players (not balanced at all, really, but at least fair, which is sufficient for a playable game). That's 'gamist' enough for me.

OK, but that seems mostly a fact about you. I know from experience that the lack of player decision points in respect of mechanics, in conjunction with the other features of the system that push against dungeon-delving style play (eg the brutality of combat) makes RQ a less-than-satisfactory vehicle for hard-pushing gamist play.

Aside from encumbrance, those are just stylistic choices. The DM can stock dungeons or not, create wondering monster tables for an area or not, give players a chance to integrate their characters into the world and craft a story around that or not.

This depends, in part, on what you think the game is. If you read Gygax's PHB and DMG, or Moldvay Basic, "layer cake" dungeons and wandering monsters are not optional, nor stylistic choices. They are core elements of the game.

Obviously there have been many players of D&D who drop these elements and move the game in other directions - and 2nd ed AD&D does the same thing under the official label - but there are reasons why many players who incline away from the distinctive 2nd ed approach to play (eg OSRers, "indie"-types, etc) have less-than-fond memories of 2nd ed AD&D.

I wish the folks who were that adamant about it would limit themselves to such games, rather than unduly criticizing perfectly good games that are open to all agendas by virtue of being basically functional RPGs.

I'm not sure if you're targetting this at me or not. The only game I think I've ever criticised on these boards (and I've done it again in this thread) is 2nd ed AD&D. (Perhaps also the occasional snipe at the "golden rule" from the old White Wolf games.)

I'm not criticising RQ, or HW/Q, or BW, or Gygax's AD&D. I'm one of the main proponents of RQ on these boards, just about the only proponent of BW or HW/Q, and although personally I suck at Gygaxian AD&D I admire many of its features (esp its treatment of hit points and saving throws) and think it's a well-designed and highly viable game.

I don't think that a good game has to be good for everything. (In fact, I tend to feel that a necessary condition of being a good game is being pretty focused on a particular approach to play.) Of my own campaigns, I don't expect my 4e campaign to deliver the same play experience as my BW campaign. They're different games that deliver different experiences.

 

[pemerton]

You could certainly 'try harder' in a game like RQ, you'd just be bucking for a situational modifier

I don't think that RQ really supports a bonus for "I try harder".

In AD&D, there are rules for berserkers (but they're NPCs), and certain animals and monsters get a combat bonus when defending their young, but there is no suggestion that PCs are entitled to such bonuses.

In T&T there are rules for berserk fighting, but they are triggered randomly rather than by choice.

At the other end of the spectrum from RQ, in HeroWars/Quest relationships are rated with bonuses just like other PC abilities, and a character's bonus in a relationship can be used to augment another check where that relationship is in play. This is a system which takes it for granted that the outcomes of action declarations will be affected by the PC's emotional context, and not just the external, causal processes of the gameworld.

I think a mechanic like inspiration works decently for this, but most treatments of "luck points" or "hero points" or "dailies" really don't, especially if the resource is (a) expendable (and therefore must be managed like other resources), and (b) can be applied retroactively ("Oh, my character failed...but no! I'll expend this hero point so I actually succeeded!"). A decision not to use the resource might be problematic in-character

I think this might be something in respect of which experiences differ.

For instance, in 4e Elven Accuracy is (a) rationed, and (b) retroactive, but the choice to use it is still a marker of commitment. Whereas choosing not to use it is acquiescing in the outcome - apparently the issue isn't so important to the PC (as played by the player) after all!

 

[pemerton]

The idea that players with different stylistic preferences shouldn't be able to get along makes them sound like jerks.

I don't know. If you put a soccer player and a rugby player on the same field, things might go wrong, but that doesn't mean the players are jerks. Or can't get along. They just need to agree on the game they're going to play.

On these boards, you can see posters who defend GM fudging and explain why it's important for the game. Posters who say that the GM gets to veto PC build choices by "powergaming" players. Posters who say that a railroad is great if the destination is fun-ville. If I was to join one of their games and disrupt it, that would be a jerk move. But I don't see why I'm a jerk for not wanting to join their games.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I don't know. If you put a soccer player and a rugby player on the same field, things might go wrong, but that doesn't mean the players are jerks. Or can't get along. They just need to agree on the game they're going to play.

