Failing Forward

[Bedrockgames]

It is far more efficient to allow many details to be fuzzy, and really determine them only when it is found to matter. We don't need to stipulate what the tabletop is made of until the player is considering setting it on fire. We don't need to be sure if there's a chandelier until someone might want to swing from one. Paying a resource to stipulate a detail is just a way of eliminating a "mother, may I?" loop of GM judgement call of whether they want to allow the player to try something.
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I think there is a reasonable complaint about this sort of technique though. There are plenty of gamers who really enjoy the sense of being there in their character's shoes and giving them world editing abilities like this can both take them out of their character's headspace and blur the line between the character and the setting. For these kinds of players, the GMs role in saying "yes there is a chandelier" or "no there isn't" is pretty crucial and if you shift that to the player it becomes an issue. Not saying these kinds of points are bad. But there is a play style and player type where they are not the ideal choice.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think there is a reasonable complaint about this sort of technique though. There are plenty of gamers who really enjoy the sense of being there in their character's shoes and giving them world editing abilities like this can both take them out of their character's headspace and blur the line between the character and the setting. For these kinds of players, the GMs role in saying "yes there is a chandelier" or "no there isn't" is pretty crucial and if you shift that to the player it becomes an issue. Not saying these kinds of points are bad. But there is a play style and player type where they are not the ideal choice.

In my experience this is true - but I have never seen this type of behaviour out of anyone who wasn't a veteran D&D or WoD player. I therefore believe it's learned from those games.

 

[Bedrockgames]

In my experience this is true - but I have never seen this type of behaviour out of anyone who wasn't a veteran D&D or WoD player. I therefore believe it's learned from those games.

I don't know. I've met plenty of non-D&D/WOD gamers who feel this way.

 

[Umbran]

I think there is a reasonable complaint about this sort of technique though.

Nothing in this world is perfect.

There are plenty of gamers who really enjoy the sense of being there in their character's shoes and giving them world editing abilities like this can both take them out of their character's headspace and blur the line between the character and the setting.

I'm sure there are. But, as Neonchameleon notes - how much of this is learned behavior, an expectation set by previous play?

That which is learned, can be unlearned, or at least so Yoda tells us. So, if possible, it may behoove a player to learn to be more flexible - inflexibility is a virtue in steel beams, but not so much in players.

For these kinds of players, the GMs role in saying "yes there is a chandelier" or "no there isn't" is pretty crucial and if you shift that to the player it becomes an issue.

Here's an interesting bit - nobody is saying you can't ask the GM first! It isn't like the FATE mechanic requires *all* small details to be in the player's hands. Fate points are valuable enough for other things that players who don't use them in this particular way probably won't ever notice the lack.

And, in Gumshoe, if you don't want to ever want to pull an in-deterministic rabbit out of your hat, just don't put points into Preparedness. You can buy other skills instead. Just be ready to always have to list out Every. Piece. Of. Equipment. All. The. Time.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Nothing in this world is perfect.



I'm sure there are. But, as Neonchameleon notes - how much of this is learned behavior, an expectation set by previous play?

That which is learned, can be unlearned, or at least so Yoda tells us. So, if possible, it may behoove a player to learn to be more flexible - inflexibility is a virtue in steel beams, but not so much in players.
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I am not convinced it is a learned behavior any more than other tastes and preferences are.

I'm inclined to see it as a preference thing. I had a player who really, really hated bennies, no matter how often he played savage worlds (a system he otherwise enjoyed). I could have told him he was wrong, misguided, close-minded, etc; but that wouldn't have been very productive. Rather I listened to reasons. Something about "well maybe that is a learned behavior you should change" seems just as rude to me as saying "FATE isn't an RPG". I mean we are just talking about preferences. The whole "I don't like having the ability to alter the setting through points" has come up often enough I think it is a legitimate style issue. Some systems may have it, and it is small enough that people won't notice. But when it is obvious, it is clearly a problem for some people.

I'm not saying such systems are bad. I'm just saying they are not for everyone (just like horror movies are not for everyone, and just like not all people like movies that break the fourth wall). It is easy to see why these points would disrupt suspension of disbelief for some folks.

In terms of people being flexible and open minded. I think it is good to try new things, and be open to new experiences. I think pretending you like something you don't isn't a virtue. I can be as open minded about dark chocolate all I want, it won't change my dislike of it. Same goes for Jazz. I've been a musician most of my life, always tried to listen to Jazz because it is one of those things you are supposed to enjoy if you are really into music but with a handful of exceptions it just never worked for me. I go nuts if I listen to more than a few minutes of jazz. I think the same thing applies here. Me and my group are always trying new games. Some of them are cool with stuff like bennies and fate points, some really have a problem with them. They'll play games with them, but they will let me know what they think of the system afterwards. Some tastes can be acquired, but not all.