Games and agendas are not the same thing. You can't have one player at the table playing RQ and another playing D&D. That's the analogy you just drew. You can have a player who wants to emphasize offense (one agenda) and another who wants personal glory (another agenda) on the same team, and, with a little work, they'll both contribute to the team's success.

I don't think that a good game has to be good for everything. (In fact, I tend to feel that a necessary condition of being a good game is being pretty focused on a particular approach to play.)

I'm guessing that's a central Forge/GNS principle, and I think that's a key problem I have with the whole convoluted thing. Back in the 90s when the Roll vs Role debate was growing into the GNS monster, what bothered me was the false dichotomy pushed by that debate. Nothing about choosing a game with workable systems (roll) keeps you from RPing with it (role). It's a false dilemma, you can have both.

The same goes for GNS. RPGs are very flexible games by their very nature. They're necessarily games, unavoidable produce a narrative as you go along, and can't help but simulate something (if only their tautological self-simulating milieu).

GNS is fine as a way of looking at how people play games and how various games interact with various forms of play. As a trio of warring camps, though, it's counter-productive, at best.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I'm not so sure the simulationist would want to make decisions in-character. He'd want to make decisions that would accurately represent the character. If his personality isn't similar enough to the characters, it would be inaccurate to get all 'immersed' and make a decision as if he were the character, and make the simulation better if he were to step back and analyze the character and make the decision from 'outside.' Similarly, a resource not under the character's control, but affecting the character's ability, chance of success, or fate or whatever could be used to make the portrayal of the character more accurate - a better simulation.

I've been calling myself a Simulationist because I'm clearly not a Narrativist or Gamist, but what I mean by the term is that the player should make all decisions from an in-character perspective. Half of the fun is in taking on the role of a character who has a different personality, and deciding to act like that person instead of acting like myself. (Real actors do this sort of thing all the time, and though they aren't generally asked to make decisions for the character - that being a job of the writers - they clearly understand their personae well enough to know whether any given dialogue or action is in-character for that character.)

If that's unclear, then I'll put it down to insufficiency of the GNS model, and wish that we had some more easily-agreed-upon language for discussing the topic.

There are extreme examples of 'games' that map to the extreme commitment to an agenda that it'd take to find a typical RPG 'unsuitable,' and I wish the folks who were that adamant about it would limit themselves to such games, rather than unduly criticizing perfectly good games that are open to all agendas by virtue of being basically functional RPGs.

My definition of "basically functional RPG" is that it must be readable, it must make sense to someone trying to read it, and that it never ask a player to make a decision beyond the agency of the character.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I've been calling myself a Simulationist because I'm clearly not a Narrativist or Gamist, but what I mean by the term is that the player should make all decisions from an in-character perspective. If that's unclear, then I'll put it down to insufficiency of the GNS model, and wish that we had some more easily-agreed-upon language for discussing the topic.

That's OK, I have no problem getting away from the GNS lingo, let's go with that. Now, do you mean in-character perspective as judging what the imaginary character would do in the imaginary circumstance based on it's imaginary abilities & personality? Or do you mean in-character perspective in the sense of the player putting himself in the imaginary circumstance, with those same imaginary abilities, but his own personality, and perhaps even some immediate sense of what the imaginary character would be imagined as feeling in the moment? (Because, the former seems a lot more workable.)

My definition of "basically functional RPG" is that it must be readable, it must make sense to someone trying to read it, and that it never ask a player to make a decision beyond the agency of the character.

Lol. That last bit makes it a very narrow definition.

 

[pemerton]

GNS is fine as a way of looking at how people play games and how various games interact with various forms of play. As a trio of warring camps, though, it's counter-productive, at best.

But where are the warring camps?

My only "war" with [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] is about whether a certain sort of AD&D 2nd ed-inspired approach to the player role (do nothing but play the character from an ingame point of view confined to ingame causal powers) is exhaustive of, or even paradigmatic of, RPGing. We've been having the discussion on-and-off for a while now on these boards, and I don't see that it is doing anyone any harm.

In this thread, I've posted some ideas that I see as solutions to the issue raised in the OP, namely, how to handle knowledge checks in play. I suspect that OP isn't that keen on my ideas, but on the principle that many more people read a thread than post in it, someone might have seen one of my posts and found an interesting suggestion there. (I know that my GMing has benefitted from reading threads about techniques where I haven't myself participated in the thread.)