Also as someone who isn't too into the point thing myself, I've played plenty of games like this and been open to the mechanics. No amount of playing has changed my reaction when it does come up. I am not as bothered by it as some folks. I'll still play but such mechanics tend to irk me. So I don't think it is a simple question of unlearning it. What I will say is perhaps my rationale is off. I noticed the irking before I had an explanation, so it is entirely possible there is something else at work beneath he surface here in terms of why. But the mechanic is definitely the source of the issue.

Now if you like the mechanic, that is cool. I am not asking you to justify your enjoyment of it, or calling into question its legitimacy. I'm just saying people who don't like it probably have a valid reason the centers on preference.

 

[Imaro]

I'm sure there are. But, as Neonchameleon notes - how much of this is learned behavior, an expectation set by previous play?

That which is learned, can be unlearned, or at least so Yoda tells us. So, if possible, it may behoove a player to learn to be more flexible - inflexibility is a virtue in steel beams, but not so much in players..

In my experience this is true - but I have never seen this type of behaviour out of anyone who wasn't a veteran D&D or WoD player. I therefore believe it's learned from those games.

For me these quotes seem uncomfortably close to the D&D players have been "brain damaged" rhetoric of Ron Edwards back in the day?? I've seen plenty of people who weren't veteran D&D or WoD players who just enjoyed a less narrative/player-authorial style.

Personally I can enjoy either... depending on the mood and experience I am looking for and I am a veteran D&D and WoD player, but... It's a preference, not some brain washing or learned behavior that had to be shed from those games... Seriously, this is a leisure activity and when doing an activity for fun most people will gravitate to what they enjoy... to pre-suppose that they need to be more flexible or unlearn their preferences is kind of insulting. I don't suggest someone who likes playing basketball but doesn't like boxing needs to unlearn his preferences or be more flexible since they are both sports, I assume he's an adult and knows what is and isn't an enjoyable experience for himself.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I know what you are advocating - but it is far from the only way to run things, and is a way I find extremely slow and clunky. Either by burying the players in the GM's wall of text or by asking lots of questions about things the character would be able to see at a glance, massively weakening immersion. As such I find this a vastly inferior way of doing things, one which makes for a less rich world from both sides of the table, and effectively leads to the experience of playing a blindfolded character being lead around by a guide (i.e. the GM) rather than having the PC actually inhabit the world. And I mean that literally - you can never get more description of the world by your way of doing things than a blind person with a guide (shared with multiple other people) would.

What you are advocating would be the equivalent of five guides, each describing things to each other in the order that they become relevant. Without a central authority, there is no way to maintain consistency in anything. If you make up a detail and declare it, and it contradicts a detail believed (but not yet declared) by another player, then you've just stomped on their immersion as well as if the GM had done it, but you don't have a unified vision to back it up.

This "Constantly switching back and forth between character-role and author-role" is something I only recall ever hearing from players whose major experience is with 90s RPGs or D&D 3.X. The reason I believe it breaks immersion for you is that you have been trained to believe that the players should not step on the DM's toes by actually trying to understand how the world works and sharing their vision as authoritative.

There can be only one final authority. The players should try to understand how the world works, but they'll never understand it as well as the one who actually designed everything and knows how it fits together in the background. If a player tries to share their own vision, as though it was authoritative, then they're likely to contradict some other things within the world - which would put a huge burden on the GM, who is in charge of running everything else in the world that isn't on-screen right now.

Between the nineties and 3.X, that's a hugely influential piece of RPG history. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that the whole school of thought, codified during that era, is the Establishment against which other games distinguish themselves. Which isn't to say that you can't do your collaborative improv thing, if that's what you enjoy, but don't expect many others to buy into it. People who like RPGs, by and large, like them for what they are rather than for what you want them to be.

Edit: Sorry, that came out sounding way more hostile than I'd intended. You raise a valid point, and it makes sense how collaborative improv could increase immersion at the table. The single-author style definitely experiences a bottle-neck of information, when the GM needs to divide their attention multiple ways, and splitting up the responsibility for world-building (and detail-building) seems like a sufficient way of addressing that issue. At worst, it's just a trade-off in priorities.

 

[Balesir]

Maybe you could elaborate a bit on what you mean by "significant strategising" here? From what I have seen/experienced, it's well possible for players to strategize--in the sense that they can plan to get their foes where they want them, before combat even starts--as long as they are able to bounce their ideas off the DM first to get some notion about how the ruling would go.

Sure. No less a chap than Dwight Eisenhower once said "I have always found plans to be mostly useless. Planning, on the other hand, is utterly essential!"

In the way I strategise when I approach games, and when I tackle big issues at work, I find that I can agree with this assessment pretty thoroughly. I don't have "a plan". I have lots of plans all mutating and developing in parallel. Some are preferred scenarios, some are more of a contingency, others are speculative but it turns out the conditions for them never really emerge. I know from conversations we have had that several of my gaming friends experience much the same sort of state of mind.

To enable this sort of "ongoing foment", I need to have a few things. Firstly, I need a clear idea of my objectives. In a board game or a war game this will tend to be given, but in a roleplaying game it will come at least partly from the character I'm playing (whether this be my PC or an NPC). This I break down into sub-objectives, and this is where the main requirement arises - I need to know my character's capabilities. Note: this is very different from needing to know what my character knows, which is usually completely impractical in any case. I am personally incapable of picking out the spoor of wild animals and recognising its import in natural surroundings, and it would take far too long to even learn about it to play a game, but all I need to know is that my character can do it either reliably, or not-so-reliably. I need an accurate model in my head of what my character can do, because the character will almost certainly have an accurate model of what they can do - even though their model may take a very different form than mine.

Here is where rules really help and relying on what the GM thinks my character's capabilities are doesn't suffice. It comes down a little bit like [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] is describing; my character knows far more about the world in which they live than I ever will - my brain is pretty fully engaged getting and maintaining all I know, never mind all some other guy knows! So I need a proxy, a substitute model, if I am to strategise in a way that feels adequate to me from the character's point of view.

This will necessarily involve also having some clear model of how the world outside the character works. To know my capabilities in dealing with the environment, I will need to know something about how the environment will respond.

Given these elements of a world model - which is not identical to the character's world model (because getting to that is impossible in less than a lifetime), but is a proxy sufficient for evaluating and moulding plans about the objectives that are relevant to the play in which we are engaging - I can start up the engine to build plans, evaluate possibilities, identify contingencies and so on. If I have to ask the GM for constant clarifications and guidance, this ability simply fails. It becomes a stunted husk of what I think of as true "strategising", where a bare minimum of options and contingencies are evaluated. In the "system thinking" terminology I was using above, much of the evaluation is being done by my "system 1" brain after I have translated the rules into its terms, but it is being guided by the "system 2" brain concerning constraints and objectives, with additional input for any maths required. This is quite hard work, but also fun as I reach a sort of state of buzzing consciousness that's hard to explain, with plans and possibilities forming and reforming as the situation in the game changes.

Does that cover the ground you had in mind?

Great post, btw.

Thanks!

 

[Umbran]

I am not convinced it is a learned behavior any more than other tastes and preferences are.

This is not necessarily much of an argument against it. Many preferences - in food, in literature, in movies and TV, color of clothes to wear, in all sorts of things, are likely learned behaviors.

I'm just saying people who don't like it probably have a valid reason the centers on preference.

Yeah. So, an andecdote: I have a friend who sometimes plays in my games. He, like everyone, has food preferences. For one, he hates cheese. He doesn't have an allergy, nor is he lactose intolerant, or any similar biological issue with it. He simply dislikes it, in any form. There is no flavor or texture of cheese that appeals to him. When he's been over over to my house for dinner, more than once, he's taken from a dish, eaten it, and said it was wonderful, complimenting the dish. And then been told that it contains a considerable amount of cheese - and his opinion of the dish has retroactive changed to him not liking it much at all.

This is common in humans. Many of our "reasons" are just rationalizations for emotional reactions, not actually root causes. My friend has an emotional reaction to the idea of cheese. If the idea of cheese, however, is not in his mind, he has no issue with the actuality of cheese.

So, I'm just saying that preferences need not be written in stone for all time, and that occasionally challenging the supremacy of accepted preferences is a good thing. We should challenge assumptions - INCLUDING OUR OWN.

For me these quotes seem uncomfortably close to the D&D players have been "brain damaged" rhetoric of Ron Edwards back in the day??

That seems more a statement than a question.

I'm saying nothing about brain damage, at least no more than afflicts humans in general (myself included). We are very good at misleading ourselves, and holding onto positions long after rational issues have been addressed. I do not know it is happening with anyone in this thread, of course. But when we start considering unnamed masses collectively, these effects should also be considered.

 

[Balesir]

What you are advocating would be the equivalent of five guides, each describing things to each other in the order that they become relevant. Without a central authority, there is no way to maintain consistency in anything. If you make up a detail and declare it, and it contradicts a detail believed (but not yet declared) by another player, then you've just stomped on their immersion as well as if the GM had done it, but you don't have a unified vision to back it up.

That's one of the things that the rules are for. The players should at all times consider what the rules say when formulating what they believe, but within that they can believe what they like. In this paradigm, only the rules dictate what can happen; what the players (including the GM) say, moderated or constrained by the rules procedures and the dice, determines what does happen. If you believe that something has happened that has not been declared, you have only yourself to blame.

There can be only one final authority.

Actually, several experiences have shown me that this isn't so. True, there has to be a way of settling disputes (as contrasted with conflicts, which term we tend to use for in-game differences of views, rather than about-the-game disagreements). But that can be a rule or a procedure just as well as it can be a person.