I don't think that posting about techniques that I know not everyone will want to use counts as "warring". Not everyone has to use the same techniques in RPGing.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But where are the warring camps?

AFAICT, mainly in the minds of those who want there to be warring camps.

You go to an actual gaming table, and you find a mix of styles and agendas, not just among the group of people, but in how each individual plays.

But then you get on line and you have people self-identifying as 'simulationists' or being labeled 'narrativist' or calling others 'gamist,' and characterizing games that don't fail at delivering narrative & gamist options badly enough as 'failing to support simulationist play,' or games that do allow players to approach them as they like as 'incoherent.'

My only "war" with @Saelorn is about whether a certain sort of AD&D 2nd ed-inspired approach to the player role (do nothing but play the character from an ingame point of view confined to ingame causal powers) is exhaustive of, or even paradigmatic of, RPGing.

I don't know if I'm more annoyed by how pedantic and pseudo-intellectual that sounded, or by the fact that it made perfect sense to me, and I can't think of an equally accurate, plain-language way of saying the same thing. :sigh: ;(

Seriously, though, Saelorn does bring up that pet subject a lot, and I wish you luck getting through to him. I do feel like GNS only helps perpetuates such nonsense, though.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

That's OK, I have no problem getting away from the GNS lingo, let's go with that. Now, do you mean in-character perspective as judging what the imaginary character would do in the imaginary circumstance based on it's imaginary abilities & personality? Or do you mean in-character perspective in the sense of the player putting himself in the imaginary circumstance, with those same imaginary abilities, but his own personality, and perhaps even some immediate sense of what the imaginary character would be imagined as feeling in the moment? (Because, the former seems a lot more workable.)

The former. When playing a role, the player should try to do what the character would do in that circumstance (based on the character's abilities, knowledge, and personality), and not do what the player would do in that circumstance (based on the character's abilities, but the player's knowledge and personality).

Using player knowledge that the character doesn't have access to is the classic example of meta-gaming, and if there's one agenda that they really put forth in the AD&D 2E era, it's that meta-gaming is something you should absolutely never do. Likewise, acting in a way contrary to the character's established behavior (after several sessions) is going to seem jarring to the rest of the players, and should be avoided whenever possible - it's just poor role-playing, in the same way that a novel with inconsistent characterization would be considered poor writing. (Some players get around the difficulty of pretending to be someone else by making characters who would behave very much like themselves; and while that's a great tool for players new to role-playing, I think many players would get bored playing the same personality over and over, so eventually they would want to branch out and play someone with a different personality.)

And while I think we can all agree that there are sometimes good reasons to meta-game - to prevent one or more players from being sidelined for hours on end, for example - it's always something to be weighed against the cost of meta-gaming.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The former. When playing a role, the player should try to do what the character would do in that circumstance (based on the character's abilities, knowledge, and personality), and not do what the player would do in that circumstance (based on the character's abilities, but the player's knowledge and personality).

I'm glad to hear it, but I don't see how resources and factors outside the character's volition or knowledge are a problem.

Using player knowledge that the character doesn't have access to is the classic example of meta-gaming.

Okay. So as long as you keep player knowledge & resources out of it when determining the actions & attitudes of the character, you're OK.

For example, you, as a player, might know that your character has 40 hps, and the goblin holding a knife to his throat, can't possibly do more than half that, even with the nastiest critical hit the DM has added to the game, but you wouldn't just have your character let his throat be slit, secure in the knowledge it can't kill or even inconvenience him, rather, you'd treat the situation as one of dire danger.

By the same token, you could have your character charge bravely into melee against a foe he perceives as superior, and RP him being brave (overcoming his fear), in spite of the fact that you not only know he has has plenty of hps, but that you have some player resource (FATE point, luck re-roll, Inspiration, whatever), that you can use to help him overcome that foe. That's, as opposed to taking on the enemy /because/ you have that resource, even though the character would normally run for the hills.

And while I think we can all agree that there are sometimes good reasons to meta-game - to prevent one or more players from being sidelined for hours on end, for example - it's always something to be weighed against the cost of meta-gaming.

The 'cost' of meta-gaming is mostly a personal one. If you feel your RP experience is diminished by it, it's a high cost. If you're 'just playing a game,' it's one way you try to 'win.'